Back in the 90’s when we built websites we would often put “under construction” banners and GIFS on pages we were still building. This Lemmings one was one of my favorites. (Tai’shar to whomever archived these from Geocities.)
Lemmings was also one of my favorite computer games growing up. Little characters (more like Fraggles than real life lemmings) would pour out of a trap door and you’d try to usher as many as possible safely to the exit. Each Lemming could have a job like digging or building or blocking unsafe areas.
So this little banner of Lemmings building a Coming Soon sign is super nostalgic.
Over the last week my website has been “under construction” as I move from Squarespace to WordPress. By the time you’re seeing this the dust may have settled, but right now my domain name is in limbo. My site is kind of working, but my email is not. My shop is down. And I haven’t worked out all the design details the way I want.
Last year I orbited closer and closer to old school blogging. I started a digital garden with Obsidian and tried the micro.blog platform. They were an easy entry, but I realized more and more I wanted my own blog and I wanted more control than any of those platforms gave me.
So here I am.
Bringing my various dragons home to roost.
My intention is to carve out a space here to share the types of things that I used to post on social media.
This month’s zine is a collaboration between 38 year old me and 13 year old me. I made it with stickers and journal entries from my millennial time capsule – created in 1999.
To celebrate waiting 26 years to open this time capsule I’ve made a full color zine this month! To go with the Crayola vibes I used rubber stamps instead of my typewriter this month. Sometimes it’s nice to get your hands dirty.
Patrons watch your mailboxes. The rest of you can buy a copy from my shop.
I was SO sure there was a Tamogotchi inside! But the only “artifacts” were a dried out gel pen (I’m 90% sure it was dried out before I put it in) and a McDonalds Beanie Babies Happy Meal bag. I remember being really confused about what to include that I wouldn’t somehow miss in the next 26 years. 😂
What would you have put in a time capsule to represent the year 1999?
In the Studio ✂️
Something I realized during NaNoWriMo is that I want to make my noveling process more interdisciplinary. My first step was printing out images from my novel’s mood board. Holding these in my hands and moving them around was incredibly regulating after an overstimulating holiday season.
10/10 would recommend paper mood boards.
I’m planning to pin these on a cork board so I can continue to move them around rather than gluing them down. I may even use string. (I have a long standing thing for conspiracy corkboards.)
The added benefit will be keeping my story visible to my conscious and unconcious mind throughout the year. Here’s a time lapse since I’m not on Instagram anymore.
Over the last month I’ve realized (reading Ray Bradbury & Dorothea Brande) that my creative ecosystem needs more time for dreaming and ideation. So my word of the year is Reverie and I made this phone wallpaper as a visual reminder. The painting by John William Waterhouse is titled Boreas.
I’m also starting a “writing from life” practice – separate from my self reflective journaling – to keep up my prose writing throughout the year. I both need space to think about my novel and space to write. I’m using this gorgeous spreadsheet to track my progress. Something I love about it is that you track time as well as words. Time researching, writing, prepping all counts. There’s tons of flexibility in setting goals and the spreadsheet even encourages you to allow for missing days.
My kid is 5 1/2 years old and this feels like the first time I’ve had the energy and capacity to stay up late writing most nights. (Brain fog in the morning means waking up early never worked for me.) I’m so grateful to home education for giving us the flexibility to set our own hours.
Reading these together really formed a constellation of creative process. Observing what overlapped and what differed. I learned years ago I can’t use another creative process wholecloth, but reading about other people’s experience can help demystify the process. Studying early drafts of Tolkien and Sanderson’s work is really doing that for me as well.
Apparently a Rat Rod “is a custom car with a deliberately worn-down, unfinished appearance, typically lacking paint, showing rust, and made from cheap or cast-off parts.” Pretty cool.
Wicked’s ‘Dancing Through Life’ Full Scene Breakdown (I love the stage production and never expected to like the film version, but with Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman at the helm this is a stunning adaptation so far.)
This time last year…
Hello from a Human Jungle Gym is a reflection on time and energetic capacity. I had similar goals last year, but continued to sink too much time into Substack. I’m hoping that making the big jump to Beehiiv will help me realize some of these intentions.
We’ll see what happens long term, but I had twice the open rate on my last email as I have on Substack recently. People are starting to treat Substack like a social media and posts get lost in the feed.
The Compost Heap is handmade without the use of AI. 🐝
Support doing things the old fashioned way by joining my Patrons ($5) and I’ll send paper copies of my zines with the coolest postage stamps I can find.
Not into snail mail?
Here are other ways you can support.
Share with a friend. (It’s free!)
Art swap! Let me know if you’d like to swap your art for a zine.
Because The Medium is the Message I’ve given up weekly blogging and I’m making monthly zines instead.
Here’s how it works.
First, I noodle around with an idea. I type up a few notes on my phone and mull it over.
I might browse are.na to find some images or I might use a photograph.
Next, I do 2-3 rounds of edits. This process is powered by my kid’s hyperfocus when playing Zelda Breath of the Wild.
Then, I go out to my studio and load up my 1950’s Underwood typewriter.
Unless there’s a big problem (like above: when I loaded my typewriter ribbon backwards) I do my best to type the zine in one go. The mistakes and typos are part of the zine aesthetic and show it was made by hand.
I actually love when the letters print twice or a little crooked. It feels punk rock in a world with AI.
Then I add any images with double stick tape. I’ve decided to go full analogue and not do any digital touch ups.
I Xerox the final product on my laser printer and send physical copies to my patrons (pledges starting at $3 on Patreon.)
But you don’t have to pay to read. I’ll be sending a virtual zine every month to YOU.
If this works.
I’m not sure how well the zine will read on phone screens so this is a bit of an experiment. You may have to pinch and zoom.
Or read on a computer. You can click here to read on archive.org. It’s pretty cool over there because you can flip the pages and see the spreads as they were designed.
Websites cost money. If we don’t pay directly they are making their money by selling our attention (ads) or mining our data (for advertisers or to train AI.)
Here are some algorithm free websites I have been enjoying. I am happy to chip in my support for the services they are providing.
A simple microblogging platform. This is the passion project of Manton Reece, author of Indie Microblogging. He created micro.blog as a simple solution to own your own microblogging content. I could write a whole post about how great this is (for $5 a month), but I’ll try to keep it short. You can use it to build a website, make a blog, or microblog (like a Twitter or Instagram alternative.)
I am playing around with a photo blog which automatically publishes to Bluesky. You can also subscribe to it via RSS.
micro.blog is the way the web should work. It can be integrated with so many different things. I’ve even set up Beehiiv to automatically archive itself at sarahshotts.blog
Bluesky is a public benefit corporation with the mission to “to develop and drive large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation.” (Source)
This is a radical experiment in prioritizing the open web over commercial success.
You have so much control over your experience there and you can even follow Bluesky feeds through RSS or on other platforms (like the micro.blog app).
Come on over to blue skies. Claim your name at least!
My biggest frustration the last time I tested Beehiiv was the friction in the comment system. But I overlooked the simplest solution.
I’ve turned comments off.
Just hit reply to message me directly (or text me if you know me.)
So much cozier.
P.S. I should probably port over my “ways to support” banner, but it’s nearly midnight and we are drowning in sales emails this month anyway. I’ll put it back in January.
A few years ago I started making artwork with a gallery setting in mind (rather than Instagram.) That completely changed the kinds of things I was making.
I started the series My Brain on Motherhood and have been in over 10 fine art exhibitions. That never would have happened if I kept making art “for” the Internet.
The medium is the message.
The platform that we create for work for informs the work.
Earlier this year, I stopped writing paywalled posts for paying supporters and started sending letters in the mail.
Changing the medium of the message has made that work feel more personal and also more like human connection and less like work. So I’ve been wondering how to bring that energy to what I’m making here.
I’m contemplating the ways in which I might go analogue with my newsletter in the new year.
This will be going out to my paid supporters this month as an experiment. (You can sub for as little as $3 a month via Patreon.) I’ll might alternate letters and zines depending on what I have to say.
What’s interesting to me is how much this is about intention.
Once made the work with an art gallery in mind – I can then share it on Instagram. (My “I’m Fine” cross stitch actually went low key viral.)
But the frame in which I formulate ideas changes what I make.
So when I say I’m going “analogue” I’m thinking of creating physical zines on my typewriter. That’s the medium. I’ll send paper copies to paying supporters (a sliding scale starting at $3 a month.)
Once I’ve made that I can then archive digital versions of that zine on my website or Internet Archive (like this). I’ll send fewer emails (monthly or quarterly) that point directly to my website and / or compost heap. So the email newsletter becomes a channel to share my work and not the medium of the work itself.
I’m less and less comfortable having the work that I make live on someone else’s platform and this is an experiment I am excited to try.
I’ve been circling around this idea for months now and I finally discovered Mail Blog and it inspired me to give it a go.
If you’re considering how creating for the Internet in general is informing your work I’d really recommend the book The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan.
In the Studio ✂️
Meanwhile here are a few updates from my creative ecosystem.
I’m also taking a course on sensory regulation with my partner. David and I are painting these sensory regulation cards and I’m very excited about them. (I don’t have it handy, but let me know if you’d like an affiliate link.)
A lot of creative energy is also going into creating spaces for learning.
And I’m also using our new laser printer to design our own handwriting sheets. (We’re saving the paper for a recycled paper bookmark project I’ve been ideating for about 5 years.)
I also made this Wheel of Time inspired snowflake for WoTtober
In the Garden 🌱
Our garden is completely feral.
But these volunteer tomatoes are VERY happy.
Reading 📖
Inspired by Hayley Dunlop I thought I might share more of the picture books we’re reading. This one has been a big hit. (No loose teeth yet, but we’re preparing to understand when it does happen.)
You can see another example of The Medium is the Message by these flashbacks to the time I was a “YouTuber.” I’m exhausted just thinking about trying to mask as much as I did in 2016.
