Freeing the Joy of Creation from Shame

in which I share my ongoing journey to combat my shame, and my love of printmaking

Full disclosure: I started writing this blog post in October, basically finished it in November, and then never posted it, in large part because of - and maybe you can guess this - my nervousness at how people would perceive it, and me.

Now it’s 2024, and while I’m not one for New Years Resolutions, I’m also working on some life changes that I hope will allow for a little more creative space, and I want to be intentional with my shifting energy. Inspired by the Cult of Done Manifesto by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark and with Struthless’ 70% Rule in mind, I am challenging myself to FINISH and SHARE 50 projects in 2024. Could be poems, prints, blog posts, etc. But point is, I gotta finish and share them. They don’t have to be great - they just have to be 70%. This blog post is this week’s DONE. If you’re reading this, that means I shared it as well. Nice.

I made a little DONE tracker for my planner. If you also want a way to track your own DONEs, I’ll include a link to download it at the end of the blog post. <3

With that said, here’s the post.

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This is the progression of how shame impacts my efforts as an artist and writer:

1. I start working on a poem, a print, or a blog post (like this one).

2. I run into an obstacle, make a mistake, or the work falls below my expectations.

3. I am flooded with shame as I berate myself for not having taken more time to create before, and wonder where I'd be "If I could just focus" or "If I had gotten an MFA.”

4. Then I feel ashamed for trying to do something beyond my skill level, for having the audacity to try.

5. Shame eclipses the joy of making, so I do it less and consequently don't build those skills.

6. Eventually, because I am only really happy when I'm making something, I return to step 1.

It took me a while to name this cycle. It just existed as a part of a big black balloon labeled BAD FEELINGS that would hang over my head, tied to my wrist by a little string. So, this is me, popping the balloon and trying to name and show some compassion to the gooey, wiggly crying creatures within. This one is named Shame.

When I talk about shame, I’m talking about this deep-seated inkling that everyone is in on a joke that I’m not in on, and the joke is me. I mean the feeling that I’m already on my death bed mourning a life not lived to its fullest, on account of the choices I am currently making. When I talk about shame, I’m talking about the thing I once mislabeled discipline, a drill sergeant voice trying to whip me into shape and get me to make things in the midst of bouts of executive dysfunction or depression. When I talk about shame, I’m talking about the voice that possesses the ghosts of ex-friends and lovers in my mind and makes them say all the unkind things I think people think of me. When I talk about shame, I mean the inexplicable sense that there is something wrong with me — not even that I’ve done something wrong, but that I am wrong and everyone can see it but me, and anyone who says otherwise must just be trying to spare my feelings.

Needless to say, shame is doing a lot of work there. It’s a professional storyteller, and I’m the only one at its private reading. And every time I try to create, I must do the added work of undoing its unkindness, and forging ahead anyway.

In writing and sharing this, I hope that you may also be able to see ways in which you might also start to identify how shame impacts you as a person who likes to make things, and maybe my experiences might help you uncover ways to work through your own shame. With that said, let's get into it!

Identify what you love, and the shape of your shame

I realized I loved printmaking in college when I took the Bookmaking and Letterpress class the summer before my senior year, taught by Aaron Cohick with NewLights Press. I loved how analog it was. I loved how meditative type-setting felt. I loved how every material, be it type, furniture, em quads, en spaces, and even the smallest coppers and brass thins had a place they could always be found, and, ideally, a place they would return to at the end of the project. I loved the typesetting room and just how many typefaces there were to work with. I loved carving linoleum and how the process of carving made my illustrations look better than they looked when I initially designed them. I loved how you could say anything you damn well pleased and say it so hard into paper. I loved how you could make so many prints (too many, in my case) and then give them away to friends or sell them or have them stacked in your room for years to come. I loved how, at the end of the printing process, you had a physical, tangible thing to show for it (and inky hands).

However, I encountered obstacles after I graduated and tried printing at home. I didn't have all the right materials, and I didn’t have all the skills to transition to at-home printing. However, rather than meeting those obstacles head-on and believing in my ability to adapt to a new way of doing things, I found myself quickly discouraged but more than that I took every obstacle to be a reflection of my skill. I don’t know why it took so long for me to realize — pushing through those obstacles is how you build skill.

And truthfully, I probably could have asked to use the press at my college more often than I did. I had a few times — I bounced in to make a book of kinky poems with my friend Joy, as well as a chapbook for the Mercury Café poetry slam team, and an anthology featuring queer poets writing about love, joy, and growth as a part of Joy and I's collaborative project, Prickly Pear Printing.

As time went on, I had this image of myself as this fairweather maker who couldn’t actually focus or commit to any one thing, who just bounced in once, maybe twice, a year to haphazardly print a project and make a lot of mistakes along the way (like the time I printed the book covers for We Grow Anyway on a waxy paper that wouldn't absorb ink and had to hang them up all over the press in the hopes they would dry before my flight the next day to Arizona for Phoenix Zine Fest, and, dismayed to find they hadn't dried, I then had to put them in a bin under a heat lamp that I used for raising chicks. (I am not sure those book sleeves ever did dry.)

Despite my discouragement, I found myself drawn back to printing after a long hiatus and have been in the process of fighting through shame so I can do more of what I love. Here is what’s helping me in this process.

I can still hear the peeling sound the book made when it got stuck to every surface it touched.

Collaborate with others who love what you love

I returned to printing this year, thanks largely in part to a collaboration with my friend Celia. Discussion around trans joy and rebellion against purity culture led to an idea to create a poster that was a celebration of trans joy at its sexiest, least assimilated form. The HAVE MORE KINKY TRANS SEX poster was born.

Celia did the hard work of asking if we could use the college press, and together we returned to one of our favorite places to do what we love: print!

What was great about this is that we made a print that could only exist in collaboration. Celia created the illustrations, which I could not do because bodies confuse me when I try to commit them to paper (and, y’know, in general.) I created the text and the silhouettes behind the bodies. We created the concept together (and watched some amazing kinky queer porn along the way. For research, of course.)

tumblr user eggwraith really sums up the experience

When obstacles arose, I was able to workshop them with them to get through those obstacles. We were able to bounce design ideas back and forth. While at first I was intimidated to work with someone who I admired as an artist, worried by the idea that I might hold us back and make the project worse than it would be otherwise, I actually found myself more motivated to try harder and step outside of my comfort zone. We were able to bounce design ideas back and forth, discuss, and research how we'd like the design to look, which was way more fun to do with someone! (Especially when that research also entailed subscribing to a trans inclusive queer porn site to get ideas for our print.)

Shame thrives in isolation, which is why it also tries to make us recede into ourselves. It is most powerful when it isn't being talked about, and when you keep parts of yourself hidden it gives it the space to grow larger, to overtake that which threatens it.

Have More Kinky Trans Sex was such a good print, in fact, that I had to admit to myself that maybe I wasn't the worst printmaker in the world and, despite my mental illnesses and various shortcomings, here was real and tangible proof that I helped make a thing.

Sidenote: I can tell the world that I'm into kinky transsexual sex and immortalize that fact in a print, but god forbid someone think I'm passionate about an art form that I'm maybe not perfect at yet. That's too far.

(Me, convincing my shame that I CAN make things.

Make a space your shame can’t argue with

After working on Have More Kinky Trans Sex, I decided to attempt printing at home again. With admittedly limited success. Prints were still not very even and looked nothing like how they would if they were printed on a larger press. But I was still having fun. So much fun that I turned a room in my house into a little printing studio. It's only half painted (a choice I decided was intentional when I realized how much I like doodling on the walls), it gets way too hot in the summer, and for some reason it filled up with over 100 moths every night during the Colorado mothpocalypse, which I would need to shoo out the open window every morning, but I still loved it because it had all my ink, my paper cutter, my Provisional Press, a wall of art made by printers I admire, and a window that faced my wild backyard. A space just for making things. Even my shame couldn't argue against me there — would someone who wasn't a printer have a dedicated space for printing?

Before, my printing space was my office space was my general mess space. Ink would get on things ink should not get on. Plus, having my computer be in the same space I was supposed to create in was a major problem — that's where all the fun easy Dopamine lives, and my little receptors wanted to gobble it all up.

I'm lucky to have a space in which I can print and not do much else but print, but I know that's not something everyone has access to. However, it's worthwhile to try to carve out a space, no matter how small, in which you can be without distraction, and your supplies are easily accessible. Nothing breaks creative flow like a phone notification or trying to find something and not being able to find it. For me, these are also sources of shame related to my ADHD/executive dysfunction.

Studio Supplies that Help Me Create In Spite Of My Uncooperative Brain

• Prints on the wall that inspire me.

• A label maker for labeling where things go.

• A whiteboard that sits right in front of me with a list of in-progress projects so I actually remember to finish them.

• A spare non-working surface to put stuff on when I want to create but don't want to clean because while clutter and I get along fine, clutter and ink does not. (Note: This method only works if you do eventually clean. To make yourself clean, I recommend using:)

• A kitchen timer so I can set up pomodoros for cleaning without getting distracted by my phone.

• Enough storage! Once I added more storage to the space I was amazed to find how much cleaner it stayed.

• A little Bluetooth remote so I can change the music without looking at my phone.

• A swively tripod thing for holding my phone above my workspace when I'm recording the process (which also makes me unable to look at my phone!)

• When all else fails, I have an app called "ScreenZen" that keeps me from looking at certain apps on my phone, or at least makes me pause before opening the app. Nine out of ten times I realize I opened it without even realizing it.

Invest in what you love

During a recent trip to the San Luis Valley with my partner and my friend Mallory, my phone pinged with a Craigslist alert I’d set for anything tagged letterpress within a 500 mile radius. Someone was selling a drawer of type cases, furniture, a printing press, and other printing tools. Everything one could need to start letterpress printing at home, at a price one could only dream of.

I proceeded to spend the next 3 hours debating whether to spend the next day driving down to New Mexico as opposed to relaxing in the San Luis Valley. My friend Mallory, wise as she is, finally convinced me by stating that while, yes, I have jumped around and tried a lot of different art forms from woodburning to crochet to embroidery to rugmaking to whittling, in the 8 years she has known me, printmaking has always been there in varying degrees. Printing and poetry, the two constants.

So, the next day, my partner and I woke up early and set off, and after a long and winding journey through Wolf Creek Pass we arrived in New Mexico where I met the couple selling the press. There I learned that the press belonged to their late uncle. He printed missionary tracts, among other things. Needless to say, the press has a different life now.

Despite our differences, I was moved by the love that the couple had for their uncle, an eccentric and passionate printer, as most printers are. Still, that night I dreamt of a ghost haunting my studio, changing all of my prints to Leviticus 18:22 no matter the type I set.

A week later, my dad and I returned with a pickup truck. In it's bed, we carefully stacked the plastic-wrapped cases of type, the galley trays with leftover projects of church sign up sheets and business cards still tightly set, and the Kelsey Excelsior printing press, which we nested on a tire to keep it from bouncing, as well as an old hole punch, the biggest cast iron stapler I've ever seen, and two lead and slug cutters.

Once I got home, I was overwhelmed. There was so much stuff, much of which I didn't understand yet. What is this strangely shaped piece of metal? What's this big rolly thing? How do I attach these rollers to this press? Does it even have all its parts?

All of the metal was rusty. All of the wood was dry and dusty. I knew that ahead of me was a long process of sorting, cleaning, de-rusting, sorting some more. Three months later and I am still in the sorting process. I think that being a letterpress printer might mean I'm always in the sorting process — except, now, I am also sorting through my messes as well.

I kept waiting for what felt inevitable: my brain hijacking me and my goals as usual. Overwhelmed by the scope of the task, the tedium of measuring leads, slugs, and rules. I will run into some obstacle that stops me in my tracks and becomes insurmountable, and then I will abandon this project just as I have abandoned many. The difference being that this time I'd be wasting a sizeable investment of space, money, and time. I will then be awash with the familiar shame of being someone who starts things, but does not finish them.

But it didn't happen. I think it was in large part because of the investment — I owed it to myself, and to everyone who helped me take this step — to see it through.

I was also delighted to find that it never did feel tedious. The process of the rust falling away, the wood furniture glowing with Old English Wood Polish, and everything finding its proper place amid all the cases and compartments — it all hummed with the inevitable conclusion of the process: soon, I would print on the Excelsior, which sat in the corner, its inking plate shining in the sun, the rust that once coated it stripped away.

To err is human, and maybe a little divine

I'm still in the stage where I hit obstacles every time I print. Every time an obstacle arises, shame still pops its head up to start telling me its many stories. However, I try and communicate with it now, rather than push it away or tell it to be quiet.

For example: while printing my latest print, Exist Without Approval, I crushed part of my linoleum carving with the gauge pins (registration using gauge pins continues to be one of my greatest challenges.) So, with just hours left before Pikes Peak Zine Fest, I carved out a new section to add back into the design and continued printing.

If I let my shame dictate my actions, this situation could have gone very differently. I could have given up on trying to get the print done before the event. I could have also broken down and cried — something that I have done on more than one occasion. I could have called myself a careless person, a bad artist. I could have abandoned the project entirely — my closet is a graveyard of linocuts that met such a fate. This time, I fixed the problem.

All of these little art problems are fixable when you understand that the problems aren't inherently you. And one day, when you are experienced and accomplished and making art every damn day with joyful abandon, you will still have problems. Ideally, they will be problems you enjoy solving.

Above my workspace, I have an Amos Kennedy print featuring a quote by George Washington Carver: "If you love it enough, anything will talk with you." This is true, even when that which you love is taking the time to point out the ways you can still stand to grow.

The Excelsior is like a wild horse, and I am trying to show it that I am true of heart and pure of spirit and can be trusted. Still, it occasionally kicks its rollers off if I move too fast, as though to remind me that I still have much to learn, and that its purpose is not one of efficiency.

Make a mistake. Slow down. Assess it. If the shame comes up, talk to it with compassion. Then fix the problem. Try again. Make more mistakes, but better this time. And if you run into a problem you don't know how to solve:

Ask for help

When I run into obstacles, typically in the form of my lack of knowledge, I try not to linger in my confusion for too long. I take to Facebook groups full of other passionate printers, many of whom are more than happy to share information, know-how, supplies.

The solitary artist does not exist. We all do better in community.

The only reason I know about printing is because I was taught how to print. The only reason I kept printing is because I was able to keep going to the Press at CC. The only reason I have a set-up at home is because people gave me advice and supplies and my friends and family helped me drive to New Mexico to pick up a press.

Morgan at Ladyfingers Letterpress gave me ink. The folks with Green Turtle Press gave me tympan. Aaron with New Lights Press gave me technical knowledge and new ways of approaching creating.

Find people who love what you love. There will be many who have been doing it a long time, who are generous, who want you to succeed.

One day, you will be like them. You will have amassed a supply of knowledge and tools and extra ink and linoleum and types that you've hoarded — or whatever is equivalent for the things you love to create. You'll have so much to share with others. You probably already do.

Share what you love, wherever you are in the journey

I feel so in love, and I want to share this love with others.

In trying to share this love, through selling my work, writing this blog, posting on social media, a new shame arises: the same of showing my inexperience online, and not just to forums of other printers.

In a time of influencers, algorithms, ads, attention hijacking, I have struggled to feel positively toward social media. I want people to see my work. I want them to enjoy it. I want to hear how it touched them. Still, every time I posted, I felt like people would see me as a shameless self-promoter, waving my arms around and yelling: "Look at me! Look at me! I think I'm the best ever and you should too!" My shame would then puppet back a hundred faceless voices: "Why should we? You are an amateur!"

I can't deny it: I am an amateur at most things.

I’ve been reading Austin Kleon's book Show Your Work, which is part of the inspiration for restarting this blog. (The other inspiration was the aforementioned Bike Blog — again, go check it out! Celia’s bike journey has now concluded but their blog is still a great read.)

In the book, Kleon talks about the concept of the amateur, and how, in the original French, the word amateur doesn't mean one who is inexperienced or bad at something. It means "lover of."

Kleon also talks about how amateurs can often teach other amateurs because they are in the learning process together. Already, you can start sharing what you learn, and the best time to share your knowledge is right now. As you make mistakes and learn from them, that is the best time to share the lessons you learn, because other people like you who might just be starting might be able to learn from your mistakes.

This fact changed how I see sharing my work online. Maybe I can share my work online, not only in service of myself, but also in service of others.

Think of every time you saw someone on social media making something, and it looked so fun you thought "I'd like to try that." Think of every time you saw someone use a technique you'd been struggling to master, and it finally clicked for you on how you can improve. Think of all the people on Instagram and Youtube and WikiHow who share guides and how-tos.

I won't claim to be any better at explaining things than an expert, but this idea gives me some comfort. Like maybe it isn't necessary to wait until I'm an expert to share what I enjoy. And maybe, by sharing my experiences and processes as an amateur, it might make the barrier to entry seem a little lower for others. Maybe they'll realize how much they love this thing I love. Maybe their lives will be changed the way my life was changed the first time I pulled a print at my college's press.

Offer your shame a compassionate ear

I've been in therapy a long, long time. About half of my life now. My current therapist operates within an Internal Family Systems framework, in which different aspects of the self are referred to as "parts." In discussing my shame, as I often do, this is what they told me, and what I'd like to share with anyone else who is struggling with shame.

Shame is not your whole self, even if it feels that way at times. Shame is a part of you, and as a part of you, it is there because it wants to help you, however misguided it is in those attempts. Perhaps shame took on a role in which it wanted to keep you safe from consequences, so it asked you to be smaller. Perhaps your shame was born when someone was unkind to you, so it became a tool so you could forecast that unkindness, so no one could catch you off guard.

Under that shame, there is a younger you who is stuck in the places that shame originated from. It's the you that has internalized, not just the thought "I did something bad" (who hasn’t?), but rather the idea "I am bad." That's what makes it so sticky.

Once you are able to become aware of shame's voice in your head, then I am asking you not to think "Be quiet shame! Go away!" because what you resist, persists. Plus, that's not how you should speak to any part of yourself. Instead, this might be a good time to journal and write out what your shame is saying, and what you'd like to say back.

Sometimes, my shame looks like an angry shadow. Sometimes, it disguises itself to look like ex-partners or friends who are no longer friends. It takes work for me to see it for what it really is — me, young and afraid of getting hurt. When I can see my shame that way, I want to say "Hey, let's look at all the stuff we made. Let's look at the life we built, even when we were sad. Here are all the people who love us, and all the people we love."

I have to have these conversations every day. There are times that are harder than others. I'm honestly going through one such time as I write this, which goes to show that I am writing this for myself just as much as for anyone else. This is the conversation shame and I have been having as I've worked on this post.

Shame: Why are we even trying? This blog post is so long, and it's not saying anything interesting. It's inane rambling. Why should anyone care about our experiences? What is there to gain by broadcasting your mental illness far and wide? Does the world really need another think piece on art by another mentally ill queer?

Me: Hey, I hear you're thinking some unkind things about yourself. Are you okay?

Shame: No, I'm not okay. I'm afraid you're going to share this and then people are going to criticize us, and say that our advice isn't actually helpful, or that it isn't practical for most people. Maybe they'll just say "tl;dr" because you made it too long.

Me: I understand that fear. Consider this though — what if there are people who like what we have to say? What if someone reads this, and something resonates with them, and they get a new way of addressing their own shame that they can add to their mental health toolkit? Plus, even if someone does have criticism, it's important to remember that critique made in good faith is a gift that helps us get better as writers and as people.

Shame: But why put all this time into something that people might not like?

Me: Because we won't know until we try.

And so on.

I know that there is no way forward in which my shame is not beside me, but I have to envision a future in which they go by a different name. Something like Made It Anyway or Un-Fuck-With-Ability or maybe just Mettle. I hope that when that day comes, we will regard one another as friends, and get back to doing what we love.

Remember your vision

I have another poster on my wall, printed by an old friend, Han Sayles, featuring the Audre Lorde quote “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

These words have buoyed me through protests, despite fears of police or alt-right violence. They’ve pushed me through times where getting out of bed has felt impossible. They help me create, even when the act of creation feels wrought with shame, and they remind me of what it’s all for.

I am alive because of art, and not just the act of making it myself. It is because of books of poetry that I survived my most adolescent dramas. I am changed and made better by the words I display on my walls, that I am confronted with every day. And yes, I am alive because of the act of making things.

When I perform poetry, I picture myself at ten years old in the audience. When I print, I’m thinking of what words might have opened up a way of being that might have helped me along the way. It is through creating that I communicate with my past using what I know in the present in service of a better future, for myself and others.

The joy of sharing the process — of creating, of growing, of surviving — has bloomed into a vision of what I want to do.

I want to make things. I want to help other people make things. And together, I want us to all be amateurs who are excited, rather than ashamed, by all we have yet to learn.

Links

Download the Done Tracker

Book Me to Host a Poetry, Print, or Zine-Making Workshop

Buy HMKTS

Buy Other Prints I've Made