The eternal struggle

I find myself resisting writing this newsletter more and more. I think I have let the “Substack experts” get to me. I feel like I am supposed to use a tried and true formula week after week in order to monetize my emails. This has taken the fun right out of it!

Things I love about publishing here:

• Getting comments and responses

• The feeling of documenting my process

• Being able to look back at a year of posts and feel accomplished, because the day-to-day work feels like a treadmill

• Having the opportunity to talk about things you can do to support me financially (aka marketing)

• Experimenting with weird things some weeks

• Writing through weird or difficult moments of my life

• Taking photos of my current projects for my own memory as much as for sharing

• Making lists of all of the things that are currently holding my interest (books, podcasts, articles, etc)

Things I don’t love about publishing weekly (or bi weekly as of late)

• Feeling like I have to sit down to write (and edit) something serious each week

• Coming up with something to say just for the sake of having something to say

• Deciding whether or not to put something behind a paywall

• Wondering if what I publish one week will cause people to unsubscribe

• Trying to be interesting

• Being serious

• The pressure to “create value” so people will pay for this content

The eternal struggle of an artist!

With that, things might get different or weird, or I might even.. Gasp! Skip weeks!

Thank you to everyone who has stayed subscribed for all this time and a special thank you to everyone who has upgraded to a paid subscription. If you want to go back to a free subscription, that’s fine (link to the manage subscription page)! I don’t see myself putting much behind a paywall from here one out because that decision exhausts me.

There are many ways to support me financially like purchasing a basket from Closed Mondays, or by purchasing original art (see below).

Without further ado, a selection of paintings that are currently available to purchase. Email me hello @ bekkapalmer dot com to get prices and shipping info.

The Shetland series of audiobooks by Ann Cleeves (apparently now a BBC show!). Thanks to reader Megan for suggesting them to me. I am hooked! They are technically murder mystery novels, but Ann Cleeves has a special way of describing life in Shetland and Fair Isle that makes you want to move there immediately. They are probably available to you in the Libby app :)

That’s it for this Sunday. See you next week or maybe the week after that!

Bekka