use what you have and keep going ffs

There is a particular kind of sleek, slippery procrastination that feels like I’m Actually Doing Something.

The usual suspects include…

researching

🦄

saving links

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exploring plot structures

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making Pinterest boards

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researching 🦄 saving links 🦄 exploring plot structures 🦄 making Pinterest boards 🦄

A bit of a hoard, you might say.

Now, to be clear, I’m not shaming anyone here. Creative people often have hoards. Not always huge ones, though let us be honest, sometimes huge. (Mine are huge)

☆.𓋼𓍊 𓆏 𓍊𓋼𓍊.☆

☆.𓋼𓍊 𓆏 𓍊𓋼𓍊.☆

On top of this…what if you’re into what can feel like way too many things? Are you careening from half-finished projects to shiny new ones and then back again?

Do you feel genuinely guilty every time you pass the half-finished project sitting there forlorn, gathering dust?

Me too! Hooray!

I don’t have a product or a book or a course I can try and hawk to you to solve this problem BUT I have some ideas on either revitalising the project or throwing it in the bin:

For a physical art project

• Gather 10 existing fragments: notes, scraps, photos, drafts, colours, or materials. 10 sounds like a lot? Maybe 3 or 6. 8? Or any pretty number, really.

• Make one new piece using only those fragments.

• What else is lying around, hopefully waiting for the day you remember you own it? (use it, the day is today).

For a story

• Ban new research for 7 days

• Stuck? Find 1 old sentence that still feels alive and build a new paragraph around it.

• Even stucker? Cut the piece out into paragraphs and move them around into some bizarro version of itself.⬇️

How I’m doing this with the unfolding slowly book: it’s an ongoing body of work that I think of as unfolding slowly. It’s about paper, thread, and found treasure gathered over time.

Reminder: book binding tutorial

🐢 part one 🐢

🐢 part two 🐢

Signing off,

Jessica

🐢

From the archives:

Spiral time, ocean time, bee time, vampire time

☆.𓋼𓍊 𓆏 𓍊𓋼𓍊.☆

If you’d like to support it there’s a few different ways you can do that:

1. tell someone you know!

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4. buy me a coffee

5. browse the zine shop

☆.𓋼𓍊 𓆏 𓍊𓋼𓍊.☆

Wanna slow down?

Pause and Create: a ‘slow art’ starter kit workbook zine

Free workbook zine download. No fancy rituals needed; this is just a zine for grounding and slowing down. Print, read, create, breathe, rest.