Burnout, Identity, and DIY Plant-Based Inks
Why outsourcing, money goals, and personal projects aren't for me and my work life balance in 2023, and what I'm doing instead.
SOME MUSINGS
Hey ya’ll! I’ve been collecting snippets and interesting things to share in this space over the last few months, but I’ve felt a bit blocked in just simply beginning to share neat things as if these times are “normal” when truly, living and working through an ongoing panorama is nothing short of abnormal, no matter how much there is a push to “return to normal” right now.
In the light of the new year with what is seemingly an even stronger push online towards hustling through a recession in one’s design business, I wanted to pause and unpack some of my feelings around sustainable work for oneself in these times and through a recession. Large parts of the design community feel alienating to me right now, and while these thoughts won’t resonate with everyone, and aren’t a judgment of how other people handle their own unique situations, I wanted to write this just in case an alternative perspective helps someone else who feels similarly to me feel less alone in the community. Because I’m feeling a bit out to sea myself, and maybe I’m not alone as well.
A PREFACE
Ever since starting to recover from long covid, I’ve felt I could no longer the haunting realization that I was no longer feeling passionate about my design work in the same way I used to. Some of this was caused by a harder year in a variety of aspects: health, finances, and a lack successful projects I was proud of it. But also part of it was coming from a feeling that I’d given all of myself into my business and it wasn’t giving back anymore in a hard world. It’s difficult to sustain (for me anyway) a passion for my job when the late-stage capitalist world outside becomes increasingly scarier and crueller in a myriad of ways. Futures, incomes, and the health of loved ones is uncertain among a sea of suffering both locally and overseas. Not to dive too deeply into current events, but I often have come across older generations waxing that they had it harder because they lived through the uncertainty of the cold war. Then what is this we are dealing with now? On top of a pandemic and climate crisis. It’s a job in itself to protect safe and joyful things for yourself personally. It’s hard to keep up the passion for a job on top of it.
And while I like doing design and it is my chosen profession, and continues to be, I feel a need to explore my interests and identity outside of it. My business, my career, my profession has become no longer the most important thing to me, and not what I want to be defined by. These are things I’m continuing to work out now, and using this newsletter is like a bit of therapeutic journalling in a sense. It is not easy to disentangle one’s sense of self identity and self-worth from one’s own business.
ON WORK
I feel a pressure (or expectation) as a designer to be constantly engaging in design-related activities even when I am not working.
Sometimes it feels like if you’ve chosen to become a designer that’s all you should live, breathe, and focus on. When you’re not working for a client you should be working on a personal project, developing a tangentially related skill, doing a design course to make your business better, or curate a perfect wishlist of designer-related things for friends and family to buy you. Or browsing and buying design asset packs so that you can use them in your next project (even though probably you won’t ever use them, …at least I never did…).1
But it can feel like a sacrilege to want to explore interests outside of that, since, surely because you chose to become a designer you should want to engage with it all the time. Choosing to become a designer instead of a more traditional career is almost an act of rebellion in itself, and it feels automatic that it becomes a huge and primary part of your identity. And if that brings you joy, that’s fantastic. But it doesn’t bring me much joy. Not anymore. It all feels like work, or work to be done in the hopes to garner more work. And it’s not that I’m trying to say that personal projects are bad, or that they’re not useful in lead generation if you’re struggling there. But that, barring necessity, I don’t want to spend my free time engaging in simply more of my profession anymore. And it feels like an expected.
I want a work-life balance that doesn’t revolve around only being a designer; I want to work my job and then be able to have the emotional and mental energy to be able to engage in a variety of diverse creative ventures, and try things I’ve never done before and learn more about the topics that interest me, like making inks to understand natural pigments, learning to become a watercolor artist and keep a nature journal, and learn more about marine biology2. And don’t get me wrong, one part of my business I do still have the spark for is trying to re-build my Instagram and community around sustainable design (one of the things I felt the most guilty around disappearing from while healing through long covid with reduced capacity for work) and doing newsletters like this (honestly ironically, I care about this more now than I did before when I felt it had to be a sales-cycle pressure to sell the Green Design Course). It’s just the client-facing side that is wearing me down in difficult times; of having someone else have the final say in what something you've created looks like.
Also, as a side note, but is anyone else a bit alienated by the concept of “just outsource everything you don’t love doing - and somehow everything will magically be better”; and no discussions around when that’s financially sustainable in your business’ books, or what fair pay looks like for the people you outsource to, etc. etc. I am the primary breadwinner in our little family and it isn’t possible for me to put resources towards outsourcing things I don’t enjoy, simply because I don’t love doing them. It feels especially unrelatable in the impending recession when client budgets are tighter, and our everyday expenses only grow steeper (have you SEEN the price of broccoli OMFG actual highway robbery). I think outsourcing is probably outside of scope for most of us and isn’t the easy solution it’s often presented as. I guess my point here is not sour grapes, but just that outsourcing is presented as a viable option to anyone at any stage of their business and I think that’s dishonest, as for a lot of people it’s not financially possible.
ON LIFE
I don’t want to be defined by my business anymore. I want to be a diversely creative human.
One of the traps of owning your own business is that, as a dear friend mentioned to me earlier this week, often “you ARE your business” when you’re a solopreneur. Over the last 6 years I’ve put a lot of my self worth into my business and tied my emotional well-being to it. And when that fell out from under me with long covid and then a string of poorly-matched contracts, I really had to start reckoning with this.
I’d like to live a life where I’m not defined by my business, where people don’t simply know me as “the woman who does branding and websites for start-ups in alternative protein spaces”. Where regardless of whether or not my business is doing mediocre or extremely well, I am creatively fulfilled and happy through more stable creative pursuits that provide intrinsic value and joy to me. Instead of through a profession where this work is hinged around client approval and praise. I’ve realized recently that if I could re-do it all over, I’d go back to school and get a marine biology degree and study nudibranchs. It was a dream I gave up because of my undiagnosed / unrealized dyscalculia (dylexia for numbers); hugely struggling at math meant it didn’t seem like a career path in sciences was “for me”. This isn’t something I can pursue now (maybe when I’m retired! if nudibranchs still exist), but it doesn’t mean this path is closed off to me completely. I can still engage in tidepool explorations with a seaweed-stained guidebook in hand, study first year biology textbooks, and keep a nature journal to observe changing conditions in the ecosystems around me. I’m sure there’s also citizen scientist projects I can look into.
And I can do all of this, I realized while keeping my profession as a designer with Little Fox. But the way I have been working in 2022 didn’t allow for that: I was too focused on always prioritizing client work over my happiness and my mental health, so when I signed off work for the day I was depleted and could barely even play a comfort video game.
My new years goal is that I’m exploring new ways to engage in my business sustainably that allow me the mental energy to be able to engage in these other pursuits after I clock off work every day. I want work that doesn’t consume me mentally, but still pays the bills (my only financial goal is literally to pay the bills and taxes, anything extra is just bonus savings). And for me, I think this means stepping away from the prestige of certain types of projects, and focusing on projects I can rely on stable income through a recession that allow me to rediscover the things I like to do. I want to explore marine biology and I want to explore a whole variety of other creative pursuits and find what makes me passionate and recharges me outside of design.
ON INK
Finding joy and creativity through making my own plant-based inks from foraged materials.
One of the things I started exploring was making my own ink. My mom gifted me this incredible book on Ink Making through foraging your own materials and turning them into inks. I was obsessed, but I felt for many months it must be too complicated, chemical-heavy, stinky to do in a 400-sq ft apartment. As it turns out, I was SUPER wrong and all you need is some vinegar, baking soda, salt, an old pot, and some gum arabic if you want to make your inks permanent for paper. In total, a $10 creative endeavour.
I decided I was going to try to make ink from horse chestnuts - I foraged a bunch from a local park near me (and some guy asked if I was collecting them to get rid of spiders XD That’s a local myth here that if you put out horse chestnuts, the giant spiders we have here hate them and won’t come near. Alas, it’s not true.) and chucked them in a boiling pot of water with salt and vinegar and waited. After about 4 hours I added some baking soda to trigger a release of pigment, and the results were way better than I ever expected!
The color turned out so incredibly and richly pigmented, and can be used similar to watercolor pigments. Here’s a little quick loose painting I did of some wooly bear caterpillars that I’d been seeing crawling around in the autumn (I love them so much they are so cute).
The red stripe on them is the ink I made myself! Natural ink is subject to change in color and texture over time, so it may not stay like this forever, but I’m thrilled by the result and intrigued to try more different things I can forage. I put a bit too much gum arabic in this batch so the ink has grown a bit sticky over time, but it’s all a learning experience!
A FINAL NOTE
I’m sure that this email didn’t resonate with everyone, and that’s okay. This newsletter is where I’m at, and I have a bunch of super cool things plotted to share in the coming weeks like extinct bird calls, and fonts based off of plants. This newsletter isn’t marking a divergence in what I’m hoping to achieve, especially with the green design space and this Substack. But a reflection of what I’m feeling right now as a designer in the community and what I’m working towards as defining my life in a meaningful way for me in a pandemic-ravaged world. Hopefully a few of you are interested in my ink making and other endeavours and would like to follow along with those updates as they come along as well! I’m hoping I can use it to express some of my additional creative explorations alongside green design. And, I mean, I dunno, I think making your own inks from plants and materials foraged in your backyard is a form of green design and sustainable expression through art is it not? Did you know lichens can produce even incredibly vibrant fuscia purple inks and dyes? SO COOL. (I’ve totally signed up for a class in March about using lichens to make dyes).
I’ll sign off here with my last ending credits for what I’ve been reading/watching lately! If you’re feeling like any part of this email resonated with you though, feel free to reply and talk to me about it! I’d love to know as well, if any of you have additional creative pursuits you want to focus on instead of your business this year as well!
Emma
Reading: I finished a fun, fantasy duology “The Daughter of the Moon Goddess” and it’s sequel. It was based the Chinese mythology of the Moon Goddess and her daughter as she tries to free her mother from an unjust punishment in the immortal realm. It’s got great pacing and was a blast to read.
Watching: Glass Onion was great! - F*CK ELON MUSK.
Listening: I’ve been hearing rumours around The National dropping a new album soon and I literally could not be more excited!
If you enjoyed this newsletter, are curious about sustainable design or my plant-based ink adventures, or just coming along for the ride to figure out a life outside of work, consider subscribing! (Substack told me this was a good thing to add at the end of the newsletter so I shall follow their wisdom).
P.S. This is not a call-out to anyone who’s suggested these things as cures to my ennui, I know it was meant with love. <3
These are things I have developed and explored through a lot of thinking, journalling, and following some of the teachings of The Artist’s Way book through morning pages. It’s actually quite a challenge to figure out what it is you like to do outside of work, when most of my adult life has been geared towards professional success. I’m not even sure if I’m 100% on the right track, but for right now, these are the things bringing me joy.
Beautifully written - I love your exploration of foraged inks - my friend does this too and her art work is fascinating.
I appreciate your genuine post and I feel much the same way you do, 2022 was a trying year. And I feel like I secretly have to fit in my creative work, for my own mental health, around the paying design work and searching for more work and trying to make any of it profitable can be difficult. Best of luck this year, I really like your inks - I've always enjoyed work with ink.