Mending Creativity, Citizen Science, and Naturalist/Museum Decor
Burnout Update #1.
Mending–that’s what I’ve doing this past year after COVID. Not fixing, not returning, not reviving. Mending. A slow, gentle process of fixing damage–it might not look or feel or be the same once I’ve mended, but a process of healing is taking place. Fixing, returning, reviving, all words I’ve been using to describe my experience with Long COVID, all coming with a biting sense of guilt for not performing at my best at all times, for not having the same capacity for work, for lacking who I used to be. And it was just this morning as I was talking with a friend that I called it “mending” and felt a peacefulness and contentment from that, instead of guilt.
When I wrote my first post on burnout, I wasn’t really sure what to expect: I felt lost and somewhat isolated and was deeply wanting to find some kind of validation in the alienation I was experiencing away from the design community and from working and the hustle-grind culture that is so prevalent. In the month since I’ve written that post, several of you have reached out to share similar stories and feelings and I didn’t feel so alone anymore. Inspired by not feeling alone, I’ve been doing some exploration into different things I can explore to re-invent my creativity, and this newsletter here is a bit of summary of that.
I still feel like I’m figuring out some of the puzzle pieces for a project (unrelated to work) I can engage with that makes me feel passionate about every morning, but each day I think I’m getting closer: these are some of the things that have been inspiring in my life.
In the last two weeks, I’ve finally felt like myself again–100% “normal”; able to set goals and work towards them without feeling like the daily grind was already as much or more than I could handle. This transition marks nearly a full complete year since my original COVID infection. And I feel I got off “easy” with my long COVID infection. I just had fatigue, and brain fog, and some tinnitus. And yet it still took a year to mend. Not an experience I’m going to forget easily. As much as many people have returned to “back to normal”, I still weigh every social outing or shopping trip with COVID-risk in mind and make evaluations and decisions based on a deep fear to not have COVID and Long COVID again.
Museum Sale: Special Treasures
My local Natural History museum was having a sale of old exhibit materials, old natural history books, and just general curiosities! Everything was marked down to very very cheap prices. I found some really interesting and obscure books on how to prepare specimens for collections departments in museums, as well as older books on fish and birds with beautiful colour plates inside them.
My favourite find however, was this dossier that was only a few pages from 1937 on “The Stomach Contents of Sperm Whales Caught off the West Coast of British Columbia”. Obviously, I don’t condone the catching of whales, but science and museum collecting methods were different back in the 30s. Nothing to change about it now, nearly a century later. I think the document is extremely cool: it is the title page, a photographic page with the fish, a giant squid, and some marks left behind by the squid, as well as a third page with a more informative write-up of their findings. I think this is THE COOLEST THING EVER, and I can’t wait to thrift a frame and hang it on the wall as part of a future gallery wall.
COMMUNITY
Discovering + Exploring Citizen Science More Closely
One of the other things I discovered recently, doing a little rabbit-hole down citizen science and specifically marine biology was citizen science apps like iNaturalist and eBird. I’m sure some or many of you will be familiar with them already, but I’m SO excited to have dived deeper into this! You can observe and document the nature around you, be it plants, fungi, animals, insects, etc. and upload it to iNaturalist and have help from the community in IDing it if you don’t know. Researchers will pull data from apps like this and use it for their papers. Really neat. I’m excited to get to know how to use the app more.
I was looking for ocean-related citizen science projects that were in my area I could contribute to, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything beyond beach cleanups, which, don’t get me wrong. Are super great! But I’m a little more interested in data-collection projects. I’ll have to look into it more overall, but I was coming up with nothing so far.
The other app I found was eBird which is like iNaturalist but it’s where ALL THE BIRD PEOPLE ARE. My partner and I walk in a bird sanctuary regularly and see all kinds of cool ducks and Great Horned owls there, and I was able to see a list of all the birds in the park we walk in that have been spotted by others, see photos of the birds taken in the park itself, hear the birdcalls in the area and more. It was SO COOL. I now know what birds to keep an eye out for on our walks that we haven’t seen yet! The park has had some amazing restoration work conducted on it in the last few years, and even on our own, without the guidance of an app, we’ve spotted a lot more different types of birds than ever before! So amazing to see the progress. Now, if only bats would roost in the bat houses they have set up!
Tidepools Nearby + Naturalist Decor Inspiration
I moved to the apartment where I live with my partner 6 years ago. It’s the furthest in-land on the island I’ve ever lived, and I figured I was nowhere near any tidepools or the ocean, or at least, the nearest ocean was a 40-min bus away. WRONG. I recently learned that not only is there a beach about a 15-min bus ride away from me, the beach has (if iNaturalist is anything to go by) AMAZING tidepools with nudibranchs and sea stars. I can’t wait to check it out and bring my seaweed-stained ID book and engage with iNaturalist app and my love of tidepool exploration and marine biology.
I’m thinking I can combine species identification with research into the creatures I find and as well have a great reason to practice my watercolor art and nature journalling all together! The citizen scientist apps only accept photography, of course, but being able to go further with it through my art personally seems so exciting and I can’t wait!
These pinterest “naturalist decor” searches have been really making me feel inspired to practice sketching and watercolor outside.
DESIGN EDUCATION
Getting back to normal after a year.
One of the things I’m most proud of the last few weeks is doing a proper “course launch”: weeks of preparation with Instagram carousel educational posts (which I’ll be continuing, of course), a free webinar that I hosted with 30+ people live in attendance, and also the routine I spontaneously developed writing here every week. During all of 2022, all of this felt impossible. I could barely think about educational green design content, let alone run a webinar. I felt extremely guilty for abandoning the Green Graphic Design Course, something I poured love, sweat and tears into during 2020 and am extremely proud of. I am really happy to have “mended” this process, and breathed some life back into it. The guilt no longer gnaws at me in the same way, and I am working on finding peace with what’s left.
I was going to use the Substack to entirely promote the course, but honestly, it didn’t feel right – and another writer I follow on Substack did their course launch just quietly and nicely at the end of their normal newsletter. I really liked that. So I’m following in their footsteps.
If you’re interested in learning Green Graphic Design, my course is the place to do it. When I started learning green design it was extremely hard to find any concrete, sourced information about the role designers can have for environmental sustainability. The course is what I wish I had when I started. It’s extremely deeply researched with dozens of hours of both scripted content and podcast-style discussions. It includes workbooks, guidelines, a private Geneva community, and more. The topics vary from forestry to printing methods to climate to recycling to packaging to talking to clients to studio policies and more (check out the full curriculum!). The course has lifetime access and there is a sale running on until this Friday the 3rd for $50 off the course price of $300 CAD/USD with the code ‘RECESSION’. (although if any of you want a special extension since this is going out on Wednesday just message me!).
The course enrolment is evergreen: you can join at any time for $300, our sale is just until Friday, and we are launching community coaching calls that will happen weekly in our course space starting in March and running them through to the end of April.
But things are expensive right now, and if it’s not the right time for you to join if you’re interested, don’t sweat it. No FOMO marketing here: the discount and the community calls will come around again this year. I’m basically anti-marketing, but I just disagree so much ethically, morally with how a “standard” course launch is done, I can’t help it. If it seems like the right fit at the right time without financial strain on you, it’s your decision to make–I’ve tried to lay out all the information I can on the course website so you can make an informed choice on your own without a crazy sales pitch from me hitting into some kind of “pain point”. I put a lot of love and care into the course, and I believe it shows on its own without sketchy promises from me about “signing 5-figure clients” and “running your DREAM design studio”. If you have any questions, feel free to just drop me a message ^.^
If Green Web Design instead of Graphic Design is more your thing or interest right now, my dear friend Amy at Blue Raspberry Design is currently launching her green web design course for the first time. It’s basically the sister-course to mine, covering all things, well, web design! Hers is the same price as mine, and has lifetime access as well! I personally am really grateful she’s created this as there is SO much misinformation in the sustainable web design–at some point I’ll probably do a minor post ranting about the Carbon Calculator Websites and their preposterous claims about how awful your website is, but I digress. Amy lays out all the information, sourced, with real concrete examples of how and why you can make websites greener. And the best part? You don’t even need to code! Her course launch also isn’t emotionally creepy either and based on false promises :)
What things have been inspiring your creativity lately? Have you started any interesting hobbies? Do you use already use some of these apps like iNaturalist and eBird? :) Got any best practice tips?
Also I’m curious, I know some Substacks have like little chat threads in the app–is that something ya’ll would be interested in? If you participate in those chats, what ones are your favourites?
Emma
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Your writing, your thoughts and ideas bring me so much joy and inspiration. I’m only beginning to slowly assess the damage both the covid infection and the pandemic as a whole have done to my physical and mental health and reading your thoughts on mending feel so inspiring to me. Thank you!