GARBAGEY THOUGHTS ENSUE

I set about honoring this Field Guide project early this winter, and it began to become clearly the thing I was to focus on. It's been a lot of months of creative and plain hard work, and we are at about the halfway point in this project.

The kickstarter goal was officially met last night, with 15 days left in the project. This is a very important moment when I know I can bring this book to print. When I began the campaign I wasn’t sure you would support this project, because one can never be sure. It wouldn’t be a smart move to be sure of such a thing. 

When 80 people generously pool together their resources to reserve this book, ensuring that it can be printed, it's truly something to celebrate. 

As if on cue, I noticed this morning that there were a lot of garbagey thoughts lurking: the you’re-not-worthy type of thoughts.

Artist’s are a funny breed. We do stuff other people don’t always give themselves permission to do, and sometimes what we’re compelled to do seems very self-involved. When I’ve set boundaries, gone against the grain of a situation, I’ve been told that I’m selfish. Even very young I heard that so it gets in the hard wiring. You could argue that making art is selfish, because it puts down the immediate needs of others around you to listen and respond to something interior, and it's not always possible. 

At a moment of success like this, a scrim or fog can float under the door. It quietly insists that a) this is somehow about me b) that this is evidence of something about me that’s wrong c) that it’s time to go back into hiding, lay low and small, and stay in a permanent bowing position.

AND YET. This book showed up in my heart ten years ago, and it didn’t go away. Many synchronicities came about to keep this project alive, to develop it, and to provide the medium for its flourishing. I haven’t forced anything, I am not this book, and over and over again when I stepped back to ask for guidance on what to focus on, this book has been the indicated thing. And here we are. Just about halfway.

There are 15 days left in this campaign, and I’ve raised exactly HALF of what it costs to fully realize this project. The groundwork is now solidly in place. Together we have gotten the cost of printing secured. My editor Darina has sent me her first round of edits; I left her with the express request from me that there’s no self helpy or prescriptive tone to this book, and that it remain engaging, unified and clear in the writing from the first to last page. The artwork is complete and all scanned at 900 dpi, and in place in the InDesign file.

There is more work to do, and this campaign is not over. Aside from the additional costs of warehousing books, mailers, initial transport of the book, help with fulfillment, additional printing costs for sharing the project pre and post campaign, I will be spending four months focused on making this book a beautiful, well conceived work of art.

My initial goal of $5500 is exactly half of the $11,000 needed to fully realize this project. To that end, the new goal is to have 100 new backers at $50 or more - two books per backer, to bring this roundly to a successful close. 

I have to build indexes, design the cover, find a means to differentiate two sections to help orient viewers, response to edits, and possibly resize the book. I tend to underestimate what is needed for these layered tasks, and I need several months to do them calmly and well. This means I don’t spend my time earning money in other ways, and have no buffer to cover the basic operating costs to do things like buy chord wood to heat my studio and to pay for software and utilities.

Please keep sharing the campaign, reserve your copies, and spend time playing at something creative and impractical that lights you up a little bit in the name of all creative endeavors everywhere, realized and unrealized.

Thank you again for your attention, time and support. Feel free to ask me anything you like about the project, and I am so glad you are also a part of this book!

Learn, back and share the Field Guide to Ambiguity Project here.