I have been retreating inward, partly due to the extreme cold temperatures in Minnesota, partly because of the exterior horrors of the world in which we must continue to bear witness, and partly because it’s in my Passion Planner to seek a better work/life balance in 2026 which is currently translating into a major purge of things, processes, and ideas that no longer serve me. 

All of January I’ve been focusing on my closet. Pulling out clothes I have not worn and do not want to wear any more for three piles - 1) donate, 2) repurpose/alter, and 3) rag making. 

Let’s hope those destined for alterations are back in rotation in fewer than 365 days. I will (almost) always finish what I start… it turns out it’s kind of a matter of time relating to how long exactly that will take. 

(Just ask Vaimo about the shirt I’m hand mending for her lol or the two pairs of my very limited collection of pants that I need to re-mend and are currently out of commission.)

I’m taking comfort in the it will happen when it will happen, mindset. But, maybe I can use this space to hold myself accountable — I would like these matters to be resolved in at least one calendar year. 

See?! New ways of being!!

In my PP I have a whole plan for January to tackle our bedroom, with a goal of allowing myself to move this project into February if needed. I try (and usually fail) to spend 5 minutes a day working on something small in there, and then on Fridays when I’m home and able I dive in and spend a big chunk of time in some kind of modified Marie Kondo meets Swedish Death Cleaning mashup. 

Already my spirit is lifting from being visually weighed down by the clutter in my closet. With jammed racks of clothes and shoes everywhere, a feeling of dismay washed over me as I waded in and out of the piles of clothes in various stages of needing laundering. It was a burden pulling me into an abyss of nihilism. 

Why even bother? 

But then, I had a conversation with my therapist about how I deserve to have my nice things be accessible and useful for me. I deserve peace and calm in my living spaces. I deserve order in the chaos of everything else. 

I didn’t really think that five minutes of tidying per day would make that big of a difference until I started doing it alongside Vaimo at the end of 2025. She had started in her office and then moved into our bathroom for tidying which was very inspirational. 

I was not wanting to be the reason for the chaos with all my things everywhere - a spark of competition pushed me to make five minutes worth of a difference, and it really did change things! 

I’m finding I also need to reset my studio space. Putting things away finally in their places. Seeking new organizing strategies to catalog supplies and know where I can find them. Reminding myself of materials in Studio Utopia begging to be used for something. 

I have no guilt for this tidying, and organizing, and ordering. 

The other day I was playing in Studio Utopia on a project for my friends — a Vday surprise that I don’t want to name here because they are clever readers of these missives and I want it to remain a surprise. But as I was looking for something I just knew I had somewhere in all my things, I uncovered something I was not looking for— a box of beads and buttons and sequins. I spent hours of my week (well just probably three in total) reorganizing that bin. In the move from Moorhead years ago, the compartments had been shuffled and while it was clear what was supposed to remain in each, the jumble just simply had to be corrected. 

My college best friend Kr knows I love to sort. It brought so much peace to just focus on this task, tweezing glass beads into their proper color compartment. Dislodging and moving sequins stuck to the plastic corners of sections where they didn’t belong back with their same colors. Ahhhhhhhh, so so satisfying. 

And, as I was sorting I started thinking about all the ways I could use these materials! I am committing to using them in 2026. Sequins coming your way soooooooon!

It does not surprise me that I am seeking calm in the chaos. There is only so much I can take of the chaos and in coming into a better work life balance for 2026 I am witnessing my patterns for where my limited energy has taken me - toward overwork, and away from daily tidying or actions that improve Future KCF’s life. I’m trying to have grace with Past KCF, find more equanimity in how I use my time for Present KCF and working to ease Future KCF’s reality.

What if Present Painter KCF could create in peace as often as they do in chaos? 

What if it’s not an all or nothing consideration? 

As a maximalist I am very reticent to part with anything I’ve collected. 

As a Creel I come from a long line of hoarders. 

As an artist I see the potential for so many things to be used in different ways! 

And so, I tend to have piles wherever I go. But, I am conquering my concerns about ridding things by shifting my perspective toward making room to honor, use, and really love what I actually have, use, love, and need. 

My time everywhere seems pulled to this corner of cleaning, tidying, organizing, and making order. 

I bulk deleted thousands of emails that had piled up in my gmail inbox. Seriously, THOUSANDS of emails that I did not have the bandwidth to deal with over the last three years. I went from 43,000+ emails to a little over 9k in my inbox. The purge felt sweet, but more remains ahead. 

I am desperate to see the fruit of my labor. To see the direct results of direct actions taken. Unlike so much in my life that relies on patience, and daily walking of a path until one day it is made beneath my feet. This one area of my life of being in better relationship to my homespace comes with almost instant results. And it is so deliciously satisfying. 

I don’t need to theorize on my actions — especially when taking action is so much more timely than thinking about action in these times — but I’m going to anyways, because the gift of feminist theory is that it is necessarily concerned with informed action. The entire field of WGS is rooted in feminist praxis, enabling those who study these complexities the tools to engage in the real world with our bodies, to not stay locked in our minds alone. 

I’ve always wanted to know why I do what I do. And, likewise why others do what they do. Part of this is a hunger for words, ideas, theories, but I think the deeper part I’m noticing coming up for me right now, is about humanity at large. Why do we do what we do? Why do we allow suffering? Why do we suffer? What is the power of art in exposing our humanity to one another?

Now I’m heading into theological territory. 

And that’s not necessary for the points I want to make. 

Or is it? 

In these times we are all forced to reckon with what it is in which we believe. Would your god support masked, gunned Federal employees kidnapping a five year old boy from school to lure his asylum-seeking father out of his home? Would your god applaud their flight to a Texas detention center? 

I read deeply and widely because I believe in the power of narrative to change the world. 

As a scholar, I am trained to take in words, ideas, concepts and draw connections between them to analyze, understand, teach others the varied meanings. As a feminist scholar I take what I read and integrate it, to inform the ways I show up in the world. 

As an artist, I’m driven to create or alchemize things into new formations. 

One of these days I will just do what I do instead of feeling the need to tell everyone what I’m doing and for what purpose. But, like so much you’ve read, if you’ve made it this far, I feel this need to say it before I can do it. Is this my childhood trauma healing?

I’m writing it as if this letter to you can also be a note to myself— reminders to Present and Future KCF that this is the path. 

So long I have struggled with my art business - trying to mold myself into what I think others will like, or what I am “supposed” to do for success. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of being told what to do. I’ve used this space, where I write about what’s going on in Studio Utopia to share with you all — a community who I imagine as my biggest supporters — and I fret about being too much, or too pithy, or too political or too ____ fill-in-the blank. 

And this is not, has not been, serving me. 

Reflecting and making sense via writing in community is a part of my artistic practice. I refuse to belittle it, or minimize it. It is a gift I offer to my community - a glimpse into the inner workings of a complex minefield of art making and thinking. 

I want to tidy this up. Reorganize it. Categorize and structure these thoughts in a way that satisfy Scholar KCF. Where is the thesis? What is the argument? Where is the supporting evidence? Isn’t part of the problem that we live in an era in which fragmentation rules? Decontextualizing snippets of information coming to us in smaller and smaller bits devoid of history or broader knowing about from when and where they originate? 

But Artist KCF and Human KCF needs to get back to the tidying of my bedroom. 

One last anecdote before I go —

I picked up a copy of Caramelle & Carmilla published by Aunt Lute Press in November at my favorite horror bookshop in Winnipeg. Jewelle Gomez author of Caramelle provides an introduction to her story which is a retelling of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla which was published in 1872 in the UK. It’s a slim volume and a very satisfying read on many accounts. Lesbians, vampires, and much to ponder about race, gender, and class radiate across the two different, yet related tales. Aunt Lute shares in the description on their website that this text is “the first book in the new series Aunt Lute Colloquy, a publishing space dedicated to fostering feminist conversations across literary generations.” 

As you might suspect if you’ve been tracking this newsletter… I love a collection!

And these two texts side by side with commentary from the writer of our current era is a book I keep finding myself coming back to. So much so, that in the digital purge of my emails I finally decided to update the quote in my signature line to something Gomez reminds us in her introductory commentary before her story kicks off. 

She is astute in reckoning with J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s lesbian tale as a reminder that “it was not so long ago that women’s right to self-expression was completely defined and curtailed by a male-dominated culture” (xv). 

She further warns, “We should also remember that it doesn’t take very much to turn the clock backward for women and others who’ve been oppressed” (xv).

Timely reminders indeed. 

Finally and most importantly, these stories should remind us that despite the monumental forces assented against democratic principles, women, lesbians, immigrants, those with disabilities, and people of color have faced this type of oppression before. As in the past we still hold our freedom and our pleasure in our own strong hands. Hands made even stronger when holding on to the hands of others.

-Jewelle Gomez, The Power of the Hand: Carmilla and Caramelle

These hands are off to get back to my domestic pursuits. 

This mind is still churning.