July 14, 2025

Self Publishing as Documentation Practice

Every Noticing is a Project

Dear Reader,

I find that every noticing can become a project, and every project begins as a noticing practice. A noticing pattern. A pattern of all the things I notice in my journal, my notes app, in the tether of my weekly newsletter.

I wade my way through the words to see what sticks again and again and this is how I find my way toward what wants to become permanent. By permanent I mean ever changing and by ever changing I mean always willing to stick the landing.

I use my journal as a place of contemplative research. It is where almost every project begins, or with one sentence scratched on a post it or in my phone. It then makes its way in long form to the notebook, in longer form to the computer, and in public form to you.

Some of these notes never leave the page. Some shape the scaffolding of a future essay or offering, but many just sit there, glowing quietly in their rawness. I’ve come to understand that not everything I write needs to go somewhere. But the act of writing itself—of witnessing—does something to me. It organizes what I didn’t know I was trying to understand. It shows me what I’m circling, what I’m avoiding, what I already know.

There’s a rhythm I return to: the inner, the page, the conversation, the offering. Back again. The rhythm isn’t about productivity but presence. It’s not about output but about practice. Journaling, for me, is not a holding tank or a draft—it is a place of devotion, and sometimes, a place of becoming.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to let our private language slowly meet the world. What it means to shape something loosely, gently, and with care—so that someone else might pick it up and feel less alone. I don’t think we need to rush that process. But I do believe in creating containers that help us tend to it with intention.

Without social media I find that the hardest part for me is not having an easy digital container to swiftly self publish my work, even if only three people see it, I still want a vessel to place my creative efforts. This is what I have loved so much about creating channels in Are.na. It feels like building constellations in an ever growing archive.

The process usually begins with a phrase that comes to me - the name of a class comes to me before the curriculum itself, or the name of a book or zine or art show or essay. Witnessing Practice, the class I am teaching this Saturday, actually came second - I knew I wanted to teach a focused and spacious class about self publishing and I wanted it to be clear that it was about the witnessing, not just the making.

My most recent project, Public Access Pilates, came first as a name and second as a project. It doesn’t make money so I don’t really consider it a business in this moment, but maybe some day it will be. That is why the class is called Witnessing Practice not The Business of Witnessing.

For me, self-publishing has always been a way to build containers for my noticing. My writing, my videos, my photographs, my voice memos, the scattered artifacts of my attention. Creating websites for little projects has become more exciting since leaving social media as well, whole little worlds to contain my projects.

Lately I have also been asking myself what to do with the ache of this moment—the ache of watching genocide unfold, the ache of trans women remaining the most vulnerable, the ache of neighbors held in ICE detention, the ache of trying to hold joy and grief in the same breath. There’s so much that can’t be fixed with language, with somatic movement, with ritual. And still, I write, I get on the mat, I stand at the water’s edge. Not because it solves anything, but because it’s one way I stay with what I refuse to look away from. Writing, self-publishing, and small acts of attention help me keep my heart from hardening. They’re not solutions—but they’re part of how I stay human.

And from there, action emerges. Not always loud, not always public—but precise, personal, shaped by the integrity of what we’ve noticed. A quilt made as a group, collaboratively deciding on how it can be used to fundraise. A letter mailed. A phone call made. A class taught. A thought held in pages. These are not side notes. They’re the form our steadiness takes.

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On Saturday I am teaching for three hours and going to tell you everything I know about self publishing books, zines, websites, and newsletters - all from the ideas in your journals! Class is $55 and recorded if you can’t make it live. You could also apply the lessons in class to an oracle deck, a board game, or anything else you’d like to self produce.

I don’t think everything needs to scale. I think some things just need to be held. The smallest audience, the quietest offering, the gentlest arrival—these, too, are forms of publishing. Of saying: I’m here. I made this. I noticed. Whether it’s a hastily stapled zine, a single webpage, an email sent to five friends, or a quilt draped across a coffee shop gallery wall—what matters to me is that it came from a place of care.

So this is where I leave you: with a gentle reminder that your private thoughts are not wasted, your half-formed ideas are not unworthy. They’re the beginning. They always have been. Whether you join me this weekend or not, I hope you’ll keep noticing, keep tending, keep finding ways to offer what you make to the world—even if only three people see it. May you find a form that fits the shape of what you’re creating.

I look forward to meeting you there in the great witnessing. Let me know if you have any questions, or reply to this email - I’d love to know what you’re working on or thinking of bringing to class!

Things Of Note :

• The opening of my show The Quilt As Archive at Cedar North was beyond my wildest imagination. Three of the nine quilts sold and you can find the remaining six here. Payment plans available at checkout. If you are in Northern Michigan between now and September 13 send me an email info AT codycookparrott DOT com or respond to this email and I’ll meet you over there and give you a tour of the show!

• For the next few weeks I am hosting an ABOLISH ICE Group Quilt Raffle made during Community Sewing Hours. Read all about it and contribute here - everyone who enters gets a postcard of the finished quilt mailed to them

• I was incredibly moved by The Quilters documentary on Netflix, especially Chill’s butterfly quilts

• Picked up The Art of Money Workbook by Bari Tessler (book club anyone>??)

• New Valerie June album is unreal

CLASSIFIEDS : 

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Are.na
Email : info@codycookparrott.com
Website : https://www.codycookparrott.com
Writing Group : Landscapes

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