The other day I was playing Esther Perel’s card game of intimacy and storytelling Where Should We Begin? and something became extremely clear to me - I love to love. I love to be in love, I love to fall in love, I love to say I love you, I love sex, I love eye contact, I love possibility, I love partnership, I love companionship, and I love to love love. Something about letting another person see this felt so raw, as if the veil was being lifted for the first time. As if to admit this was a big secret I’d been keeping from myself and everyone around me.
In the moment of seeing this so clearly I felt shy and embarrassed, especially as the last two years have shown me how delightful my aloneness is. How much I accomplish alone, how sweet it is to be by myself, how regulated my nervous system is when I’m not waiting for the apple of my eye to text me back. I love to have my routines that no else sees and to romance myself into oblivion, just because I can. In my embarrassment I was able to see clearly how I can hold both truths, the feeling of gratitude for the way my life is now, and the desire to love again. I touch into fantasy only to be brought back by the staggering reality of how little I know of what is next.
It’s raining today and I’ve been deep in my copy of Yvonne Rainer’s Feelings are Facts. I am looking forward to the rigor of grad school and committing to more research and writing. Having just wrapped Writing the Personal yesterday I feel both complete and filled with light and ready to take a teaching pause. I have never been so delighted and inspired by a class and watching the ultimate outcome - more outspoken words and work from my peers and students. It is heartening to witness.
What oftentimes comes out of a season of thinking I know is a season of not knowing. As soon as I hit a tipping point of being so sure of myself, god will bring me a new person or set of ideas that will bring everything crashing to a halt. It isn’t to say what I thought before is no longer true, if anything it invites in two truths to exist simultaneously. The past four months I have been in a constant state of feeling or thinking something and deciding it is the only truth, believing my own brain, outside resources, news, people, and committing to it as fact that I can report on with ultimate authority.
What a hoax! To be an authority on anything is against my own values and even when I state I am still learning I have to ask myself - am I still learning? Am I truly dedicated to knowing all sides of the dice? Or is the learning just digging my heels in to what I already know?
These are my absolute favorite things I paid attention to this year, and it was a year of deep attention. With my exit of social media, I have found myself with a profound sense of feeling and noticing so much that is around me and beside me and in me.
This week on Common Shapes podcast, I’m deep in conversation with poet, teacher, and my dear friend, Jacqueline Suskin.
Jacqueline is a poet and educator who has been teaching workshops, writing books, hosting retreats and creating spontaneous poetry around the world since 2009. She’s published eight books, and her most recent one, A Year In Practice, was just released with Sounds True press.
Together we talk about seasonal practices, radically reconnecting with the Earth, Fern Gully, writing multiple books, having multiple calendars, and choosing to remember.
My house is surrounded by trees and in the summer this provides a sheltered cocoon. While I am pretty close to the road I am up on the hill and I can’t see Don or Terry’s houses across the street or Mike and Paula unless I’m in the meadow. I can’t see the horse farm and the white fence or the horses in their little jackets. I love this little pocket of being hidden, watching the rose bush come to life all by myself, tending to the cosmos, greeting the turkey family as they come through to perch in the trees.
As the light gets shorter the light gets brighter. The leaves fall and I am left with glimmers of the sky, the white fence at the horse farm peeks through, and the hills to the west look like tiny mountains on the other side of the clothesline. My house is as bright as it ever is as the first days of winter arrive, and the sunset and sunrise showoff even on the cloudy days.
My 5:30am wakeup call has alluded me even with my multiple alarms. I fall asleep around 9:30 or 10pm but when it comes time to crawl out it’s not as easy as it was a few weeks ago. I make excuses in my dreams and when the sun starts to slip into the room I am startled awake, ready to make my coffee and feed June.
Dropping in at the end of the week to invite you to Writing the Personal, my three week class that starts TOMORROW to bring the poetic, personal, and political together for essays of self discovery and service
with guest teachers and
Sun Dec 3, 10, and 17 9-11am PST / 12-2pm EST Live on Zoom Bonus 90 min sharing our writing workshop lab Wed Dec 13 10AM PST / 1PM EST
Payment plans and scholarships available - Can’t make it live? Every session is recorded and sent out within 24hrs with lifetime access + Closed Captions provided
This week on Common Shapes podcast, I’m joined by my dear friend Fariha Róisín for a conversation at the intersections of writing, politics, care, and liberation.
Fariha is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Ontario, Canada and raised in Sydney, Australia. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, she is interested in the margins, liminality, otherness, and the mercurial nature of being. She’s the author of five books and writes the Substack newsletter, How to Cure a Ghost.
In this episode, Fariha shares her experience telling the truth amidst propaganda and channeling righteous rage into writing. She explains how she approaches writing about Palestine during the genocide in Gaza and how she embeds the depth of her feelings and beliefs in her work.
Yesterday I did not protect my Monday as I am known to do. I enjoyed my day, filled with new friendships and walks and being supportive of other artists, but I missed my window to write my newsletter. Mondays are for newsletters and nothing else, and as soon as I break that rule, something inside me sort of snaps.
I report to you from Tuesday, a day that I don’t feel as tapped into the channel but a day I can find my words nonetheless. If you have a writing practice I suggest you protect it at all costs. Schedule nothing else in place of it, if there is free time in your calendar but you know it is time to write - do not cross your own boundary.
Keep the writing time, protect the writing time, it doesn’t have to be sacred or precious. It just has to be there, waiting for you to sit down.
I’ve been writing personal essays for over a decade, and I believe that my personal essay practice allowed me to leave social media.
So in today’s episode, I share how I blend the personal, the poetic, and the political in my writing. And I unpack how that supports me in speaking up and sharing my work without shying away from what’s happening in the world.
I hope this episode inspires you to share your writing with the people. Tune in to learn about—
The importance of your life story
How to share your political values
Facing fear when we don’t know what to say
Being willing to get it wrong
Why you should choose a container for your writing
How personal essays can help you leave social media
Photo by Ellen Rutt, me standing in front of Lake Michigan at Christmas Cove wearing a hat that says Ceramics
In the past week I have woken up five out of seven mornings at 5:30am to sit down and start writing before 6am. Dare I say, nothing has transformed my writing practice more than this decision and dedication this past week. A book that has been desperately trying to crawl its way out of me for almost three years is pouring on to the page, a second book started to come through me, and I am finding enormous pleasure and peace watching the sun come up as I wrap up my writing time around 7:30am. I get in about 2000 words a day and let myself take two hour naps in the afternoon. I go to bed at 9:30pm anyways so this is working much better than when I was sleeping until 9am and feeling unrested and groggy and depressed by the time I got out of bed.
There is no magic to writing, you just have to write. This is the worst and best rule of writing and figuring writing out. Your fingers clack away on the keyboard. Other parts of creating good writing include reading, walking, staring at the wall, and starting the fire in the morning in the wood stove. But the writing part of writing? That part requires typing words and letting them hit the page, even if they sound stupid.
This new wave of divine creativity didn’t come out of thin air. I was talking to my friend who has written multiple novels and she was asking me about my book outline and how it was going. I froze and felt like I didn't know how to talk about it, didn’t know how to structure it, and was waiting for an inspiring feeling to catch me so that I would suddenly be hungry enough to sit down and write it. Desperate for the muse to appear unannounced and for my anxiety about it all to just disappear.
Welcome to season two of Common Shapes! Since last season, I took a big step in my life and logged out of Instagram for good.
So in this episode, I’m going to share why I left and how I did it. Not from a place of knowing-it-all, but by asking the question, “what does it actually mean to be done with social media?”
I hope this episode inspires you to take supportive steps that are right for you. Tune in to learn about—
I didn’t leave Instagram and tumble downwards into a void of nothingness. I left Instagram with an email list I’d been building for eleven years. I had another digital channel to fall back on. I’ll talk more about this in the first episode of Season Two of Common Shapes that comes out this Wednesday. I’d love if you followed Common Shapes on Apple or Spotify and when the episode comes out left a review or shared it. I feel excited to turn my attention to this form again.
Podcasts are a channel, newsletters, email marketing, social media, flyers, posters in the coffee shop, business cards, community radio shows, these are all channels. So to leave one that is addictive you’ll need another stream to jump into, or an entirely new job or business model, or both. Then you have to continuously check in to see if the new space is as addictive as the old one, and do everything in your power to leave it alone when it’s time to take breaks. We can turn anything into an addictive habit : checking unsubscribes, obsession about subscriber count, refreshing the gmail app, the list goes on.
What art is motivating you into action at this time?
Visual art, plays, movies, podcasts, abstract paintings, biographies, anything you want to share
I am feeling called to my studio art practice of quilting this week, not entirely sure what is waiting for me there but all my writing feels like it needs to move through me with movement or sewing. There is only so much that language can give me during this time.
Ellen Rutt with painted shape in the meadow in Northport, end of Summer 2022
My daily ritual is to get in the sauna and do my morning pages. Sometimes this happens in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes after dinner. Sometimes I do my morning pages on the couch when I wake up and then do another set later in the day. Are they morning pages if you just keep doing them at all different times, or are you just journaling at that point?
I pray to keep the channel of creation open, and as times of despair and sorrow and loneliness strike it feels harder and harder to do this. I notice in the absence of Instagram on my phone or in my world I refresh the gmail app and check my bank account, not just for something to do, but to feel like I am doing. To feel like I am working, making an effort. Even though these refreshes rarely lead to any productive or deep work, my thumb travels to the icons in hopes of finding something valuable there. Some thread of human connection, a glimmer of being witnessed. My bank account never tells me what I want and my inbox reminds me of the time I haven’t protected to respond to emails.
I am noticing now more than ever the importance of no phone time to channel clearly. It really can’t even be in the same room as me if I want to get any downloads, new inspiration, and new ideas coming to me. I have to be phone free, pen in hand, or fresh google document open. I have to ask what is next, I have to ask for the new idea, I have to ask what the next class is. I keep hoping the new thing will just appear out of thin air, but it is in the inviting of spirit into collaborating on the invention that fruitful new ideas come.
🪟 We recorded the Visioning Session of Flexible Office yesterday and it is now available to watch! Thank you to everyone for such a beautiful session. If you’re wanting to jump in and join us still you are welcome to. We get to work on Tuesday.
🪞 In a few weeks I am teaching Crafting Hidden Marketing Gems In Your Newsletters : Live class Tue Nov 21 at 1pm EST - I would love for you to join me. It’s a fun spin off of my Skillshare class and we go deeper into the email marketing side of newsletter creation
Dropping in mid week to invite you to Flexible Office, my digital co-working space that begins tomorrow November 2 with a Visioning Session to help map out the next eight weeks.
We meet every Tue and Thu from 8-10am PST / 11-1 EST through Dec 28
I find that now more than ever the effort it takes to begin anything is completely daunting and insurmountable. We ask ourselves the question - why would we invent a class, launch a product, promote ourselves, and share our wins with a relentless genocide happening, mass shootings at every turn, death at every corner, confusion and pain in our personal lives? When is the right time?
My press on nails from my angel costume are starting to fall off one by one. I should soak my hands but I don’t, I let them break and crumble and awkwardly snap off. The leaves all fell off the trees while I was gone and now that I am back my cocoon is open, I see through the branches and the first snow fall is here. Subtle but announcing itself clearly and with little regard to the stack of wood left uncovered.
In my dreams and in my waking life are the ghosts of love. When the veil is thin I find that the memories of love lost, love cherished, love unrequited, finds its way into every crevice left unprotected. I find myself longing for feelings that used to be and in the in between of what will be next.
The gift of nothingness is the quiet. No waiting. No lust. No distraction. Without so much as a thread of longing for another I watch as the flames move in the wood stove, June curled up next to me, a strange gratitude for what is not here. As sure as the snow falls I know this will not last, perhaps not even until dinnertime. I will crave a lover.
Email Marketing and writing a creative newsletter are two different things that also have a lot of crossover. If you’ve started monetizing your newsletter or writing essays in this format you might be confused where marketing fits in. The good news is: there is a formula and it can be fun! Storytelling and sales can be magic spells, not just a phony weird way of selling that makes you feel slimy or awkward.
Time and space are not awarded to us, we must carve them out and protect them. The eclipse felt like destiny in that I went out dancing and went to four places in one evening and also felt like destiny evaded in that my mind was in places my body wasn’t. Or perhaps my body was filled with a destiny separate from my wanting. Time and space is not a part of destiny but it is a part of how we can lean into self discovery and patience.
Yesterday walking amongst the sculptures of the Heidelberg Project in Detroit with Lukaza we were talking to Tyree Guyton, the project’s creator, about time. Where are you going with time? What are you looking for? Did you find you? He continued asking us question after question about our relationship to time and even in the asking I just kept thinking, there’s not enough.
A perfectly timed stop, Tyree invited us down the street to the Heidelberg Project Art Gallery to show us some of his latest work, off the grass and onto the white walls. It felt like a portal of time, like we were dropped into the sculptural museum on the street just as he was headed there, so he could take us to see what he was so excited about. In the gift shop I bought a book and a sticker that says ART IS TRUTH. Today I am thinking about exactly that. Writing is truth, art is truth, creation is truth. We are here at this time in history to tell the truth.
The cosmos are hanging on while the rain starts to freeze and the temperature drops. Blowing in the wind outside the window while I type I wonder what happens to them. Do all the petals fall off first? Do they all fall over? Why does Autumn have two names but no other season does? Two sunflowers came up and I cut one for the kitchen bouquet.
This is my last month of my first year here at the house, my last first time seeing how the plants change and become new and die and return to the Earth. Each year I am thrilled to do this same returning. I think Summer plays its cursed trick on me to speed me up when I want to go just as slow as October reminds me to.
Over the years and into my thirties I have become more and more of a hermit, requiring more alone time, recharge time, and distance between my calls and teaching.
Almost a year ago I bought a house. It felt like the biggest miracle ever as a self employed artist, queer, non binary, unpartnered person with no generational wealth or access to a cosigner or beneficiary. It took many years and many steps to be ready and able to make this happen, both logistically and spiritually. I hadn’t filed my taxes in years, my credit score was shit, and I had no savings for a down payment. Through mentorship, dedication, privilege, hard work, god, and an FHA loan, I was able to acquire my house surrounded by five acres of woods and a small meadow.
For the last year I have been working to make it a colorful and vibrant space for artists and friends to visit, and today I am excited to present to you a new project and name for this work, as well as an open call for the first experimental residency season.
Window Place by Genevieve Kukurugya-Rabaut
Window Place is a domestic artist residency and rural land project for looking in and looking out
Monday Monday is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading and want access to my advice column YES YES and other essays consider becoming a paid subscriber
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Welcome to Yes Yes, my monthly advice column here for its triumphant return. Pop your questions in for next month. I am writing to you from my house in the North on a cool September morning. I feel grateful for the ways the seasons change and grateful for the ways I change and the ways I stay the same.
The past few weeks I have been orienting towards the big possibility of going to grad school, specifically to get my MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College in Vermont. Their low residency format, vibe, and faculty have pulled me in and I am longing for more mentorship, peers, and rigor in academic study.
I thought I wasn’t book smart enough for my Quilt Studies program, which I dropped out of, but really it was that the history and instruction style wasn’t grabbing me. I asked a lot of friends advice but what I really did was looked within for the answers. It shaped me in seeing that what I want is deeper study and a full masters degree. I write more about this in today’s column.
Monday Monday is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading and want access to my advice column YES YES and other essays consider becoming a paid subscriber
You can also share excerpts of today’s Monday Monday on social media, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. Thank you for reading.
Monday Monday is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading and want access to my advice column YES YES consider becoming a paid subscriber
You can also share excerpts of today’s Monday Monday on social media, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. Thank you for reading.
YOU DID IT! WHAT ELSE IS THERE EVEN TO SAY?! YOU READ THE ARTIST’S WAY AND DID YOUR BEST AND HERE WE ARE
Good news : Are you a bit behind? You have a few weeks to finish up, review tasks, carry forth your morning pages practice, and continue your artistic recovery :)
Please note a date change for our second meet up. We will now meet live on zoom for 90 min Sunday September 24 at 9am PST / 12pm EST : (originally September 10) Zoom link at the bottom if this email
For the first time in my life I am watching the hit television program Sex And The City. As I sit and watch Carrie Bradshaw, a writer, have her 35th birthday single and alone surrounded by her friends, I am held by the timelines of the similarities that we share. Charlotte says Don’t laugh at me but maybe we could be each other’s soulmates. I sigh, yes. This.
Last weekend I had the honor of attending my former spouse’s wedding, an experience that is beyond words or this lifetime. To sit and to ask god - what might I say about this way of being alive? How might I share how seamlessly I can let love in while also wondering what it is I am missing?
Monday Monday is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading and want access to my advice column YES YES consider becoming a paid subscriber
You can also share excerpts of today’s Monday Monday on social media, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. Thank you for reading.
Welcome to Week Eleven - we only have two weeks left! I could cry! There are tears in my eyes! You did it! We’re doing it! The spiritual practice of artistry is upon us, beckoning us to be more ourselves at every corner.
I am thinking about grad school, studies, deepening my practices. Seeing what I can accomplish on my own but also what I need more help with. The containers of creation are many, and we are invited to access them in new and abundant ways. Accepting that we are artists, even in the constant pull of comparison we still may feel in Week Eleven, is the way to ultimate success.
Monday Monday is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading and want access to my advice column YES YES consider becoming a paid subscriber
You can also share excerpts of today’s Monday Monday on social media, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. Thank you for reading.
Welcome to Week Ten! Hard to believe we are in our final three weeks. If you are a free subscriber and getting this email - you are invited to upgrade and read all the amazing pep talks, watch the recording of our recovering artist meet up, and participate in talking about your morning pages and experience with the book and connect with other book study members.
This week I launched Success on Substack : Craft a Subscription Newsletter Worth Reading - a Skillshare Original class. If you’re looking for extra support with your own newsletter, a perfect place to channel your artistic endeavors, check it out. You can watch it with a 30 day free trial.
Please note a date change for our second meet up. We will now meet live on zoom for 90 min Sunday September 24 at 9am PST / 12pm EST : (originally September 10) This extra two weeks time can be used to catch up on tasks, read the book, and give yourself the time you need to finish. This was requested by a handful of participants mixed with a conflict I had on the 10th, thank you for being flexible! Zoom link at the bottom of this email
Monday Monday is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading and want access to my advice column YES YES consider becoming a paid subscriber
You can also share excerpts of today’s Monday Monday on social media, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. Thank you for reading.
It’s week nine! Little by little we carry on. These next few weeks are the home stretch. Pick those morning pages back up, make them afternoon pages. Just write a gratitude list instead. Find a way to get a pen to the paper. Watch a documentary as your artist date this week - keep it simple! There are so many ways to go through the book. You’re doing great!
🌼 You can find the recording here of our 6 week meet up (Passcode: 3!u+d5U2)
Frances Swan, by A Acker - who has an opening in Glen Arbor tonight 8/18 6-8pm
Monday Monday is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading and want access to my advice column YES YES consider becoming a paid subscriber
You can also share excerpts of today’s Monday Monday on social media, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. Thank you for reading.
It’s week eight! We carry along as we do, day by day. This stretch of the book, this mid section of the journey, can feel long. Are we there yet? I hear from so many people week 8 is where they drop off. Hang on, keep on going - even if it is a light skim through the chapter.
If you haven’t been participating in the comments, thats ok! Tell us today even if its - shit you guys I totally dropped off on week two but hi! There is no wrong way to be in the Monday Monday Artist Way Book Study :)
Also - thank you again to everyone who attended our artist way book study! We have one more meetup at the end, I do need to reschedule the date! So please keep an eye out for that new date next week and my apologies in advance <3
Monday Monday is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading and learning in this space and want access to my advice column YES YES consider becoming a paid subscriber. The next installment comes out this Wednesday.
You can also share excerpts of today’s Monday Monday on social media, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. Thank you for reading.
It’s week seven! We are still managing to find our way through this book. If you fell off morning pages or created your own new type of morning routine - we celebrate that here! Only done a few tasks in the book? That’s ok! It’s all about the unfolding, however you manage to peel back the layers is beautiful.
Thank you to everyone who joined the live meet up. It truly felt like a recovery meeting for our inner artists, the artists that we are!
🌼 You can find the recording here if you missed out (Passcode: 3!u+d5U2)
In the summer heat it feels as though my brain is cooked in cough syrup. Like it is just soaking in there and the thoughts can’t come through to the top. Like the haze of the Canadian wildfires, it fills the sky and dissipates, only to come back again casting a strange glow upon the water. Something in me is shifting, yet it persists.
Photo by Chloe Sells
I am sitting inside of Flexible Office : Writer’s Retreat (we just got started today and have four mornings left if you care to join us) and am grateful to begin by writing my newsletter, my strongest creative muscle. The place where I have a cadence that flows naturally through me from finger to page. While I began with a judgement that I should be jumping right into the book proposal I have been noodling with, I knew this was the place that would set me up for typing beyond my weekly capacity. My fear is that the cadence of the essay keeps me trapped in a length I can’t break free from. This week I aim to shift that.
The skill of writing long form requires an ability, or rather a willingness, to zoom in and to zoom out over and over again. To see the whole picture of the project from a bird’s eye view, and then to be a little beetle crawling beneath each sentence to see if it makes any sense. To be willing to dive bomb into whole sections to get the worm, or scurry under words and devour and spread them out as fuel for the next piece of truth that spills out.
It’s week six! Our half way point! I look forward to seeing some of you this Sunday July 30 at 9am PST / 12pm EST at our Artist Way meet up. Think of it as a 12 step meeting style where we’ll share for 2-3 minutes our findings and have some time to write about what has been coming up for us! The zoom link to the meet up is at the bottom of this email. And if you haven’t joined us yet for the book study or went through the book before and are wanting to connect with other artists : we’d love to have you!
🌼 If you’re looking to carve our more writing time in your life this upcoming week join me for FLEXIBLE OFFICE : WRITER’S RETREAT live on zoom 8-10am EST Mon July 31- Fri Aug 4 - Ten total hours of writing, guidance, and togetherness!
At my house I am surrounded by the plants that came before me and the plants that were already there. Those are two different ways to say - the plants that someone planted or the plants that came with the formation of Earth. I am planting my own seeds too close together and without enough knowing. I pull the weeds as if to say - hello I see you all and I promise I’ll make room for you to appear.
I write today after sleeping seventeen hours. A place of uncertainty but of great rest. The only thing that seems consistent and worth relying on is my dog, even the roses are starting to turn. I am wondering when everything will feel steady again. When anything will feel steady again. Or did it ever?
It’s week five! You’re doing it! The gift of possibilities! Little by little we come back to ourselves. Again and again. We take what we like and leave the rest. Of this book, this process, this whole experience of being human. I imagine as you receive this email you may not be on week five in the book itself - this is ok! It is my commitment to you that every week I will remind you that where you are is exactly where you need to be. You can push yourself and finish the tasks this week, or be easy and let them linger. You are an artist no matter which way you slice the cake.
Ellen Rutt and Aaron Glasson’s show at Cedar North, Cite Site, July 2023
This week we begin to see how limited we really are. The imagination that God has for us is beyond our wildest dreams, but we must be willing to clear the wreckage to receive the gifts. I love that we start thinking about God as the source for so much of our good fortune, rather than materials and people.
Making this podcast brought me into a business ecosystem crisis. Very little of my output changed, but my inner understanding of my work needed to shift.
So in today’s episode, I’m sharing how my job description has changed since I launched this show. And I’m exploring how shifting your job description can transform your relationship to your work.
