TumbleDweeeb

😁 … I’ve been diving back into Austin Kleon’s books again, Steal Like an Artist & Show Your Work. I’ve probably read these several times over the last few years, but they keep having an impact each time I come back to them. Austin’s work clicks with me, maybe because I actually met him on WordPress many, many years ago before he became the creative guru everyone knows now. Steal Like an Artist… always reminds me to stop overthinking originality and just create, while Show Your Work keeps pushing me to be more open about my creative process instead of waiting until everything’s perfect. As someone who tends to keep people at arm’s length, these books challenge me to share more of what I’m actually working on.
   The third book is completely different, Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World. This one’s had a personal impact because Cotton Mather is actually a person of interest in my own family tree … I’m a Mather descendant. Reading his work feels like having a conversation with a complicated ancestor… 😂 This is absurd but also amazing 🤣 …The Salem witch trials stuff is heavy and problematic, but understanding that this is part of my lineage, for better or worse, has made me think about how family history shapes who we are. It’s weird reading someone you’re related to and thinking “yikes, but also… fascinating.”