Just start the damn thing

Navigating a new creative chapter with the baggage of success

How do you begin a new journey? I think it starts with realizing you’re already walking. Creating has a false beginning.

A blank canvas, glaring, brilliant, spotless white. Un-messed up. Only potential… well, and pressure. The pressure to get it RIGHT. The pressure to stumble upon the next big thing, with the admired humility of effortlessly hitting the right note at the exact right moment. Propelled to fame, popularity, reassurance that you’re doing it right. Right, right, right. Definitely not wrong. Constricted. Success.

I’ve done it right before. I’ve hit the note. Twice now I’ve started businesses that fit right into the cultural moment.

I began my ceramics business, Suite One Studio in 2009 at the start of the etsy boom and this catapulted me to visibility I never imaged possible. Magazines, tv interviews, blog features, designing for Anthropologie… we’ll get into all of that more later.

Then in 2018 it happened again. I signed a lease for a commercial studio feeling something big on the horizon, and within months had co-founded The Studio Source an online community and business education hub for artists. We rode the wave of the online course surge peaking right through the covid-19 pandemic. For the next six years I did this work, meaningfully helping thousands of artists through free trainings and tutorials, and deeper work through a robust, paid program.

Last week we announced that we’re closing. Shattering news. Light-filled news.

I’ve done IT and it’s time to do it again. You’d think this would bring self assurance that the new Next Thing would be confidently started. Well that’s at least what I would’ve thought. Yet here I am starting a new thing with little more than that finger prickling anxiety that I think is excitement.

I’ve felt this before.

It IS excitement but it’s also fear. Courage is the prescription, and the action. Creativity the result. The words filling the page, the no-longer white canvas filled with a messy underpainting. Each forward movement clumsy… confident? This is process, momentum. It’s forward.

It’s started.

Just start the damn thing.

I’m using this platform to chronicle my creative process as I start this next chapter. I don’t know what’s ahead, but this time I’m sharing how I figure it out. You’ll see monthly posts here in which I’ll share my ideas, reflections, and goals. In between expect conversations with my creativity— little notes from me to you— and honestly from me to myself.

Thanks for being here!

Lindsay

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