Beginning Again.

The Following is from the Sils Newsletter- Please Subscribe to get these stories, as well as early access and other perks in your inbox 1-2 times month-

Hello dear subscribers. It has been quite some time since I have drafted a letter to you all. I hope it finds you feeling rested, hopeful, and well-loved. This email is longer than usual. In our fast-paced, attention-reducing world, it feels clunky and audacious of me to attempt to take up so much of your time. Nonetheless, I hope you feel inspired to grab a cup of something to sip, cozy up, and stay a while here with me.

We awoke early in Berlin Tuesday morning to take an eventful cab ride (awkward road rage and language barriers included) to the airport. Nearly 24 hours and 3 flights later, we stumbled home and into bed late that night in a very different timezone than our bodies were used to.

At a young age, I decided there was nothing of greater value I could invest my time and money into than traveling. The pages of my passport issued at 18 felt like a destiny to conquer with stamps and visas. The more effort a visa application took, the more pride I felt in its colorful stamp. They hid within the pages like badges of honor awaiting adoration. We would trade around passports in hostels, exchanging stories and recommendations with strangers. Mine always stuck out because my picture included an awkward toothy smile. I learned that smiling, especially with teeth, is a leniency granted only to US passport holders. I did not smile for my next passport, though I can’t say why. Maybe it has to do with being older.

As I have grown and matured, the way I travel has changed. My understanding of the complexities of the privilege to travel has expanded. Spending time in a foreign space, within someone else’s culture and home is no longer a goal to achieve, but a gift I accept with reverence when the opportunity arises. Theres a deep humility I did not have at a younger age, but that very humility was learned through the observation of dramatically different places I had the honor to move through.

In my 30s, I have traded a desire for adventure with a desire for perspective. What we have to gain from travel that I find most valuable is a true and complete break from routine. We receive the literal distance to observe a wider view of what our daily life is like, what is working for and against us. When we are placed physically outside our comfort zone, we make space for clarity to rush in.

When we have no one to talk to but ourselves, we move through the thoughts that have been avoided. When we have nowhere we need to be, we get to follow how we feel. When we have no tasks that must be completed, we get to paint, read, rest, write, listen, taste, watch, smell, wander, learn, and unlearn.

I titled this letter “Beginning Again” because the truth is that I allowed myself a break from running Sils during the summer months of Art Camp, and then I was too afraid and indecisive to know how to return. Depression begot self-doubt, begot procrastination, begot depression. I shared some of these thoughts on instagram shortly before departing, and was met with warm support and kindness I am immensely grateful for. It gave me hope in a place of personal sabotage and despair. That hope was channeled into motivation to come home, with a plan on how I was going to move forward as an artist with grace, discipline, and self-care.

The career-shifting clarity I received revealed itself not as a revolutionary idea, but as a permission slip. I have been waiting to act on a deep personal knowing I have carried for awhile, and I trust that now is the time to change course. Even the slightest pivots can lead us to entirely new realities.

If you are reading this letter, there is a very good chance we were connected through Instagram. This photo sharing app has been wonderful to me, it gave me a space to show my work and connect with people. It is where my supply finally found demand. It allowed me a place to learn from diverse voices, mobilize, support community organizations, and make friends. I grew as an artist through painful challenges and wonderful opportunities that would not have occurred without this app. But Instagram is changing.

The joke we say with anxious chuckles is that Insta is going through an identify crisis. It sounds reassuring, like this personified data-farm actively colonizing our attention spans will soon return to us and apologize. But we know that won’t happen. It has never happened in the nearly two decades of various “Meta” platform evolutions. Zuckerberg is no visionary, he is simply an other mediocre white guy quick to poach the ideas of his competitors, and dodge any accountability for the harm his monopoly causes. He even shamelessly and knowingly increases harm in the name of optimizing stake holder cash-out. Maybe calling him mediocre is giving him too much credit… But we all know this already, that wasn’t the clarity I am referring to.

My very simple and yet mysteriously powerful epiphany was this: As an artist, I too, am going through an identity crisis. Perhaps the overlap of crises is what has made the thought of adapting once again to the platform’s latest manipulation tactics simply intolerable. An additional insurmountable dilemma lies in the fact that the underlying theme of instagram’s crisis could be described as rapid, shallow, and excessive. The underlying theme of mine is diligence, depth, and intention.

And yes, you are correct in your guess at where this is going. We are riding this conflicting personality crisis metaphor right into its hypothetical break up announcement. It’s not a throw ‘em out, block ‘em, and forget about ‘em scenario. Rather an intentional and gradual conscious-uncoupling, if you will: celebrating and appreciating the good times, accepting that things change, and while the bridge is left intact, the intent is to move on- move forward.

This small yet mighty realization that I am moving in a completely different direction in my values and goals as an artist and human than the app that my business is nearly solely dependent on, was the simple clarity I was seeking. The permission to trust that it is time to wean off social media, and explore what a creative life without a reliance on instagram could be. To commit to chasing the ideas I have been intimidated by, because they are too large for instagram squares.

Instagram stopped feeling like an inspiring space to me a long time ago. Like lovers who sit in the comfort of stale companionship until their grief is processed before they are ready to announce the break up; I had to sit with the imagining how to pursue a creative business without instagram for a long time before I was ready to try.

This newsletter is my starting point. It is a renewed commitment to sending regular letters on topics of creating and being. I have always known that words are a vital component of my creative expression. I have squeezed them into captions, stories, and 30 second reels, but imposter syndrome also led me to suppress them. As suddenly as my childhood confidence in story-telling disappeared somewhere within the hour of an AP English class, it has returned in the past few weeks. I hope to nurture them with the attention, time, and space they require to carry my creative practice further.

Within the instagram platform, there is little space for discussion, conversation, and depth, and it continues to swiftly diminish as bright colors, trending sounds, and time lapses destroy any chance at mindful engagement. In the past year, I can’t ignore that almost every scroll on instagram leaves me feeling numb, starved, and hopeless. Empty, creatively threatened, and uninspired. My hopeless addiction to it leads me to unconsciously open it again and again, even though I know that the connection/inspiration/motivation I am habitually seeking is no longer there.

We spend so much time trying to fill a void with our phones, when ironically healing is found in celebrating how delightful the world right beyond that screen is. I have found inspiration in the gift of foxes dashing in and out of view when I walk my dogs in the gully by my house, in online courses for creatives, in the pages of books, in warm coffee rituals with carefully selected mugs, in my firm belief that winter is the best season for strolling gardens as the muted colors allow plants to flaunt their stunning textures, in Estonian Craft Camps with silver-haired women wearing fabulous, bold glasses while offering advice on how to travel with knitting needles, in the way children create the most magnificent things when you give them paint and leave them alone, from seeking the pieces that are overlooked in museums, and attempts to decipher the messages in street art, in meeting up monthly with amazing humans to trade books and give candid updates on our lives and personal ambitions, in the honesty and small delights described in newsletters by creatives I look up to, podcasts that make me laugh, and activists who use their art to create the world they believe we can have: one project at a time.

These experiences are where I want to spend my life minutes. This is what I want build and share with fellow earth-dwellers. I chose again and again to move through the world: with diligence, depth and intention.

I hope to invite others who feel overwhelmed by their bind to social media to join me. I trust I will find the souls I am meant to find who have already taken this step. I know that the universe brought creative humans together long before instagram was around, and will continue to bring them together long after instagram is gone. I do not know what this path looks like, but I have faith I will know what the next step is after I take this one.

As always thank you for choosing to be here with me.

With love and awe-

Kirsten