big news
My friends! Here’s the news: I quit my day job and am here, making art and sharing it with you, full-time now. I’m also making ✨plans✨ am looking for people who’d be willing help me out by taking a survey I put together in trade for an $8 shop code and lots gratitude for your time and perspective. If you’re up for it, CLICK HERE!
I also wrote you a whole letter about it since today is the 6 year anniversary of @britchida and I’m feeling feelings. It’s below if you’d like to read along. Thanks for being here.
“being a huge fan of your check-ins, I knew this survey would be a gentle one with a Brit twist :)” - actual survey taker. Take the survey here & get an $8 credit 🎈
Can you believe it: It was six years ago today (!!) that I made my first art post to Instagram. My account was anonymous, I had no followers, I was 30 years old and I didn’t know how to paint, but that didn’t matter. Art was a brand new acquaintance, and you know how sometimes it’s easiest to pour your heart out to someone you’ve just met? Well, I poured and poured.
I’ve since made a bedrock practice of laying out everything I know (and everything I wish I knew, and everything I wish I didn’t know) in paint and ink, as plainly as possible. I’ve stopped keeping secrets from myself and begun to trust myself. And that trust became a greenhouse for the little sprouts of things I’ve wanted, but had always left squashed and parched before. And, I made a lot of friends (that’s you).
I am a cautious person who has a deeply seeded fear of poverty. I’ve prioritized security over adventure at almost every turn and have never been interested in quitting-my-job-to-follow-my-dreams. Art has been a hobby tucked in around my work as a physical therapist all these years. So I can barely believe I’m saying this but, friends: I quit my job. To follow my dreams. Because of your kindness and support. Someone pinch me, gently.
There’s a lot I could say about the transition — how much more accessible it is for me to work from home for my health/body, and how burnt out I was working in a hospital after going through the pandemic there, and even though I’m super risk-averse, how I felt I owed it to my artist-self to match their tenacity and give this a go full time. I could also write pages about how I felt bad about doing something so blissful, having somewhere along the way made a kind of righteous pact to not be happy until everyone is happy and how that is a backpack full of boulders.
But what I’m thinking about is this: art is a community endeavor.
I hope that when people see my art they recognize it as a stack of love letters, and only one half of the correspondence between me and you. I love listening to you — reading comments and messages, seeing what ideas sing something familiar to you, even when they come from the most exiled places in me. I spend as much time looking at your responses as I do making the piece in the first place.
I want to thank you for being my penpals, my art companions, my patrons. Knowing you are looking carefully at my work and making it a part of your life has been a precious pilot light for my creativity. Together we’ve made a kind of home, a place to come and just be. And now, thanks to you, I get to make my art full time and I am just floating on gratitude.
I hope I can do this for the rest of my life. The art is easy. The friendship with you is easy. The part I am working on is just logistics, building the business side up in a way that I don’t have to spend all my time trying to make ends meet, and can actually continue to create.
I’m bursting with ideas and I’d really value your input. If you would be willing to trade about 10 min of your time for an $8 shop code, it would mean so much to me if you would fill out this survey I made. I had a bunch of testers take it to make sure it’s easy and smooth, and several folks compared it to a check-in story, saying it was actually kind of fun to fill out. That made me happy to hear.
I love you all. Thanks for being here, for your support and friendship. I’m excited to continue creating with you!
Brit
I’m hoping to get to know you better and make some ✨plans✨ so I made a survey. It takes about 10 minutes, and if you’d fill it out I will give you an $8 store credit in thanks for your time, along with big gratitude for your perspective.
big news
Yay Britchida, pour and burst through - here's to honouring our needs, fulfilling our wildest dreams, and the power of community, especially in living free. Thank you for your work and this insight into your process. You've uplifted me on several occasions. And so much here resonates: "don't be happy until everyone else is." Sheesh. And when will that be, and do we even have control? No, influence though, and loving kindness. Happy to do the survey :)