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Thank you for the share Rachel! I love this thought "You can never get so good your art is completely devoid of signs of you." I need to take that to heart. I am new at drawing/writing/sharing. Every time I do a picture I have to turn off the part of my brain that judges how my handwriting looks - I have always disliked my chaotic scrawl so am working to find a way to love it - and I think your comment helps with that - it is a part of me and an undeniable stamp of me, love it or hate it. I don't hate it enough to do calligraphy classes and change it so I better get on with the loving! xo

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I'm glad you enjoyed the post! I did laugh as I read your comment - my "crafty handwriting" is a messier scrawlier version of my regular handwriting because of the loose and imperfect way it looks!! I hope you find a way to love the personality it adds to your work xx

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I wish I could do it that way around - my cartoon handwriting is me trying very hard to be readable as my usual scrawl is unintelligible to everybody but me - and often unintelligible to me as well!

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That whole imposter thing is what stopped me writing and posting. But I think I’ve finally reached the age (and growth in myself) where I do not care about that (said with fingers crossed behind my back 🤭)

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it's scary, isn't it? And it's so weird, because we write/post to be heard but then freak out if we're TOO heard lol. I'd love to see you pop back up in my feed <3

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Thank you for the encouragement! One of my goals for this year was to write 12 posts, but as you can see, not much has happened. Maybe I can start small with a review from my trip to Melbourne next week

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That’s a great idea for a nice easy post to ease you back in! I will confess I often backdate mine; I’ve been posting almost every day this week but if you look at the archives it looks like one or two a week 🤣

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“I need to learn to accept those words as, maybe not as truth, but as well meant and offered in a spirit of encouragement.”

Maybe we need to take those things as partial truth.

I believe it was Walter Wangeren who said that art is not complete until it is shared. It is both the effort and the experience of the effort—our skill AND our flaws and how others respond to/accept the fruit of the union of our skills and flaws—that create the fullness and impact of art. So our HONEST acknowledgment of our flaws and failings is true, but so is their HONEST estimation of our skill. Right? It takes two to tango!

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so true, there are indeed biases on both sides. And interesting you say that about sharing. My substack pod is going through the seven steps of the creative process and that's the last one, and I'm really looking forward to diving in and exploring what that means for me personally, and how it's reflected in a body of work spanning a decade and a half.

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