Find a place you trust

and try trusting it for a while.

Mildew sent me their latest issue, and it made me so happy. My first ever magazine all about secondhand fashion!

As you know, I live and breathe secondhand. It’s the thing I think about, the thing I talk about, and the reason this newsletter exists. I actually cannot imagine my life without resale and secondhand, it’s just impossible. I’d have nothing to talk about and nothing to wear.

Somewhere in the back of my head, the dream has always been to make a magazine about it myself, you know? A real one, on paper, about the one subject I actually care about. But, of course, someone else made it first, and made it beautifully, the nerve of them!!! I’m so happy, I’m so jealous, I love it.

Do you know Mildew? Imagine a magazine where the fashion shoots are styled completely out of secondhand/flea-market purchases! How cool! Where the shopping pages are full of other people’s lovely junk (tchotchkes, my new favorite word) — an abandoned earring, a strange souvenir spoon. And I love that the ads are not those annoying ads that are in your face, but more like for resale platforms or small secondhand shops. I really thought this magazine only existed in my head. It doesn’t! It’s real, it’s annual, it’s published by Broccoli (who also publish a super cool cat magazine), and you can buy it here. Buy it, hold it, smell it!!!

Thank you, Mildew. You made me very happy and a bit jealous, and that is very good!

From here.

Somewhere in the intro of the issue, there was a mention of Sister Corita Kent and a book she wrote on creativity. I’d never heard her name before, and that one line sent me down a rabbit hole for a few days — mostly Katy Hessel’s Great Women Artists episode on her, which I really recommend (a good moment to say: one of my all-time favorite podcasts). Corita was a nun, a pop artist, a printmaker, a teacher. In the late sixties, she wrote ten rules for her art students.

That would make a great poster.

I loved all ten! They’re common sense, and I love common sense. “Nothing is a mistake.” “The only rule is work.” “Be happy whenever you can manage it.” I could have nodded at all of them and moved on, but I got stuck on the first one:

Rule 1: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.

I want to think about it with you, because I don’t know for certain what I think yet. At first, I read it literally. A place is a place — a city, an apartment, somewhere you stay in long enough to make it yours. And sure, that’s part of it, I think.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if she meant something else, too. Since this is about creativity, what if the place isn’t a place at all, but something in your work? Something you make? A thought, a sentence, your own voice? What if “find a place you trust” means: decide your work is good enough, and then actually believe it for a while? This thought is so helpful and comforting to me!!

Take this post. I could decide that the thought I’m having is worth having, and worth sending to you, and then trust that — instead of rewriting the first paragraph for the tenth time. If you paint, or make music, or make anything at all, it’s the same thing. Find the place where you believe your work is good enough to be seen, and then trust it. Trust it long enough that it stops being a one-off act of bravery.

I found a nice essay on this exact rule by Natacha Ramsay-Levi, and she reads it as a rule about attention — that trusting a place really means fixing your attention on it and keeping it there, on purpose, instead of letting everything else drag you away. I like that a lot. You can’t trust a place you won’t even look at, no?

And then there’s “for a while,” my favorite part. She doesn’t say find the place and stay forever. She knows nothing lasts — you’ll move, you’ll change your mind, the trust will wobble. She just says: try it for a while, long enough to see what it does to you.

Me writing to you from a place I like.

I think this rule really got me because the past couple of weeks have been a bit up and down. Something I wanted very much didn't work out — I got quite far, and then I didn't get what I wanted. Ugh! And then for days, I couldn't trust myself to do anything right, least of all the one thing I'm supposed to know about…

So yeah, then Corita’s rules turned up that exact week, through a magazine, through a rabbit hole. Find a place you trust, and try trusting it for a while. So I decided that the place I’d try trusting was me, my strengths, my voice. This newsletter. The fact that I do actually know some things about my small corner of the world.

I’ve been trying to be braver lately. Trying new things, saying yes to stuff that scares me a bit: for example, considering buying a skirt and a dress and trying to actually dress for summer. It’s scary as hell. And the idea of trusting yourself, your voice, your work — and trusting it for a long time, not just for one brave afternoon — I love it!

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And now that that’s off my chest, what I’m really curious about now is you. When you read Rule 1, what came to mind? What’s the place for you?