The Story (Newsletter No. 30)
People always ask, and tell me to tell, what’s your origin story? What’s your why? And it sounds cliche (and it feels cliche to label something as cliche) but it’s true, I agree, it’s the most important part of selling anything (for money, approval, understanding, etc.). It’s the same thing I exasperatedly exclaim when trying to help (and perhaps projecting my deficiencies on) someone else. “But why???”
And I always dread unpacking it because
I’ve tried, and it’s boring. Is there anything more to it than, for some
reason I like making and designing things?
It feels like it sounds really boring. My life. The small and same-as-everyone-else-ness. Maybe it’s a lack of self-esteem, but honestly it does feel really boring to tell it to someone else. Um I made stuff in my room? I melted plastic spoons in the toaster oven and dried lemons between books because an 8th grade classmate’s mom’s car had dried lemons? Laminated dead flowers? Show me me and i’ll show you a million other me’s. It’s mostly boring to me because I’ve lived it, and living it was fun and fine, but I don’t need to tell it and relive it.
It’s hard to go deep without sounding like a therapy session maybe or something that I’d maybe prefer to keep in one…and are those “deep” reasons even accurate, or is it honestly still just reason #1, I like making things…I like tiny things I can hold, I like color, I like shiny.
I overshoot the zoom out and I keep falling into generics. The attempt at bigness, existentialism, “nature,” “culture,” “we as a society.”
I can’t articulate myself.
Well here are some explanations I’ve come up with.
I’ve always liked secrets. From people, in dreams. Secret passageways, codes, diaries with locks and keys, cupboards, boxes, hiding places, attics, the concept of fortune cookies, meadows beyond the woods. What’s the physical manifestation of a secret? Treasure. What makes a secret treasure secreter? When it’s harder to see, smaller.
I like small tiny things because they’re easy to comprehend and create the narrative for. Whatever I didn’t like in my life, whether it was simply boring or felt out of my control, I can escape and read and watch and then write and create it precisely like I’d like it to be. Jewelry is story props you can hold. Jewelry is treasure, jewelry is secret power symbolism.
Tiny things are like toys, maybe by making and playing with toys i’ll stay innocent.
What’s MY favorite part of it? How unaware it made/makes me feel to create, even though now I’m forever chasing that moment of unawareness, to go back to so completely, enjoying for the sake of enjoyment. It’s not just because social media exists, it’s not being a child anymore, forever.
It makes me feel like me.
I have a million ideas that while are often not big or vital, observing, digesting, synthesizing and tweaking is one of my top 3 happinesses, even when it’s at the scale of a tiny knickknack. And the potential validation that comes with it is part of it also. The I’m amazed, the I see exactly what you were trying to do. To be impressive, to be seen. The strive. Audience size doesn’t matter so much as the thing I care about most is being recognized by whoever would recognize. Whoever would understand, I want them to understand. I know that I’m not going to shift the world with jewelry itself nor do I feel the compulsion to do so, but whatever rivulet ripples that I was meant to make, I want to make them. I want to mess up and keep going.