Embracing a slow burn.
Slowness is success.
As an artist, I see so many of my peers share their published things and successes, making me in turn feel pressure only to share the symbolic “wins.” Yet, I think it’s equally important to share when launches don’t go how you had hoped. It’s been two years since my “Gentle Reminders” Oracle deck was released, and I am just now about to make enough sales to start getting my royalties. I have mixed feelings about that.
First of all, I am deeply grateful that this deck is out in the world. When I was approached to make this, I felt this was an opportunity to create an oracle deck that didn’t spiritually bypass our tumultuous times. When I first started getting heavily into meditation and “holistic” things like tarot or oracle cards, I quickly picked up on the ableism of it all, the hierarchy of it all, and the binary gender roles it perpetuated.
I turned to meditation and other modalities to support my chronic pain, to help me be more in my body so that I could better understand myself, not to bypass the implications of being Disabled in this world.
When I was approached to make an oracle deck, I used that opportunity to try to create something that I could’ve wanted to support me when I was in turmoil. I dug through my old journals to pull out little reminders, made my drawings, and sent it off to be made. It takes a while for a thing you’ve created to be out in the world and published.
As the year ended, I knew the following year would be when the oracle deck was coming out. I had a test copy sent to me, which allows you as an artist to see any final things you would like to fix about the deck. I had some notes and made my edits but kept on to my test copy.
So, I was all set to do a big promotional launch for the Oracle deck the following year. In 2020, I picked up a lot of new followers for my art and perspectives on Disability via Instagram. By 2022, the algorithm still felt somewhat supportive of me as an artist — now, not so much.
In November things were wrapping up information-wise regarding when the deck would arrive etc, and then I had a subdural hematoma, which truly knocked so much of what I was doing all over the place. I thought it’d just take a few weeks to recover, but it took several months.
One of those months included the month the Oracle deck came out. I did what I could to promote, given my circumstances. I was actively in physical therapy, strengthening my balance.
I was dysphoric from having to shave my head due to the way the brain surgeons butchered my hair in order to make an incision in my head. I was not in a public-facing position, and I also wasn’t really ready to just air out the fact I had navigated a near-death experience.
I was running on “crip-time.” Ellen Samuels describes it by saying, “Crip time is time travel. Disability and illness have the power to extract us from linear, progressive time with its normative life stages and cast us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts, tedious intervals, and abrupt endings.”
Even though I was moving slower, I could tell my mind still wasn’t having it. I thought of ideas to promote the deck including a podcast, which I had thought of in the mania of me being in the ICU on lots of pain meds recovering from surgery. I followed through with the hospital bedhead idea and interviewed some lovely people I admire.
While everything was recorded, I didn’t have the bandwidth to edit episodes, and in listening to my interviews, I could tell that I genuinely just couldn’t even conduct conversations in the ways that I had liked to. So that podcast idea was scrapped. I had to surrender to the slow burn of having something you created out in the world.
These past two years, I have done what I can to market and share that this thing is out. I slowly watch the sale numbers rise at the pace they are going. I’ve found that when you have something published, people want to support you directly, and I have to reassure them that wherever they get the deck, it supports me by bringing me closer to receiving royalties. I have to remind myself, too, why this thing is even out in the world. I created a thing with “gentle” in the title. Gentleness asks for slowness. It asks for patience.
Gentleness is rooted in crip time.
The ways people have shared with me what’s come up for them when using the oracle deck, always grounds me in the purpose of why this is out. I’m so thankful people tell me how it’s impacted them.
I wanted to create a tool that encourages slowness and grace. I wanted to create a tool that folks could use in times where they might feel pressure from the outside world. I wanted to share these things, because I had naively thought that just because you have something published out in the world, you have it all figured out.
Even when you are a “published” person, you still won't have things figured out.
You define success.
You define what “established” means.
You set the pace, even if capitalism tries to get you to rev things up.
I appreciated this sentiment from
I’m preparing another launch for something that will be published in connection to the Oracle deck later this year. Between preparation and riding on the heels of two years of having this deck out, I’m more grounded in the fact that sales won’t be the sole thing that determines its success for me.
We have many symbolic accolades like “bestseller” lists or specific influencers sharing our work, but what if those accolades don’t happen?
What if your large number of followers still doesn’t amount to something “selling” or being “reached” to others?
What if your work just impacts those in more quiet intimate ways?
What if your project supports people in ways you couldn’t imagine, outside of what capitalism defines as success?
I am so grateful to have the “Gentle Reminders” Oracle deck out. I hope it can continue to support people in the ways it has and in further ways I wouldn’t anticipate. I continue to trust that it reaches those who connect to it. Your support means so much to me.
Hi Barry, I’m an elementary school ESL teacher and i use your deck with my students every week. We all love it very much. Thank you for your work!!
Gentle reminders is what I call the things I make too. Your Oracle deck is now on my list to purchase. Sometimes things happen slowly, but I think that's a better pace (even though it can be hard sometimes).