opening yourself to support
opening yourself to support
[TI-14] a reflection on in(ter)dependence, asking for help, and acknowledgements
At the Are.na spring cleaning I hosted, we discovered that we all shared one thing in common: none of us had a full-time job. Instead, P & T compared themselves to "professional sidemissioners," people who always have a project but never have a job.
Most people are on a side quest these days (or yearning for the freedom to pursue them), whether that "side quest" is their life's work or simply some time to rest from the daily grind of a 9-5. With the continuing loss of trust in any sort of institution to provide a stable existence, much less a nurturing one, lots of us are in some form of employment instability or looking for an exit. Everyone wants to be free.
When I started my "professional" sidequest last year, I phrased it as a chapter of independence. I was breaking free from my corporate bonds and making space for my creative desires. People I met commended my bravery to be nontraditional and commit to myself.
There's a romanticism in the "myth of the lone genius" that lives on in the modern age filled with independent creatives and solo makers. "Doing your own thing" and going indie signal an unshakeable confidence in your abilities. People dream of toiling away on a game for years on end like ConcernedApe, the maker of Stardew Valley, and becoming an overnight success.
"All it took was nearly life-ruining levels of obsessiveness"
(from the above profile of Eric Barone AKA ConcernedApe)
But there are real (and honestly, necessary) "marketing" benefits that come with this branding. How else can indie, mostly solo devs compete with triple-A game studios and venture-backed startups?
How do we set expectations, and ask for help, without leaving out all the people who have made our work possible?
Even when you do want to make space for all the people and communities that have enabled your accomplishments, many systems don't provide space to acknowledge them publicly. We can send them thanks in private and make personal dedications to them, but how do we make them part of the work as much as we are?
As the year progressed, I became more intimately aware of how much I did was inextricably tied to and made possible by someone else. Even as I spent hours on end nurturing ideas and cultivating them into public projects, they would've been meaningless without the community who gave me early feedback and decided to bet on (and believe in) me.
It's not much of an exaggeration to say I owe so much of my current art practice to Max and Shelby of the HTML Review taking a chance on me & giving space to show html garden. This work led to my first encounter with the physical installation of internet art and formed a foundation for finding my unique artistic voice. Kristoffer's highlighting of my work has connected me with several supporters and collaborators. My partner and close friends have given me so much detailed feedback that helps what I do connect meaningfully with people.
This story repeats over and over for so much of the work I've been able to do throughout the past year. Friends giving me feedback, collaborating with me, and supporting my work with not only an unshakeable belief in the importance of it, but also materially connecting me to the right opportunities and people to make it possible to continue.
And most of it has started from the courage to ask for help and the dedication to honoring and returning the gift.
from https://twitter.com/spencerc99/status/1790630845109399858
Last week, I released Gather, an offline-enabled multimedia collections app that connects to Are.na. It's the first time I've explicitly asked for monetary support for something I've made, and I was terrified to do so. It's not required, simply a nudge of the labor that went into the app's creation and the maintenance required to keep it alive1.
Instead of charging a recurring subscription which is common practice for most software, even the kind that doesn't require much continual upkeep or incur big variable costs (and is a practice that is universally hated), I decided to ask for a one-time contribution for Gather (that is completely optional) for its development2.
The contribution screen is the last part in the "setup" flow. The default is $13 and the scale ranges from $3-$60.
I decided to share my story and bring the people using Gather into my community. I wanted them to understand how much, not only their contribution, but their very use of the app was part of this interdependence. That I wasn't just a faceless company that doesn't care who signs up for their app outside of how they contribute to the revenue figures. I wanted them to know that each contribution had a face on it—one I would personally cherish.
I didn't have much expectations. I figured just a few people would donate, and that would be that3. But the response has been incredible. Over 70 people have contributed something to use Gather, with an average payment of ~$11. There are less than 300 people signed up for the beta now, so it comes out to around 1/3 of the people using the app contributed something. It's more than I could have hoped for, and it's making me dream of a world where this might sustain my living expenses for a couple of months.
Every time I am shocked by the willingness of people to help you when you ask for it. The community will support you if you ask them to. It will hold you if you open yourself to being held.
Every day of this "independent" life further cements my belief that the network (as in mycelium) is everything. Everything I'm able to accomplish is made possible by someone else. I've started to depart from "independent" as a classifier and reaching instead for "indie" to distinguish myself from being supported through traditional employment at a company.
"We want independence, yes, but also interdependence."
from https://www.interdependence.online/
Even as I say this, it's hard to change my language to reflect it. It's easy to think that I'm on my own and feel guilty about all the work I'm not able to do. That it's weak or even incompetent to ask for help. I even titled my reflection about a year of this freedom "a year of independence."
One place that has always held space for the gratitude of indie makers is the Acknowledgements section lodged at the end of works, from writing to websites. I love reading through these letters wherever I find them to see how others manage to capture the gratitude for everyone in their lives who helped make their work possible. Do they acknowledge every single person who believed in them, critiqued their work, shared time with them, brought some tea or gave them a hug during the hardest moments? How can you capture all your gratitude in a single space?4 I love seeing the personal, inside-joke messages that weave between the lines, how the author's writing voice starts to transform from a singular representation to a multifaceted, jumbled composition of the personalities of everyone they pull into the space as they thank them.
Maybe we could acknowledge them in our very titles? Maybe we could be "in(ter)dependent" (from Marcel Goethals) artists, researchers, engineers, technologists, and creatives?
I have an old practice of acknowledging. A couple years ago, I started keeping a record of appreciations for people. There's not really a central repository for them—I just tag them with "#appreciations" in the most accessible note-taking app at that time. Whenever I feel gratitude for someone, I record their name followed by what part of them I'm feeling grateful for. I wrote a little script to extract these, and I've been thinking about sharing them with people on their birthday (or perhaps every season?). There's the seed of something beautiful here. How would you adopt this practice and how else would you share it with the people you love to thank them?
Latest News
Gather is available for anyone to try on iOS and Android. I'd love to hear your thoughts. You can read more about it and my broader computing philosophy in this wonderful interview Meg and Cab from Are.na conducted with me.
I'm headed to London and Berlin for a couple weeks in mid-July. I'd love to hear recommendations and if you know of venues where I could host a webstone workshop!
With Gather released, I'm heads-down working on my installation, AcknowledgeNET, a piece honoring how much of our labor makes up the Internet, for Gray Area's Artist Showcase on July 10 and 11th in San Francisco. If you're free come by to see it and 10+ other works :)
I'm starting to explore the possibilities of creating a small batch of computing-infused ceramic objects monthly as another way to make rent (more thoughts on this whole tension with money soon.. lol). Let me know if you have ideas.. and I'm also open to custom commissions (either a personal webstone for yourself or a specialized design for your team or even your most loyal customers)
This dispatch was sent to 846 inboxes. My writing is independently funded and made free and possible, in large part, through the support of the community. Consider sharing this with a friend and tipping me if you have the means and want to see this work continue!
Thank you to the 27 people who supported my independent work with a monthly sponsorship last month and especially to Jasmine for their generous sponsorship.
It's designed more like shareware, except nothing destructive happens if you don't pay. I might send some gentle reminders after continued use, but I haven't implemented it yet.
Although I've been encouraged to also ask for some sort of recurring contribution to support updating of dependencies and changing phone OS versions that will require consistent work every year, so I've been thinking of adding a link out for people to do so in very small amounts like $5-30 annually. I don't know maybe this is still too small to justify maintaining it. I have a tough time reconciling how much we've become normalized to pay for software (hundreds of dollars per month to send emails) and simultaneously how much we've come to expect software to be free when it requires active labor to maintain. If you make an indie game that becomes wildly played, the millions who play it subsidize the cost for everyone else. The low variable cost of software means that you can only charge a low price if you go big. I haven't figured out how to reconcile this with making personal, handmade software for your community.
in fact I probably wouldn't even have launched with this screen without the encouragement of Cab, whose nudge I'm now incredibly grateful for
I’d love to see examples of acknowledgements / credits that you love! Please send them to me :)