You unwhimsical B*tch

To quote the start of a song I recently heard, “People always say, mmm, that’s not realistic... Not for you, you unwhimsical bitch”. When’s the last time you were a whimsical bitch?  

Whimsy is dead and we’ve killed it. When’s the last time you just played like a child? Felt that sense of wonder and awe that left you speechless. Your whole body alight in a sense of joy. Where a giggle bubbles its way up from the depths of your chest. A goofy grin plastered on your face? I felt it today in a moment of nostalgia. I used to watch fan made anime music videos (AMV) on YouTube roughly fifteen years ago. Today I happened to have one recommended to me on my front page, apparently there’s been a resurgences in AMV’s lately.  

So naturally I clicked on it. I was swiftly transported right back to my teenage self. Hunched over in the chair gazing at the screen in awe as the bright colours of my favourite anime flickering in fast-paced edits to the edgy music of the early 2010’s. A wave of childlike joy at seeing characters with the backing track of Linkin Park while being portrayed as bad asses filled me with elation. I felt the same way I did then all these years later. I feel so inspired to go out and make, do, hit the gym, just do something when I watch them. It’s such a silly thing, but they really have such an effect on me. And in this world right now, I welcome any sense of joy I can get from wherever. 

We get so bogged down by saying things like “Lock in”, “Rise and grind”, or anything that makes you have to be serious about literally anything. My coffee break is now a competitive sport. How can I maximize my relaxation? I’m sure some finance bro on YouTube has a program to sell you on the best way to “relax-maxx" for one payment of $99.99.  

Every time I get into a hobby now, I have a million people telling me how to turn it into a business idea. I was head over heels with Leatherworking at one point. Having wanted a hobby that paid homage to my Pa, I couldn’t afford a lesson at the Shoe School that was in Newtown at the time (Context my Pa was a third generation Cobbler), he passed away before I could learn – I say that like my teenager self would have be interested in continuing the legacy, she probably would have turned her nose up at it. However now as I get older, I think I would have enjoyed continuing that family legacy had things turned out differently).

So, one day I discovered leather working and more specifically, Leather tooling. A specific skill within the craft, where you carve pictures into the leather itself (specifically natural Veg-Tan leather). Look it up, it’s pretty neat. Being broke at the time I decided to go all in. I sold my PS4 to buy my first leather hide. Turns out I was good at it from the jump too. I loved it. It’s a soothing craft. I had that sense of play, experimenting, and joy that I got from craft and art. I’d never found a medium I enjoyed so much before. It just fit with my personality, with the bonus factor of connecting with my family in a way. I started making online friends through it too. If you don’t know on the streaming platform Twitch, there’s a creative section. You can watch artists broadcast their craft as they create. Often being able to interact and ask questions about the process. And there just so happened to be a small group of leatherworkers. We got close. Often gaming together, doing video chats etc. And then slowly. The pressure to create for selling started. “You’re so good, you need to try and sell things”, started to be an often said sentence in my direction. I got sucked into it. And slowly my love for it died. Stress started, it started eroding my love for it. Mind you most of these people came from America, where there is a Leather culture. New Zealand is shit for Leather – specifically bespoke leather hand crafts. The market here is completely different. Fast fashion has it’s dirty claws impaled firmly into our way of living. So, I tried selling it cheaply. Then those comments turned into, “you’re under charging”. No matter what I did, how I did it, it wasn’t good enough. The goal post always shifted. And now I struggle to pick up my tools. I know it’ll come back eventually, but the damage was done and still really hurts to this day. The whimsy nature of why I started over taken by the “lock in bro”. 

I almost made that mistake with my photography again. People in my ears saying, “You’re so good you need to charge for it,” and I did. A few times. While it was fun in moments, the negative kept outweighing the positive for me. I love photography. Just as much as I love leatherworking. I don’t want to make that same mistake twice. My creativity will not have a price tag again. It is the one part of my life where I find joy. I play. Try and create weird and wonderful things. I just TRY things. I don’t care if it fails. Who the fuck cares. No one is dying if a photo idea doesn’t work out. Hell, most of my favourite images I’ve created recently are pure accidents because my main idea didn’t work out, or I got bored and changed something last minute. I’ve challenged myself to basically do a photoshoot a week for this year. Which kind of sounds a bit backwards, since I was just bemoaning the lock in bro culture. However, with this. I’m purely doing it for me entirely. Not for views. Clicks, or validation (though sometimes you lot will get lucky with some fun photos that are work adjacent). I just want to have fun with it. Experiment like I used to in Mum’s craft room as a kid. See what happens. What comes out. So far, I keep surprising myself. Even if I can’t be bothered, and it’s a low effort photoshoot. I end up making something I’m proud of, and begrudging – I end up having a ton of fun. 

So, I dare you. Go out and try something. Be a goddamn whimsical bitch. Do something your younger self used to absolutely love. Chase that feeling of wonder.  

“Creativity is a temporary salvation from the claws of death” - Emil Cioran.