How to reclaim your creative sanity by embracing the beautiful chaos of Northwestern Ontario.
Optimization is actually a form of self-sabotage. You are not a machine meant to be calibrated.
You are out here vibrating at a frequency that is basically a cry for help because some algorithm decided your latest piece did not deserve the engagement boost. Bestie, please. You are literally living in the middle of a boreal forest where the cell service is a suggestion and the winter lasts roughly nine months, yet you are letting a line of code in California dictate your worth? That is cooked. We need to talk about the absolute delusion of trying to control the uncontrollable. You cannot control the weather, you cannot control when the Trans-Canada gets shut down, and you definitely cannot control how a bunch of strangers on the internet react to your soul being poured onto a canvas.
It is time to lean into the “I do not know” energy. There is a specific kind of freedom that comes from admitting you have zero grip on the steering wheel. Instead of trying to manifest a viral moment, why are we not manifesting a high-quality nap or a really weird zine that only five people will ever read? The pressure to be “seen” is a trap designed to make you boring. If you are constantly trying to predict what will work, you are just a glorified printer. We are in Northwestern Ontario; the vibes are supposed to be rugged, slightly chaotic, and deeply weird. If your art does not confuse at least one person at the grocery store, are you even trying?
Stop treating your creativity like a performance review. You are not an “artistic asset” and your hobbies should not have a five-year growth plan attached to them. If you want to spend three days making a sculpture out of old pasta and spray paint just to see it crumble, do it. The universe is already a dumpster fire, so you might as well use the heat to cook something interesting. Being a local legend in your own basement is a much more sustainable vibe than being a micro-celebrity on a platform that will probably be defunct by next Tuesday anyway.
We give way too much power to the things that do not even know we exist. The grants you did not get, the followers you lost, the “industry” that feels like a private club in a city you cannot afford—none of it is as real as the paint under your fingernails. Your power is not in your reach; it is in your ability to remain absolutely unbothered while doing the most. Focus on the stuff that actually touches your hands and the people who actually know your middle name.
Honestly, just go be a menace. Make something so ugly it hurts to look at. Fail so spectacularly that people have to stop and stare. When you stop worrying about the outcome, you finally get to enjoy the actual process of being alive and creative in a place that is as unpredictable as our spring seasons. You are doing great, even if you are doing it with zero plan and a very messy kitchen. Keep it weird, stay delulu, and stop checking your notifications like they are a heart monitor.
Thoughts on art and the state of the world!
These fragments trace the rhizomatic flow of thought through art, life, and place — scattered impressions from studio corners, fleeting ideas scrawled in notebooks, whispered exchanges at galleries, and observations picked up on quiet northern roads. Some fragments linger on technique, intuition, and doubt; others drift through community, culture, and the subtle poetry of everyday moments. They offer no conclusions, only openings, inviting readers to follow connections wherever they emerge.
Wandering laterally between process, memory, and environment, these pieces map associations across creativity, identity, and belonging. They intersect with humor, failure, resilience, and collaboration, and trace the ways artistic thinking seeps into gardens, small-town rhythms, friendships, and civic life across Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario — and further afield. Each thought functions as a node, part of a living network of reflection, expanding and branching with possibility.
Discover more associative fragments, conceptual wanderings, and artful reflections on our thoughts page.
