Take the leap
Happiness is wanting what you have
Last week Mel’s Notebook hit a huge milestone! We passed 400 subscribers, which is so freaking heart-warming to me that I cried. When I started this Substack newsletter, I felt a little unhinged. My life was in shambles. Was it really the right time to start a newsletter? And yet…starting it was a commitment to myself. It was a promise. I will post to this newsletter twice a week, which means I will make art twice a week. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep that commitment, but I went for it anyway. It was either that, or give up, and I wasn’t giving up. So I took the leap.
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It took me a few weeks of exploration to figure out what I wanted to do here. I’ve always doodled about the creative process and specifically writing. Everyone who saw my doodles always encouraged me to share them, but I had never really figured out the right platform. I share my art on Instagram and I used to share on Twitter (RIP) but those platforms don’t really encourage a lot of conversation. The things I think about are nuanced and layered. These ideas need space to breathe. The newsletter gave me the space to explore and share those thoughts, and I’m just ridiculously thrilled that so many of you enjoy them. In my lowest moments, I found such solace in taking 15-20 minutes to make some art for myself. Just single pages, focused on a quote or a thought that resonated with me. I’ve always been a collector, and taking the time to intentionally collect my thoughts on creativity felt great. It reminded me of who I was, and I thought that maybe other people would enjoy these reminders, too.
Diving into a newsletter while in the midst of divorce isn’t the first time I’ve taken a leap of faith. When I was a senior in high school, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a veterinarian. I had worked at a vet’s office, Biology was my favorite class, and I grew up riding horses. Everything seemed to point to becoming a veterinarian, so I went for it. I only applied to one college: NC State University, which had the top veterinary school in the country. I was so focused on getting into their competitive program that I turned my high school down when they nominated me for the Morehead Scholarship at Carolina. The counselors thought I was being short-sighted, but I knew what I wanted. So I went for it, and I ended up nominated for a brand new scholarship program, the Park Scholars, an award I eventually won.
It only took about 6 months in pre-veterinary science to realize that it was not the right major for me. Luckily, I stumbled upon an amazing installation project led by a landscape architecture professor affiliated with my scholarship group, and he invited me to join them. He didn’t care what major I was in. When I started working on this project, where we built a backyard garden at 7X life scale, I rediscovered the love of art that I had set aside when I’d considered my choices for college. I’d always taken art classes in school, but no one ever told me that I could puruse creative professions. I knew that fine arts painters existed, but beyond that, I had no idea that design field existed. By the time we finished building the giant garden, I knew I had to make a change. That’s when I jumped ship and applied to the Design School at NC State.
