I'm working on shifting my online presence - and my Soul Caller community - off of FB. It's challenging because, in so many ways, it's so easy to go there and just click around.
It's challenging because I've gotten in the habit of composing posts there, while my blog/website floats, unattended in cyberspace. There's an ease in Facebook’s format - which I enjoy but there is also that FB price.My posts are less visible (unless I pay) to push them before you. I catch myself trying to outfox an algorithm instead of simply sharing my heart. Daily, I find myself trying to figure out if a friend request is coming from a real person or someone trying to mine my community for ... what? For data? For influence? It's exhausting.
If my year of quarantine has taught me anything it's the value of simple things. I want less. I need less. I am living a much smaller life - and yet, I am so much bigger inside. There is a spaciousness, a lightness, a brightness inside of me. I love that and I want to cultivate it and share it.
During the ten years that I've worked online, I've winnowed down my work to core principles - I'm ready now to offer new work but it doesn't land right in the too-loud, too angry Facebook realm.
As I shape this new emerging work, I know that I want to share my real experience - and out of that, to inform and offer what clarity I've gleaned along my own way. I want to share the teachings I received from my own mentors and guides.
I want to offer workshops and books and all of that - but in a cleaner, simpler way. I want to support and hold the people who are drawn to my work as they work with the teachings in their lives. And then, I want to give them tools to share my work - my Soul Call Cards, for example, and my flagship workshops - with their own communities.
I've been sitting inside of this impulse, this vision for a couple of years now. Inside the cocoon of the idea, melting down old forms, trying out new ones.
I'm playing over here on Substack - I imagine it will work really well for blogging and free flowing ideas and posts. I’m also playing on Patreon, where I can offer my work at different levels of engagement. Because I have different kinds of clients: some just want an energy recharge. Others want a more personal conversation. Others want workshops and gatherings.
I want to serve all of these clients. I also want and need (sometimes, rather desperately) to write. In my deep heart, I'm an author, a poet, a memoir-oriented essayist. I'm a teacher yes but like a singer-songwriter, I need to write the songs (workshops) that I sing (teach) and I need a space that’s easy to use and supportive of the writer. And so far, Substack feels that way to me.
I really am determined to do business the way that I want to do it - and to do it in a more spacious, less aggressive and politically charged space. I need to do it accessibly - my pricing MUST make the work available to anyone who is drawn to it.
Finally, I need (as we all need) to work in beauty, in freedom, to let my creativity and intuition guide me. I need all of this so that I can be ... me. So that I can be what I am in this world. It's the only way I can teach my clients to do the same.
All of this is moving in me now.
Through your words a bright light of integrity, commitment, truth and love shine a bright guiding light Amy, thank you. Thank you.