Here’s the TL;DR, (before I bury it in a garden metaphor.) I moved this community over to Patreon, it wasn’t the right fit, and I’m bringing it home, back here to Substack.
The longer version below is the one I wrote to work out what I was feeling about all this (waves hand) and what my next steps were. And naturally, I started my thinking process with a garden.
Have you ever visited someone’s garden and wondered: could I re-create this in my own garden? I have. And I mean, not just take some inspiration, but seen a sloping garden bed and taken stock of everything there and thought about copying and pasting it into a similar spot in my garden.
I’ve tried it with plant combinations for my front garden. The trio I specifically tried was echinacea with correa alba clouds and native grasses.
But the combination I saw in the other garden didn’t turn out like that in my garden. It sulked. Because my soil is different - clay, clay and more clay. The aspect was different. The sun that poured through those grasses never found the same angle in my space. You see it was never really about the perfect combination. It was about the conditions. The soil it was grown in, the light it was given, the reasons someone planted it there in the first place.
That’s the honest version of what happened with Patreon. I saw other creators thriving there, building lovely spaces for their people (which I am a part of too) and I thought, I’d love to create that for my community. So I took their plan and tried to recreate it. But my conditions were different, and Sentimental Friends never quite took root in that soil. No fault of the plan. It just wasn’t grown for my patch and where the audience for this podcast is.
So here we are, back on home soil.
I’ve come to think this is simply what it looks like to grow in public. You make a decision, bring the idea to life, send it out into the world, and then you wait before you can see whether it took. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you’re standing there months later with the watering can, realising the thing you were so sure about isn’t working, and the only honest move is to dig it up and try again. In full view of everyone. Showing the weeds and all.
It would be easier to do this quietly. To slip back here as though Patreon never happened, the way you can shove the washing baskets behind the bedroom closed door and let people think the whole house is tidy! But that’s never really been my style. We’re here, following a thing, trying something out and observing what happens along the way.
So, here’s what that means from here. Newsletters will land in your inbox after each episode comes out (I’ve got some catching up to do with the latest one!) Sentimental Friends subscriber episodes will live here on Substack as well, alongside Apple Podcasts (if you’d prefer to get them there). And I’ve got a hyperfocus I can’t shake lately, which is writing more about Australian native plants, and honestly whatever else I happen to be besotted with that particular month.
If you’re up for more growing in public, pop your feet up and stick around. And if you’re just joining us, leaning in to see what all the fuss is about, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.
The other thing I’ve rediscovered in all this twisting and pivoting is that I really do love to write. Not the performing of it, just the doing of it. I’m finding my own voice again the only way you ever really do, which is by using it more often, out loud, where you can be seen.
That’s the whole thing, really. This is what growing in public looks like.
Waving,
Cass Dowding
Great news !!
Welcome home! 🏡