iDidItScared

I have a secret identity.

By day, I’m a perfectly respectable American Airlines employee, helping people get where they need to go.

"Good morning! How can I help you? Where are you traveling to today?"

Very professional. Very pleasant. Very much giving employee of the month.

Meanwhile, in my head, I’m Basquiat walking through the airport with thick locs and an entire creative universe nobody knows about.

These people have no idea who they're dealing with.

And honestly, why would they? I’m standing here asking if they checked a bag.

Anyway, there I was, minding my business, being a productive member of society, when my phone went off.

Five orders.

BLOODSEED!

Five actual orders. From people spending their actual money on something I made.

I wanted to skip down the terminal. I may have skipped a little. Nobody could tell me anything that day. I called Nick and the kids, who were just as excited as I was, then logged into my website to make sure the orders were real.

Because I trust technology, but I also know technology.

And then, almost immediately, mi belly.

What if they hate it?

What if the print isn’t right? What if something goes wrong? What if they open the package and wonder what possessed them to spend their hard-earned money on this?

Amazing how quickly you can go from celebrating your first orders to personally imagining every possible customer complaint.

And the funny thing is, I wasn't even expecting a sale that day.

For almost two years, I’d barely posted anything. An occasional Story, a comment here and there, maybe a little evidence that I was still alive and had access to Wi-Fi.

That was about it.

But somewhere along the way, I started thinking seriously about what I wanted to put into the world.

I hadn’t stopped being an artist. There were sketches, ideas, and paintings beginning to take shape. What I Carry, a series I'm developing, started as a concept because I was becoming painfully aware of how much I had been carrying myself.

Life had gotten heavy.

And I’m not talking about the kind of heavy you fix with a weekend away and a scented candle. Life was life-ing, and some of it was rough.

I was working, raising children, dealing with things I never imagined I’d have to deal with, and trying to make sense of it all.

Surviving, really.

But even when I wasn’t sharing much, I was still thinking. Still observing. Still making things.

And, because I’m a Virgo, still overthinking absolutely everything.

At two in the morning.

Down a rabbit hole.

With 17 questions, 37 browser tabs, and absolutely no intention of going to sleep.

Was I on the toilet?

Perhaps.

One of the things I kept coming back to was legacy.

Not fame. Not becoming some household name. I’m talking about the ordinary question of what you want to be remembered for.

What will I have left behind that actually reflects who I was?

We live in a digital world. Our photographs, opinions, arguments, vacations, questionable fashion choices, and things we probably shouldn't have posted in 2012 are all floating around somewhere.

So what would my digital footprint look like?

Would it say anything meaningful about me?

Could I take a period of my life and intentionally develop work that reflected my experiences, my culture, and the things I care about?

Could I make art that connected people? Share stories about where I come from? Create something that might mean something to somebody I’ll never meet?

And in a world where artificial intelligence can produce an image in seconds, does something I spent weeks making with my own hands even matter?

I don't know.

I mean, I believe it does. Obviously. I’m an artist.

But I’d be lying if I said I hadn't asked myself the question.

Because creating something privately is one thing. Putting it out into the world, where people can look at it, judge it, buy it, ignore it, misunderstand it, or love it, is something else entirely.

And after being quiet for so long, I was nervous.

I could already hear the imaginary commentary.

She still doing that?

She still trying to make art?

Now she just drop in selling shirts?

First of all, I’ve been doing this since before I had children.

I didn’t wake up one morning, buy paint, and decide I was an artist.

I’ve studied it. Practiced it. Lived it. Made things I loved, things I hated, and things I thought were brilliant until I looked at them again the next morning.

It’s who I am.

But somewhere between living life and trying to keep everybody else afloat, I’d gotten used to keeping that part of myself a little quieter.

And being quiet can become comfortable.

Nobody can criticize what they don’t see.

Nobody can reject something you haven’t offered.

Nobody can tell you your work isn’t good enough if you keep it in your studio.

Very peaceful arrangement, actually.

Terrible for sharing your art, but excellent for avoiding unsolicited opinions.

Of course, people will have opinions whether you’re doing something or not.

You’d think we’d all have more important things to worry about by now, but apparently this is a lifelong extracurricular activity.

Which brings me to my children.

Parenting is hilarious when you really think about it.

You spend years telling these little people to be independent. Think for yourselves. Make good decisions. Don’t follow the crowd. Speak up. Believe in who you are.

Then one day they start developing their own opinions, making their own decisions, and exercising all that independence you've been encouraging.

Excuse me?

Whatchumean you’re your own person?

Who approved this?

But somewhere between reminding them to do something I’d already asked them to do 400 times and giving my usual speech about believing in themselves, I realized something.

I couldn’t keep telling my children to take chances if I wasn’t willing to take any myself.

I couldn’t tell them not to be afraid of failure while quietly arranging my own life to avoid it.

I couldn’t tell them to believe in their abilities while hiding mine.

Because these kids are watching.

And I talk a lot of shit.

So now I kinda have to back it up.

That realization didn’t suddenly make me fearless. I still questioned everything. I still revised things 100 times. I still wondered whether anyone would care.

But I kept working.

I finished designs. Worked on paintings. Built the website. Made decisions, changed my mind, changed it back, and occasionally questioned whether I had lost my entire mind.

Eventually, I had to stop preparing to put my work out there and actually put it out there.

And then came those five orders.

After the excitement, the phone calls, the skipping, and the sudden gastrointestinal distress, there was actual work to do.

Somebody had trusted me with their hard-earned money.

And I wasn’t about to send them some raggedy shirt.

I checked everything. Every print. Every label. Every detail.

I personally lint-rolled every single garment.

Every. Single. One.

Because whatever happens with this little creative venture of mine, nobody is going to say they paid good money and I sent them something I couldn’t be bothered to finish properly.

I had spent months thinking about legacy, artistic purpose, cultural identity, and whether handmade work still mattered in an AI-generated world.

And there I was, standing over a T-shirt with a lint roller.

The glamour.

The artistic vision.

Basquiat would understand. Probably.

But there’s something about that moment that has stayed with me.

For so long, the work had existed mostly in my head, on my walls, in my sketchbooks, or on my computer. I could change it whenever I wanted. Keep adjusting it. Keep finding reasons it wasn't quite ready.

Now somebody else was going to wear it.

A painting might eventually hang in a home I've never visited. A journal I created might hold thoughts I’ll never read. A shirt I designed might travel somewhere I've never been.

And once those things leave my hands, they begin having lives of their own.

Which, now that I think about it, sounds suspiciously like parenting.

You spend years pouring yourself into something, and then one day it turns around and starts doing its own thing.

Rude.

But I suppose that’s the point.

You make something because you have something to express. You put care into it. You do the best you can with what you know.

And eventually, you have to let it go.

I don’t know where any of this will lead.

Some people will connect with my work. Some won’t. Some will love it. Some won’t understand it. And some will probably have something to say regardless.

That’s life.

What I do know is that I don’t want to spend another two years wondering whether I should try.

I’ve been an artist for a long time. I've been a mother for a long time. I’ve been a lot of things to a lot of people.

I’m still figuring out how all those versions of me fit together.

But I’m making room for this one again.

And I didn’t get here by myself.

To everyone who encouraged me, shared my work, sent a message, or trusted me with an order: thank you. Truly. You made putting myself out there a little less scary. You have no idea what that meant to a woman standing in an airport trying very hard not to skip.

And if my children are going to watch me talk about courage, taking chances, and believing in yourself, they might as well see me do it.

Even if mi belly hurt.

So here goes.