Why digital prairie?

digital prairie is growing out of a longing for a place that feels like an internet home - a container to scatter seeds and allow them to grow into something beautiful. I wanted to create a wild place that is allowed to be messy, overgrown, half-dying, teeming with life.

Past experiments with sharing online

I have put some level of energy into social media and having a classic portfolio for all of my adult life and most of my teen years. What has resulted? A sense of dread, isolation, anxiety.

Social media is designed to sell your attention to advertisers and to distract you from speaking up about injustice and corporate greed. It is a whiplash of topics, encouraging you to transition your attention rapidly like a dog in a field of squirrels. Over here, boy! No, over here!

I have tried so many things to move beyond the toxic platforms and carve out a different space to connect with people. But there was always something missing, a hurdle that I stumbled over, squashing my motivation.

I experimented with Medium, Mailchimp, Ko-fi, and more recently, Mastodon and Bluesky. My audience never grew to the number that I had on Instagram. I didn't get the likes, the comments, the feedback. My friends weren't making the switch. I was pouring energy into the void and I didn't even get the dopamine rush! I was still tempted to scroll through a sea of unrelated posts that left me feeling depleted. I had already been working at sharing my art on social media for a decade by this point, how was I supposed to make money as an artist when it was this hard and it felt this icky? What I truly craved was connection and a sense of community, and I was not finding it.

I have also had a portfolio website, with a variety of iterations, since around 2015. It had been a place to post my finished pieces and sort them into neat categories for prospective employers and art jurors to flip through.

In 2020, I did a UX design bootcamp. Now I had a new format to box my work into: the case study. It was no longer sufficient to share glossy images of my completed work. I needed to include metrics, KPIs, ideally there would be charts. Forget my years of experience, my BFA degree, my creative vision, my ability to empathize and make people feel seen. The stakeholders need to see that the numbers are going up!

The next iteration of my portfolio included these things. I learned how to make interactive animations. I performed user interviews, gathered data, worked for free so I could have the right kind of work experience to land a job. I set up meetings with people in the UX design field so I could get advice on how to pass the elaborate tests of the interview process. It never felt like enough. I was always unsatisfied with my website, uninspired. I felt so uninspired by this process that I stopped applying for jobs before I ever landed one. I took a long break from working on my website and from posting online in general.

The turning point

I came to the realization that I am not the kind of person who gives a shit about making the numbers go up. I have no interest in being chained to a computer desk for 60 hours a week so I can make a convincing enough presentation to get my design approved by some tech bro. On any given day, I am managing ADHD, anxiety, and a life-threatening autoimmune disorder. For physical and mental health reasons, the vast majority of UX design jobs are not for me.

But I should still have a portfolio, right? Well, the bulk of my freelance work comes through word-of-mouth recommendation by past clients; it always has. Yes, they may still want to see my work, but does it really need to be packaged in an easily digestible manner? I would rather work with people who see me as a multi-faceted human whose biggest strength is creativity than a robot who can execute the same thing over and over.

What if I didn't worry so much about compiling my work in a pretty package, and instead shared whatever is currently inspiring me? What if I could share my creative process in a way that felt authentic, exciting, wholly enjoyable? What if my website could be a safe container to pour my thoughts, experiments, challenges, and triumphs into? What if it's totally okay whether everyone sees it or no one does?

These questions were the ember that sparked the idea of digital prairie. I bought the domain on a whim, enjoying the imagery of a blooming landscape full of interdependent life forms. The prairie is a place I visit for a mental reset, to enjoy the beauty of nature and enter a time portal to how my entire state looked before commercial agriculture. It feels like possibility, what I want to be surrounded by in an imagined future.

I also enjoy the idea of not using my name, allowing me, the person, to be a step removed from the creative landscape I am cultivating online. The digital prairie is ever-present, evolving yet unbound by the constraints of time, place, and the physical body.

I consider this space to still be in its infancy. It is starting as a blog, but may take another form as I allow creative impulse to guide its shape. For now, I am enjoying the process of writing, illustrating images for posts, and sharing my interests and projects as inspiration arises.

What's the difference between this and a digital garden?

For me, it's that a digital garden is a framework that someone else came up with. As I am trying to remove limitations from the process of sharing online, it feels more expansive to use a term that is not currently in use elsewhere. I think that digital gardens are wonderful, and I'm glad they exist! If you want to categorize this as one, that's okay. For me, the label is less important than the sense of freedom that I am trying to cultivate here.

If you made it this far, thank you for sticking around. Welcome to the digital prairie. Feel free to wander.