Locked Myself Out
When you go a long time neglecting something, life happens. I realize my last blog post in here was in 2015. I joined Patreon at the start of this year, and have been keeping up with the blog steady at least once a week on it. It’s a pretty nifty little platform, like an ongoing crowdfund where your Patrons subscribe to your content on a monthly basis, giving you freedom to continue your art, and if you have enough Patrons, you can just stay creating without going after a normal 9-5, and only being accountable directly to your supporters.
A lot has happened in five years…the old computer broke so I lost all my passwords and shit, and honestly wasn’t exactly motivated enough to stay focused on music to really bother recovering this one to have access into this website…thankfully I still have an awesome webmaster who doesn’t chastise me when I finally get off my ass to focus on a project.
I have been writing music. I’ve written about five songs since Covid happened. Even played a show for the first time in years last November I think it was?
Did a year and half of couples therapy before entering into a new marriage this last August. Put myself back in therapy, solo, about 2-3 months ago now, and have overcome some major hurdles that has finally landed me in a place emotionally stable enough to start real work on my memoir. Been posting first drafts on my Patreon, along with lyrics, poems, and other shit.
I said goodbye to construction about a year after becoming a journeyman. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. I still pay my dues to the Union hall, but I haven’t worked for anyone else since the Friday before Christmas last year. It’s been a challenge and a struggle to figure out what fits and what doesn’t anymore…but I don’t feel like that’s new territory for me really. Just the shit I’m wrestling with has changed to some extent.
The plan when I started construction was to have a skill to fall back on, just in case shit hit the fan somewhere along the way. I needed a solid foundation, which is something I’d never had for myself before…I just kinda always flew by the seat of my pants and landed where I landed. I find that taking similar risks is a lot harder these days. Something about working in an industry where your best is never good enough and feeling defeated for caring really took it’s toll on me.
I have a better understanding about the blue collar mentality, but it really didn’t fit.
Mainly I’ve been focused on re-branding my Button business. It’s an LLC now, on it’s fourth rendition of the name, but it’s one that sticks better and won’t ever need to change despite what I’m going through in my life. No matter what, I’ll always be Becka, and I went with Becka Makes Buttons, and focused more on the passion behind it…why I got started with buttons in the first place. Up until Covid happened, I had events booked through August, where I was traveling all over Washington and Oregon to various events, setting up an interactive learning station, where I was sharing my love of button making with anyone young and old who wanted to take a crack at it. Its a way of giving of myself in a controlled environment, sharing what I love without giving all of me away, and it fits. It’s a lot of fun and it was working to help me to connect to people again.
I love showing people that they can be creative in even the smallest of ways. There’s a lot of adults who come to my booth, having never done any kind of art before in their lives…so it’s great because there’s minimal risk. Slap some stickers, write your name, and the press it all together…immediate gratification for something you made. I love seeing people’s eyes light up after making a button for the first time ever.
Let’s see, what else…a lot of therapy, got married, back to buttons full time, despite the hiccups of our current economy, still learning how to be the best me I can be…I started a podcast.
It’s 10 episodes deep, sometimes I have a plan, but mostly it feels like floundering. People keep telling me what I should do to get ratings and shit…but I’ve always been the slow growth type…Idunno. Some people want me to focus on just interviewing women, but the whole point behind it is just having real conversations with people I love, find interesting, or inspire me. Covid has made it harder to focus, but I’m still meeting my deadline, every other Wednesday, even if the episode is not really what I wanted it to be.
It’s hard to interview people about all the fun and interesting stuff going on in their lives when everything they were involved in got put on hold. At least that was for the guests I had lines up…but I grow and I improvise, and floundering or not, it still exists. I will put up a link to access the show here on the website.
I’ve done some cool stuff I’d like to add on here…while projects have been few and far between, I still did some things.
So for now…here’s the link to the show…
I also was interviewed for a couple other podcasts over the last couple of years.
I flew out to San Francisco to do this with an artist I met years ago on one of my solo tours.
The woman who interviewed me for finding fixes found me through the RAINN Speakers Bureau, which has been a great program and healthy outlet to process my trauma from my past and heal. It covers battling addiction and healing from rape and abuse.
https://www.findingfixes.com/s2-e5-treating-ptsd
I have been in a metal band for some time now, but we haven’t left the basement yet. We were scheduled to record May 2nd, but for obvious reasons, that has been pushed back.
This July, I’ll be celebrating 8 years without alcohol. It’s been a hell of a journey, but definitely the best one so far. Still learning, still growing, still winding my way through life, figuring out how to be the best me I can be, find what fits, what doesn’t fit…and really just heal and try to enjoy life best I can.
Still not 100% where I want to be, and still redefining Zebrana Bastard as I go…this was from an online show I did a few weeks ago. I really dig the way my makeup turned out. It’s hard…I still feel like I’m 15, fighting to be seen in a lot of ways…fighting myself with what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, with what’s okay to share and what’s not okay to share.
Last year, I started to get out more, slowly reconnect with people, this was gunna be the year I would full on dive back into art and traveling again, but the world had other plans, and I’m adjusting. I really do miss traveling though. I think when flight restrictions are lifted, I might dodge the country for a bit and go experience a different country while not on tour. I have a friend in Austria I’d like to be tattooed by, it would be great to see her again…she’s been really supportive and encouraging since I stopped, and it would be nice to see her face to face again. But who knows really…I’m pretty much down to go anywhere, and places I haven’t been before are always nice. All I know is regardless of how much of a hermit I’ve become these last five plus years, sixty days is a long time to just be sitting in your house all the time. More than anything, I miss traveling.
I feel like I should apologize for the silence on here, but I’m honestly not sorry…it’s taken some time to dig in deep and find who I really am, there’s a lot of deep wounds I was told I may never heal from…in peeling back the layers, I’m currently stuck at about eight years old with some things…although I find that the more I process about my father, the easier it’s been to let other things go. I’ve also discovered that dealing with father triggers deeper emotions I thought I dealt with related to my grandmother. It was around the ages of seven and eight that I started taking on the role of mother for myself, my sibling, and my cousins. You can call it baby sitting, but I was left alone for far too long, many times, the oldest of my generation…so I guess it makes sense that I seem to be stuck there in some of my development.
I finally got past the need to hide in tense situations. It’s been over two years since I laid on the floor or crawled in the closet when I didn’t know what else to do. That’s how I know I’ve progressed beyond five years old finally. It’s a strange thing, learning how to raise yourself again, but properly…this time the child lives inside my head and not in the mirror This time, I’m no longer scolding her and telling her what a terrible thing she is. This time, I’m just loving her unconditionally and forgiving her for slow steps of progress…in all things, being kind and loving to myself. Learning how to forgive and let go. Learning how to love and be loved. Learning how to simply be. None of this shit is easy by any means. It’s hard to combat things ingrained since birth, really look at them, and eradicate all the shit that doesn’t fit. I still have bad dreams…less frequent, and the night terrors are even less.
My husband has helped a lot. We’ve known each other for over twenty years. He’s seen a lot of the things I used to try to explain to others and failed in doing so. We’re cut from the same raggedy ass cloth, so it’s nice not having to explain where I come from. He understands the pain, the anger, and the violence…the chaos that rampages through my brain at times, even though it’s considerably less than what it used to be. Sobriety has helped a lot. When I speak he listens, and I’ve learned to do the same.
Life is life, and I’ve been taking it a day at a time…learning how not to push myself too hard, and just being really. Everything is everything…I’ve been out here in the trees, always doing as I please, and I won’t give in today.
With love from my home in the woods,
-ZB
Please, if you’d like to stay up to date on the latest, join me on Patreon. It’s $1 to check it out, and if you hate it, you’re only out a buck. I have 11 friends on there so far, generating about $35 dollars of steady income a month, which pays for the hosting of my podcast right now. Maybe one day it will pay the bills, Idunno…taking it one day at time…I figure if you’d be down to pay for a show, $12 a year to stay up on the latest of things I’m working on isn’t much to ask.