season 3, episode 11 - prioritizing life with yarrow magdalena

our guest for episode 11 is yarrow magdalena! yarrow is a queer artist, writer and web designer living their introvert dreams on the east coast of scotland. they are in love with print making, local fibres and art that brings us closer to what matters. you can find them online at yarrowmagdalena.com and on the making app @yarrowmagdalena.

each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is brujas: the magic and power of witches of color by lorraine monteagut.

take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!

seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council. you can support future episodes of snort & cackle by sponsoring a full episode or transcript.

transcript

snort & cackle - season 3, episode 11 - yarrow magdalena

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host, Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedgewitch. And each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world, a better place.

Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color by Lorraine Monteagut.

Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.

Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]

I'm so delighted with sharing today's guest with you all. I'm here with Yarrow Magdalena, who is a queer artist, writer and web designer living their introvert dreams on the east coast of Scotland. They are in love with printmaking, local fibers and art that brings us closer to what matters.

And I'm so excited to have Yarrow on as a guest, because I was on one of Yarrow’s podcasts a few years ago now and at that point I was like, this podcast thing is so lovely. We get to have such nice conversations.

[Sound of dog collar in background.] Of course, Willow is going to jingle right behind me while I'm saying this so I'm going to mute myself and deal with her

and then Yarrow, thank you for joining us. Why don't you tell us a bit more about you and what you do in the world?

yarrow magdalena: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's really nice, like I said, to be on the other side for change. I love podcasting too. And I'm so grateful for the kinds of conversations that we get to have, because gosh, I am such a heavy podcast listener myself. I listen to maybe 15 to 20 hours, no shit, a week of podcasts.

And yeah, I love this medium. And what I do is many different things. I'm just celebrating my seventh business birthday. I'm a work designer, help other small businesses in creating like a sustainable digital strategy. And I think what that means has really changed so much over the years, especially now in the pandemic.

So that is within my business called Pink Well Studio. I also facilitate a community of business owners in which we talk about stuff. And then my other business used to be called Daydream Goals, and it's now called Creative Nature, and within that, I also facilitate a Patreon community where we get together for ritual and Eid and craft making.

And I make prints by hand, which I really love doing. And I just, I teach classes around creativity and ritual, and that's, both these things just mean the world to me. I work part time. I don't think that I take things so serious anymore and there’s a real sense of playfulness now that is very hard earned and treasured. [Both giggle.]

I'm pretty open. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I do.

ash alberg: I love it. And I love how yeah, seven years in business is, that's a milestone. And I love how ... I think one of the things that I just appreciate so much about, ‘cause I think I've probably followed you for most of, if not all of those seven years through the work that you've been doing and with your podcasts and things.

And one of the things that I have just really appreciated is you always coming back to ... I'm sure that in, in real life that it doesn't necessarily feel like you're always there, but you always seem to come back to what you need and prioritizing what you need and adjusting your business to fit those things, which has included a lot of digital and social media detoxes, which especially for somebody who like works at least part of your work in specifically tech world, I feel like is extra almost radical because you're like, I don't like this game and

I'm not interested in playing this game and I have better things to do with my life.

And I'm going to do those. Fuck you and what you want, Mark Zuckerberg. [Laugh-snorts.] That's just especially when I'm like really struggling with the social media shit, I'm like, oh fuck. I could just pull a Yarrow.

yarrow magdalena: [Both giggle.] Thank you so much for saying that. That made my week. Yes. You can call Yarrow if you want to. And for context, I should probably say more about what you mean. So I, I took a big Instagram break in 2019 in the before times, basically. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: The before times.

yarrow magdalena: The before times. I had just arrived in Scotland. I was living in the south of England and Brighton before so that was a big life transition as it were. And I was often at the time saying to my friend oh my god, people like Clarissa Pinkola Estes, for example, such an incredible career. So much beauty and pleasure brought to the world yet never been on Instagram, why can't I have it?

But that just felt so far out there, and then one day in August that year, I was like, fuck it. Maybe I'm just going to do it and see what happens. [Clears throat.] I had an, I had two podcasts and I had been running them for a few years. I had a moderate ... or what does that even mean?

I had a newsletter list too. To some people, it would be tiny, to some people it would have been really big. But I just really archived my profile for a while so it was completely unavailable for half a year. And I really checked in with myself and really witnessed what happened in my business. And it really wasn't actually that bad.

I think the most community engagement that I'm really enjoying and that is effective in terms of what I want, which is to build relationships and really get a sense for what people actually need from me and what I can sustainably offer them and how we can work together in a way that's kind and honest and beautiful and empowering is ... that was a very long sentence. Is running free workshops.

So I just love showing up on themed Zoom calls and facilitate conversations. And that is just hands down the most effective thing that I've ever done in my business. And I didn't need to be on Instagram to do that.

And I also looked at numbers and this is getting a bit geeky, but bear with me for a moment. I just feel like such sense of protection and preciousness around my time and energy. Not because I think I'm so special, but because I'm disabled and I really care about what I do and I want to make sure that I'm honoring the resources that I have in my life, be that the food that I eat, the landscape that I'm in, the time that I get to be in this body on earth.

And so I'm looking at those numbers and I use an app at the time called the, I think it's called the Zenscreen app and it tells you basically how much time you spent on the different apps. And at that time, that summer, having just moved to Scotland, I was spending, wait for it, 10 hours a week on Instagram.

ash alberg: Oh, that doesn't seem that much, which is really sad, but yeah. Then I break it down. I'm like that's like a little over an hour a day. That seems. Yeah. I was thinking like, 10 hours a day, I'd be like, okay. But 10 hours a week. But then also when we think about 10 hours a week, what could we be doing with that time?

yarrow magdalena: Yeah. Totally. Exactly. And I really, going through this life transition any way of moving to Scotland, was really in this experience of, there's so much I want to do that I don't have time for. I want to be an artist, I want to do weavings that take 30 hours to make, I want to learn to crochet, all that kind of stuff. I want to meet new people here.

And I was always like, feeling oh, but when it comes to time that just isn't quite enough for me. I really have to be so careful. And then it turns out I do find these 10 hours a week to hang out on Instagram. And then I looked at the stats and what I meant by that is that I have this little profiling, as most people do.

And some people use something like Linktree, where you just get these like little sub links, which is great. But I had a page on my own website that had all the sublinks and so I could track how many people clicked on that link per month. And I knew I was spending 40 hours a month on Instagram and I got about a hundred clicks on average.

ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah.

yarrow magdalena: [Audio distorted]... to see your face right now because that's just not a lot of people and people are not numbers. They are relationships. And of course it matters, like each of those clicks is precious in a way, is valuable to me. And I really appreciate that people make the time to check out

what I was offering, but it just can't justify a hundred clicks with 40 hours of work a month. That is just wild.

ash alberg: Because also like, when you think of, for people who are working like regular jobs, as like small business owners than a 40-hour work week is like a dream slash like not even necessarily the dream that you want. I love my work and when people tell me I need to work less and I'm not choosing to work less, I'm like, fuck you. I'm going to, my 60 hours of work a week, I am okay with.

But for people that are working like regular nine to five, eight to four jobs then ... Willow ... then you're looking at a quarter of your month, like one full work week every single month is being spent on Instagram alone. And are you making a quarter of your income from those hundred clicks?

Like probably not. Give me a second. I'm going to go and steal her bone.

yarrow magdalena: [Laughs.] That's okay. Yes. I'm going to waffle a little bit more in this topic, so you don't have to edit that out later, but yeah, I just found that super curious and it just felt like it wasn't worth it for me. And then I did come back at the beginning of 2020 because I wanted to see, as the pandemic kicked off, I needed to scream into the void with other people.

And I missed that kind of easy connection and contact and just seeing what people were snacking on, what their pets were doing, that kind of stuff. So I stayed.

ash alberg: The pets are important. [Chuckles.]

yarrow magdalena: Very, yeah. So I stayed from another a year and then left for good at the end of 2020. And I never looked back. And I will say I spent a good year totally free of social media now, but I'm discovering something I actually really love, which is the Making App.

And you can find them themakingapp.com. I'm not an affiliate. I'm not getting paid to say this, but it's just a cool bunch of people. It's not just white tech bros running this show. I think they're very thoughtful and inclusive and I've been teaching a class with them, which is wonderful. And they treated me so kindly and paid me really well.

So it is, the tagline is “A space for every maker.” And so there's a lot of people nerding about their craft projects and then the art that they currently into, which

is really nice to see, and it just feels much less competitive and numbers-based. So I really love that space.

ash alberg: That sounds delightful and yeah, for anyone who's ... obviously we'll stick links in show, in the show notes, but it's run by the same team that's behind, or at least part of the same team that's behind Making Magazine and yeah, it's just, it's a really lovely crew of humans. I'm not actually on the app and that's, that is because, and perhaps as I find slightly better balance with social media, it is just because I don't have time.

Like whenever somebody is oh, we're doing, we're doing this thing and we're having a conversation over on Discord or we've got a Slack channel, I straight up know, I'm like, I will not use that. I don't have time. I'm not interested in trying to keep up.

And it's not even because I'm like too old to learn a new thing. It's literally because I’m like, I'm already on my screens too much. And I don't give enough of a shit. And if I were to give enough of a shit then I would get way too distracted, and I know that about myself. And especially with online learning these days, I find it really interesting slash have been burned enough times now to know that when I'm looking to work like with a new coach or on a specific thing, whether it's, I don't know, Pinterest strategy or Facebook ads, or whatever it is, then I no longer look for ones where the price has been upped because they have this online community space.

Or, because if there's a live portion of it, I'm like if you have a Facebook group where I can go and ask questions. Cool. That's nice. I'm highly unlikely to use it. If you have pre-recorded material that I can go and watch and then get what I need and leave, that's actually what I'm looking to pay for and if you have that and the price point is whatever the price point is and I feel like I have gotten my money's worth out of that, great.

But if the reason that the price point is because you have this Facebook group, or because you have a Discord community, or if I'm going to really be like lacking in my knowledge because I am not engaging with that, then I just know for me, it's not the right tool and it's not the right way of learning because I just, I'm not going to use it.

And I have learned that through trying to engage with those things in the past and sometimes doing it successfully. And most of the time, not. I would say that maybe 20% of the online communities that I did as part of a structured thing actually turned into something that was really useful.

And now I think, honestly, it's just like my pandemic brain has, it's got like a really severe cut-off point that I have learned to not fuck with it. Maybe if the pandemic wasn't a factor, then I would have a little bit more capacity, but I just, don't. Not anymore.

But I've heard very lovely things about the Making app. And I think, especially in our space, like in craft space, it's a really wonderful addition. So for folks that actually are looking to add that in, that seems like a really great space and it's not just, it's a mix of mediums, right? Like for me as a knitter, I see it amongst knitting feeds, but it seems to, it caters to pretty much every craft form.

yarrow magdalena: Yeah.

ash alberg: So I'm trying to imagine like being offline fully now during the pandemic, and that seems ... do you find it, because also like you're in an isolated place, like having been there very briefly myself, which is, it's lovely. But do you find that it is more isolating than you want it to be at times? Or do you find ...

I feel like when I stopped using Facebook, technically I still have a Facebook profile, but like I'm literally never on it. And I remember initially thinking, oh, I'm not going to be able to communicate with so many people. Which is true, but also the people that I want to communicate with have other means of getting in touch with me.

And I also notice that every time I take an Instagram break, I used to like fully just take a full-on break and delete it off of everything. And now, it hasn't been on my phone for at least a year, but it is on my iPad. And so when I take like a break then I still am checking in to have conversations with my friends and then just try to avoid all of the business portion of it.

But how do you find your like personal life interactions without the apps?

yarrow magdalena: I think they're just different. I think it was just a bit of a shift that people got used to, but I talk to my friends on actual messaging apps, so like Signal, Telegram. I really am so big into voice notes. That's like my main way of interacting with people that I'm not in a physical space with. I just love hitting record and just saying what's happening, what's on my mind.

And that's, that feels intimate and beautiful to me. I also got more into the habit of actually sending people pictures or where in the past they would have maybe seen my dinner on Instagram, just showing them that if I want.

ash alberg: Right, yeah.

yarrow magdalena: But I think if people are nervous about feeling isolated, what I would say is that a, you can just archive it for a bit and see how that feels and see to how that [audio distorted] your relationships.

I really noticed that it's just given me so much more head space. There was so much information I was taking in that I really didn't need that didn't support my creative practice, my business, or my relationships. And so taking that away has allowed me to have much, much more time to sit down in my garden and record the bird song for a friend far away and talk about my life than I had before.

So I think that's just an increase in meaning making, I think. And then another thing to remember is that if you really do feel lacking something, or you need information, most people have public profiles so you can, if you want to, still open that in your browser. Someone who comes to mind is Dori Midnight, I really love her work. She really inspires me. So this is someone that I will still sometimes go and check out and see what she's been up to.

But that's a totally different experience than constantly trying to catch up and see what everyone is doing on your feed. No, I don't think it's made me feel more isolated and I do live in the countryside in Scotland on the east coast, but I technically have access to both Edinburgh and Glasgow.

And I do have friends in those cities and then also here, and the pandemic has all, really forced all of us to just be more discerning with how we interact with people. So that's definitely been like, not always straightforward and a lot to figure out, but like you, I also often feel overwhelmed with. Facebook groups are not my jam at all. I’m not on that at all anymore.

And where, what I do enjoy are long-term Mighty Networks communities. And I think that's both ... but I'm in like three, right? Like I'm not in twenty. I'm in three that I really love. And I do check in with those every week. And that's a nice way to get to know people over longer periods of time.

I don't love Slack either. So Mighty Networks, I think because it's quite slow, it's not the fast pace of Slack or Discord or something like that, you can really speak and let a conversation unfold of a time. You can organize stuff into topics really beautifully. You can have events very clearly listed on the side there.

So that just makes a ton of sense to my brain as a setup. And then of course, it's about the people in that space and just not being in too many of those. So I think three is my maximum. [Both laugh.] That is all I need. Yeah.

ash alberg: Oh man. Yeah. It's, I dream of the day where, because I've tried doing like full on breaks from social media and like taking actual vacations. And it was interesting over the holidays, I realized that I actually, vacations are not a thing that I am good at when I'm not able to like physically go away.

If I'm trying to take a vacation, but I'm home, then I just end up being like antsy at home and wanting to do work and then guilt, feeling guilty, which is like maybe a thing I need to talk to my therapist about, but like feeling guilty and like going into those guilt and shame spirals of not doing something, but then if I do something then feeling guilty about doing something when I should be working.

Going just through those chunky things. And, but I also definitely notice an impact on my sales and that's something that I don't love and that I'm trying to diversify the ways that I am bringing in money because when I'm not on Instagram or when I'm not posting ... and I preschedule basically my entire grid. I'm just like, I'm not fucking interested in needing to actually physically show up day after day to post something.

So my grid is prescheduled, but like whenever I'm like, oh, I'll take a break on just posting things and not even preschedule something for a week, there's absolutely an impact on my sales. And same if I take a break from sending out my weekly newsletter. So I've learned okay, if I want to take a break, my break comes from pre-scheduling content that's going to roll out, and then I just don't check in or a check in significantly less during that time that I'm away.

But I don't know. I think learning how to take formal vacation breaks to refresh my brain basically and my creative practice within pandemic restrictions versus outside of that. They’re two very different practices that I'm, I've lately of course been having to deal with the pandemic restrictions and figuring that out.

Yeah, I don't know. But I do dream of the day that I at the very least can afford to not, like literally afford to not need to be on Instagram all the time or to be relying on Instagram, because it's just, it's also just not a smart or safe business strategy to have your eggs in, so many eggs in one basket, whether you meant for it to end up like that or not.

yarrow magdalena: Yeah.

ash alberg: Ritual is obviously a really important part of your practice, but how has your personal relationship with ritual kind of grown? What does it sit like as now? What are tools that you really love using? Tell us all about that.

yarrow magdalena: Yeah, I think, and that's such a cliche thing to say, but I think that since I was a kid, ritual has been a grounding for me. I remember when my parents got divorced, I was about five and I started making these little avatars and just sitting with them and I wouldn't call them that. I was just collecting stones outside and that good old fake gemstones.

I don't know what they're called, but you would like in the eighties, which is when I was a kid, you would put them on your jacket. And so I made [audio cut out] out of these little altars and that's something I was really into. But then there was also like decades of death disconnect between.

So when I was five, my parents divorced, I moved to the city. And I didn't live in a countryside again until I was 23. And I think in that time I did what most people do when they’re young and they don't have a lot of guidance. I was working a ton. I lived quite at very fast paces. I didn't really allow myself a lot of space for creativity. I fell in love and got heartbroken many times.

And I always journal so since I started writing, that was an important ritual to me. And I think I've always been very intentional with my space. I think ritual-making to me has so much to do with my bedroom because that's where I wake up and where I go to bed and where I just spend so much time. So to me ritual is about colors and intention and simplicity.

And I'm also noticing in myself that whenever I experience losses or difficulty, I just lean in so much deeper and then there's always this reckoning of like, why am I not always doing that? Or would I meet this challenge differently if I had made that part of my practice every day in the past year, whatever? What I think, I see that with a sense of humor now. I think loss is just often like a catalyst for this kind of stuff and that's okay.

And I'm willing to learn in easier, less painful ways for sure. [Both laugh.] But thinking about tools, I think especially this winter, and we're recording this in January, 2022, so just about to go into the third year of the pandemic. Simplicity has been really big for me.

I'm just about to move houses again and I decided ... because anyway, I'm spending a month in the Highlands in 10 days time. And so all my stuff before moving into new house is going to start. So I'm really looking at everything

again, I'm really touching everything a bit like the Konmari method. And I'm like, do I love this, does it give me joy?

And I gave so much away and really simplifying and deepening the intimacy with very few things that I have. So my special writing pen, which is like a really simple 10 pound one from Lami, but I just love the way it feels in my hand. And it writes very quickly. So I love that for journaling.

I have an altar in every room. I don't have that many rooms. I have two. [Laughs.] But there’s three altars within those two rooms. Just looking at them now, I really love making the potions. I really love weaving words. So when I was thinking a lot about embodiment four years ago, I experienced a sexual assault. And so that was a time in my life where I thought so much about being in my body and what that meant and reclaiming my pleasure.

So I would make these little potions that said my body is my own, or like pleasure is possible. And so I really loved working with declarations. And then I really love making things with my hands and making those part of my ritual. Again, looking over at my altar, I have a print by someone called Izzy Williams and that who I really love, a small piece of pottery, and then some potions that I made and the candle and I just sit there.

And I think it's so tempting sometimes when we're struggling to be like, what can I buy, who can I follow, who will tell me what to do just to take this pain away? And I just repeatedly am being told by the universe that is not how it works. And so at the moment, I'm like in a big space of letting go, and simplifying it and valuing time and intention over stuff and yeah. And that feels good.

ash alberg: That’s, oof. So much. It's such an interesting, just all of it definitely like hits home and resonates. And it's also, it's so funny because I'm not a hoarder but I'm also definitely not a minimalist. I'm somewhere in between. And I would say I probably fall closer to the hoarding side of the spectrum than I do to the minimalist side of the spectrum. [Chuckles.]

And, but I've also learned, especially through the pandemic and having to, and I was at home and working from home long before the pandemic, but that the, again, like my capacity and like my lines, my boundaries have become more solid rather than being a little bit fluffy. And so you can manipulate them and shove them one way or the other.

They are not so shoveable these days. And so the line of like homey or I don't know the line between clutter and nesting has become really defined for me. And the line, like falling into clutter is something that feels very tenuous on a pretty regular basis. And it just, it literally clutters my mind.

But I'm also somebody where if there's too much empty space, on the one hand, I love it. But when I'm actually living in it, I'm like, this doesn't work for me. Like I start to fill it. And I think it's cause I have too many magpie tendencies where I want to collect things and it's not that I need to buy them, but it is, yeah. Just like altars everywhere.

Like I have candles on most surfaces and stones and feathers and bones and pieces of moss. Like my mum came into my kitchen and she was like, what is that? I was like, oh, it's a piece of bark with some moss. She was like, why do you have it? I was like, I don't know. I just, it's supposed to live there on top of my oven.

And so I always have a really hard time of downsizing, but when I think of, when I think of, what is my longer-term goal with my business and my life and what does my life look like? Then it looks like having enough abundance that it then gives me space and time to go and do the things that are more simple, where it's, I want more time to work in my garden.

I want time to have kids beside me making, learning how to bake muffins from their great nan's recipe. And I want time to sew more quilts for the house so that there's just quilts on every fucking possible surface. [Laughs.] I'd like, like none of that actually comes down ... and I want more time to grow bigger gardens so that I can harvest more things to have things drying and like literally none of it is reducing the actual amount of clutter, but it is reducing my reliance on, I think, especially on like capitalist systems and supply chains that don't feel supportive and also don't feel like they're fulfilling.

Like I don't, I'm not interested in going out and buying new whatevers, but I am interested in having more space to be able to fill it with more things that I am making and growing. And to also have more space for nature to take over where it wants to be taking over. Not necessarily in the form of like mice running around my house, but okay, we have a very large field outside of the house that you are welcome to run around. Go do that, feed the foxes, feed the other critters, just don't come inside. [Laughs.]

yarrow magdalena: Yeah.

ash alberg: But yeah, it's also, I fucking hate moving. I remember when I lived in the UK, I moved ... I lived in the UK for a couple of years, less than that. And I think I moved at least six times.

yarrow magdalena: Oh god.

ash alberg: And it's, it was the fucking worst and like all over London, like north London to south London, to east, all over London and then to the Isle of White and then back to Canada, but then not fully.

And then eventually ... and it was the worst. And whenever I'm moving or whenever I'm needing to do a clean, I feel like that is one thing, is that the universe, every once in a while is, “We're going to throw something at you that is going to force you to clean and remove some of this clutter that is stagnant inside your home so that you have ... you don't have nothing, but you do have less than was there because a lot of this stuff is not actually necessary.”

But yeah, it's always nice when the universe decides to teach you those lessons in a not traumatic way. [Chuckles.]

yarrow magdalena: Oh yeah, totally. I love it when it's gentle. [Audio distorted]. Yeah, me too.

ash alberg: How do the dogs feel about all of this?

yarrow magdalena: It's funny you asked that. I think just today, we turned a corner together as a pack. The last few weeks have been hard. They know on some level that we're moving and they don't know what that means, which I always wish with dogs, you could give them the itinerary and be like, this is, where we're going to go and then we'll ... [audio cut out.]

ash alberg: Yeah.

yarrow magdalena: But yeah, we had some really good walks yesterday and today. We just checked out the neighborhood again and hung out in a garden. And then they just felt really chill and that hadn't been the case for a few weeks.

So yeah. Things are going well. Yeah.

ash alberg: So your escape to the Highlands, how ... what's it, what's your kind of like plan? Do you have a plan or are you just gonna go and see what happens during the time that you're there?

yarrow magdalena: There's this big part of me that was just like, whoa, I always have a plan. [Ash cackles.] I can't not have a plan and it freaks me out even to think about, just seeing what happens. What does that even mean? And I don't know what you're talking about.

No, I don’t think we'll have a plan. It's not been a plan for very long. I was initially thinking that I would move just straight from one house to next. The reason I'm moving is that I'm on the first floor of a Victorian conversion and I had an accident a year ago that means like how we do the stairs anymore. So I was totally planning to stay in this house for the rest of my life, basically, and so that was that was already a change of plan, but it turned out to be totally okay.

I really love the new house that I'm moving into. It's a small one-bedroom flat with a bath tub, which I love, and a small garden. And it's in a beautiful cul-de-sac street, which is super quiet and it is near the sea, but it's also 50 meters above sea level. I'm very anxious about eco stuff.

[Audio distortion, both talking at the same time.] ash alberg: Yes. [Laughs.]

yarrow magdalena: So that feels good to me. It's not in a flooding zone. There's no fire risk. There's 30-minute trains to Edinburgh. I can also go to Glasgow. So it just ticks a lot of boxes for me, is really good.

But yeah, so I was initially going to move from one house to the next, and now I'm spending a month in the Highlands partly to make the move easier because it is very hard to buy and sell at the same time here because you then in the chain, and I'm very lucky to get to do that in the first place.

I'm happy to talk about that as well, because I think it's important for me at least to talk about numbers and be honest about that stuff. And talk about the privilege of that as well.

But yeah, I'm basically doing that to break the chain and I'm going to be on a sheep farm. I've always wanted to spend spring with some sheep. That’s really ...

ash alberg: Oh my god! [Yarrow chuckles.] I'm so jealous.

yarrow magdalena: So I think that's going to be really cool. And in terms of plans, I'm not taking a ton of work. I have booked this place for five weeks and

I think, I don't have a lot of, I maybe have three hours of design work that I'm taking and then I'm teaching some classes. I'm going to start writing my second book.

I have committed to writing 2000 words a day for 30 days. So at the end of that time I should be at 60,000 raw words and then maybe over the summer edit that. But yeah, that's something I'm excited about. And then I have a, I'm going to take a lot of yarn and embroidery floss, and I think there are some things ... so this place I'm staying, super beautiful, it has this little fireplace, it's like a studio, a very small, I think they’re called bothies in Scotland. They're basically shepherd huts.

ash alberg: Okay. Yeah.

yarrow magdalena: So like a small place with a fire. And I just want bring some textile ideas to completion that I've had for a while so that I can maybe teach them as workshops.

So I currently am not well-versed in them enough to teach them, but I need to look at that again with beginner's eyes and really think about how I could share that practice with someone else. So that is what I'm taking with me. Yeah.

ash alberg: This sounds delightful. Do you happen to know the breed of sheep that are on the farm?

yarrow magdalena: I don't sadly, no. I have also already asked the person renting the place so many questions and I felt a bit awkward adding that to it. [Laughs.] So I'm going to report back.

ash alberg: Yes, please. I would like to know. [Laughs.] Does it feel like ... oh yeah, that's going to be so much fun.

I literally last night I went down a rabbit hole of, because I like, trying to find the ways, when you are a micro-biz of like, when you're a micro creative biz and the reason that you started a business is because you deeply love your practice and so you end up making money off of it rather than having to work for other people but then you end up like having to make money off of your practice on an ongoing basis and that means that you don't necessarily get to pick what your favorite thing is all the time, or get to devote all of your time to that because you need to bring in money to survive and pay your bills and shit.

And so last night I went down the most delightful rabbit hole because my doppelganger, Kalea, and I have this literally long-term like, we're, we had a phone call this morning and we've determined that this particular like container that we were planning on is a five-year project. And that's without like things getting in the way and us needing to adjust it.

So it will probably be longer than five years, but we have this five-year container. And it's heavily research-based to then give us then the time and space to be like learning about traditions within our practice and being able to apply them and finding grant money that will offset a lot of that cost so that then if it's, you're spending time working on that and not spending time on the business, that you can still pay the bills sort of thing.

And I am very happy to be in a stage of my career where that feels like something that I can do and also where I can articulate it well enough to hopefully get some grant money.

But this year is going to be digging into tartan history and tartan practices. And so I was on a little deep dive yesterday about historic breeds of sheep from Scotland. And I, and then like went and was trying to find places where I could then purchase breed-specific yarn that also fits those reasons. It was fun. [Laughs and snorts.] So I'm just curious about what breeds.

yarrow magdalena: Me too, right? Yeah. [Ash laughs.] [Audio distorted.] That too. I love those rabbit holes. And sometimes when I'm like, this is also pandemic speaking, but sometimes a really sexy, exciting Friday night is staying inside, lighting candles and researching something.

ash alberg: Seriously though! Like it, honestly it really was, it was, I had so much fun and I like, a friend who lives nearby was like, we were originally planning a dog walk and then I got a message from her. She was like I'm busy, er no, I'm pooped from teaching so can we reschedule?

I was like, it's okay, I am down a rabbit hole right now of tartan history and the natural dyes that were used at the time. [Snorts.] She was like, okay. She's also an academic so got, understood. But I was like, I was having so much fun.

I was like, also, this is why I need grant money because when I go down these rabbit holes, I will easily lose 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours just like in whatever rabbit hole I happened to be in. And meanwhile, I could have been using that time to do some other actual work shit. But I'm much more interested in this right now.

So let's talk numbers though, because I think this is also something where especially social media makes it not as grand where people don't actually talk about the numbers that are involved in running a business. And like whenever I'm teaching, especially with my Creative Coven students, which is, I designed that program specifically for folks that want to make a side hustle or a full-time hustle out of their design work.

And I'm like, okay, cool. You want to do this? We're going to talk about money right away because if you actually want this to be a hustle and not an expensive hobby, which is fine, but even if in terms of hustle, your version of hustle is that you at least want to recoup your material expenses of your yarn, that's one version of the hustle. If you want to bring in enough money to pay for Christmas gifts each year, that's a different kind of hustle.

If you want to bring in enough money to pay half of your household bills, different kind. If you want to replace your corporate income and retire your partner, like all of that, those are very different kinds of hustles. But at the core of all of them is money. And it is a business and it's not like bad or good.

It's just, you decide for yourself what makes the most sense and what are your actual goals? But I feel like a lot of times, people don't talk honestly about what it costs for them to live their lives. And I think especially insidious is the number of folks who run what looks like, based on their vanity metrics, a really successful business.

And then in the meantime, they're like, not even, nevermind, like not paying themselves a salary, they're like not even breaking even on their material expenses. And meanwhile, people are looking up at them as though oh, this is the magical thing. And I can have this perfect life. And it's like that perfect life is ... I remember being at a small biz, creative biz conference, pre-pandemic.

And one of the speakers came in and like the rest of it was a decent program, but I was like y'all did not the best job at vetting this particular person, because this person came in to talk about social media trends for creative small businesses. And she had ... this was like a while ago, and I think she had something like 30,000 followers, which nowadays, again, like some people might think that's a lot. Realistically, as far as, it's not necessarily that much.

It's certainly enough that you could be making like a decent chunk of change off of it, if you have the right conversions. And so somebody asked her, she like went through her whole thing, explained, oh, I do this and I do that. And I have this part portion of the biz where I do I do like large-scale commissions.

And then I have this portion where I make kits for what I do. And I do both. And then, like she was a young mom, so she had I think at that point, the kid was like maybe two. So like very young child in the home. And she was like, yeah, like I get up at 5:00 AM every day and I'm like working until then my kiddo wakes up and then I am momming through the day.

And then my husband comes home from his work and we spend family time. And then I have another chunk of hours in the evening that I'm just working and I'm doing this hustle and she's making this grand thing that also is like, that you are giving up a lot. If nothing else you are giving up your sleep, that every single day you're waking up at 5:00 AM to do your hustle.

And somebody then, after she explained all of this, was like, “So can you tell me what's the breakdown of what percentage comes in from the commercial or from the commissions and what percentage comes in from the kits? And what's your profit margin and all of this?” And she was like, “Oh actually, I don't actually make enough money to cover the cost of the kits. My husband works in IT in Silicon Valley.”

And everybody like, literally me and everybody along my row, we all just closed our notebooks ‘cause we were like, you're not the person to be talking about this then. Like your social media trends are now not relevant for us as small business owners because what you are doing is not actually running a successful business.

You are running an expensive hobby at the expense of your husband who brings in enough income that your family household does not rely on yours. And that's fine, but be honest about that. And I think that's a thing that like, it's not as though, if you are a stay-at-home mom and you need something to do, and actually your household can really benefit from you having an additional income coming in or if you are a stay-at-home parent because if you were to go back to work, you've got enough kids that you would be going back to work in order to fund paying for daycare and that's it, right?

There's lots of reasons that we are all running side businesses or running full-time hustles and bringing in whatever amount of money we're bringing in or not bringing in whatever money we're bringing in. That's everybody's personal journey. You decide what works best for you.

You decide what you're most comfortable with but be honest about what it is that you're doing and where it is that you're at so that then when other people are looking at you and thinking that they're going to model their lives after you, if

they have a very different experience and a very different ... like if somebody is, “Oh, that sounds marvelous!” And then meanwhile, they're either single or their partner doesn't have regular income coming in or maybe they do, but like they absolutely need a second equal income coming in to fund their household.

Like all of those experiences are very different ones where now that experience that you are sharing is not going to be as relevant and trying to model a duplicate of what you're doing is actually going to be harmful potentially. So ... sorry, that was like a really long tangent slash intro into ...

yarrow magdalena: That just needs to be said is what it is. I feel that. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: So let's talk numbers.

yarrow magdalena: [Laughs.] Yeah, sure. So maybe I'll talk a little bit about my background and where I'm at right now. So like I said, I am going to celebrate my seventh year very soon. I'm 36. I live by myself, I have only two dogs as dependents, so no kids, a big difference, I totally agree.

I don't have a partner that supports me financially and I've always known that's not something that I want. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm queer and that answers a lot of questions. [Ash laughs.] No, okay, wait, what I meant by that is so many different things.

But I'm a kid of divorce. I've always been in like, which isn't the healthiest thing, and it's definitely something that comes up in therapy, but I lean towards hyper-independence in some ways, especially in, when it comes to money and homes, or I always had this idea that I would live this Finsta dream basically, and wanted to make that happen.

I never wanted kids. And that's just a personal thing. And I think I just feel like it's not like a privilege as such, but it definitely has made some things easier for me because I never, never worked towards that sense of stability. I want, would want to give kids if I had wanted them.

ash alberg: Yes.

yarrow magdalena: But I did donate eggs twice in my twenties, and that's a big part of my story and I'm in touch with them and I love them. And that's what felt right to me and still does. I never really received financial support from my parents, but I had a lot of really affordable access to education.

So I have a BA and an MA, and I think the most student loan I ever had was 12 grand in British pounds, so that's $15,000, I think.

Because things are just different in Europe and I was very lucky. I'm also white. I did start out with some social capital and that. I had been blogging for 10 years before I started an actual business so I had some sense of how the internet worked and I had relationships with people that were supporting me emotionally and that really made a big difference.

But before I started my business, I never had more than a grand in savings. So I started out with no capital and I really immediately had to make and living. I so often hear people tell stories of I had these 10 grand and I put it all on the table and I’m like ...

[Audio distorted, both talking at the same time.] ash alberg: [Snorts.] How?

yarrow magdalena: I'm like happy for them. And that's great and I also understand that there are certain business models where you just need a bit of start-up capital, but as not as part of my story. I think if I'd had that, I would probably have become a potter to be honest.

But yeah, but I am, I chose what design not just by necessity. I really love it. And I still do, but I'm self taught and I actually started a different business program and that was in 2015. So I ended that program not really knowing what kind of business I wanted to have and being in that space, I saw that in week three, we all were meant to build our websites and everyone was really struggling with that. I knew Wordpress really well and I had a sense of color and fonts, so I was like, this is what I'm going to do.

And it was just what I needed to make a living. And I think in the first few years, I was much more attached to that identity of like, I’m a web designer. That's what I do. And I now think of it more as like my getaway car, because it was this thing that opened all these doors for me. And it was something that I was able to do with no start-up money.

I immediately had clients. I didn't need a ton of clients because each client was paying quite a good chunk of money for each project. And survival-wise, it just ticked a lot of boxes for me. And the first few years of my business, I was living in Brighton, which is in the south of England and it's commutable to London so it's very expensive, as you will know. [Chuckles.]

ash alberg: [Laughs.] Yes, I do.

yarrow magdalena: And I also really wanted to live by myself. I had lived in house shares obviously through my twenties in Brighton and Berlin and other places in Europe. But I, towards the end of my trainings, I really wanted to live by myself.

And I lived in a converted, in like an illegally converted garage, which was rented to me as a tiny house. That's all I'm going to say to that.

ash alberg: [Laugh-snorts.] I am not surprised.

yarrow magdalena: Yeah. And it was, I was, it was so small that you could literally reach between the two walls if you had quite long arms. And I didn't have a sink in the kitchen so I did my dishes in the shower and it was just ridiculous in some ways. I'm just telling this story too, I'm going to get to a point, I promise.

ash alberg: I'm okay with it. [Laughs.]

yarrow magdalena: So after a few years in Brighton and I lived in Brighton two times, once in my early twenties, and then in my later twenties again, and there was a break in Berlin in between, but I really hit my, I came out of my Saturn return and then the relationship that was really dear to me came to an end in the romantic form.

And I was like, okay, that's it. I lost, I lost a few things in that moment and it was just a great way to reshuffle the cards and really think about what I wanted and also where I wanted my work to go, ‘cause I think living in that tiny house in air quotes was, it was like a sacrifice I was making to be able to work in a way that I did quite creatively, quite flexible, being playful and not stressing too much about work every single day.

I did definitely experience stress, no doubt. But yeah, that was like the compromise I was making. And I also knew that I really wanted secure forever housing, like owning my home was something I've always wanted since I was kid. My parents never owned a home. We moved around so much.

So I grew up with like none of that. I want to own, I want to paint my walls. I want to really have that intimacy with it, with a home. And when I donated eggs, the lesbian couple I donated eggs to in London, borrowed me a chunk of

money to buy a piece of land in Portugal, which I sold at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 and it didn't make a profit.

It was just like either, it was whatever. It was ... yeah.

But I had saved that money backwards in that this lesbian couple borrowed me that money and I had paid it back over five years. So then at the beginning of 2020, I suddenly had a chunk of money, which I had never had before.

And I took that money and put it down as a deposit for the home that am now in, the home that I'm now buying is 60,000 pounds. And I'm saying that because it's just, I think home ownership can mean so many things and I've made this choice for myself to, to move to an area in Scotland that's very uncool.

It's super beautiful. I fucking love this landscape. Like I said, it's near the sea, I love the cliffs here, it’s the sunniest part of Scotland and has this easy access to Edinburgh, but it's just not a cool urban environment. It's not really sexy, but it has a cool craft community. And I'm so here for that.

And so I think I'm going to, so my plan is to have that paid off by my mid-forties so that I can then retire into part-time dreams earlier and have that paid off. And that is just a big part of my business as well. And I recognize that it's a big privilege to have had the chance to build up that deposit in the first place.

Some people have good reasons to live in a more expensive area, be that if you have kids who go to school somewhere or you're queer, disabled or marginalized in some ways, and you need that access to your own community, which often you might not get in the countryside. So I'm not saying this is the only way at all, but I think for me, there’s this big simplifying.

I was just like, I'm not here for the rat race in London or Brighton or somewhere else in Europe. I don't know. I, but I know I need a forever home and I need that home to have a big ad space and a lot of room for my creative practice. And I need to know that I can very easily afford to pay that off and that I'll be done with that at some point in the near future.

And that I can then save a little bit for my retirement. And there's a real sense of peacefulness in that. Yeah. Was that the waffle you wanted?

ash alberg: That was actually fantastic. And I fully am on board with literally all of it. Yeah, I, living in London, I, so I had been to London for not just for a

weekend, like I had been to London multiple times for multiple weeks at a time before I moved there and I used to love it.

And I remember before I moved there thinking, oh my god, I'm going to, I'm going to accidentally get stuck and I'm just going to end up living in London for the rest of my life. I'm like, that's going to be so lovely. And it was truly two of the worst fucking years of my life. And I don't, I'm not somebody who has regrets about things.

I learned a shit ton and I never need to learn those lessons again. [Snorts.] I never need to repeat those things. And it was like, it was deeply traumatic. Like I, I got fucked up as a result of it in many ways which we don't need to go into on this, but suffice to say I left London in 2012 or 2013.

It wasn't until 2021, so eight years later, that I could look back at London and think, yeah, I would go back now to visit. I would never live there again, ever. And I would probably like I've said to the few folks that I'm like, yeah, I would go. And they're like, oh, I could go with you. I'm like, cool. You need to be aware of the fact that I will have so many fucking triggers going off and I am not my best self when I live in that city.

And it just automatically turns on because when you live in London, like the rat race isn’t even ... people who haven't lived in London or like New York or cities that are huge, like I'm not talking ... even Toronto and Vancouver, like I also would not live in those cities because of the expense, like I've done it before. I know that it's not fun.

Like you can be, I could be a doctor and my partner could be a surgeon or a lawyer, and we would maybe be able to afford a condo, right? It's, you can have stupidly high paying jobs and barely be able to afford anything if you are choosing to live in those cities. And so you are literally working to live, but you are working so much that you don't have time to live.

And I personally am much more interested in ... like I live in Winnipeg. It is, it's, I have my house. I like it. It's working for me so far. Eventually I will sell it to have more land, but I am living in a city that despite the fact that absolutely like pandemic housing pricing is fucking nuts.

But it is still a city where if you have a certain amount of capital, you can have a very comfortable life that then also gives you the space to travel to places that are more expensive, that have all of the restaurants and the workshops and the shows and all of these things. Go and do that for, if I want to be like, I'm going

to go to Toronto to do this workshop outside of pandemic life, then I'm going to Toronto, do that, enjoy the restaurants while I'm there.

And then I'm going to come home and still be able to pay my mortgage and actually have a mortgage to begin with.

But like, I remember coming back from London and I had to stop off in Toronto on my way home to renew my visa, which ultimately never ended up actually getting used. But I remember landing in Toronto, needing to go to my visa appointment and the visa appointment was in the Eaton Center, which is like a, a big mall. And there's like, passport people are in the mall in a certain section of it.

So like I had a timeline that I needed to be there. I had my appointment, I was fucking booking it. And I remember walking through the mall, like on a mission and being slightly shocked and thinking to myself, oh, I'm back in Canada because people moved out of my way because I was very clearly on a mission trying to get somewhere.

And it was just this moment of being so happy about being back home because in London, everybody is like that. And the only way that you move through a crowd is if you are physically strong enough to push your way through the crowd, against the people who are pushing back against you. Like you are literally swimming, upstream and a crowd of people on an ongoing basis.

And I don't, I am not exaggerating that, like I honed my sharp elbows. My bitch face was honed in a way that like, realistically, my bitch face has now been this way for the majority of my adult life. But if you had known me prior to me living in London, I was a much happier baseline of face.

And now just I, it comes on, it comes off. It is a useful skill, but I do not love the fact that when I am in London, that is my baseline. That bitch face is what goes on and it stays on. And to come into smile mode is ... that takes effort. And so I hate that part of it, but it's also yeah, you choose.

For some folks, they love that. They love how there's always that hustle and bustle around and they love having easy access as long as they have the money to go and do all of the different sorts of things. And it's not even necessarily that the events themselves cost that much. There's lots of really cool free stuff that happens in big cities.

It's just literally the expense of traveling from A to B. Like when I was living in north London and then I moved to southeast London, but I still needed to get to work in north London, like I would spend my paycheck just getting to and from work because that's just how expensive transit is.

So it's, but yeah, like I think for a lot of folks, what they don't necessarily consider before they go into business is thinking for themselves before they get started, what do I want my life to look like? And what is the cost of that going to be? And what are also the extra things that are factors that I'm not thinking of?

I also don't have kids. Eventually I want kids. I also am not willing to become a parent. And I have control over this at this current point in my life. I'm not willing to become a parent before I am in a financial position that I'm not worried about if ... and I don't live in the States where if they break their arm, it's going to be a thousand dollar bill. But I do have to worry about if they get sick and they have COVID or even if they get sick and they don't have COVID, but right now it's COVID, and so the assumption is maybe they have it, they now need to stay home for a week.

And so now I need to be with my child for a week and not with my work. That, I, that's going to be a problem. Like kids are so fucking expensive. Yeah, sorry. I don't know where the longer-term portion of that conversation was going, but ...

How does ... you were chatting about how you got started with your work. How does ritual play into your work? And especially, I guess now, and also, how are you imagining ritual being in your work as you're moving forward and as you're getting ready for this next stage of when you move into your new space and all of that?

yarrow magdalena: Oo, yeah, that's a good question. I think ritual is a part of my everyday life. I really love just love ritualizing everything. Really like the way I make mood boards for websites that I make, or the way that I facilitate classes is very ritual-based in how I prepare, but also in what I invite people into any creative project, be that my podcast or another book or zines that I wrote will have an element of ritual to it.

I spend a lot of time in my garden thinking or not thinking about my business, but having ideas because I'm with my hands in the dirt. And I think that's how I strategize about my business in a lot of ways. I think sitting at my altar is really important.

One ritual that I do really every day at the moment is oiling my body with herbal balms or oils. And that feels like such a nice way to just touch, touch in with myself. I'm in someone's class. One Walker teaches a class called, I think it's called Working with the Swords and the Tower for Change. It has a better name, but it's about swords ... [Yarrow mumbles, Ash laughs.]

And one of the things that came up in that class was that I'm not going to go anywhere without my body. And I really liked that because I think my body is just like such a good benchmark for what I can and cannot do. What I want to do and I think especially in the first few years, like the overwhelm from this daily micro decision-making is so big because there's really no one deciding it for you.

You're deciding about your logo, which social media channels you want to be on. You’re deciding about your message and your pricing and your business model. And it can be so draining. And I think if you can have some kind of embodied practice that helps you just make those decisions quicker and be clearer about what feels right or not for you in any given moment, that is just going to take such a big load of you.

Not that you don't have to do those decisions anymore. Yeah, but just taking the [word indistinguishable] away and stopping the overthinking. I think that is the one key thing where ritual really helps me a lot. Yeah.

ash alberg: That makes a lot of sense. Do you, are there like particular tools that you're like, “I could not run my business without these tools?”

yarrow magdalena: I have a very lightweight tech set up. So I obviously have a laptop that I carry. I was going to say, carry with me as if I'm going places right now. [Both laugh, Ash cackles.] Like carried around my house. [Laughs.]

I often work in bed, and that is something I used to feel a bit shy about, but it's actually, because I can't sit very long. I had an accident where I broke my leg really badly. It was like so ridiculous. I did one step out of my door and New Year's Eve 2020. I slipped on black ice and I broke both the fibia and tibia in multiple places in a spiral-like way, and so I have 20 pieces of metal in there.

ash alberg: Holy shit!

yarrow magdalena: It is bizarre. I can’t sit very long because it changes circulation in my leg. And so I work in bed a lot and that's fine, but I need to

have a mobile setup so I can move around and make my body comfortable. And then tech-wise, I use Mighty Networks to facilitate my communities.

I use MailerLite for my newsletter because it's, with the function that has the most affordable tool in my opinion. I've also had Ontraport or ConvertKit. I used to be with MailChimp in the very beginning. And I have set up dozens of systems like that for my clients. And my winner has always been MailerLite, so I love them

And then I run a Patreon, which I have for about four years, I think. I have had times of mixed feelings about that because I'm paying quite a bit in currency conversions and platform fees. But I think because they offer people to pay in different currencies and it's just easy for people to understand, I stuck with it and it's worth it for me, but it is, maybe if I was starting now, I would choose a different tool. I'll say that.

What else am I using? I use Excel sheets for all my bookkeeping. I don't have a booking suite and software. They’re pastel color coordinated and I fucking loved them so much. [Ash laughs.]

I use Zoom for calls and I have a few insurances. Public liability, income protection. That's pretty much it. So my business spending overhead is without material costs like yarn, which I talk about separately. It's 120 pounds that I’m spending each month on my tech support set up and it fully and completely automated. I don't do anything manually that this, can be automated anyway.

One thing I forgotten is I have 17hats for contracts, forms and booking and invoicing. So those are the things I use enough. I think that's evolved over the years, but it's really the slimmest, most effective set up I can even imagine, dream up.

And then of course I buy yarn and print material. And I think about, I do have Excel sheets for that as well, where I look at the print that I made and I look at how many hours it's taken me to cut the block, how much I spend in ink and other materials. And then what the per item price is now, so how many prints I can make of that one block?

ash alberg: Right.
yarrow magdalena: So now you know. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: That's super useful. Thank you. I think that's, yeah. That's like a really useful list of things. Because yeah, also just like being organized enough to know each of the things. Like I am starting now to have a better grasp on like actually how much do I spend in my business each month versus what are my personal spending expenses each month. Which is, part of me is what the fuck am I doing in my business?

But then a bigger part of me is okay, if I really need to knuckle down on something, I'm really good at living on a really tight budget. And part of that comes from being in like arts and non-profit background before then. So like we never got paid that much anyway. But yeah, realizing okay, my living expenses over the years, my life feels like it's got a lot more abundance in it, both in material things and also in other things.

But my personal spending is like fucking small. And then meanwhile, I'm like, oh yes, I have a $10,000 mill bill that I need to be anticipating. And then, $15,000 tax bill, because I was, didn't make my quarterly installments last year. And so now I gotta figure out how to pay the whole thing at once or in a much shorter period of time.

But yeah, I think if you can be organized like that from the beginning, it really helps. And I also love that you are, like that there are certain things where you're like, I've tried these different ones and to figure out like, what works best for you and also what works best for you at the most affordable price ‘cause it's not necessarily that the cheapest is the best, but it also doesn't mean that if you're paying the most, that you're getting the most out of it.

But then there's also things where you’re like, I could go and change that, but also it's working for me and yeah, there's some things about it that I don't necessarily love, but it's also built up this other portion that is really great. And to migrate it at this point is not necessarily going to be worth it.

Because yeah, those are all choices that you have to make and yeah, the micro decisions, it's not my fav.

And then what about, what are things that you can't live without? Like you've got your pen, is there, are there a tarot decks that you deeply love? Are there certain candles that you're like, I always need to have a stash of these candles or like a certain type of notebook that you're like ... ? I always have Moleskin notebooks, but it's actually because I'm a lefty.

And so like the pen struggle is real. And so I always get, Staples actually makes these like gel pens that are honestly the best pens I've ever worked with. And Moleskin works, like it soaks the ink immediately so I don't have to worry about the lefty drag. So I spend a lot of money on my notebooks, but it's because I have found these perfect cheapo brand pens that work really well. [Laughs.]

yarrow magdalena: Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, no, not really. There isn't like one brand or thing that comes to mind. And when I was thinking about tarot decks, I just showed you before this interview, I drew a card from the future ancestor deck, which I really love. And I think that's my favorite right now.

I have five other decks and sometimes I wish I had just one, if I'm totally honest. I got other ones because I used to offer a tarot readings and I really wanted people to give a, have a choice. Especially in terms of representation, I wanted them to be able to choose a deck that really represents who they are.

But I think I'll share them around probably, the decks that I'm no longer using. So that will feel good. Candles do feature very big in my life. That is true. I love making them myself. I'm not a minimalist or like I know this whole zero waste thing, it's very annoying. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: It really is.

yarrow magdalena: It’s so annoying.

ash alberg: Especially like the zero waste that is like zero waste, but actually just like green-washed capitalism under the guise of zero waste. I'm like, you know what fuck ... or zero waste that is also not ... it's just like coming from very privileged ... Like I remember seeing somebody on Instagram commenting on ... this one person who I actually, I love their feed and I love all the things that they're doing.

And they had partnered, like they're doing a brand sponsorship for this really cool little machine that takes your compost scraps and immediately composts them. And so you just like, you plug it in, it's got, it's pretty much net neutral in terms of the energy that it uses to do the composting, but this person commented and was like, “Why would you electronify ... (or whatever the fuck word they used). It's something that like, nature just does automatically. This is like the opposite.”

And the person was like, not everybody has access to a huge portion of land where they can have a compost pit. It's, exactly. If you're living in the middle of

a city and you're living in an apartment or a condo and you don't have a fucking yard like, this is actually really useful.

yarrow magdalena: Yeah, totally. Yeah. But I think all this to say, I am annoyed with this extreme zero waste stuff and I do think that we need to have more conversations around cars and access within that. But yeah, like I said, I think this big decluttering I've done again in the last few weeks has really helped me and I’m trying to make things myself.

I just sew a little zipper bag the other day. I really love embroidering stuff. I really love natural materials. And I hope I'm not saying that in a snobby way. I think it's a sensory thing. I don't like, I don't like wearing things with buttons anymore. It's like soft trousers all the way from me. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: Yes, a hundred percent.

yarrow magdalena: Yeah. And I, the only colors I love in my home and will allow it to come in are woodland colors and dusty pink, that's it. So people, if someone brings red into my house, that's really gonna be a problem in our relationship.

ash alberg: This is a little too loud. [Yarrow laughs.] Please calm it down to a dusty pink or leave it outside.

yarrow magdalena: Yeah. And yeah, colors are important to me. I think they're a part of magic and ritual. I have a ton of house plants. Usually at this time of year I have seedlings. I don't now because I'm moving so I can’t take care of them, but yeah, small things. I think essences and herbal tinctures are probably also big features.

I love Ashanal Bejoran’s work. I have a lot of her potions. I love Dori Midnight potions, they’re beautiful. Sometimes I make them myself, sometimes I'm too lazy, so yeah.

ash alberg: I love that. I also, yeah, the, it's very valid to be like, I could make this myself. I also don't want to right now. [Laugh-snorts.] I would rather buy from somebody else who has already done all of the magic and has made some beautiful work and just support them. This is how this energy exchange is happening today.

Yup. What plants do you have planned for your new house? What are you thinking for your garden? Or do you know yet?

yarrow magdalena: So I'm going to have to get to know that garden because it is mostly north facing. There's a small front garden that's going to be south facing. And I'm hoping for a horizontal situation at the wall, basically. And then the back garden I'll need to see in Scotland. The sun moves very extremely so in the summer, I think the whole garden would get a lot of sun and then winter, nothing at all likely, as the case where I'm here now.

And so I'll see what my neighbors are doing, what's working for them. I do have, there’s existing huge fancy grass in the garden. I fucking love fancy grasses. It's much taller than me, and it's the kind of thing that you'd see in like a French movie, someone reclining and being teased with this big bushy thing.

ash alberg: Yeah. [Both giggle.]

yarrow magdalena: Really sensual and beautiful. I'm very excited to get to know this person, plant person. [Ash cackles.] I really love nettle a lot, which is not conventionally a garden plant, I'm aware.

ash alberg: It can be though. I literally have some directly beside my front gate and I did plant it there intentionally. [Laugh-snorts.]

yarrow magdalena: Yeah.

I have a little wormery, which I really love, so that's going to be by my kitchen window and the plant I’m bringing, so last year I got myself two black magnolia trees, which to be honest is probably not the most sensible thing for this climate, but they, I've seen them in my row. Like people definitely have made them happy.

I just love, they're so fucking beautiful. They’re this deep magenta pink, almost black, and then they have these like really super sexual flowers.

ash alberg: Amazing.

yarrow magdalena: And in the spring, you can go on dates and sit under them and then you'll be rained on with these like pink petals. And it's just a fucking dream.

ash alberg: Oh my god. That sounds like just the best photo shoot opportunity. [Both laugh.]

yarrow magdalena: Yeah.

ash alberg: Oh, man. I love that. Okay. So what is something that you wish you'd been told when you were younger about magic and ritual?

yarrow magdalena: I think that you can’t buy it probably. I think because so often when I was young and felt imposter syndrome and was stressed out, I put so much pressure on myself to know exactly what my practice will look like for the rest of my life.

And really had this strong sense of seeking ... I remember being 20, living in London, working for a German company in this tiny start-up at Leicester Square, which you will know it's very stressful, terrible place.

Pros and cons. But I used to go to the big Waterstones, which is a bookshop at Piccadilly Circus, over five or six levels, I think. And I used to always hang out with this deep sense of longing in the Self Help section, eating at Krispy Kreme donut from Tescos. [Laughs.] And just feeling sad, and I think I really thought that I could go to Waterstones and if I just found the right book that will fix it, and that will make me feel a sense of belonging in the world.

And I often, especially in winter, would go to work in the morning when I was still dark and then come back home and it was already dark again. And so I had so little connection with the seasons. I never knew what moon it was. I didn't know what my body needed.

I just went to Waterstones because that's what I knew. And I wish someone had, I wish ... and this has maybe some like time travel magic I should be doing now that I'm saying this, to just meet my older self in that Self Help section and be like, just go home, just go home and light a candle and stop buying shit you can't afford and just make your own magic.

Yeah.

ash alberg: Yeah, that feels really real. Also I challenge anybody to be working in Leicester Square and feeling at all connected to anything in their body. Like I always, I joke, but it's not actually a joke, that like in London you have a long distance relationship with your grocery store. So like, how are you supposed to have any sort of significant sense of community?

Like it's just ... someday I will go back and I will maybe enjoy the pockets that I miss. There's pockets that I miss that I'd be happy to go back to. But definitely don't need to do it by moving back there. [Laughs.]

yarrow magdalena: Yeah.
ash alberg: So what's next for you?

yarrow magdalena: Oo, so the Highlands are next and I think that is gonna be so beautiful, really excited for that time. I am going to write my second book. My first book is called Rituals: Simple and Radical Practices for Enchantment in Times of Crisis. Which I wrote, I wrote that at the very beginning of the pandemic, this book is going to be called Creative Grief. I'm going to write about 13 craft projects to help us integrate loss.

ash alberg: Amazing.

yarrow magdalena: Yeah, very excited for it. And when I'm back, I think in my work, my focus continues to do, to be the community facilitation. That is something I'm absolutely super deeply committed to. It's my bread and butter, it’s something that really energizes me. I’ll continue to work part-time, I’ve kind of levelled at 20 hours a week and that feels really good for what I need in my life right now.

And then I've continued to get to know my body in this different way. Having become much more disabled through the accident, I'm not able to walk so much anymore and I need more help in different ways. So that is something definitely that I'm still getting used to and need to learn so much more about.

And then I'm going to make more eid and that is, sounds like I'm saying, like I'm just going to make more eid, but I think that's quite a big deal to me. I have huge imposter syndrome around that. And I think this, being a designer, being a web designer is, I really love this work, but I never considered myself ... maybe because it was so much like a commercial consideration in the beginning, like a truly creative person.

And yeah, there's so much I want to learn. I really love sewing at the moment. I love weaving. I love embroidery and crochet. Haven't really gotten into knitting yet. Maybe that's coming but ...

ash alberg: Just wait. [Laughs.]

yarrow magdalena: At this time I just want to have time to just be with my dogs and explore and see what I want to do. And printmaking. So printmaking is going to grow in my work as well, I think. Yeah.

ash alberg: All of this just sounds so delightful. I am so excited for your time in the Highlands. I also just am real jealous of the fact that you are ... Scotland is, I deeply love Scotland. Like my whole thing is eventually I will go back to the UK. I will stop off in London, go see like a couple of the things that I missed and then like high tail it north. [Laugh-snorts.]

yarrow magdalena: Yeah.

ash alberg: Scotland's just like, my time in Scotland was so much lovelier and so much more familiar. And the people were so much kinder. [Laughs.] Like London is a place where if you're, it's not a spot where if you're in the middle of the street, clearly in need of help, that people are going to avoid you. Like absolutely people will help you, but until you ask for help, they're going to avoid you and also give you like a glaring glare.

Whereas Scotland people are just like way nicer in my experience. And just because people aren't quite so grumpy, maybe, I don't know.

Cool. Thank you for this. This has been really lovely. I know it's getting late for you where you are.

yarrow magdalena: Yeah, no, that's really okay. And this is my new rhythm now, and I have a burst in the morning. Then I chill all day. I put around my house in the afternoon and I have another burst in the evening.

ash alberg: Perfect. That's delightful. Ah, so good.

yarrow magdalena: Thanks so much for having me. This was really great. Like I said, it's lovely to be on the other side for change, and I love your questions and I love the podcast, so thank you.

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.

Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.