Waiting for life to calm down before joining an online Zentangle membership?

"When things settle down" isn't going to happen!

Think about the last time things actually settled down. Properly settled. No half-finished to-do list, no family stuff bubbling away, no work thing hanging over you.

I'll wait for you to come up with something. Notice how the thought of it sounds absolutely amazing, but you feel it's something in the future that 'may happen'. What I've learned is that if you want to have calm, more time to paint, read, garden, whatever it is, you have to create the space in your diary for it, or it just won't happen.

The mythical calm week never arrives, because life doesn't work like that. There's always something demanding your attention.

And so "I'll join when things settle down" quietly becomes "I'll never join", without you ever actually deciding that. That voice sounds sensible. Responsible, even. But it's not sense talking. It's a naughty mindset monkey dressed up in a sensible cardigan, telling you that rest has to be earned and calm has to be scheduled for some future version of you who has it all together.

She doesn't exist, by the way. I've checked.

Calm isn't the entry requirement. It's the result.

This is the bit I really want you to hear.

You don't get calm first and then make space for the thing that calms you. It's the other way round. Even if tangling isn't for you, you have to make space for yourself. With tangling, you show up with a pen and a little tile, and the calm arrives.

An online Zentangle membership isn't something you do once life is sorted. It's one of the things that helps sort it. An hour (once a month, it's two hours) on a Wednesday where your head gets to be quiet, your hands get to be busy, and nobody needs anything from you.

Waiting to feel calm before you join a calm thing is like waiting to get fit before you're allowed in the gym. The monkeys love that logic. It keeps you exactly where you are.

Here's one we made earlier

I thought you might like a peek into a recent workshop we had together, called Under the Sea. These monthly workshops are where we play with different techniques. In this case, it was the colouring and thinking about tangles in a different way. I was inspired by Ernst Haeckel’s under-the-sea drawings, which are breathtaking, a blend of biology and art.

You can book this as a one-off workshop for £35. But here's a little secret: £35 is also a month inside the Tangle Emporium, where you'd get this workshop plus three more live sessions and then replays. Same money, four times the calm

What joining an online Zentangle membership actually looks like

In case the monkeys have also been telling you it'll be one more demanding thing on your plate, it isn't.

A Wednesday pocket of calm, inside the Zentangle membership

We meet on Wednesdays at 3 pm. Some weeks it's a workshop, some weeks we learn new patterns together, some weeks we take one tangle and play with it properly. If you can't make it live, every session is recorded and waiting for you, no guilt attached.

There's no homework. There's no behind. There's just a lovely bunch of people who also have loud heads and busy lives, drawing together anyway.

That last bit matters. Nobody in the Emporium joined because their life was calm. They joined because it wasn't.

The honest bit

Now for the practical part, said plainly because you deserve a straight answer rather than a countdown clock.

The Emporium doors close on the 23rd of this month. After that, they won't open again until the autumn. That's not a tactic, it's just how I'm running things, so I can properly look after the people inside.

So if you've been circling this decision, waiting for that quieter week, this is me telling you kindly: the quieter week is on the other side of the door, not before it.

If it's genuinely not the right time, money-wise or life-wise, that's completely fine, and I mean that.

But if the only thing in the way is "when things settle down", well, you know who's talking.

Come and draw with me. You can join the Tangle Emporium here:

Until next time, Ruby 👑 x

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