The Ask I Have Not Made Field Notes — This Week's Audacity Thursday, August 13 Observation: We were raised to be so competent that asking for something feels like admitting the competence was a bluff. Her answer: I have been building this whole thing, the page, the numbers, the pitches, without once asking for what I actually think it is worth. I keep letting the numbers set the price instead of me. And under that, there is a smaller question I have never answered either. When someone lands...
22 days ago • 1 min read
I sent the emails. Carefully written. Genuinely considered. The kind of pitch that took longer than I want to admit because I kept second-guessing the tone, the ask, the way I positioned what I'm building here. I can see that they were received. I cannot tell you they were opened. There is a specific kind of waiting that lives in the gap between sent and seen. You check. You tell yourself not to check. You check again. You read the email back looking for the thing that was wrong, the word...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
THE AUDACITY DISPATCH Issue 01. The Build. Published: July 23, 2026. A document of record. A LETTER FROM JOYHDAE. Wow. I'm actually here. When I started the Audacity Project in April, I had a vision for what it could become. What I thought I would build. What I thought the public showing up would feel like. I was wrong about almost all of it. Phase 1 was The Declaration. Me saying my goals out loud, to the public, and inviting them along. What I learned is that declaring something out loud...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
I want to tell you about the specific experience of watching someone read your pitch and say nothing. Not the general version. The actual version. The one where you wrote the email carefully, over more than one sitting, and you chose every word with the particular attention of someone who knows this is a first impression and you do not get to make another one. You positioned yourself well, you think. You were specific without being presumptuous. You made the ask clear without making it feel...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Phase 1 is over. I want to sit with that for a moment before I say anything else. Thirteen weeks of declaring things. Of putting words and intentions and a whole infrastructure into the world and then living inside the weight of having said them. Of finding out, slowly and with some discomfort, which of my declarations were real and which were aspirational in a way I hadn't fully examined. It's over. I made it through it. And today, Phase 2 begins. The Build. The name felt right when I chose...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Five days until Phase 2. I've been trying to figure out why The Build feels bigger than The Declaration did. Phase 1 had its own fear. The exposure, the public commitment, the not knowing if anyone would care. But this is different. The Declaration had a safety net I didn't fully acknowledge at the time. If nothing happened, it was still early. Still the beginning. Still the phase where not having results yet was part of the plan. Phase 2 doesn't have that. Phase 2 is the part where the work...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
I want to tell you about someone I can't seem to get away from. She knows everything about me. My patterns. My deflections. The specific way I go quiet when something is required of me that I'm not sure I can deliver. She knows which version of busy I use when I'm avoiding something real. She knows my voice when I'm performing and my voice when I'm not, and she has spent a very long time making sure the performing one stays in charge. She is an older version of me. And she refuses to get...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
This is not a "top tools for creators" roundup. I am not qualified to tell you what is best. I can only tell you what is currently open on my laptop and actually doing work. I run this brand alone. No team, no studio, no agency. So every tool in this list earned its spot the same way. It either makes something easier, or it makes something possible that otherwise would not be. Here is what the stack looks like right now. Content and Video CapCut (paid) This is where I edit everything. I also...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Phase 1 ends in two weeks. I've been sitting with that quietly, the way you sit with something when you're not sure yet whether you're proud or just relieved. Maybe both. Probably both. The Declaration was the name of this phase, and I declared things. I said out loud, with my name attached, what I was going to do and who I was going to be this year. And then I lived inside those words for ten weeks and found out which ones were true and which ones were wishes I'd dressed up as intentions....
2 months ago • 2 min read