Caitlin Hackett is a soft spoken (though not shy), very very
talented, freshly minted tattoo artist at Old Crow Tattoo in Oakland, CA, who has already lived a whole career in the tough world of fine art. Life brought changes, as it does, and Caitlin moved
into learning how to tattoo in early 2023.
I met Caitlin last year at her shop where she was starting her
apprenticeship while I went in to get tattooed by the owner, Hannah Wolf. I invited her on the podcast to talk about what she left behind, how she is making the transition and what her vision of
the future is.
Besides putting needle to skin, Caitlin is a big D&D
person. She loves to build worlds for people who will love playing with them. She loves to tell stories collaboratively, and also cook vegan food. At one point she was fostering
fourteen kittens at once.
Listen to this charming human and me. You will learn so many
delightful things.
Find Caitlin Hackett on:
IG:
https://www.instagram.com/caitlin_hackett/
and on her website:
https://www.caitlinhackett.com/
episode transcript
Micah Riot:
Hello darlings, Micah Riot here. Last Sunday I had the incredible honor and luck to interview not only one but two Caitlyn's for the podcast. Today you're going to hear from Caitlyn Hackett, who is just out of her apprenticeship. She is at Old Crow in Oakland and she is in her late 30s, as you'll hear, and a human who's had a beautiful, successful, fruitful career in fine arts. Caitlyn's world is absolutely magical. Her art looks like stales from fairy tales. Last year when we met at Old Crow, she struck me with her sweetness and gentle energy. As the year started, I thought about who I would like to invite into the podcast and she came right up. You know how. Sometimes you'll be talking to a person and you'll have one conversation and you really feel like they opened right up to you, like they have nothing to hide, like the conversation was so authentic and so sweet. And this is a person who wears their heart on their sleeve and is just a joy to talk to and, I'm sure, a joy to get tattooed by. So here is the conversation ahead with Caitlyn Hackett. Well, hello, caitlyn. Hi, micah, you're my first Caitlyn today. I have two of you.
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh, amazing. It's a very popular name from the 80s, so there's a whole plethora of us.
Micah Riot:
It's. I suppose that's true. I think we're all around the same age.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, I'm 37 and I definitely came up in a huge cohort of Caitys, cait's, catherine's and Caitlyn's.
Micah Riot:
So yeah, I came from a different country to this country and my seventh grade class, which was the first American class I was in, was full of actually Jennifer's more than anybody's Rich and Jennifer's. So give me like a little, just some like identity markers that you like to be for people to know about you.
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh, sure, let's see. I'm a Sagittarius Okay, that's a good one An identical twin. I was born and raised well, I was born in Texas but raised in Northern California, so I'm a forest baby, grew up up in Humboldt County. I was very deeply influenced by growing up in the trees and in nature up there and no doubt influenced by being a twin as well. It probably plays into why I do so many multi-headed animals and my design work. And, yeah, I rescue cats. That's sort of my, you know, volunteer vocational work that I do on the side. So I'm a big animal lover and I feel like those are some of my defining features.
Micah Riot:
Deep. How many cats do you cut once in your house now?
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh gosh, it's definitely cut back since I started tattooing, but in the peak of it I, you know I've fostered for the last eight years, I think at most I had 14 in my house and that was. I don't ever want to do that again. That was just sort of a crisis time in the summer. They didn't have enough volunteers and I wound up having, I think, four separate litters of all different ages of kittens in the house simultaneously on top of my personal cat. So it was. It was a wild time. It was a bad balance. The cats outweighed the humans by far too much.
Micah Riot:
All the friends of mine who had kittens. I've been privy to like how wild that is to have kittens. So to have many more than like one or two is sounds, sounds like a lot of kittens yeah.
Caitlin Hackett:
I was also primarily a medical and a crisis foster, so it wasn't just like, oh, cute, happy, playful kittens. It was, you know, kittens who had been maimed by humans or wild animals, kittens with terrible diseases or illnesses, kittens with congenital deformities. So it was a really intense situation to be in, especially with like 14, all with different sorts of like care levels. So, yeah, I definitely had pushed myself past my boundaries a little bit with that.
Micah Riot:
Was this like right before you got into your apprenticeship?
Caitlin Hackett:
The worst of it was actually probably like pre-pandemic. I've been over the last couple of years really trying to establish some boundaries, so in the last like four or five years I'd actually already dramatically cut back. So the summer of 14 kittens was maybe five or six years ago now. But now that I tattoo I also I no longer foster neonatal kittens and I don't really take on as severe of medical cases because I'm just not home anymore.
Micah Riot:
So don't have the time. Yeah, so you. I feel like, since we chatted about you coming on the pod and you being on the pod, you like switched your status. You're like, no longer an apprentice, right, you're graduated.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, hannah says different things on different days, but I'd say I've either just graduated or I'm on the cusp of graduating. So it's been a year and like three weeks now since I started tattooing. And yeah, hannah says I'm right on the cusp of graduation.
Micah Riot:
Okay, but you're like you're taking on this next batch of clients like as a full tattoo artist. Yeah, yeah.
Caitlin Hackett:
I will say my apprenticeship. Well, I don't know a lot about how other people's apprenticeships were, but mine was maybe a little unusual in that I have been essentially acting as a working artist for the last six months, while still obviously learning a lot from Hannah and the other artists at the shop. But I think because I was already an established artist going into my apprenticeship as soon as Hannah felt I was relatively competent. I've already just been fully booking clients in. I have a lower rate than the other artists in the shop since I'm new, but I have been in a weird position of like sort of an apprentice and sort of not for a while now.
Micah Riot:
What made you transition? Like I, clearly you have been. You've had an art career, you have a huge following. Like what made you want to go from selling art to selling art on skin.
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh, wow. I think, like a lot of people in the last couple of years I've been through a variety of crises, both mentally, physically, financially, relationally. Like most people, COVID really changed my entire world. Having family members get very sick, losing friends to COVID really changed my view on the world. And then, with the dawn of NFTs and AI art, I was increasingly being pushed into a corner. I've been a professional artist for the last like 12, 13 years and through the pandemic and then the sort of this dawn of AI art, I had started to lose a lot of my bigger clients. Individuals were still really great. Individual humans on a base level are so lovely and like still commissioned paintings, would commission tattoo designs, would buy prints. But as a freelance artist, a lot of my bigger clients publishing companies, bands I started to lose them, you know, and some people was just budget constraints. But I did notice that some people had switched to using AI art. I had a lot of my work scraped into the big like mid journey databases and I kind of lost faith. I was actually ready to go back to school. My best friend, Karina, had just started going back to Laney. They do a free spring semester for low income students and in 2021, 2022, I had started looking into that to shift my career. It's not that I thought I wouldn't make art anymore or is such a deep part of who I am as a person, but I was trying to decide if it was something I still wanted to use as a means of making money and paying rent, because I was really profoundly burnt out and had lost a lot of faith in I won't say like humanity as a whole. I have a lot of faith in humanity but after the like AI art stuff, I was like, oh, like people switch so quickly to being willing to not pay an artist, even like companies I'd worked with for a really long time. So I was already in this state of transition in terms of what I considered my career path to be. I think I was in a state of pretty deep mourning as well, not only for everything that was happening in the world, but mourning the way I thought my life would work, the way I thought my art would work. And at that sort of crucial point I got a new roommate who used, to date, a tattoo artist for five years and one evening we were doing what you do sitting at the kitchen table, complaining about the world and the difficulty of being creative minds in a capitalistic system. And I was talking to her about how I was going to go back to school but I didn't know what for, because I wasn't sure what my other passions would be. And she just sort of laughed at me and was, like you should just go tattoo, You'd probably be good at it. And yeah, that was December of 2022. And I made a post on my Instagram just asking for advice from anyone else who'd made the transition from being a full-time freelance illustrator to tattooing, just to see what they had to say about it. And that's when Hannah reached out to me and said that her current apprentice was going to be leaving in January and that I could come in and meet with her.
Micah Riot:
Yeah, the rest is history, I guess. Did you get a lot of people answering that ask besides Hannah offering the position? But did you get? It's something that I feel like I've seen people go the other way. You know, tattoo to more visual art or illustration. I haven't seen a lot of people go, I guess, but not that I know that many people but it feels like a more unusual path, especially as an adult, like you're not in your 20s right, like you're with some life. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's a stereotype that tattooing is something that young people do and then they get out of it For sure. For me it is not the case. I'm very much committed to staying and tattooing, but I'm also now looking to expand some of my. Being able to only make money when you work is hard Like what if something happens? What if you can't work as much? What if just the energy starts to wane as you get older? So now I'm thinking about can I make money doing something else, maybe creating some design that I can print on some clothing? I know it's a very over-saturated market, so what are your thoughts on that?
Caitlin Hackett:
I did get a lot of advice. People were so kind and so helpful. A lot of folks let me know things to look out for in terms of abusive apprenticeships. A lot of people just gave me advice for strength training, resting my body, like you said. I think it is an industry that a lot of people get into younger. I know, certainly at my shop, most people started when they were fairly young. I am a little anomalous for having had a full-fledged art career through my 20s and now in my mid to late 30s, having made that transition, I do still sell prints. I think, as you were saying, having another form of income, especially because our bodies don't last forever and even in the year I've been tattooing I've noticed how hard it is on your body to do. We're only going to get older. Our bodies don't hold out forever. So I think having those alternate forms of using your creativity to earn some kind of income is actually really smart. It's also hard. It's a hard balance. I'm running my print shop and also trying to make paintings, but I have stopped doing my gallery work because I just don't have time.
Micah Riot:
And when you started tattooing, when you finally got to the point where you were like, okay, I'm starting to do work on the skin 101 with people, was it like an immediate match where you're like this is awesome, I love this, this is what I've been looking for.
Caitlin Hackett:
I really didn't like it for the first month. Yeah, I'm an introvert, I really, and I worked from home alone for 12 years and it was really challenging the first couple of weeks, even before I was tattooing people, with that first like four weeks where I was just tattooing oranges before I started on people just being in the shop, being in that energy, being around people. There's such a performative aspect of being in the shop that felt very similar to the way that you perform as a gallery artist when you go to a gallery opening where you are sort of dressing up in the persona that you think you want to be perceived as as an artist. And that's not something I had to do. Working from home or even emailing back and forth with clients like I used to as just a freelance illustrator, you know, being face to face with people took a really big toll on me. I'm also a perfectionist, so I had such a heavy sense of like duty to do right by the people who came in and, of course, like having been a master of my craft and then becoming an apprentice and being a beginner and a baby and having to relearn and not be very good when I started was really scary and really daunting. I put a lot of pressure on myself to learn really quickly, which I don't know is like a particularly healthy approach to learning, but it is unfortunately a facet of my personality that's hard to avoid. Yeah, it was really hard. I think I was also in mourning. Still, I was really. I was really very sad to leave behind the art career that I had started to build up. It's funny because I think I would be considered an established artist, but you never really feel established in the art world. You always feel as though you're running one step ahead of the crumbling ground and, you know, trying to climb a slippery wall. You never feel like you're at the top, even though ostensibly like I had become established. Yeah, I was in mourning, I'd say, those first couple of weeks. It took some time for me to fall in love with tattooing.
Micah Riot:
And it's not been that long. So when did you start to feel like you were falling in love with it?
Caitlin Hackett:
Probably around six months ago. I had started to sort of fall in like with it in the months before then, especially as I got more used to being in the shop environment and around people and so many of the artists at the shop were like so helpful and so kind. I think being social, like any muscle, is something you have to build up, especially if it's not something that brings you energy, which in my case, you know being social costs me a lot of energy. So I had to build up those muscles as well. But I think I kind of hit a breakthrough when I started to be able to actually replicate my art style in tattoos in a way that felt more satisfying. Also, just the relationship with the clients felt really special. I started to realize that people had a lot of like faith and a lot of trust in me and the kind of people who are drawn to my work are also the kind of people that I am going to be drawn to as individuals. They love animals, they love cats, they love fantasy, they love magic, they love D&D, they're spiritual, they're whimsical, they're powerful and to be able to make pieces that made them really happy and have so many people come back again and again. You know those people who came for those early apprentice tattoos like still came back later for bigger pieces and continue to come back for more in-depth projects, and I think that's when I started to fall in love with it.
Micah Riot:
What are you using like shop doc, like what was your first machine that you felt so okay? So I'm asking that also because you're used to drawing by hand, I'm assuming with pencils on paper sounds like you can do really digital stuff and that is something really different from tattoo tools, but it's less different than it used to be. Like when I was starting out it was all coil machines which are much heavier and so, like going from pencil to coil machine that you had to also like hold a certain way and turn a certain way, like it had to really move a certain way to get nice smooth lines. That was a big like piece of getting used to things. And now that we have pens it's something I'm not really familiar with yet but, like my apprentice is definitely that generation of like she's using a pen and I'm like okay. So I don't know how to teach you how to like hold the machine or like get the right line quality, because I'm not familiar with your tools.
Caitlin Hackett:
Totally.
Micah Riot:
She came from a fine art or an art degree background. She's also not willing to go to coils because it's hard on her body. She's like curious, like what are you using and how does that feel comparatively to like a pen?
Caitlin Hackett:
Sure, yeah, I do feel very privileged to have started tattooing at a time when we have machines that are so similar to pens. I worked primarily in watercolor and ballpoint pen, as well as some like micron pen, and when I first started, my mentor Hannah had me start with a little inkjecta, a very tiny little machine, extremely lightweight, and that was so much like a ballpoint pen that I think it made the entire process much easier than I expected. Even the way that you shade and line is so similar to the way that you shade in line with a ballpoint pen. It's. It was really fascinating how much simpler it was to learn than I thought. I've now moved on to a Cheyenne Hock Thunder, which is, from what I've been told, a fairly utilitarian machine, is not exactly a specialist, but it's lightweight. It's not battery operated, does plug in, so I do have like the cable attached, but it's very lightweight. It has a small grip. It's again very similar to holding a ballpoint pen. I've practiced with a few coil machines but kind of as with your apprentice I, I struggle with them because they are very different than inking traditionally or drawing with with graphite. You can really feel it like vibrate your whole bones. Yeah, you feel that work in your wrist. I can see why a lot of tattoo artists get into strength training because those those machines are heavy. They put it put a lot of work on your shoulder and your wrist. So I've only used them once or twice, simply because it seemed like I ought to at least try. But yeah, my Cheyenne Hock Thunder is my workhorse. I use it for almost everything. I also have an FK's iron spectra. Oh gosh, I might be saying that wrong. It's like a shading, I think.
Micah Riot:
I know what's not. Yeah, the year you're in pen you use. You use the same machine for both lining and shading.
Caitlin Hackett:
Pretty much, yeah, that. It's kind of my favorite little machine, so I pretty much use it for everything. I'm hoping to maybe learn more about different machines and test more out as I go, but I've described myself to some of my friends as like a I'm like a blunt force instrument, like I learn how to use one thing really well and then I tend to stick with it.
Micah Riot:
I mean, I totally hear that and I love that too, that idea. But I feel like with tattoo machines they like they'll blow out, right, and then you have to go on and buying. I feel like you can even buy the same thing from the same maker and it will still be a little different. So each machine I have to get used to, all you know, all fresh.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, I suspect that's going to be a really interesting part of my journey. I've only been tattooing for a year, but I know that most of the other artists in my shop have a lot of different machines that they move between for different projects and even as inevitably the machines break down, they'll switch to new ones and you know, they end up doing a lot of research on different machines for different purposes. It's an aspect of the tattoo world that I find really fascinating because it is a little bit like being in a mechanic shop. Like the shop talk is something that still goes a little over my head. I've been trying to learn more as I go. I will say it is definitely one of the challenges of learning. Tattoo is like learning how to use and practice with multiple different machines and knowing that there's an inevitability of the fact that I will have to learn to be adaptive constantly.
Micah Riot:
Yeah, and it's. It stops to feel as daunting, you know, after a little while. But there's an element of like like I've been at it for 15 years, mostly using coal machines, now getting into Rotaries and feeling very new again and having to ask for advice because I've worked in a private space for the last like 10 years and so you know asking one of my friends who works, you know, in shop, who owns a shop, what are you using and how did? How? Are you just listening to Rotaries and getting what they said and then being like kind of hate this and being like no, I don't hate this. Okay, now I really like it, you know, and it's like taking but it's taking a lot of mental energy to shift, but also exciting to there's innovations.
Caitlin Hackett:
So much of that learning process. Yeah, it takes up so much of your mental energy, but it is also exciting. Transformation is exciting. Feeling like a forever student is, I think, both challenging but also exciting.
Micah Riot:
I think that's the thing you know. It's like I think, if you really truly love your craft, there's never a point when you feel like the master Just because you know I finally felt ready to take an apprentice on. It was less about feeling like I knew so much more and more about wanting to take care of somebody else and watch somebody else, like get their feet under them Kind of step out of the big world and like assure a younger person. So that was yeah. It was less like being like I have all the stuff to offer you and be like I have something to offer you and like but I care. You know I care about you and your career, so yeah, it's just a beautiful sense of community.
Caitlin Hackett:
It's something I really have liked about entering the tattoo world is that so much of it. Is this really remarkable community, like the give and take between artists, the fact that you and your clients are also in collaboration. It's a really beautiful sense of flow back and forth, like the knowledge people share, the knowledge you can return. Even the art of tattooing is so collaborative the way that it works with the body and has to flow with the body, and the inevitability of the decay of our bodies. Yeah, I love it. I think it's almost poetic the way that you all have to work together in a shop and as a community and trying to share this knowledge back and forth In this endless cycle, because you're never done and there's always something you could learn or change or do better. It's really, I want to say, like heartwarming. I don't mean to make it sound like it is new movie, but it is. Something I've really enjoyed is getting to learn from other people and see how excited they are to also ask me questions, even though I'm like I don't know anything, like I just started. But it's interesting. Everyone does have something to offer because you do, you pick up these little tricks and techniques along the way that are so like, unique to each person.
Micah Riot:
It's absolutely best case scenario. It's a absolutely amazing warm community and you know, the other side of it is there's a lot of what people now call gatekeeping I feel like it's a new term, but that's definitely the case also in like the deep recesses of the tattoo community that is really started with more dudes and very old school kind of ideas. Definitely. You know like what I started tattooing. I was told okay, here's how you pick up more knowledge you like go to somebody who's work you like, you sit in their chair, you pay the money and you ask him questions. They're working, you can ask them questions. And so I like went to this convention and there was this guy with like nice, nice work that I liked and chatting with him, and he was like well, I only have time here at the convention but I'm down in LA, so come, come down here If you want to get tattooed by me. So I go make the trip. Sit in this chair, get this giant fucking piece that he kind of nonconcentrally made the size that it was. You know like, okay, fine, I'll get this big piece. So it took us several sessions and I would ask him questions and he would just be like hmm, hmm, like just kind of grunting at me while I was like in his chair for hours. I stopped and I was like this is a disappointing. You know, told was like the route to um making connections and getting more tips and knowledge and clearly this person is not interested in sharing with me. So I was like okay, this is not the way and honestly, like I've kind of just learned on my own, like learn most of what I know just by practicing it, and like my style is very much my own in many ways, that I've never worked with somebody who does what I do.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah.
Micah Riot:
And then, you know, having someone like Hannah, like having Hannah having wolf, like having people who I know, who I just feel peers with, and also, you know, like when I come to get tattooed by Hannah, she's happy to answer my questions.
Caitlin Hackett:
So yeah, I definitely feel very fortunate to be at a shop where people have been very open about their skills and willing to share, because I've certainly heard some horror stories, similar to the one you told, of a lot of gatekeeping and a lot of unwillingness to share, and it's like that even in the fine art community in some places. So it's unfortunately something, I think, that goes across a lot of different creative fields. I definitely feel as though I really lucked out ending up in the shop that I did and getting to have the sort of experience that I had with learning from everybody. It's also been like somewhat hands off in a way that I also think is probably helpful. Like you said, a lot of it is just like developing your own style and like teaching yourself, but I think it's hard when you feel like that's your only option, yeah, if people aren't like actually willing to sort of open up those gates and like share that information. It's an interesting facet of being a creative person too, because I've always really loved to tell people like how I work. You know, obviously, as a fine artist, like we had a big community and we would, all you know, share information and tips and techniques and brands of paints and paper and do tutorials and send them to each other. That's really sweet, yeah, but obviously that was not the case universally across, you know, that creative community. There were definitely people who would harbor you, know their secrets as closely as they could and would be insulted if they perceived that you were trying to, like, steal their painting technique or you know whatever it is that they considered you to be doing as if, as if everyone wasn't already going to do the work differently, as if every creative body wasn't going to do that, and so I think that's the way to take that technique and do something completely different with it. But I think that fear mindset, that scarcity mindset, is also deeply ingrained into a lot of creative people. Just because it can be such a hard industry to make a living in Obviously like trying to be a creative person under capitalism that scarcity mindset can really corrupt you, and it's not as if it's not entirely true, like we do live on sort of the financial edge a lot of the time, and I think that fear tends to bleed into people in the way that they want to share.
Micah Riot:
Yeah, yeah, you're right, there's a lot of that scarcity mindset, but there's also this new element, I feel like, of social media and people wanting to go viral, right, so if you share a little piece of knowledge that people want to know, they'll keep watching, your video, will get pushed to other people and you'll go viral and then that will potentially bring you more followers, more money, you know some brand deal, whatever. So I feel like there's like that mindset of scarcity is now being capitalized on right, like people now will capitalize on sharing. You know, like I was just. I feel like there's like the Pat McGrath look. You know there was like that. I don't know if you see that online, but I think what they did is like put the like this kind of coat on people's faces and they were shiny and people were like how did you do that makeup look? And Pat McGrath was like you know, I won't tell you. And people were like how could you not tell us? This is wrong, that you won't tell us, like don't gatekeep. And there was always a conversation about artists and what they have a right, you know, to share, not share. And then I think Pat McGrath did like an event where they the makeup artists like showed, showed how to do the look, which I think was pretty straightforward, but it became this huge viral thing, you know, and I was like this is this is just really interesting, like we are in an age of information access for which we have to pay with our attention, eyeballs, likes, like Oremont, but it's just such a shift. How does it feel like when you call literally everything?
Caitlin Hackett:
It's a wild game and people it has become very gamified Trying to figure out what the right recipe is to have a viral moment. It's kind of wild to have to turn yourself into a content creator and to turn your art into content and to try and figure out what's going to be popular. It's wild, it's exhausting.
Micah Riot:
Can you speak to that? I'm curious. I mean, you have a really big following, 250 or so thousand people.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah.
Micah Riot:
That's so much for Ata. To artist yeah, it doesn't really matter. It's not what makes somebody good, clearly, but I feel like it does have an effect on your career and where you go from here.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, I got very lucky in a lot of ways. I started on Instagram right at the beginning, very early on before Facebook bought it, before the algorithm changed, when whoever followed you saw what you posted in chronological order, and I got my start back then. Like I built up a huge following very early on back when I think it was still possible to do so. I actually don't think it is possible to do so in the same way any longer. I know some people still manage it, but I used to get a thousand new followers a week. It was wild. It was wild times. I was featured in a few art magazines back when I was in my twenties and lived in New York City and a few major galleries that I used to show with also shared my work and it just exploded in my social media following and back then, if you could get over a thousand all of a sudden, you would just be getting fed more followers and I think once I passed like 40,000, it just fed itself. I will say, like I'm good about social media, I have a pretty strict rule for how frequently I post. I post every single day on all of my platforms, sometimes more frequently depending on the platform. These days slightly less, because none of it really works anymore.
Micah Riot:
It works in a positive way but it works in a negative way, like if you skip a week it will just completely tank. Oh yeah, post every day. It will stay the same. It's exhausting.
Caitlin Hackett:
It doesn't feel very rewarding anymore. So yeah, I think on my Insta I had gotten up at 1.430,000 followers. I'm down now to 425,000 because you never gain anymore. It's pretty much a losing game. Well, some people probably do it. It probably depends what you're doing.
Micah Riot:
but I was off by like hundreds of thousands, sorry.
Caitlin Hackett:
It's not really. It does not matter. Yeah, I mean it does. I'm grateful. It's a privilege to have had that following, to have been able to gather it the way that I did Prior to Facebook, having bought Instagram. Everything really changed after that. Now even I feel like I don't know how it works and I try to really pay attention to the system and what they want you to do. Reels were hot for a second. Now they want you to look at posts for a certain length of time, so doing the kind of posts where people have to scroll through. But it's addicting in a really bad way. I think I would consider myself to be fairly social media addicted. I don't find it to be a huge positive in my life, even though it is what launched my career, like Instagram launched my fine art career. I was just a young artist, recently graduated in New York City, in the middle of that big recession, and my now ex-husband convinced me to join Instagram and it changed everything. It's what allowed me to quit waitressing. It's what got me gallery shows, so I'm extremely grateful for it. I will say I've really had to adjust my expectations now that it doesn't work the same way, because I had gotten kind of hooked on that dopamine hit of being able to post something and get like this huge reaction. But even now, even in these sort of waning days of it, it is still extremely useful. It's how I get most of my clients. It's why I still post to it almost every day, because I still end up getting a lot of my clients through Instagram, through Tiktok, through Twitter or X. I'm on every app under the sun.
Micah Riot:
Are you on Reddit also?
Caitlin Hackett:
I'm actually that's the only one I'm not on. I never got into Reddit, Although we have been told that we should. At the shop and our recent staff meetings they were talking about that as a good option for getting your tattoos out there.
Micah Riot:
There's some pretty busy tattoo subreddit, so, yeah, good thing. But so I'm curious with the social media piece. Like when I got on Tiktok last year, I had one piece go viral like got like 6.6 million views. But in that onslaught of the views, of course there were always really shitty comments oh yeah, from people who kind of forget that there's a person behind the thing, and like accusing me of lying and all this stuff, which you know. Why would I do it? Like I get why you think that people lie on the internet, but I don't Like yeah, there's no need for me to do that. And like did you see my account? I have like five postings and this happens to go viral. What scheme do you think I have here? But it's really stressed me out. I was like like I don't know if I cried I might have, but I like really got stressed out about it and it was so early in my Tiktok posting that I didn't realize that you were supposed to respond and like keep it going. You know making response videos and like defend yourself online, and I just kind of would sometimes like yell at the people, sometimes delete their comments, sometimes like retort, but I just didn't really know how to deal when you have a really big amount of people following you. They don't, they forget that there's only like you, like a single human. So how do you deal with? Do you still get a lot like? Do you get negative attention to? The people say anything shitty? Oh yeah, all the time. How do you deal Like an introvert and clearly sensitive human?
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh gosh, yeah when you were talking about that, like it just made my like my hackles rise. Like I yeah, I have cried so many times over comments. I am a crier by nature and I have for sure cried at a lot of comments that people have left. I used to get really angry and engage a lot. I think I learned over time. You simply, like I, know that the thing that they want is my attention and I know even that the thing the algorithm wants is like me to give them attention. Like you were saying this, like create a drama, create a back and forth. You know, I just don't anymore. I delete everything. I delete every negative comment, like I am absolutely unwilling to feed any energy into it. There's no avoiding negative comments. People are always going to say shitty things, especially on the internet. When you have that level of anonymity and especially when you get a post that goes viral, like the amount of cruel and sort of inane things that people will say to you is really shocking sometimes and they always seem to stick in your head more than the like. Millions of nice and friendly comments. Yeah, I delete everything now. I delete it right away, but I can remember them like they stick in my head. I feel like I carry them with me and I try not to. I try to just let it go. It's. I know that somewhere out there there's just another board, sad individual who saw that and was struck by some sense of envy or longing or pain, who knows? Or just the petty petulant, you know malice of a stranger. But yeah, I delete everything. Now, it's not that it doesn't impact me. I'd like to say I'm, you know, as calm as a wind, you know just letting it blow past me. But I'm not. I like I go and I cry and I think about it and I text my friend and send them a screenshot and say how could someone say this to me? But I delete all of them. I don't engage. Yeah, it's. I feel like it's. The only way to regain any sense of like, power and the dynamic is to remember that like it's my page, it's my feed. I don't mind constructive comments or questions, even if they're borderline, you know, maybe negative or critical, as long as I feel as though they weren't said with malice. But anything that feels like pure malice I do not engage with or keep. I just get rid of all of it because I just have to accept that there's always going to be malice and it hurts me and I don't want to see it and I don't want my other followers to get in arguments with these people and have potentially their days ruined by being dragged into something. So but yeah, it is wild. It's wild the amount of energy people will extend into just saying something mean for the sake of cruelty.
Micah Riot:
Someone I know who is a creator and has a big following and has a topic that's controversial for their videos, has their one of their partners go through all of the comments and delete all the negative ones. Like that's a really good idea if you want to like any of a big following.
Caitlin Hackett:
Totally yeah, just to preserve your own mental well being, because, yeah, it really does stick with you.
Micah Riot:
Yeah, like when you said that you carry with you, I was just like, oh no, I don't want you to have to keep that shit inside your body like that's not yeah it's.
Caitlin Hackett:
I think like I have a like a deep and inherent sense of insecurity about my own work. It is part of what makes me strive to do better, but it, you know, it also makes me particularly vulnerable to, you know, malicious comments, because there's always a part of me that's like should I examine that, should I carry that with me? Let me take the microscope up to it and see if maybe they've they've seen through me to some inherent flaw and I yeah, I've had to really train myself to just be like, just delete it, don't look at it, don't think about it. But having someone else go through, I think, is also a useful measure. I used to have my ex husband do that for my emails, for me, and there's a reason I don't use any of my dms, so Right, yeah, is your sibling, your twin?
Micah Riot:
Is she? I assume she. Maybe they use different pronouns.
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh, yeah, my sister, she her and my brother is they them?
Micah Riot:
But you're, you're, so you have a twin, and then your brother's older, younger.
Caitlin Hackett:
A younger. We have a younger brother named true, and they are an angel and the best thing in the world. And then my sister and I we are five minutes apart, I mean it's older, five minutes of only child done.
Micah Riot:
I'm sure that you hold that over. Her Wisdom Is similar type of person. Is she like artistic and sensitive and introverted?
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, but in very, very different ways than me, I'd say, although increasingly I think I've realized like we we really are the same. It just manifests a little differently with her. She's very creative. As children we spent all of our time drawing together and I would say when we're young she was a better artist than I was, but we both we drew constantly. Our parents could just sit us down with a pile of paper and we would draw and tell stories together and pass the drawings back and forth and collaborate on them and finish each other's drawings and, yeah, she was really good. She went a slightly different route. She wound up becoming a graphic designer. So when I went to college for fine art, she went to college for graphic design and now she's a product designer.
Micah Riot:
Where is she living?
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh, we're all in Oakland, so she's in East Oakland. My little brother is in West Oakland. Sweet yeah, we've all gathered.
Micah Riot:
Do you do other art related crafts or hobbies that are not like 2D? I mean, tattooing is kind of 3D, but you know what I mean, yeah. Artistic endeavor.
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh, I used to do more these days I don't as much. I used to really like sculpting little objects with like sculpt the in clay. It's actually something my sister and I did growing up. We would sculpt minatures. We're obsessed with minatures. We had a huge doll house where no dolls lived, only tiny glass animals Dwelled there and we would sculpt tiny slices of pies and little tiny cast iron pans, a little tiny eggs and tiny chairs. So I love sculpting, but I've I've definitely kind of fallen out of that. I Love storytelling. I think a lot of my work has a narrative nature because of that and I'm a D&D player and a DM and I love building worlds and designing monsters and Creating gods and in vast stories. I love collaborative storytelling in particular. I've never been a very competitive person, so actually growing up I hated board games, but now as an adult I really love that. There's a lot of collaborative games and obviously any kind of collaborative storytelling Really appeals to me. So I think I get a lot of creative. Probably my Real creative outlet now is storytelling and D&D and running games. I think that's the place where I get the kind of creative bliss that I used to get as a kid from drawing and painting. But now that drawing and painting has become the labor that I do, I don't get the same euphoric kind of joy from it, whereas with the storytelling work that I do, I it just. It makes me feel so connected to the world, it makes me so excited. I Will stay up all night, I'll get an idea and just be writing notes on it and I can't wait to like build a world that my friends get to engage with and create stories that make them feel Special and powerful and connected. So it's, it makes me so happy.
Micah Riot:
That's amazing. What if you had a few more lifetimes to fill with jobs? What, what else would you do? We'll be like you other, like two or three lifetimes of types of work that you would do.
Caitlin Hackett:
That is such a good question. I love that question. Oh, if I had enough lifetimes to fill, I think I would spend one, probably as a biologist. That was the other route in life I considered to. I love wildlife, biology, I love microbiology. I would have loved it. I sort of see it as like the branch in my path. You know, I chose to go to art school but I also, when I was touring colleges, was debating, studying biology, and I wound up choosing to go to Pratt in New York to study art and I declined my acceptance To UC Santa Cruz where I would have probably studied the sciences, and I always think of that as the path not taken and I like to think of some Fragmented mirror universe where I took the other path. And there's some other, caitlin Hackett, who became a scientist. I could for sure see a lifetime spent doing that, if given more lifetimes. Yeah, I think I would love to Travel the world and be like a chef and make food, because I love cooking, I love creating food, I love making food for other people. It's definitely one of the things that satisfies me the most is feeding people and probably writing. I know I could still do that. I sometimes have to remind myself that life is not over, that you could always start over. You could always Begin another lifetime within your own lifetime, and in some ways I guess I did that by switching careers at you know, 35, 36. But I do think I have to constantly remind myself that it is in fact not too late. If I wanted to entirely change my entire life again, I could simply pick up something new and start over.
Micah Riot:
It's like mostly true, you know it's like living in late-stage capitalism, as you said, like there's no, I mean depends on your Set up in your family, but like if you don't have a safety net, like you have to Kind of like hustling to make that money to pay that rent. But yeah, and I think as an idea it's, it's definitely true that one could switch careers, like midlife, no problem.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, logistically speaking, financially there's definitely the struggle of making that jump, but I think, having already Kind of done it once, it makes me feel as though it would be more possible. With everything that happened in like the last three years, it's like okay, yeah, I did Like hit rock bottom at dead broke and, of course, tattooing is very in line with what I'm already doing. It's not that big of a jump, but I was very close to going back to college for the sciences, so I sometimes think about that as well. If I had taken that route again like again I picked art again when I had the choice, I chose art but I Do sometimes think about the fact that, even though everything bottomed out, I have somehow Crawled my way back up again.
Micah Riot:
Yeah, okay. Um. Well, since you told me you like to cook what's your, what's like a common dinner that you've been making yourself like in the last Little while that you're like, this is this is my go-to Dinner that I'm making.
Caitlin Hackett:
I've been on a big cauliflower kick so I've been doing curried cauliflower and chickpeas. I'm primarily vegetarian so I cook mostly vegetarian. So For the last week I had bought like a couple big heads of cauliflower they're like cheap and they last a long time and I've just been doing like curried cauliflower with chickpeas. Last night I made Orzo in vegetable broth and then added in the cauliflower and the chickpeas and tomatoes. Oh it was so good. I have been on that kick for a whole week but before that I was on a big risotto. You know, it's winter, it's risotto season, so I was on like a mushroom risotto kick for a little while. And then I my whole family makes fun of me excited the same thing for breakfast every day and have for probably eight years. But I have a One of those Trader Joe's cowboy quinoa veggie burgers on a bed of spinach with a fried egg and then whatever vegetable I have like, usually bell peppers sauteed on the side, and I pretty much have that for breakfast every single day.
Micah Riot:
I love to hear that, because I'm a big proponent of a savory breakfast and and people are like I have a bowl of cereal right, like they're used to this thing. And I like you're eating sugar for breakfast, that's like so bad for your Blood sugar. And like, just, you're not setting yourself up for the For a day of energy, and they're like, well, it's not sweet cereal, it's like the. I'm like no, it's still. Yeah, we eat a savory breakfast with protein and stuff. So I'm happy to hear that you do that. That's a really interesting Breakfast. Like what if you don't have a Trader Joe's around where you are? Or like what if you don't get yourself to it? Then what do you have for the patty?
Caitlin Hackett:
I'll usually find alternative patties if I have to go somewhere else, usually like a black bean patty, any kind of sort of like. I like the ones that are higher in protein, so I don't usually get this sort of like potato ones, but I really like like a black bean patty and any will do. I really like the Trader Joe's Cowboy quinoa ones because they get really crispy on the outside when you pan fry them. Um, but any will do, and I definitely do branch out to others and every once in a while I'll have like a fully different breakfast. Billy, he said it's almost always savory. I'm hypoglycemic, so if I don't eat protein in the morning I'm pretty much useless by afternoon.
Micah Riot:
So Well, do you know how many grams of protein that thing has?
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh, I'd have to check Um, I Wonder. I think it's like 15 grams of protein, that's really good. Oh, but yeah, it's pretty high, which is part of why I like it. I've been thinking about cutting eggs out of my diet and going vegan, but it would be hard for me because I do eat a lot of eggs and I am a creature of habit, I that I love that breakfast so much so.
Micah Riot:
Okay, I'm gonna pivot us because we don't have too much more time, but I'm really curious about how you're managing Making all the art that you make and all the different drafts, I'm sure and you know getting line work out of your drawings Without an iPad. So this is a new thing for me. I started using my iPad about a year ago and I, like now, can't imagine not using it. So how do you do without an iPad?
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, because I worked traditionally prior to getting into tattooing. I have still been drawing all my designs traditionally and I'll then scan them in and then work on them in Photoshop. And I do have Wake-up tablet or Wacom I'm not totally sure how you pronounce it that my ex-husband left me. He was a photographer and I used to use it to help him retouch his photos from photo shoots and so I had. I did know how to use like Photoshop for digital editing and I knew how to use the tablet to like alter Photographs. So I've been using Photoshop and that tablet and I'll take either the ink to drawings that I've completed and I'll scan them in and sort of alter them digitally that way, or I'll take like a graphite sketch that I've drawn on paper and scan it in and then Essentially ink it digitally in a way that I can then like play around with a little bit more. It's obviously with the digital tools you can really make sure that the piece is gonna fit whatever body part that you're working on, and I have been considering getting an actual iPad to work on, because obviously with the Wacom, when I plug it into my laptop there is a little bit of that delay. It's not like you're not drawing directly onto the screen like you would with a lot of the tablets. So it can make it a little frustrating sometimes when I'm trying to like ink in a piece or alter a piece. But yeah, for now I'm still kind of doing an old school. I'm still just scanning in my sketches and doing my best. I have had both Hannah and one of our my friends who used to work the shop in the Koto have both offered to give me Tablets that they're no longer using. I think as they see me struggling and are like oh, you could make your life a lot easier so I might take them up on it one of these days. I think I still have a perverse sense of pride in the fact that I draw Traditionally. I love paper so much. I love the feeling of paper. I love the feeling of the texture, the like scrape of the pen over the texture of the paper. Maybe that's why the movement of the needle through skin is so satisfying. I think there's an echo there.
Micah Riot:
So no, I hear you, and I also prefer to draw something on paper, but then I'll take a picture of it with my iPad To the line work on it.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, I love that methodology. I think that's that's probably what all end up doing as well. There's just something about sketching on paper like that, like you're saying.
Micah Riot:
Very true and you know, I had to get one of those like I Thought I was like, oh, the iPad. Like years ago, when I first bought my iPad, I was like it needs something like a screen protector, that it feels like paper. And then the time there wasn't anything like that, I was like business idea, because I'm not interested in like hiring Some factory in China to make things like that and keeping track of that. But now there's so many options, so yeah, that I got one. It's not probably the best one, but it does help with that little scrappy.
Caitlin Hackett:
More a bit of that paper sense.
Micah Riot:
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Hackett:
It does it like anchors you when you're sketching, I think.
Micah Riot:
Yeah, yeah.
Caitlin Hackett:
It is. It's cool to talk to someone else who does that. Almost everyone else at the shop just sketches straight into their tablets and they do incredible work, so it's obviously really working for them and I can definitely see the benefits of working on a tablet where you can draw right on the screen and not having to do sort of this like transfer with the wake-up and everything. So, that'll probably be one of my investments coming up, that and I'm I'm hoping to maybe try out a couple of different machines that Makoto recommended. So we'll see how that goes.
Micah Riot:
Well, I'm gonna go back to the beginning of our session when I'm like, when I'm editing this, I'm gonna take down notes about the machines you mentioned, because I want to also give those tips to my apprentice and also for myself, like I'm ready.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, yeah we. Makoto, who used to work at Old Crow with me, and then Sarah, who I think on Insta goes as the French Sarah. She moved back to France so neither of them are at the shop anymore, but both of them had used the Cheyenne Hawk Thunder and they both do work. That really resonated with me. Sarah did a lot of like illustrative birds and plants, and then Makoto does kind of everything. She's very multibluetated but obviously a lot of really beautiful line work, and both of them were like oh, you'd probably like this, even though it's not a specialist. And so and they were right I have really liked it, so your apprentice might dig it too, and it is lightweight, which I have appreciated with my little bird wrists, since I have not really gotten myself into strength training yet.
Micah Riot:
Yeah, yeah, I think it's just, it's just better, you know, it's like there's no need to overstress your body, and there's, yeah. There's like make your way as easy as possible.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, isn't it so fascinating, like? As a tattoo artist, you're faced with mortality in so many different ways. Like, not only do you feel the strain in your body constantly, like in your back and your shoulders and your eyes and your wrists and your fingers, like but also the fact that we're working. You know, art making is like a form of immortality, but when you're working in tattoos it's actually such a mortal form of art because the tattoo will die when the body dies and I. It's an interesting way of creating art, having gone from a world where I'm making paintings that I hope will last for hundreds of years after I'm dead to now being honestly obsessed with this idea of making work that is mortal and then also feeling so deeply the mortality of my body and the pressure of my body and thinking all the time how many years do I have in me to do this physically? Whereas I always thought like I could, I can paint in watercolors, probably up until the day I die, Even if I'm bedridden, even if I lose use of my hands, like I could use my mouth to hold a brush. I could paint until the last breath, but tattooing feels as though it has a time limit, like the pressure of the body makes it feel as though there's a time limit, and I'm sure you have a very different perspective on that because you've been doing it for so much longer than me. But just as someone who's doing this in my late 30s and like really feeling the physicality of it and being someone who thinks a lot about mortality and death and aging, it's fascinating. I'd be curious actually to know like your thoughts on that, as someone who's been tattooing and working with bodies and working within your body.
Micah Riot:
Yeah it's. I have a totally different perspective on it because I never was a painter. That wasn't anything that ever appealed to me. In fact, when I was starting to tattoo, I was like how can I be a good tattoo artist if I'm not a painter? Because that seems the first thing people do and they go from painting to tattooing as a practice. Right, they paint as kids, as teenagers, they maybe get an art school education and they tattoo. And my mentor at the time, one of them, the owner of Black Blue, her work is much more abstract and she loves Idux. Said enough, you know Idux's work.
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh, I think, yeah, I think I've seen them.
Micah Riot:
Yeah, and it's all it's. It's pretty abstract and the art she would make, also with her hands, was more abstract and like big pieces of wood, like put together and like metal bits. And I was like, ok, there's a space in the tattoo world for people who are not illustrative artists. And of course, when I started I did everything. But you know, it was right away that sense of like I'm making this piece of art for you on you and you're taking it away with you. You know I'm talking to other people at the shop. I remember people being like God, I just I wish I could keep my art. Like I don't want to give my art away, like I love my art.
Caitlin Hackett:
I want to keep it.
Micah Riot:
I'm like I don't want to keep it, I don't want anything to do with it after it's done, like I'm happy that I make it and someone else is happy and they take it and they leave. Because for me that like one to one relationship and that like ephemeral nature of it is is why I love it. You know, it is like it changes, it ages, it fades, it spreads, and I love all of that about it.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, I think that's really beautiful. I think that's maybe something that draws me into tattooing more and more. I love that, the idea of the ephemerality of it as an art form and the idea that the whole process of it is, yeah, like you said, letting go, like you're letting it go and you're taking joy and letting it go and knowing that the art you are creating is, more so than almost in your other art form, a collaboration with your client and a collaboration with the universe that you no longer have control of once it walks away and time and sun and age will do what it wants to the thing that you spend, you know, hours diligently crafting.
Micah Riot:
But I kind of love that.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, it's the mortality of it, I think, is really beautiful. I love the way that you talked about that. It's yeah, it is ephemeral, and that's, I think, part of what makes it more special.
Micah Riot:
Thank you and I, you know, I also like I made this little episode this week about the journey versus the destination of going on the tattoo journey to get the tattoo. I don't know if it made a lot of sense to other people because it was late when I was making it. I was like am I just rambling, like is anyone going to understand what I'm saying? But for me, like you know, like my best friend was somebody I tattooed early on. My partner was somebody I tattooed and then we got together shortly after that. My you know, somebody I tattooed now just texted me the other day and they were like thank you so much. I am loving the connection I'm making with the therapist you recommended, you know, and so you know I have there's a, there's a couple of folks who are now married, like kind of long term, happily married because I introduced them. So the, the journey of like your connection with your tattoo artist is so much more than just like how to get to the final product of having the tattoo and that's like the weaving of the community, the weaving of the connections, is like so much a part of it for me that that's like, yeah, it's like 50%, 75% of the point of you know the this, this thing we do together, which is to then create the final product on your body Like. I hope that this process changes you, not just that the tattoo itself will be like an addition to your life.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, I love that. It is very collaborative, it is very community oriented and it is a way of adorning people's bodies that does more than just like create a static piece of art Like you are building a community with every person that you meet. It is amazing to think of people coming back throughout the years and these dynamics that you get to build with them over time. Even just in the one year I've been working, I already have had a few clients who've been in three, four or five times and I already I like have gotten to watch like one of them go through a fertility process over the course of the year and like just had to cancel her big tattoo project because she just found out she's pregnant and like, yeah, how amazing, how deeply human. I loved being a traditional artist and I still love making traditional art, even though I think some of my relationship to that was spoiled by the really intense pressure that I was put under in order to like support myself and support my husband For so many years. It's kind of nice to enter this new industry with this new energy at a time in my life when I'm really particularly interested in friendship and community and collaboration, and to find you know, fortunately enough, that there is, in fact, a community that's waiting there and a lot of connections to be made that, yeah, go beyond just the art on the body and the ink and the skin. You know, whatever sort of witchcraft we're doing with blood and ink and needles, is also this beautiful moment of like connecting with other people in a way that, as someone who is pretty introverted and who spent a lot of years both working alone from home and also dealing with a lot of like issues in my relationship in life, as sort of this like white knight, like solo figure, it's such a relief to sort of like lift that mantle and enter a space where not only am I the novice who gets to learn, who gets to ask questions, who does not have to be perfect, but, yeah, also there's people. You open the door and the there's people on the other side.
Micah Riot:
Yes, exactly, and they will. They will be there. That's the thing you know. It's like you make these connections and that that's it's for life, even if you're not like in touch with them. Every you know every month, whatever. Yeah, this is. I feel like this is such a beautiful development for you, like this really feels like a fresh start for you and like the precise ways you've needed it, and I'm happy to hear about that.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, it really has been. I'm infinitely grateful. I'll always be grateful to Hannah for having sent me that DM and kind of opened open that doorway, even if I, you know, didn't love it at first it's. It's been such a path of falling in love and, like you said, so much about falling in love with the people that I work with and the people who I've created art for. So, yeah, I'm so grateful.
Micah Riot:
Hannah is a very smart person and knows gold when she sees it. That is, that is for sure, true.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, she's great. She's so funny. I love her. She's so sharp in a way that I'm like not sharp and I love that sharpness.
Micah Riot:
Very, yes, very different also from my set of skills. What's so? I ask everybody this question. I try to remember to what's a small thing that's been making you happy lately.
Caitlin Hackett:
Oh gosh, I feel like there's been a whole bunch of things lately, but I think in particular yeah, probably like the the littlest thing that's happening this week and it's. It's very mundane, but I'm finally replacing the curtains in here that my cat has absolutely shredded and I just. They just actually arrived yesterday morning, but I was at work all day yesterday, but today I'm home and after this I'm going to hang them and move the curtain rods. These curtain rods were here when I moved into the apartment and so they're at top of window level and I want to take them up. We have high ceilings. I want to take them up to the ceiling height. So, new curtains, it's going to be great.
Micah Riot:
Please send a picture and I will post it as part of my little I will take a before and after. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I so appreciate your time and energy and openness and being just being willing to talk so frankly about your inner world and all the things that have been happening for you.
Caitlin Hackett:
Yeah, thank you so much, Micah. I was so looking forward to this. I remember meeting you really early on in my apprenticeship when you came in to get tattooed, and I've been listening to the podcast since then and this has just been really nice. You have such a beautiful perspective on the world and the work and, yeah, I was really honored that you asked me to be on, so, thank you.
Micah Riot:
Thank you.