Minisode: Make It. Break It. Reset It.

In this mini-episode of The Secret Life of TK Dutes, TK shares a story time about how creativity and community helped her find her way back to herself.

Burned out, depressed, and desperate to get off the laptop, TK started making functional art just to keep her hands busy.
What began as an exercise in avoidance turned into an unexpected metaphor for her own life and marked a turning point.

The episode also features listener call-ins about healing, reflection, and rebuilding.

📞 Call The Secret Life Line: [phone]
🎙️ Or send a voice note to philosfuturemedia[at]gmail[dot]com

Produced by Keisha “TK” Dutes
Post-production audio by C.

More minisodes and behind-the-scenes moments to come.

**Coming Soon: Episode 2: An Invitation to Sit**

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Creators and Guests

Host

Keisha "TK" Dutes

Host/ Executive Producer

Editor

C.

Multidisciplinary artist/ Post Production Support

What is The Secret Life of TK Dutes?

The Secret Life of TK Dutes is the story of what it means to become when the system won’t let you be. One woman sets out into the world, looking for ways to get ahead as an Artist. Producer. Daughter, Sister. Partner.

Together with those who bear witness, TK throws away the scripts and looks for answers, in airports, dentists offices, across borders.

Each episode is a new world, pioneering the art of loose autobiography to build the picture of a life in a community of voices.

What happens when you stop doing what is expected of you and start doing YOU?

A better life can be a hustle. It doesn’t have to be a secret.

TK: 01:16

Before we dive into today's story time, I wanna let you in on something special. In between our main episodes, I'll be sharing minisodes, behind the scenes moments, and story times like this one. So if you remember episode one, part two, doctor Rawls encouraged me to tap into my creativity and harness that cleansing anger into something beautiful. So today, I'm gonna share the journey of how my friends and my desire for something more helped me rediscover my creative spark and try something new. Discovering or rediscovering like that childlike self that Doctor.

TK: 02:03

Rawls was talking about. I didn't even know I was doing it until I started doing it, right? I was so desperate. I was so desperate to be off the computer because that's the source of that was the source of all of the stress, all of the pain. Like, that's what I I put in my head.

TK: 02:24

I look at the laptop, problems on fire, emails, sickening. Like, literally at that time period in my life, that's when I decided to turn off notifications. I do I no longer have notifications on for Gmail, for for Slack. Like, I check it when I'm on the computer. I don't have none of that shit being pinging on my phone.

TK: 02:49

And it's because I needed to get off the the laptop so desperately and out of the the the line of fire. So I said to myself, what could I do with my hands that, you know, would keep my hands dirty to not open the laptop? Because addiction is real. So we were circling COVID times, and then and then this extended into COVID times. But, like, I saw people doing ceramics.

TK: 03:22

Ceramics was hot. Ceramics was the hottest baby on the block. Like, the cutest little butt. Like, you just wanted to take ceramics and squeeze its cheeks. Right?

TK: 03:32

Everyone want a little ceramic. Let me get a little ceramic. Right? Like, yo. So I'm like, yeah.

TK: 03:38

Yo. I'm gonna get into ceramics then boom, lockdown. Okay. So now we're in lockdown, can't go nowhere. I went online and I said, well, what's a craft that I could do that is handy, but also will give me the satisfaction of having an object?

TK: 03:55

I love functional. I love functional objects. So I found this craft. I learned about resin, but I also learned about acrylic resin. So resin, as we know it, is like it's plastic, basically.

TK: 04:11

Two things, you mix it together, it sets and it makes a plastic item. Cool. You can add colors. You can add things and all that. That's great.

TK: 04:20

But I was like, but I wanna get closer to ceramics. I wanna get something that you can you know, like, you go feel it and, like, you can, like, hear the you can hear the plate. You can hear the cup when you tap it. So I found this thing called acrylic resin, eco resin, jasmine. I there's a lot of different name, aqua resin, and it's a powder, and it's a liquid.

TK: 04:40

So this material actually gets very hard in, like, one hour, thirty minutes to an hour. Then I got a bunch of molds, molds of plates, molds of cups, molds of this and that and the third. Right? I went online. I bought, like, a little kit just to see if I liked it.

TK: 04:54

I loved it. I loved it, y'all. So my hands are dirty, and I bought this kit, and I got the colors, and I have a three tier cart. And on top, because I lived in a small a smaller apartment than where I live now, I had a a cutting board and I put it on the top part of the cart and the cutting board was my surface. That's it.

TK: 05:19

That's all the room I had for this cutting board was my surface. I start making these items. I love making these items. It also involves like colors and sanding because when you sand, you can see what's underneath and that's a whole nother journey and it takes time. So now I'm too busy to look at the laptop.

TK: 05:37

Right? Now I'm reclaiming my time. So okay, bet. One day I'm chilling, I'm making my stuff on a Saturday. I'm showing it on the internet, no big deal.

TK: 05:48

I get up and I didn't watch my step. And I stepped on something that I thought was finished, but it's not finished anymore because I just broke it. I stepped on the shit. Goddamn, what am I gonna do now? So I'm looking at these broken pieces of plate.

TK: 06:06

And I said, well, what will happen if I put the broken piece back in the mold and I put more material in there? Boom. I found my aesthetic family and it became this I just started making shit to break shit. Making shit to break shit to reset shit. And then as I go on this journey of, like, creation and getting back to myself and finding my inner child and showing people and show and tell, I realize I like making shit.

TK: 06:38

I like breaking shit. I like putting it back together. And is that a metaphor for my life or what? I like making shit. I like breaking shit.

TK: 06:50

Right? Making my life. I like making things. I like breaking shit, I e disrupting. Right?

TK: 06:58

Like, you know, I'm gonna come into some workspace, and I'm gonna fuck it up. Right? In a good way. And if you don't see that it's a good way, then you've missed out. Right?

TK: 07:06

I'm gonna make shit. I'm gonna break shit, but I'm gonna reset shit. I'm gonna put it back together. I'm gonna like this podcast, I'm gonna create a team that's gonna put this life back together for me in a way that I could fucking be proud of. Right?

TK: 07:21

Because the first iteration of this life, I wasn't wasn't thrown so thrilled with. Right? Then I had to come in and fuck my own shit up. Right? Like all the hardship, all the stress, all that, and then put it back together.

TK: 07:36

That's us. Right? That's this podcast. That's the producers. That's everybody.

TK: 07:41

But I'm so blessed to have people around me, my community, my friends that love me, that that wanna see me win, that they don't wanna see me sick. And that time was very that was a hard time. I would like post things online and I think people were worried about me. But people were like, listen, TKs, do you want me to send you Venmo? Do you want me to send you a sandwich?

TK: 08:06

Do you want me I had a couple sandwiches because people were like, yo, I want to help you. I want I want you to feel better today. I was I was severely depressed. And this creating, crafting and people reaching out helped me so much. So one of my friends, Charlotte Michelle, she said, she texted me and she said, Girl, I'm at IKEA and I see something I think you could use.

TK: 08:29

And I happened to be starting this journey to move to this new apartment. And I said, What is it? She shows me a picture of this table, a wooden table with two leaves that extend outward. And I go, Oh shit. She's like, Do you want it?

TK: 08:47

Like, do you want me to get the table for you? I said, How much is it? I'll send you the money. And I didn't expect her to say it was like a couple $100, right? She goes, No girl, do you want me to get it for you?

TK: 09:00

And I said, wait, as a present, as

Caller 4: 09:03

a

TK: 09:04

gift, I'm not gonna say no. So she got it for me. Now this table changed the game for TK for my creativity. And this was put like, the table gave me a surface to play on. I went from the size of a cutting board, like a regular 99¢ store cutting board.

TK: 09:29

That's the size I was working off of to a fucking like, I don't know what size it is, but like, I don't know, four feet. Like when you put up both leaves, next thing you know, I'm going ham. My creativity, my capacity to create 10x, right? So now I'm making different shapes. I'm experimenting differently.

TK: 09:50

Every day after work, my job was to make more shit. I had so many little things, little cups, little plates, little dishes, little hangable, you know, functional art, little weird experiments. I can't even explain it. So my capacity 10x because a friend saw that I needed a thing. I needed an outlet.

TK: 10:16

I needed to find my way back to myself. And then the following year after that, I had so many items that for my birthday, I decided to do a one day art exhibit. And I hung up all my things. It was the ultimate show and tell. This was like my refrigerator.

TK: 10:38

Welcome to welcome to the front of my refrigerator. Grab a magnet. I'm gonna make you look at everything. So me, see my creative partner, he helped me put it together. My girlfriend who I had just met, not just met, but like we had just started dating and you know, so she's seeing me in this like environment of like art and shit.

TK: 11:03

And I'm like, I'm not an artist. Well, I was that weekend child and she jumped right in. So like now I'm just seeing how I'm blessed with like people that like know me and love me and wanna help me. And they want to foster a different kind of creativity in me because something was getting lost. I was getting lost.

TK: 11:23

I was drowning. I was drowning. I was drowning. I was drowning. But not for long.

TK: 11:27

But not for long. I went from a cutting board to a whole table. Like, I was making stuff to breaking them on purpose. From falling apart to putting myself back together piece by piece, yo. And the wildest part was the more that I made those little plates, the vessels and all the other stuff, the more I remade myself.

TK: 11:53

The art show wasn't just an art show. It was me saying, I'm still here. I'm still creating. It might not be audio. It might need this it might be this new thing.

TK: 12:05

And in this new thing, I'm choosing myself. My people, they handed me a table. They gave me a little bit of space, and they reminded me that I still had something to give. And now that I know I can rebuild, I'm not afraid to start again. Let's go.

TK: 12:33

Alright, y'all. That's the story. That's that's what it is. But before I let you go, last time we chatted, I wanted to know how you were healing. Here's what a few of you had to say when you called me.

Caller 1: 12:50

Hey, It's C. Your Ace Bloom. How am I healing? Well, I can do a few things. Most importantly, rest, taking care of myself, my body, getting to nature, and of course create, make things.

Caller 1: 13:05

Sometimes it's just writing prompts. Sometimes it's tarot. And sometimes it's just paying attention to what triggers me. And things all pointed towards me having a clear line of thought. This

Caller 5: 13:21

is your girl, Jordan Knox. You know, one thing that's been helping me on my healing process has been really God all the time. Like and what that really looks like is everyday building, you know, building with my community creatively, strategically, technologically, and just understanding that this makes me feel great, you know, to to just grow and to learn more about myself.

Caller 3: 13:58

Hey, TK. Well, I'm healing through drawing and painting classes, and it really helps me to express myself and you know if you look at it a little bit more in-depth, know being able to say something that you might not be able to verbalise, it could just be on your mind and you just don't know how to say it. And also just being able to, you know, confront certain things, certain aspects of my life that I've been struggling to confront, like for example, life drawing, you know, I've been able to explore my relationship with my body even though I'm drawing somebody else. I don't know how it works, but that's what it does for me.

Caller 4: 14:48

It's Krishna. I'm healing from the corporate.

Caller 5: 14:51

And

Caller 4: 14:51

so what I do to do that is I am involved in a lot of things, like a lot of programs that are geared towards helping kids so that they don't make the same mistakes I made going into corporate America, and the things that have hurt me in that space. So being able to talk about whiteness in a way that I feel safe and that I know that other people can take, digest, and then move freely through the world. So that's how I'm healing, by giving back to my community and also I crochet. So those are my things.

Caller 5: 15:33

Hey, TK. This is Naomi. What's healing me currently, well, first of all, my therapist, my weekly therapy appointments with my black lady therapist. And it was so worth like the amount of time it took to find her because she's just so understanding and easy to relate to her. Like, I love her.

Caller 5: 15:53

She's great. Another thing that I find healing lately is trying to make gratitude and practicing gratitude a part of my everyday life. One way that I do that is by telling my friends that I love them when I speak to them on the phone. So like when I talk to my friend on the phone before we end the call, we tell each other we love each other, and this is something I've been doing, with with my friends. And also just spending time with people who I know love me and care for me is very healing to me.

TK: 16:29

Thanks to our callers, C, Jordan, KJ, Krishna and Naomi, we got self work, service to others, faith, using art to help you name what's going on inside, therapy and gratitude. Not a bad list at all. And if you want to share, I'm always there. Call me on The Secret Life Line at [phone] or email me a voice note at [e-mail]. This has been another story time in the secret life of TK Dutest, produced and shared by me, Keisha TK Dutest, with post production audio by C.

TK: 17:10

Hope you enjoyed it. Next episode coming soon. More minisodes, more behind the scenes, more becoming all on the feed. I'm out for real this time.