Courtney Perkins

Courtney Perkins is the creator of the now legendary astrology meme account @notallgeminis. With a dedicated & rambunctious following of over half a million followers, Courtney’s incisive wit & sense of humor quite literally have me rolling. I especially appreciate her honestly when it comes to producing “total fucking shit,” accepting it and moving on. Here,  her humble attitude, humor, and incredible work ethic provide insight in what success looks like on a day-to-day basis.

How would you describe what you do? 

I make memes! Mostly centered around astrology! That’s the simplest way to describe it. What that actually entails is posting daily Instagram stories and posts, along with Twitter content, and then everything that goes into the back end of how I can actually fund being a content creator, which is a lot of emailing with media outlets and brands.

How do you deal with the continual ebb and flow of “success” as a creative person?

It’s not easy, especially because my career is so tech-driven that I am constantly presented with real data that measures my success - views, clicks, follows, unfollows. I don’t think it’s very helpful for the psyche to be so aware of the day-to-day consequences of what you do online; it mostly just encourages a heightened, anxiety-inducing amount of self examination, which really just breeds narcissism. That said, none of my work is precious to me and that has been essential to my sanity. If something fails, fine, and if something soars, amazing. Humor is so subjective, and there are so many factors that go into whether or not something you do will be well-received. I feel best during the phases when I’m feeling very inspired, and creative blockages really get to me.

When is a time you felt really successful? Or a time you felt like you failed?

When I got asked to write my first paid article. When Frank Ocean followed me on Instagram. When my parents talk about me. I get little joys out of feeling moments of respect from the artists and people I really care about in the world, knowing that maybe something I wrote made them smile.

Failure is harder. I feel failure most on a moral level - times I should’ve seen something coming, or known better, or been more inclusive and aware, or not made that risky joke. It’s very easy to be defensive about failure on the internet because the attacks come from people you don’t know; you can insist to yourself that they don’t know you, or that your intentions were good. I try to remind myself that that’s bullshit. If you’re defensive about something, it touched a nerve. If it touched a nerve, it’s worth investigating. I’ve learned a lot in the last two years and it has been almost entirely through fear and failure and fuckups. 

What is your biggest struggle as a person in creative industry?

I feel out of my league with money stuff, as a freelancer, a young person, a woman. Creative lulls can really fuck me up. If I feel like I can’t think, or I don’t have any new ideas, or I just don’t feel funny, then I can get very depressed and stall for weeks. Then it’s like, eventually inspiration hits and I’m golden. But the times when it’s like, oh man I’ve got nothing, it feels like I’m just bad at my job. 

What is your daily routine? Your weekend routine?

I’m an early riser. In the morning, I wake up, check messages, put up daily polls on Instagram, walk my dog, make coffee, make breakfast, and sit down in my nook for the day. Usually I try to get a post or two up earlier in the day than later, and in the meantime it’s a lot of emailing with the people I freelance for about what I’ll actually be doing. I just launched a merch website, and so that has been the other part of my time recently - dealing with those orders. Usually I have TV on in the background, partially because I always need new content for my account and I’ll look for screenshots as they come. Right now it’s Gilmore Girls, and I’m desperate for Rory to break up with Dean. I usually stop working anywhere between 5-9 depending on the day, and then my boyfriend and I almost always watch a movie before bed. I’d be lying if I said it was a perfect routine; usually the nights that end at 9PM are related more to the 3 hours of being on Twitter in the afternoon than to my amazing work ethic. 

My weekends are kind of the same, just looser. What can be difficult with setting boundaries is that the internet doesn’t sleep. People always want to be entertained. Still, I try to establish weekends as separate for the sake of my own sanity. My mornings are usually the same, with the polls and everything, but I think the difference is that I don’t check my phone as much. 

How do you motivate yourself to actually get things done and/or maintain some level of productivity? 

The routine does help - the structure of having one thing I do consistently every day: my stupid fucking Instagram polls. Even if I can’t write an article, can’t make a meme, can’t reply to emails, I can still create those polls and that’s something. Sometimes it’s nice to just make total fucking shit and accept that that’s all you can offer the world for the day. You have to make shit in order to make anything good. Otherwise, how would you know the difference? There have been times when I’ve made memes about lacking productivity, about feeling isolated, about depression, about banging my head against a wall because there isn’t a creative thought in my head today, that have done surprisingly well! I’m regularly pleasantly surprised by my followers’ humanity. 

How do you manage the stress/anxiety that’s inevitable with putting yourself out there?

At this point, I feel essentially nothing when I click post, unless it’s important or new to me. Of course I’m going to religiously check the reactions to even my worst work, but it’s rare that I post something without knowing how it will be received. There are things I’ve learned to toe the line on, and that’s disheartening but just part of being a public figure. I miss the honesty of being a smaller account, but when my account expanded from being for my 40 friends to a couple thousand people in a few months, I received a lot of swift and sudden judgement for posts I had made that were essentially inside jokes. That was stressful. I had a lot of panic attacks when my account blew up. I needed a therapist so badly. 

How do you know when it’s time to rest?

When my eyes hurt. When my ass is sore from sitting on the couch all day. When my feet fall asleep because I haven’t been moving. When there isn’t a single original thought in my head and I know it. If I’m tired, I’m just going to put out garbage, and sometimes it’s essential garbage because contracts and posting schedules exist, but I really, really, really don’t like putting out garbage. So it’s better if I log off when I hit that point. 

How do you manage the internet/social media?

Honestly I think it manages me a lot of the time. 

Do you collaborate, and if so, what’s your collaborative process like? 

I collaborate on occasion, but not really. I’m too much of a control freak, and I like that the majority of my page is original content. It’s a source of pride that all of those posts really are my work. The astrology community on both Instagram and Twitter is pretty tight knit though. We’ve got fun group chats for admins where we’ll  talk about everything that’s going on, from Instagram beefs to what’s happening in the stars.

What’s your big dream? Do you have one? How do you set goals/set yourself up to achieve?

I’m too indecisive for a capital-B Big Dream. I’d like to smoke a blunt with Rihanna and talk to her about her Pisces moon. I’d like to have coffee with Mike Schur and just ask him for writing advice. I’d like to have Paris Years. I don’t know if my big dreams have much to do with my career. I can pivot. I just want to see the world. 

How do you deal with people not liking you, liking your ideas or being jealous of you? 

Not well! I think my birth chart is incredibly badly suited to being disliked! It would only be worse if I were a Libra sun! People not liking me personally is a day-to-day thing of if I am going to be sensitive and sad about it, or if I’m going to be a little troll bitch about it. If people don’t like my ideas, I often get angry and have to rant to my boyfriend because I think my ideas are well researched, even if they’re poppy. If people are jealous of me… that is a random ass concept to me. It’s not something I ever think about. When I hear about people I know in real life, actual friends, being jealous of me, I feel so sad. It just makes me want to hang out with them and show them that my life is very normal and relatively unchanged. When professional astrologers are jealous of me, I can’t comprehend it. I get that they just want the platform to relay their own ideas, ideas that are probably way more informed and spiritual and cool than mine, but to me it’s like… I’m a dumbass! Why would you ever need to talk over me? Obviously you deserve more respect than I do! I get that! There’s no need to be mean to me about it; I respect you more anyways! 

For more of Courtney follow her on Instagram

This interview was conducted in May, 2020