Well, I am kind of a smart ass and I came up with this:

Then I stumbled upon this very emotive collection of images of Angela Lansbury and asked the internet for help:

And then somehow, Al Gore’s internet brought me this gem:

So of course, I bought the first book in the series (there are like 65 or so of them!) and I bought the first two seasons of Murder, She Wrote because I haven’t seen it since I was a wee babe, and now, here we are. I had no clue that the elder millennials had so much love for Jessica Fletcher and Cabot Cove.

So here we are, I’m writing this blog post/article about my new found obsession and literary icon and asking fellow ‘stackers if they want to start an unofficial Murder, She Wrote fan club.

So I’ll leave you with this. I’m not sure how I will pull this off, but I am working on brainstorming some ideas to create a little space where fellow “Fletcherettes” can gather and help each other by proofreading each others manuscripts, or just being a soundboard to riff ideas off of. Maybe this is a Discord add on, or maybe its my subscriber chat… I don’t have it all figured out yet but it if it ever comes to fruition, it will be a very casual, supportive and creative space for artists and writers to connect.

If you have any ideas on how to execute this zany idea, I am all ears!

So, here’s the deal. I wrote this post back in March when I was leaving my Corporate job and I think I was a little scared back then. I think I was still under the influence of working in a cube and still brainwashed by all the “employee perks” that came with the job.

Now that I have some distance and a lot more confidence in my writing, I wanted to shake the dust off of this one and tell you all what I really think.

Originally shared March 03. 2026 (but now with MORE!)

Have you ever laid in bed and dreaded opening your eyes while the chirp of the alarm a few inches from your head urged you to wake the hell up and get ready for your 11 hour day babysitting grown people who have weaponized their incompetence? No? Just me?

Well, this is that story, so if you can’t relate to hating your job and wanted to disappear into the forest to escape the shackles of modern society, then I can tell you know, this post is not for you. If you’re still reading though, let me set the stage… I am in my early 40’s, a project manager for a BIG engineering firm and I hate my job. I hate everything about it, except for the pay — which that part is great (like six figures great); don’t get me wrong. But the money earned is as a major cost: My freedom, my happiness, my sanity, my tears.

I’ve been daydreaming about early retirement. I want to open a coffee shop and just serve drinks all day. I want to do real work. Like, REAL work where I create a thing, serve a thing, the customer enjoys the thing and we are done. Our client-customer relationship is over until they want me to make another thing for them.

Currently, my relationship with my “internal clients” (which thats code for co-workers who are above you on the rungs of the corporate cult ladder) takes forever to complete. We have Teams meetings about meetings. We have per my last emails to cover our asses and we have revision after revision after revision because one guy with a few letters behind his name had a “whiz bang” idea at the last minute.

It’s exhausting and I am exhausted and I literally hate every single moment of it. But you know what…

The best part of this week is that I am giving this place my two-weeks notice.

Before coming back to this post and revising, this is how I kicked it off back in March, 2026:

Life lately has been wild, to say the least. I’m excited to share some really BIG news about my little world. I am officially ‘retiring’ from my cubicle job and will be running a little coffee shop while also making more time for artsy stuff and enjoying living.

I had just given my two weeks notice a few days before and was honestly terrified. I was literally about to “throw it all away” to be a barista. Now, my dream was to open my own cafe somewhere in the vicinity of my homebase so that my early mornings would yield a shorter commute and that once the cafe door was locked up for the day, I’d have some time to live, ya know, live a life.

Things came to me in a slightly different package, I don’t technically own this cafe as it is an “employee benefit” — meaning, thats its a complimentary service offered to folks who work for the publisher three days a week, the tiny but mighty little 14’x16’ sized coffee shop lives in the lobby and it’s closed on the weekends, major holidays and I earn a salary and have health insurance, like really good health insurance at that.

Oh yea, did I mention I technically work for a publishing company? Insert squeal here.

Back in March, 2026 before actually working in the cafe, I had some hopes and dreams for the experience. Here is a snippet from my original version of this essay where I gush about all the great things ahead:

the dream has always been to build the coffee shop, but boy, did I get lucky, because this coffee shop already exists, its closed on the weekends due to its location AND in comparison to my cubicle gig (consisting of 11-hour days) I’ll “feel” like I am only working part-time since my typical work day will soon be just about 8 hours.

At the end of each day, I’ll be out the door early enough to enjoy some sunshine, and with it being just a jump away from home, the commute to work will be shaved down from 40 minutes to just about 6 minutes! Not to mention that it’s equally super close to the art studio, so I see lots of artsy stuff happening in my future (finally!).

I think I am dreaming, right? All of that seems way too good to be true.

For the most part, I would say that everything rang true to this hope, but of course, life finds a way and the art making wasn’t as abundant as I had hoped, and there was of course a major adjustment that I knew going into this whole thing but didnt realize just how old and tired my body was — the standing. I knew that my feet were going to HURT and another down side was that coffee making money isn’t exactly the same as mega-corp cubicle money, but at the time, I just kept thinking “life is way too short.”

My cubicle job kept be distracted, tired, frustrated and any chance of living outside in the real world was squashed. Even on PTO days I would get calls and texts about things that truly didn’t need me but because I was just a bottom feeder, it was my job to make my bosses job easier. Again, weaponized incompetence.

It was probably a month or so before I applied for the job to run the cafe at the publishing company, I was getting coffee with a mentor and he told me that just because ‘this’ place is a great place to work for some, doesnt mean its a great place for me and I’ll tell you what, that really opened my eyes to the realness around me. He also advised that I try to start teaching art again to see if that brought back a spark — which I tried to do that but it was a flop (maybe I’ll write about that another time).

After that meet up, the decision to leave Corporate America was made, I just didn’t realize it yet. I knew I needed some type of balance that let me experience these years of my life. I mean, afterall, whats the point of making all that money if I am too broken down and depressed to enjoy it, or I am on call 24/7 and can never get away from it long enough to take a fucking breath.

I felt zapped at the end of each day. I wasn’t making time for my hobbies, and my days in the studio had longer and longer stretches in between them. I think subconsciously, that mentor meet up rebooted me and gave me the ability to realize that I am the type of human who needs a ‘real’ job, doing real things. Helping and serving real people. I need a job that gives me the mental space, away from screens, to be inspired.

I know that my choice to jump ship on a “normal” life may be jarring for some, I mean, so many folks at the giant cube corp had no problem telling me that I was taking a major step back, and brought up plenty of what ifs, but I felt it in my soul that I was dying. I guess I wanna say this to you if you have gotten this far and if you are ever feeling off about your day-to-day life like I was; consider that the version of success that you’re currently eating may not be for you.

Find your bliss! Curate your life! Define success on your terms. We only get so many days on this floating rock, please go out and live them to the best of your ability. Coming back to this article with a few months of serving coffee under the belt has proven to me that life goes on after the 9 - 5 and that the money isnt everything, that taking a vacation and not spending half of it on email and teams is worth leaving the job alone. That doing good work at work and living a good life outside of it can be real if you are willing to invest in yourself first.

Just quit. just quit that job that’s killing you and get a blue collar gig. Go get a real job (like I did) and experience living.

Y’all its been way too long! I completed my last buggy tarot card way back in January. I hope that this long in between cards never happens again! My hope is to finish up this deck and get it printed so that I can use it (and possibly pitch the deck to publishers).

Interpretation:

In the traditional Rider Waite card, the Magician represents untapped potential and manifesting goals. He holds a scepter or candle to the sky, essentially making him a conduit for the Universe’s energy.

Biddy Tarot goes into a more in-depth look at the traditional card but something I wanted to share from the site are the keywords they used to describe this particular card: Manifestation, resourcefulness, power, inspired action, manipulation, poor planning, untapped talents.

In my buggy version, I thought that the firefly (or also known as a lightning bug) made sense to represent the central figure because of its ability to produce a glow as an internal chemical reaction. Which, to me is pretty magical. and kind of feels like that whole “the magic was in you all along” trope but, like way more scientific.

Emotionally, these little wonders (ps. they are not flies, they are actually beetles) mean a lot to me. I had never seen fireflies growing up but our first year living in KC, we were hanging out with some friends who have a great backyard and off in the distance, I saw what was probably 20-40 twinkling lights. Once it clicked that what I was witnessing was this little beetle, it kind of took my breath away.

I think that’s the magic of nature, its so small and its always there but sometimes you don’t always see it unless you are ready to see it. Maybe when I was a kid fireflies were all over the place and I just didn’t take the time to observe them, but at this phase of my life, seeing a miniature swarm of these little beetles after a move across the country kind of made me feel like I was embarking on the next chapter of my life and was going in the right direction.

Behind the Scenes:

I didn’t do as great of a job documenting my process on this one, but still, I wanted to share some behind the scenes looks at the fully analog process that goes into making each of these cards. My source materials are vintage magazines, paint, ink, my own illustrations done on watercolor or mixed media paper. It’s all cut out by hand and layered together with glue and then, bam, it exsists!

The theory: As women enter their forties, we have a second development of our frontal lobes.

You see, something happens to us when we climb over the hill and hit the big 4-0, and since this is related to women and medicine, I figured that we haven’t heard of this second brain developmental stage because, well… the women get it. The medical industry (yes, industry is my word of choice here) is kind of a joke for the ladies since every concern can conveniently be cured by losing 10 pounds, but I’ll touch on that later.

Getting back to my point, at forty-ish the woman who spent twenty years making herself smaller suddenly starts taking up space. The one who apologized for everything begins saying “no” — it is a complete sentence after all. Someone quits a job they've hated for decades. Someone else starts painting. A friend cuts off ten inches of hair and says she's never felt more like herself. In a man’s world these are hysterics but to the 40+ year old gal going through it, it just kind of makes sense.

Curiosity got the best of me and I started researching this theory, here I was carrying around unearned confidence like a man, thinking I was about to discover somewhere in a neuroscience journal there existed a paper about this very topic, but alas, I was completely wrong. Our brains do not go through a second redevelopment. Bummer.

While my little theory doesn’t hold an ounce of water, I happened to stumble upon the work of neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Mosconi, who studies the brain during menopause, and while she doesn’t confirm my theory, she did describe menopause as a neurological transition or “brain remodeling”. So, women don’t get a second awaking and development of our frontal lobes, but we do get a flood of hormones that dip and spike and make us feel completely out of sorts. Maybe the hormones unlock the gateway to this new outlook. Maybe. Or maybe there is something else at play here. Let’s venture back up to the top of this article, where I mentioned the medical industry and let’s bring up her sister: the beauty industry.

By forty we've spent decades being brainwashed by men and society to look, act and be a certain way. Literally, it's exhausting carrying around a version of yourself built entirely for someone else's comfort, but we do it, or we did it. I remember being a teen and getting magazines from the drugstore and looking at these layouts of perfect looking people and just knowing that I wasn’t going to measure up to that standard. Walking down the aisle of said drugstore also was product after product of emotional warfare telling us that we needed creams and pills with “anti” aging and cellulite properties. There were thick sticks of skin tone “cover ups” to hide our tired eyes and give us a “youthful glow.” But then one day something inside us shifts and we flip the switch and BAM, zero fucks are given from here on out. I don’t know about you, but I went from choosing comfort over style, practicality over desirability, I went from staying quiet to shouting and I definitely went from caring to not caring at all about other people’s opinions.

Now that I am in my forties, I am embracing a societal archetype that the mainstream would have you cast out or be ashamed to be associated with. She is THE CRONE!

These are women who have lived long enough to stop performing. The Crone doesn't care if she's beautiful. She isn't shrinking herself to fit inside someone else's story. She's making soup and vibing in her cottage, growing herbs in her garden and reading books by the fire. She is thrifting, aka collecting little treasures, and she has lived it and seen some shit, The Crone knows things. If I'm being honest... She sounds a like every version of womanhood I hope to become.

Now were at the part of my research and theorizing where I got the idea that maybe this “second phase of frontal lobe development” coincided with the Witch Trials; so I followed that rabbit hole. While It’s not disputed that history has always seemed uncomfortable around women like The Crone its confirmed that the folks hanged and burned in the witch trials were both young and old and even some men were considered witches. These were the women who lived outside the expected roles of wife and mother were often treated with suspicion. These were the village healers, midwives and widows. Women with knowledge, some without husbands, but all who only answered to themselves. While we called them witches like it was a bad thing, I’m pretty certain that what frightened people (aka men, aka authority) wasn't magic, it was independence.

I know I kind of went all over the place in this one, but I guess my Crone era is showing and I have a lot to say about this topic. I strongly believe that growing older isn't about becoming invisible but becoming visible to yourself for the very first time.

So... Was my theory right? No, not at all. Women don't grow a second frontal lobe development in our forties, at least, not according to science. Maybe menopause remodels the brain hormonally and maybe life experience remodels our ability to set firmer expectations and stop shrinking in the shadows. Maybe our confidence blooms and for the first time in decades we can hear our own voice over everyone else's. I don’t have all the answers, I actually don’t have any of them, but whatever it is... I don't think women disappear in midlife. First handedly, I feel like life is just beginning.

I think we just finally stop performing long enough to discover who we've been all along. And honestly? I kind of think that’s way cooler than growing our frontal lobes redeveloping.

When I first published this piece last year, I wasn’t sure anyone would read it, let alone care about my memories of growing up in a tiny trailer park in the conservative South, or about sneaking onto LiveJournal during study hall and late at night just to write my heart out.

To my surprise, some of you did.

Lately, I’ve found a little more confidence in my voice here, and I’ve realized that so much of what I’m writing is about nostalgia and the unexpected emotions that come with looking back at the internet I grew up with, the places that shaped me, and the person I was becoming. Revisiting this essay felt like a natural next step.

So I polished it up, added a few new memories, and decided it deserved another trip around the internet.

Originally published in August 2025 | Revised July 2026

As a teenager, I was keeping a deep, dark secret, one that would have made my already complicated teenage years even more miserable if anyone in my family had found out that I was secretly online.

Online, I was living my best life and making internet friends. I spent hours discovering a version of myself that wasn’t labeled a burden or a villain by the people raising me, and it felt really good to connect with people who were like me.

It was 1999 and I was a sophomore in high school. On this particular day, I was sitting in yearbook class designing layouts in PageMaker for our end-of-year publication. On this particular day, I skipped lunch to finish a spread when a friend rolled her chair over and casually asked me, “Hey, do you have a LiveJournal?”

That simple question changed my life. At the time, I had no idea, but looking back on it now, I can honestly say that LiveJournal became the gateway to my creative life. It was the first place where I felt free to express myself without a filter and where I discovered that writing was something I really enjoyed.

Just in case this is your first time here, let me give you a little backstory. Ya know, because some of the stuff I’m talking about doesnt seem that revolutionary, really, but for me it totally was.

I grew up in an incredibly conservative home. My grandmother raised me in our single-wide trailer in a ratty little trailer park in the South. She regularly searched my backpack under the assumption that she would find drugs or notes that implicated me as being a Satan worshiper, there wasnt a phone call that occured where she wasnt on the other house phone listening in to catch every word. She kept a close eye on just about everything I watched, read, and listened to. Her job, as she saw it, was to protect me from “the wrong influences.”

I do think she genuinely believed that the iron-fisted household she created would shape me into a respectable Southern Baptist girl and that her rules and restrictions would keep me out of trouble, I think she really hoped that I would quietly fall into line without questioning the big “why”, or worse questioning her authority.

Surprise: it didn’t.

Instead, it taught me how to disappear inside my own home. I learned early that it was safer not to have friends, to not to speak up, to always be working on homework and to always have an extra credit project on hand.

I learned how to tell whether she had a bad day before she ever said a word. I knew that asking to go to the movies or the mall would end with me being grounded before I’d even finished the sentence. By the time I entered high school, survival mode had become second nature.

Outside our screen door, though, there was hope for me. School was a safe haven and the internet was still young and seemed like it was broadcast in full technicolor. I soaked up every vivid hue I could find, in secret, of course, because at home everything felt black and white.

So, back to when I created my LiveJournal account during lunch while the yearbook spread for the chess club flickered in the background, I remember feeling a cool sweat gather at the back of my neck. I knew that if my grandmother ever found out, I’d probably lose what little freedom I had. (And if you’re wondering... yes. She eventually found it. But that’s a story for another day.)

The moment I clicked “Publish,” something shifted in me, I was officially a rebel and for the first time in my life, I had found a place that belonged to just me. LiveJournal didn’t just give me somewhere to write, it gave me proof that people like me existed. Kids who loved movies they weren’t supposed to watch and bands their parents didn’t understand and artsy teens who made things simply because they wanted to and who weren’t yet tainted by the monetization of everything. Growing up, my family had me believing I was the strange one, but ya know what, blogging dismantled that belief. Every new journal or community post I discovered made the world feel a little bigger.

As I got older and slowly created distance between myself and the life I’d grown up in, but I always found my way back to blogging. LiveJournal became Tumblr. Tumblr became Blogger. For a moment in time, I hosted my own website but, then life happened, work happened, responsibilities happened.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped documenting my little life and started sitting on the couch doomscrolling for hours, consuming carefully curated highlight reels of everyone else’s lives, served up to me via platforms that rewarded performance over authenticity. I didn’t know it then, but it was making me feel utterly depressed. The comparison game was hitting hard and I was just following along because it was the trend.

Lately, though, something came back to me. Maybe it’s the second development of the frontal lobe (I think this happens in our 40s, much like it does in our mid-twenties) but the short form view of the world I was catching from that little screen in my hand was kind of reminding me of the trailer park views I had as a kid. I definitely do not want to become an influencer, and I really don’t have some grand message for the world. But I miss the internet before everything became content. So I came back. I dusted off the idea of blogging again and eventually found this space, Substack.

I missed personal blogs, I missed browsing their blog’s sidebar (remember those!?). Substack kind of had that vibe, it definitely had the long form, storytelling element that I loved about Y2K blogging. Nothing shared back them was exceptionally profound and there certainly werent posts about posting strategies or how to optimize this or that. Substack has a little bit of that coaching influencer cringe but overall, I have to say, it kind of feels like home.

The older I get, the more I find myself returning to the things that first made me feel alive. It’s kind of a trend to go analog now, but thats really what it is…Watching movies on DVDs, writing long blog posts that will never go viral but might make one person feel a little less alone, journaling with a pen on paper, making ugly art in a sketchbook.

And yes, I realize there’s a certain irony in writing about living more analog on a digital platform, but I think that’s okay. Maybe Yesterthings Press isn’t about escaping the internet totally but more about reclaiming the parts of it that helped us all become ourselves in the first place.

I’m trying to build a slower, stranger internet like the one we had growing up. I think creative curiosity matters more than the algorithm and that those old blogs made us connect and find real friendships.

I just want a space where we get to live in color again, before everything became content.

Driving around in a car that’s older than Spotify, Pandora, and even the iPod has reminded me of a time when listening to music felt like an experience instead of background noise. Music wasn’t something an algorithm served up between podcasts and playlists, you really had to go looking for it.

One of my favorite parts of buying a cassettes and CDs was opening the case and flipping through the little booklet tucked inside. I think these little books were also my gateway to zines because they were filled with lyrics and thank-yous, tiny photos of the band behind the scenes. And don’t get me started on the album art. Chef’s kiss.

Long before I had the internet, they were one of the ways I discovered new artists and quietly fell in love with albums that felt like they belonged only to me. Back in the ‘90s, my hometown had a music store whose staff rivaled the knowledge and cool factor of the cast of Empire Records. No joke, you could walk in, hum a jingle from a commercial, and they’d somehow know exactly what song you were talking about. I know this because that’s exactly how I discovered Daft Punk.

I spent hours, literal hours, in that store whenever my family was having one of those rare weekends where life felt normal and I was allowed a small taste of girlhood. It didn’t happen often. But when it did, it felt magical. I’d disappear into one of the listening booths, put on a pair of oversized headphones, and explore music without worrying whether it was on the approved list back home. For a little while, I got to decide what I liked.

Looking back, I think that’s what I miss most about the pre-algorithm times, the ability to stumble upon and discover things by accident. I miss recommendations from people instead of platforms, I miss falling in love with an album because a stranger behind the counter said, “You should hear this.” Maybe that’s why the little cassette player in my Cabrio hit me harder than I expected, it kind of reminded me that some of the best parts of growing up happened when we were left to wander, browse, and let curiosity guide us to the things that would eventually become part of us.

So, in the spirit of those listening booths and handwritten mixtapes, I put together a little playlist of things I’ve been loving lately. Consider this my modern-day mixtape. I hope you find something unexpected.

📼 Watching:

• My So-Called Life

📚 Reading:

• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

• 1984 by George Orwell

✂️ Making:

• This Substack space a little more intentional

• A monthly zine called dAziE, I’m ironing out the kinks now and plan to share more soon (very excited!)

☕ Drinking:

• Nescafe Instant Espresso Iced Lattes with oat milk, at home on the weekends.

• Caramel Iced Latte with oat milk, at work

And honestly? I was just kind of sick of the whole parade, ya know? My DVD player rebellion wasn’t even meant to be nostalgic at the time. It was just me wanting to make my own choices again. But here we are.

It all started when I scrolled through every app on our TV and realized we rarely watched any of them. Instead, we spent more time trying to decide what to watch than actually watching anything. That realization sent me down a rabbit hole of physical media, where I discovered something hiding in plain sight this entire time.

Maybe I wasn’t plugged into the Matrix yet. Or maybe I had noticed them all along but had simply accepted that physical media wasn’t part of the world anymore.

Either way, something shook loose and I reverted to a previous operating system and I started catching up on decades of movies I never had the chance to experience in my youth. Somehow, this $40 DVD player became my tiny act of rebellion against a world that was always trying to tell me what came next and gave me a safe space to let the kid in me heal a little.

Now every trip to the thrift store and used book store feels like a scavenger hunt; I never know what’s waiting on the shelf between a stack of workout tapes and ten copies of You’ve Got Mail. Sometimes its a copy of the movie Stay and sometimes its The Craft or all of the Twilight movies.

You see, I grew up in a home where everything I watched, listened to, or read was carefully filtered. Entire corners of pop culture simply didn’t exist in my world. While my (at school-only) friends were quoting movies, discovering bands, and obsessing over television shows, I was living inside a very small definition of what was considered “acceptable.”

As a kid, I didn’t question it much. Well, no, I did, but questioning it wasn’t really an option.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized there were entire pieces of my adolescence that never got the chance to happen. So when I tell you that I squealed after finding a copy of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, I don’t just mean I found a movie. I mean I found another tiny piece of a life I wasn’t allowed to experience.

Watching these movies now feels strangely emotional. It’s like introducing my younger self to all the people, stories, and ideas she should have met decades ago. While that definitely sounds dramatic, it does genuinely feel like healing in a way that’s difficult to explain. Maybe that’s why I’ve become so fascinated with physical media lately?

A DVD isn’t trying to convince me to watch something else after the credits roll. There’s no algorithm deciding what I should consume next. It’s just me, a movie I intentionally searched for, found, and brought home. Its ninety uninterrupted minutes with that teenage girl who still lives somewhere inside me.

Recently, I ordered My So-Called Life from ThriftBooks because it was another cultural touchstone that somehow passed me by. I mean, obviously.

There was no universe where I was going to be allowed to watch Angela Chase kiss a boy, have a gay best friend, or dye her hair. Just asking to watch the show would’ve gotten me grounded.

I’m currently five episodes into my very first watch at forty-three trips around the sun, and I’m honestly devastated there’s only one season.

Where is the fan fiction? I need archived message boards and late-night Reddit debates. I need to know what Winnie Holzman imagined for Angela and the rest of these characters. More than anything, I wish I’d gotten to discover it when everyone else did, back when I was young enough to relate to Angela instead today, relating to her Mom Patty.

But I keep telling myself (and the younger version of me) that there isn’t an expiration date on becoming the person you were always meant to be. There isn’t an age limit on discovering the books, movies, music, and art for the first time, even if it shaped everyone else twenty years ago. I feel like I am reclaiming my younger self here but in reality this isn’t about recreating my childhood at all. It’s about finally giving myself the permission to be, to exist, to like the weird stuff I like and not worry that its going to upset someone else or get me grounded.

I know my childhood wasn’t perfect, but now that I’m older and have a little perspective, I think there’s something worth reclaiming from a time when we chose our entertainment instead of letting it choose us. I don’t want to the past, but I do enjoy finally getting to meet the parts of it I missed the first time around.

It’s got me thinking about where I am now creatively (as well as where I am not, and where I want to and don’t want to be) and looking at myself and my art in a new way. I’ve had this name floating around in my head for a while, Yesterthings, but I always felt like I wasn’t cool enough or knowledgable enough or whatever enough to use it.

Well, dang it. I am using it now.

When I started this substack, I wanted to chase the vibes I had when I blogged way back in the early 2000s but I felt like I didnt have a lot to say. Then I left my corporate job and became a barista so I would have more whimsy and less drives home in tears. While I do feel like I’ve started to find my voice in the Rainy Daze Cafe, the person I thought I was isn’t really who I think I am now and I really don’t want to write about leaving a corporate job — I mean I do, but not as like, the main topic of my viewpoint or narrative.

Today, I feel like I am finding my footing and that a lot of my life lately is centered around breaking free from the social norms, chasing nostalgia and physical media, using a “dumb phone” and healing the Y2K teen within. So, of course, every identity crisis deserves a makeover, which is where this whole post is leading us to… the revamp of my substack.

Welcome to Yesterthings Press!

My hope for the future of this space is to bring some of that less polished, raw, livejournal - slash - google blogger vibe back to the internet. I am trying to live my life without filters and think that sharing posts here about real life may be fun (maybe even inspiring) for others too. So, with that, thanks for tagging along and hopefully you enjoy the ride from here on out :)

Eryn Mathis was one of the people who reported to The Box every Monday through Friday. She spent her days craning her neck toward presentation slides and sitting through strategy meetings where her opinions were frequently requested and routinely ignored. Her boss, CeCe, hadn’t always been like that. Before her promotion, she’d been one of the good ones. She advocated for work-life balance and remembered that her team consisted of actual human beings. Then she got promoted. The running office conspiracy theory was that the promotion had come bundled with a shiny new lobotomy.

Now everything was an emergency. Keeping up meant dropping everything to execute whatever whiz-bang shower thought CeCe’s boss had dreamed up at the eleventh hour. Of course, it never made sense. It derailed the team, was always a clustermuck, and somehow CeCe made sure Eryn carried the brunt of the chaos. Lately, Eryn had been doing the work of three people. She was exhausted, angry, and running on little more than caffeine and spite. Every request for help was met with one of CeCe’s empty promises that things would get better after the next deadline.

Spoiler alert: they never did.

To no one’s surprise, Eryn’s proverbial cup eventually ran bone dry. Instead of refilling it with the can-do attitude she’d started with at The Box, she filled it with unmasked eye rolls and visible rage. During a launch meeting for a half-baked “Empowering Future Leaders” program, she finally said exactly what she thought. Live. On a recorded meeting. And, of course, in front of CeCe’s boss. Needless to say, the launch did not go as planned and by that afternoon, Eryn was carrying a cardboard box to her car and driving home from her first “real” job for the last time. Whether she was ready for it or not, she was about to get a fresh start.

First came internal loathing and the “what-if” self talk, then anger and then eventually acceptance. After all, Eryn had spent the better part of three years feeling sick to her stomach every Sunday night in anticipation of the week ahead. She knew that The Box might have been a great place to work for some, but it hadn’t been a great place for her.

Through all of this emotional growth and revelation Eryn was caught in what felt like an endless cycle of interviews, each one leaving her more deflated than the last. Not because the opportunities were terrible, but because she understood the language now. She knew that a “fast-paced environment” meant chaos. “Wearing many hats” meant being understaffed. “Growth opportunity” usually meant someone else had already quit. Halfway through one particularly painful interview, Eryn found herself listening to a hiring manager spend twenty straight minutes talking about herself. CeCe 2.0.

“I don’t want to start all over just to end up here again,” Eryn thought. As if the universe had decided she’d suffered enough, her phone buzzed inside her blazer pocket. Normally, she would’ve ignored it, but CeCe 2.0 was long-winded, and Eryn had officially stopped caring.

BIG NEWS!
You have a job here if you want it 😘

The message was from Adrian, Eryn’s work bestie who had escaped The Box seven months earlier for a startup and had spent most of that time trying to recruit Eryn. Apparently, she’d finally succeeded, and for the first time in the last three years, Eryn felt herself relax. She didn’t know what the job was yet, but she knew two things: Adrian worked there and that rent was due in two weeks. That was enough.

The next day, the two met for lunch, and by the time the check arrived, Eryn was on the phone accepting a position as Director of Communications. Impressive.

Even though an offer letter was waiting in her inbox before she got home, she knew full well this wasn’t her dream job, and it wasn’t even a daydream job. But it was a paycheck, and right now, that mattered more. Unfortunately, while the title sounded impressive, the salary was not and it came with one immediate problem.

Eryn’s downtown apartment had to go.

With only two weeks until the start of the month, Eryn was in full-on scramble mode, she managed to somehow find a friend of a friend of a friend’s recent college graduate who wanted to sublease her apartment and the timing worked for them. Hooray! The arrangement left her with a little cash in hand and she assumed finding a cheaper place would be easy but with less than a week left for her housing search, Eryn realized she was going to need to widen the search beyond the comforts of downtown.

With a new search filter added, there it was.

“Hmm. Walden? Let’s see what you’ve got for me,” she mumbled to herself.

The other dormer was regularly occupied by Henry’s little sister Violet, his little shadow, she was half his age and had twice the mischief; they had a special bond and they both adored each other’s company.

Violet often sat in her window on a creaky bench and sketched fantastical creatures in a beat-up sketchbook, she read book after book (sometimes the same ones two or three times) to escape to wild worlds outside of the real and painful one she lived in, and she spent hours watching the wind tickle the leaves of the old Southern Magnolia tree in front of the house. Violet often said that there was something magical about the tree and that it whispered to her; no one paid much attention to statements like that; after all, she was just a kid with a big imagination and that seemed to run in the family.

Violet’s imagination was a blessing, especially since kids her age didn’t seem to want to play with her much anymore, she had always had trouble with headaches and got sick easily. She started feeling stiff all the time and eventually she told her parents that there were spiders crawling in her fingers and toes, tickling her from the inside. While Violet always had a way with words, the frequency and peculiarity of these most recent mentions made her Mother worry. This was the start of a string of countless hospital visits.

One of the last times she came home from one of her “medical vacations,” as she liked to call them, she and Henry were in the attic, building a world, she sketched it out while he dipped his fountain pen and wrote it down. Dust motes danced in the streaming sunlight and the two of them worked side by side at Henry’s battered oak table.

“We have to capture it all, every wonder we can think of, before it slips away,” Violet pleaded as she thumped a thick blank sketchbook on Henry’s desk. The spiders were tickling more and more, some days were better than others but on the worst ones, Violet would get so stiff she couldn’t move her legs. She worried that soon, she’d be stuck as an observer to life, rather than an explorer.

Henry’s eyes carried the weight of things he hadn’t said aloud to her yet, because Violet’s worry was something he carried too, “Every last one, I’ll write it all down, V.”

And so he wrote down all her stories. All the odd places and things that the tree whispered to her, all of the interesting folks and animals she made up in her head. Henry wrote as quickly as he could to capture it all in perfect detail.

In the margins of Henry’s writing, Violet sketched creatures that had never been seen by anyone but her: small winged foxes with fur the color of twilight, ancient trees that whispered knock-knock jokes when you leaned your ear against their knots, flowers that changed their hue depending on what song you hummed at them. Henry recorded landscapes of impossible mountains, rivers that wound like silver ribbons across purple plains, and villages that glowed with a light you couldn’t put into words. Together, their work became a world that felt impossibly alive.

On the first page of the sketchbook that would become her living memories and fairytales, Violet signed her name in neat, confident letters. Henry watched her and thought to himself, “It would be worth a journey to see this world.”

And in a way, it already had been. Together they came up with a name for their book and called it A Catalogue of Remarkable Wonders.

It was a collection of Violet’s imaginary pets and friends, an index of her make-believe, a book meant to hold magic so tangible you could feel it in your bones. They both knew Violet had a lot to say, but before either of them was ready, she would no longer be there to help turn the pages and help write these fantastical places down.

So, for now, the attic buzzed with vibrant energy. Ideas and made-up places bounced across the pages like a suncatcher throwing prisms across the floor. In those moments, the world they built was whole and wild, just waiting for anyone brave enough to step inside.

A few months passed, and eventually the Elmwoods’ stopped sending Violet on her “medical vacations,” focusing more on making sure Violet was comfortable and as happy as possible. They also moved her bed to the attic so she could watch the Magnolia tree and be closer to Henry while he typed newspaper articles at his desk. Every day, Henry and Violet added to their book. She promised Henry she would stick around as long as the Magnolia tree had flowers blooming; selfishly she wanted him to finish writing down all of her stories.

“You’re not going anywhere, Violet. Don’t be dramatic,” he said with an empty smile, though he knew they would both be lucky if she could somehow stick around through the season.

The last flower fell from the old Southern Magnolia a few weeks after Violet left this world. Their father, Papa Elmwood, and Henry cut down the tree a few days later; neither of them could bear the sight of its naked branches anymore.

Eventually, life went on without Violet, though it lacked the sparkle and magic she brought to it. Henry officially moved to Walden proper and wrote for paper, making a pretty big name for himself. Mama and Papa Elmwood stayed at the farmhouse, not wanting to sell it, Henry always thought that it was their way of keeping Violet around.

After many years and even some happy memories later, Mama and Papa Elmwood eventually passed peacefully. First Mama went, then Papa a few years later. Their deaths forced Henry to come home to the farmhouse one last time.

As the last surviving Elmwood, Henry spent a final weekend at the farmhouse, he went through the last of the drawers, closets, and little tucked-away spaces. It broke his heart to do it, but he sold the farmhouse to a lovely couple who were excited to start their own little life there.

A big box of little reminders started to fill up as Henry moved about the house, when he finally got to the attic, he almost couldn’t climb the stairs. He didn’t want to be in the room where her magic went to sleep forever.

He started to turn away and leave the attic alone, but as he turned and headed down the stairs, a faint whisper tickled his ear. When he turned to acknowledge it, a trick of the light danced on the other side of the door and caught his attention. Henry knew he was alone in the house, but something felt as though she was asking him to come in and say goodbye, for real this time. He knew he’d kick himself later if he turned over the keys to his childhood home without going up there even though he felt like those few steps to the door were miles away. His heart felt heavy and he stood there for what felt like an eternity, but eventually one foot took a step and the other followed.

When Henry opened the door, the sun poured in through the twin dormers. There, in one, was her little bed, and in the other, his desk. Sitting on top of the beaten oak desk, wrapped in years of dust and its cover bleached by the sun, was the book they had written together before it all slipped away. Henry stood in the doorway for a little while before he closed the distance between this version of himself and the one that wrote that book.

A Catalogue of Remarkable Wonders

He opened the book and ran a finger over Violet’s signature. He thumbed through the pages, equal parts laughing and crying, until he reached the last finished page. Henry scooped up the dusty tome and brought it home to his new life where he sat at a more grown-up desk, in a more comfortable chair, and with a subjectively better typewriter and pen. The book sat on the bookshelf where he took time to notice it often, until time stretched and the book became just another book on the shelf. Of course it was special still and it was Henry’s prize possession, it just didn’t get the same attention it once did.

Years passed and Henry continued to write for the paper, live his simple life and enjoy each day as much as he could. By now, grey was settling into the hair above Henry’s ears and little lines around his eyes started to show. He hadn’t planned to do it, but one rainy afternoon, Henry found himself writing in the book, picking up where Violet and he had left off all those years ago. He wrote more of their silly stories, jokes, and magical encounters in her catalogue for years, until their final story was recorded. There were still a good number of pages left to fill, but that would come later.

Along the way, Henry retired his column in the newspaper and opened a bookstore. His Parkinson’s made it too hard to write with a steady hand, but dammit, if his eyes weren’t sharp. He surrounded himself with a collection of “very good books,” as he liked to call them, as Violet once called them. Little pocket worlds that he could slip in and out of, lots of little worlds that Violet would have loved to visit.

During these easy going twilight years Henry’s bookstore, Very Good Books, was peaceful and boring, in the best way possible. If he forgot where he placed a book, he just started reading a new one. Not a lot of foot traffic came into the shop, maybe a few souls here and there who really needed something good to read, but overall, peaceful and boring.

Every day, that is, until a young woman who was still technically new to town, pulled the handle of Very Good Books, and the little bell above the shop door announced her arrival.

The plan is to share a “cozy portal fantasy” with you all that uses a simple magic system and tugs on your heart strings (I’m talking about my character Henry here!) but the truth is, I don’t have it all done yet; the outline, yes, but the actual pages, no. So, you’ll have to bear with me as I navigate being a fantasy fiction writer and share each piece of this story as it is born.

So, what’s it about?

I’m currently calling this story “Project Walden” because I don’t have a better working title for it as a whole, so there’s that. It’s the story of an older female main character named Eryn who is just a loveable loser and fails at her dream job. Her professional failure brings her to Walden where she stumbles upon a bookstore that she later finds to be somewhat magical.

Throughout the journey Eryn will drift between the real world and liminal space via a handwritten tome she gets from the bookshop and eventually Eryn will discover that the world she keeps visiting is falling apart and that she has to figure out how to keep this magical space alive.

I hope that readers that find this story enjoy the color theory and symbolism baked into the characters as well as some of the historical touchpoints I’ve used as inspiration to help set the time and place of this cozy tale.

How to read it!

I plan to share it here, in a serialized format. If I can pull it off, I would also love to develop some character artwork to accompany each piece of the story I publish.

And so, that’s it for now! Let’s see where this goes!

— Rainey Daze (writer!)

Two weeks ago I made a drastic career shift. I left my 6ft x 6ft cubicle at a fancy engineering firm where I worked 12+ hours a day and traded it in for making lattes and cold foam, here’s what I noticed.

At my old job, I struggled to get to sleep each night, dreading my 4:30 am alarm. I did all the performative routines to get myself ready for the day, though I was in a constant state of exhaustion and constipation. Everyday blended together because I left my house in the dark wee hours and rushed home in the bumper to bumper ones to scrape together some semblance of “life” after my 12+ hour day of looking at a screen.

While in my cage, I mean, cubicle, I pressed buttons on a keyboard and did emails and meetings, sometimes I did just meetings all day, sometimes just emails. My job was to make sure everyone else did their job. So you can imagine how fulfilling that was.

Now though, my feet ache (though that is starting to regulate) and my workday is surprisingly fewer hours. I leave the house at 6:45am so I can brew a cup of coffee for myself and ease into opening the cafe by 7:30am (did I mention my commute is 35 minutes less now too?), while the milk steams, I am planning out new flavor combinations and watching latte art tutorials. All this new form creativity has been a lot of fun to absorb.

The weekend away from work though, wow, I think that’s the most shocking change. Before being a barista, I would stress out on Sunday mid morning and spiral into that clammy space of professional dread. I thought longingly about ‘having more time’ and dreamed about having my brain to myself and not wasting my thinking on a day that hadn’t even started yet.

Now, my hands get dirty from the garden or the studio. My feeling of tired comes from doing real, actual work and the weekend feels like a restful pause between weeks. I do my job, I make the coffee and serve it, then it’s done. The weekend time is now my own and my brain is pulsing with lots of creative ideas and schemes that I cannot wait to dive into.

Leaving my corporate life for this more grounded version of self has been absolutely amazing and I feel like all of the frustrations, frazzles, burnt out vibes I was embracing before wasn’t ‘getting older’ or ‘perimenopause’ it was that I worked a fake job doing work that really didn’t feed me and now, the work I do soothes me. I get the best version of everyone I interact with. I get to be around coffee and smell like vanilla and caramel on my way home from work. I get to use my arms and legs and work my muscles doing a blue collar job that makes be feel like a best friend, a therapist, a help line, a philosopher, an artist… you get the idea. I get to make a cup of joy for everyone that comes to my counter and they leave me smiling. I love that. I absolutely frickin’ love that!

I guess I am writing all of this to say, if you think that working in service or a trade is something that you are interested in, do it!

Leave that cubicle and join me!

You would think that the endorphins would be firing on all cylinders, and they are (ish), but that still doesn’t change the fact that I have three more days to navigate in my corporate role. Granted, I don’t have any new projects, and my work is ramping down, but my heart and my mind are still telling me things like, “stay in bed all day and maybe Monday won’t come,” or “scroll some more, this is a good distraction from tomorrow’s reality.” In both cases, I am the loser.

So, how did I get moving today? Honestly, it was really hard and in full transparency, I did sleep in until 1 pm, but let's blame that on a fun Saturday night of playing D&D and the time change, yeah? But I honestly just forced myself to crawl out from under the safety of my comforter and thrifted granny quilt. I brewed a pour-over coffee, dressed it up with caramel, then sat down at my ‘big screen’, aka my laptop, and got a few things crossed off my list.

Now, I kind of have some momentum behind me, and I am about to jump into doing as many chores as I can so that when Thursday rolls around, and I am officially no longer employed at the corporate cube, I have the mental and emotional freedom to enjoy a day of creativity.

My plan for my long weekend before starting my new gig is, first and foremost, to relax! I've been spinning plates and running on high-stress empty for so long that just having a gentle day or two sounds like such a treat. I want to paint my nails, get a fast-food breakfast, make some coffee and read a book of my choice for at least half of a day.

I want to hit the thrift store, browse the racks, hunt for odd treasures, and bring home something that brings me whimsy.

I want to spend a day in my studio again, just making silly art and preparing for a class project for my Children in Literature course, as well as do some planning alongside Lassie, of ,for our little creative side gig.

I know it sounds simple and maybe even silly, but that’s really all I need to feel like me. I am so excited for this next step because I think I will finally have so much more of myself back.

I know my jump is probably wild to a lot a people, but I can’t help but be curious, how are you feeling on the Sunday before the work week?

The new semester at my local community college started recently, and I am in that phase of life when I’m back in school, learning more about the topics I love. This term, I am taking a class called ‘Literature for Children’, and our big class project is writing and illustrating a children’s book and having it printed/self-published. I’m so excited!

Other exciting news is that the studio is working on a Valentine’s Day charitable/protest project (I’ll share more about that soon!), and we have officially started work on Good Neighbor, our local community-focused zine.

Check out my February Mood board:

Last Month’s Link Round Up:

Bookworm | Fangirling Over Marcus Kliewer

Bookworm | My 2025 Reading Wrap

Handmade Tarot Project | #17 The Star

Studio Stuff | Field Notes from the Studio: Amanita verna

Studio Stuff | Chatting about my favorite watercolor butterfly and daydreaming about making art for fun again

Studio Stuff | Schnailnannigans

Hey, Have You Met My Friend?

Lassie is the author of Hello. From the Lunar Library and a cartoonist in KC. She is also a co-founder of Freehand Collective and a huge inspiration and motivation for me, both personally and for my artsy things! Cheers to one of my best pals, go check out her Substack and subscribe, wouldja!?

Thanks for hanging out with me this month! I’m excited to share what unravels next. Until then, friends, smell ya later!

— R

Sharing a whimsical illustration of a poisonous plant is such a little vibe; I really love the juxtaposition of making this killer appear ‘cute’.

It’s so hard to talk about my art because, I will be totally honest, it isn’t that deep. I just like things and want to draw them. For example, in this case, I really like the colors that I am seeing, and I love nature and all of her little babies, so as I was looking for something to draw one day, I stumbled upon this type of mushroom in a textbook and was inspired to do a quick, field studies-type of drawing of it.

I’m not trying to get philosophical or metaphorical here, I’m just drawing for the sake of fun and practice. When I studied drawing, the person I was learning from was very skilled, and I learned so much about “looking with a different eye,” and while that sounds very weird and ominous, it’s such a game-changer in how I observe objects when I draw. I don't really know how to explain it — it's kind of like looking at the object, but also looking past it too, like imagining the back and side that can’t be seen from the current view. It’s also about imagining how the object would feel and its texture, and incorporating that observation into the drawing. It's definitely a skill that helped me improve my work, but now that I am not drawing for a living, I can just draw a heap of wonky mushrooms. I kind of like that.

Thanks for hanging out with me today. Do you have a favorite mushroom?

— R

When I first got into watercolor about 20 years ago, I found a muse that still inspires me to this day and seems to give me endless resources and references. I just love bugs, guys, I love them. Butterflies, moths, spiders, beetles… all of them are exceptionally beautiful and offer so much to the observer’s eye. I’ve been painting bugs (and their cousins) for so long, and I have yet to find boredom in their form.

This particular butterfly is the Cymothoe beckeri, also known as the Creamy Glider Butterfly. It’s also one of my all-time favorite pieces that I have created over the years. It’s a perfect example of the flow state, and I made it during a time when I was discovering, I wasn’t yet a professional artist and selling work, I was just making art to make it, to learn, to enjoy it and play and let whatever happen, well, happen. I feel like you can see that in this one.

I am actively seeking that feeling, chasing the state of joy, flow, and play. I want my work to regress to this moment again and create a joyful space for me to just create without intention. As a retired commercial artist, art was work for so long that it became grinding and grueling, and it just wasn’t the same. It’s been about 5 or 6 years since I left that space, and now, I’m starting to dip my paintbrush in dirty paint water again, and the feeling is, dare I say it, magical.

If you are trying to get into the biz, please know I am not knocking it; I am just sharing that this way, for me, is so much better. I applaud those who enjoy the grind and who chase the work, and I truly hope that you land that deal, baby! This, however, is my little slice of the internet, where I can reflect on the time I spent doing all that hard work that made me hate making art. This space is my little recovery zone, my soft pillow, my ease back into making art for the sake of joy. I hope you enjoy seeing what I created in my past life and what I uncover about this version of myself along the way.

Thanks for reading! I hope you liked this little guy, this particular piece and moth are one of my favorites.

— R

I discovered Marcus Kliewer via the ‘Available Now’ filter on my ‘TBR’ tag in the Libby App, and oh, what a ride. The book I am talking about is We Used to Live Here. I had just finished There There by Tommy Orange and wanted to dive into something else (because, damn, that book wrecked me).

At first, I wasn't sold on We Used to Live Here. There were parts where I even thought the book was heavily written or edited with AI, but I didn’t give up on it and eventually reached a part of the story written in a completely different style. This is when I realized that Kliewer was writing in a broken, short, punchy sentence structure, which was meant to evoke doubt, confusion, and unease.

I really can't tell you what We Used to Live Here is about because I don't want to give away anything about the story, but it's wild, confusing, makes you question everything that's happening, it’s just really, really damn good.

But this isn't a book review anyway; it’s more of an appreciation post about this author. I opened this post with a copy/paste from his publisher’s author page on the Simon & Schuster site, and it really says it all… This writer, this author, is just like us… writing for the love of writing and sharing those stories in any format that will put eyes on our words. I don't really need to repeat it, but We Used to Live Here was a serialized story on Reddit… damn, if that isn't inspiring, then you just can’t be inspired.

Kliewer’s story really shook me, both his book and his story of getting the book published. It makes me feel like there is a chance to share my own little capsules of creativity with others. Sometimes I feel like I am screaming into the void, with algorithms and feeds fighting against me, while my own busy life snatches up my precious art-making and writing time. However, I guess I just need to remove my focus from that and realize that showing up is all that matters. Giving this little nook of creativity a few minutes each day is all I need to complete the story and eventually post it. It's just a few minutes to draw in my sketchbook and snap a picture of my progress. Just a few minutes to make a list or plan for the sewing project, so I am ready to jump in when I have more time.

I guess I am writing all this just to say: Kliewer struck the match and ignited the flame of possibility again for me. For that, I am so thankful.

If you are a creative, you CAN do it. Kliewer did, and I am sure that there are other, similar stories out there that I am not aware of. So, I suppose this little love letter to the art of making, showing up, and sharing what you’ve got is also me shouting out to anyone reading this — hey, you've got this.

Number seventeen is DONE! I feel like this little baby pink star moth is so whimsygoth, and I absolutely love that for her! I took some liberties with the pattern of the actual moth, pushing them into stars rather than the true, circular shape they are in realit,y and I think it really gave this card a lot of personality.

Here is the actual pink star moth, next to the Rider Waite inspiration for my buggy version.

In the traditional Rider-Waite deck, this card represents balance, renewal, intuition, hope, healing, connection, optimism, calmness, and purpose. There is so much symbolic imagery, too, but that can be said about all of the cards in the Rider Waite deck, really. The water being poured into the lake and the land is balanced, and the five little streams that break off from the water pooling on land represent the five senses, which is why for my stars I went with the five-pointed version. There is also one large star that acts as the north star or the guiding star, as well as a sky filled with stars.

In mine, my moth is still following that guiding star, but instead I incorporated those whimsygoth stars on the wings and threw a few other stars behind my moth to represent the senses and chakras.

I am thrilled with how this one turned out, and for me, my buggy tarot interpretation aligns pretty closely with the traditional one. It’s a pink star moth finding the light of the big north star and just making its little way on its little path. The moth is in tune with her senses, and she knows that whatever is meant for her is already hers. She is following her inner voice and confidence and just keeps gliding in the starlight to where she needs to be.

Some Behind the Scenes of Number Seventeen:

A look at the sketches and planning that went into this card. I take a lot of time to research the cards and their meanings, and try to find a creature that fits that vibe in terms of metaphor or spirituality. Sometimes, I do lean into a bug’s color and pattern or its common name.

A final look at The Star with the other completed cards, as well as a solo view.

Thanks for joining me for the reveal of THE STAR! I hope you liked the added peek into the process on this one. See you next time!

— R

Sharing an inky spread of snails from one of my sketchbooks. For these little guys I used Liquitex Liquid inks in a range of browns and a brown fineliner. This page was a lot of fun to reference and make.

I love using old text books or field guides for reference when I am playing around so that I am not only giving my eyes a break from gazing at a screen but also, I feel like it gives me an opportunity to learn more about the subject, there is something about learning why a creature or plant does what it does that helps me understand their personality or energy, and while it sounds really abstract, it can also help me understand how to illustrate them better.

I fell in love with these little snail studies and then got the itch to add to the pages. I really want to start incorporating journaling into my spreads, similar to what one of my favorite artists, Jo Brown, did in her book, Secrets of a Devon Wood: My Nature Journal. I’d also like to start adding more collage to my work.

While I was digging up the images of these snails, I also remembered that I made stickers of them! These are small, I think measuring 2 inches or less, and are so cute for a journal, calendar, or another sketchbook page. I think that a new spread with new snails may be in my future soon.

Thanks for joining me on a walk through this sketchbook spread.

— R

I admittedly felt like I didn't read enough in 2025, but then I took a look at my StoryGraph and realized that I did a pretty dang good job of keeping my nose in a book. Overall, I read 26 books and DNF’d five titles. Plus, I read a lot of required reading for a Women’s Literature course I took at my local community college. My eyeballs did a lot of work!

My 5 Star Books

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

On Writing: A Memoir to the Craft by Stephen King

Slewfoot by BROM

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

All Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby

Goblins & Greatcoats by Travis Baldree

There, There by Tommy Orange

We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

Other reads that may not have been 5 stars (for me) but were still enjoyable are pictured above, except for Drowned Country by Emily Tesh and Slow Productivity by Cal Newport, I forgot to copy/paste those covers into my little graphic.

I feel like overall, everything I finished reading in 2025 was a solid 3 stars or better. I have a silly reading rule: if something doesn’t popoff and hook me by chapter 5, I just DNF, because with over 800 titles on my TBR, I don't care to read something I don’t love.

My DNF List

Into the Dark We Go by DG Woods - I really wanted to like this story, but it just didn’t hit for me.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver - I couldn't get past the letters/correspondence format, maybe it would be a better audiobook for me?

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden - Ugh, I really wanted to like this, but I tried to enjoy this as an audiobook, and it just wasn’t doing it for me. I felt lost a lot and probably would like this one if I gave it a second chance, but in physical form.

Woman, Eating by Clare Kohda - Meh. Just kinda boring.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, with Sarah Moses - This book is wild; I want to revisit it, life just got in the way.

Side Note - I also read some career self-help books this year (Let Them by Mel Robbins & Dare to Lead by Brene Brown). Not even linking them, bleh. It was a solid reminder that self-help books written by privileged white women are not for me. But hey, at the time I needed a life jacket at work, so there is that.

The above-mentioned self-help book by Cal Newport, however, was good, had substance, and I feel like I took away a few nuggets from it.

2026 Goals & Must Reads

In 2026, I would like to read at least 26 titles, and as part of my vision board’s Q1 Winning Habit, I plan to read daily for at least one hour. So I think I can make it happen, and maybe even a little extra!

Books that I must, must, must dive into in 2026:

• Brigands & Breadsticks by Travis Baldree

• The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer

• The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer with John Burgoyne (Illustrator)

• Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill

Everything else I subject my eyes to will be at the whim of my Libby ‘available now’ filter on my TBR tag. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Until next time (book)worms!

— R