Creative Recommendations for June

What I'm reading, learning, watching, and making art with!

Hi friends,

It’s time for my Creative Recommendations for June! These are just for my lovely ~patrons~ aka my paying subscribers. 

Each month, I curate my favorite things I’ve been reading, learning, watching, and making art with. If you want to upgrade to receive these once a month, you’d make my day 🥰

This one has a big update tucked in the middle of the post, so you might want to read until the end.

Before we dive in, I have a few special announcements:

• For my New York friends, I’m hosting another Quiet Car event tomorrow, June 27th. It was such a hit last time, we’re doing it again! We’re taking over the 96th St Q train and turning it into a phone-free experience. RSVP here!

Reading

The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig. Wow, I have not read a book this fast in YEARS, or maybe ever, honestly.

It’s about a woman who is between life and death, and during this period, she enters a place called the Midnight Library. This space contains books of all the lives she could have experienced if one thing had changed in her root life. She starts life-hopping to try to find a life she likes more than her current one. Honestly, I think this book may have changed my life.

It has been really helpful in a period where I’m considering making big changes and fear that I could make the wrong choice. It brought me a sense of peace, accepting I can’t live all the million lives I want to, and that’s okay. Note: check the trigger warnings because there is some sensitive content. Read here.

I also really enjoyed How to Not Know by Simone Stolzoff. You’ll see the theme of this month has been uncertainty, and this book has been a balm to that.

It shares case studies around sitting with all kinds of uncertainty. He covers perspectives around the unknown that comes with navigating career, climate change, relationships, health, and more.
I had just finished reading The Good Enough Job by Simone and heard his next book was coming out. Both of his books have been incredibly helpful in navigating this new chapter of looking for a full-time job and making big life decisions. Read here.

Other book recs:

• Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. This is the perfect summer beach read. This was apparently one of my grandma’s favorite books. I never met her, so I love the idea of being able to connect to her through this book. I’ve read it before a few years ago and just picked it back up. It’s a meditation on life and slowing down, using the ocean as a metaphor. It’s short and sweet and goes down easy. Read here.

• Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. I met Anne-Laurie at a podcast recording my friend David Nebinski hosted last year. Her new book is all about taking tiny changes to test out and see what you like. I’m a big fan of doing this in my life. I often throw spaghetti at the wall with different creative projects and see what sticks. Read here.

There’s a bonus reading recommendation at the bottom that’s my guilty pleasure, which is just for my paying subscribers.

Making Art With

My Substack friends! I went on a retreat to Maine with K. Woodman-Maynard, Beth Spencer and Kelcey Ervick a few weeks ago. We have a little Slack group called ArtStack that meets every few months on a Zoom call. In the winter, Katharine suggested we do a DIY art retreat in Maine, and somehow it managed to come together!

It was such a dreamy week. We got to experiment with each other’s art supplies, paint on the beach, doodle on the patio, cook together, and brainstorm together.

I got to explore more minimalist styles and new color palettes

We went to the botanical garden and made a series of collaborative paintings. Katharine turned it into a painting game, if you want to read how to do it here.

Katharine’s Substack post

While we were there, Beth made a tutorial on how to turn paint swatches into beautiful beetles that you can read it here. We all tried it out and made our own beetles.

Beth’s Substack post

And Kelcey made a beautiful illustrated post recapping our week that you can read here.

Kelcey’s substack post

I was beyond inspired by all of them, and it was truly one of my favorite experiences of the year.

Watching

The final season of Hacks. Oh man, what a tearjerker that finale was. I have a funny origin story with Hacks. I watched it for the first time on an airplane and started with Season 2. I thought it was Season 1 and was constantly asking myself, "Will they ever explain what happened for Debra to be so mad at Ava??”

Then I realized it was Season 2. So I got off the plane and eventually watched Season 1.

This is not the first time I’ve done this. I had a similar experience while watching Heated Rivalry, where I accidentally skipped episode 3. Which, for Heated Rivalry fans, you know how critical that plot is. At the end of the season, I was just as shocked as the audience when Scott Hunter pointed to his boyfriend in the stands to come down. So I watched episode 3 after I finished the whole season.

Anyway, back to Hacks! I loved this season and didn’t want it to end.

I’ve been wanting to learn how to bring comedy into my life in a more real way. I go to a lot of comedy shows in New York and it’s one of my favorite things. I’ve thought about taking comedy writing classes at some point. For now, I’m finding the silliness I want by being the “Conductor of Quiet” during my Quiet Car events.

Learning

I’ve been learning how to edit videos more efficiently. And I had my first Instagram video go viral. It got 40K views and 1,000 likes on Instagram. This was the first time I've ever had anything go viral on Instagram.

I’ve stayed away from making videos for a few reasons. One is that I care about helping people spend less time on their phones, and I feel conflicted about creating content that is designed for them to be on their phones. And partially because I’ve found it challenging.

I’ve never sat down to actually learn the basics of editing efficiently. I’ve fumbled and mostly been annoyed with the process. But I’m starting to take tutorials and beginning to view creating videos as a new form of creative expression. I really enjoy the script-writing and storytelling that it allows me to explore.
This internal tension is something I feel when I've been marketing my app Free Time, because I don't want to be creating mindless content in an effort to get people to stop mindless scrolling. But I've switched my intention to create high-quality posts and less quantity. And I’m trying to do more offline marketing, like this little pop-up I did in Prospect Park asking people about their screen time.

Where I've landed is that I want to create thoughtful videos and stories that help inspire people to put their phones down and engage in collective quiet. There is an intimacy that comes with being quiet together, and creating more spaces like this feels like something people are craving so much right now.

We live in a noisy digital world, and I love being able to help people put down their phones and be quiet together.

Inspired by

Making art for fun. I’m in the process of separating my art from my income. My previous philosophy was to make art that people want. Now I’m working on making art I want to make for myself or people/things I love.

My favorite thing I’ve made recently was this animation of the final shot of Game 4 of the Knicks. That game was the first basketball game I’ve ever watched. And I think it will be all downhill from here because that was one of the greatest comebacks in history!

I watched it after a comedy show in the basement of Union Hall and came upstairs to leave, but decided to stick around and sketch a few people, treating it like a life drawing class. But then I got hooked by the game. I put my sketchbook down and started talking to people around me to help understand what was happening.

I also painted with my friend sargun, who built an app called Playdate that lets you make a bucket list of things you’d like to do you, and then your friend can book a “Playdate” with you. I booked one with her to “make a big painting,” and she came to my studio so we could paint together. I had an idea to make a giant MetroCard since they retired it in January and I was happy to finally get around to it!

Dreaming about

This is a big one and I’m nervous to even share it…but I’ve been dreaming of moving to the beach. Over the past few months, I’ve been doing sooo much big picture reflection. Ex: I’m making a big change by deciding to get a full-time job (read that announcement here).

A few weeks ago, I told my landlord that I’m not resigning my lease on my apartment in Park Slope. My lease ends at the end of July, and I’m ready for a change of scenery. And I’m planning to move to a cute beach town called Asbury Park.

I’ve gone 4 times in the past 3 months to check it out. I’m from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and grew up going to Belmar, a neighboring town on the Jersey Shore. The whole area is very nostalgic to me. Asbury Park has a big arts community and seems to have a lot of what I’m looking for.

I wrote a book about quiet, and have found ways for New York to be a quiet place for me, but I’m thinking it might be time to start an even quieter chapter.

I’ve always dreamed of living in a beach town, and did for a year when I lived in Venice Beach. But I wanted to be closer to home, so I moved back east. I want to be able to get into NY through public transport, and not far from my parents. Somehow it seems to check all these boxes. Many of my friends have moved 2 hours north on the Hudson. It looks like I’m just going to be moving 2 hours south on the beach!

I know I kind of buried the lead here (partially because I kind of can’t believe it’s happening!), and will share more details in a future post. This is me soft launching the move. If you know anyone in Asbury Park by chance, let me know!

Listening to

I started a new routine where I play a song before bed to help signal when I should stop watching TV and using my phone. Basically, I’m creating a bedtime routine with music. At 9:30 or 10pm, I tell Alexa to play one of my go-to adult lullaby songs. This week it’s been James Taylor.

I grew up going to sleep-away summer camp and have such core memories of our camp counselors singing You Can Close Your Eyes and Sweet Baby James before bed. That summer camp was completely tech-free and my happiest time of the year. So I have very positive memories associated with these songs.

Basically, I’m trying to condition myself to start winding down when I hear these songs. I think it’s working! Listen here and here.

As promised, my guilty pleasure of the summer is