Creative Recommendations from February

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

Hi friends,

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

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

Reading

I’ve been reading more graphic novels this month because my brain has been fried from everything going on and I haven’t been able to totally focus. Also they’re beautiful! One of my favorites is Poetry Comics by Grant Snider.

He has such a beautiful way of weaving together art with mindfulness. I’m obsessed with his simplicity and approachability. The rhythm of each frame is so calming.

I wanted to start making my own poetry comics about digital minimalism. This was the first one I did by hand. I drew it at an event I went to that was a phone-free evening.

Making Art With

My art expression has been mostly digital the past few months while building my app Free Time. Last month, I revamped the screenshots for the app store.

I’m really happy with how they came out! One of the most interesting things I did to improve them was post on a Reddit page designed for feedback on App Store screenshots. The people were super helpful (and direct, classic Reddit).

I really have fallen in love with UX and digital design in the past year through creating the app. If you want to spend less time scrolling social media, you can try out Free Time.

I’ve found it helpful work on new app features when I hit certain milestones. So when I hit 500 users, I pushed a new build with bug fixes. To celebrate launching my book, I let myself code a new feature I’ve wanted for a while, which is custom themes. Now you can change the colors, fonts, and layout of your locked apps. I really wanted to make the black and white version to make my phone look like a dumb phone.

I’ve used Claude Code to build it and Figma to design everything. I’m thinking of doing a write-up on how I built the app at some point. Let me know if you want that!

Learning

How to launch a book. My book came out last week! It’s so surreal to see it in bookstores. I went to a few Barnes & Noble stores and was thrilled to see it on the shelves next to my favorite books about New York. Truly a dream come true.

It’s so fun to see people sharing photos of their books arriving!

I wrote a whole piece on the process of how I got a book deal. Next week is my in-person book launch at the Rizzoli Bookstore (which is almost sold out!). Tomorrow I’m doing a virtual book launch with Quiet Communities if you want to RSVP for free here.

Watching

Survivor!! Season 50 started last week and I am thrilled. This season is a special one with all returning players. And the first episode delivered! If you are a Survivor fan, please let me know because I need to yap about it with someone.

My favorite thing in my social media feed is the Survivor Affirmations Instagram

I was nearly as excited about Survivor as I was about my pub day 😅

Dreaming about

SUMMER! Oh man, am I over this winter. The 40-degree days are like summer compared to this winter. I started laughing to myself when I wrote this section because I started it with the same sentence last month. My apartment is finally temperate (no long 60 in the mornings), but that bonus snowstorm last weekend really was not necessary mid-Feb. It looks like next week is going to be in the 60s, and I cannot wait!!

Things I loved

This is a new section I’m testing out with speed recs:

• The Good Hang episode with Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch. Watch here

• Nick Plante’s NYC Off Tech email. I’ve been going to a bunch of phone-free events in the past month through this and have met such wonderful new friends. Read here.

• School of Radical Attention. I went to their Attention Lab event. It’s a beautiful space in DUMBO, and they also do virtual events. Learn more here.

• Critics at Large Podcast episode on Heated Rivalry. Listen here.

• Deep Questions with Cal Newport episode on How to Reinvent Your Life in 4 months. Listen here.