Creative Recommendations from October

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

Hi friends,

It’s time for my Creative Recommendations from October! 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 🥰

Reading

Over the past year I’ve been listening to every Becky Chambers sci-fi book out there. She’s a pioneer of the hopepunk genre, which imagines worlds of optimism over dystopia. When the real world has felt overwhelming or I’ve been stressed about work, this cozy sci-fi world has been my favorite place to escape to.

I’m working on the 4th and final book in the Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet series and am going to be very sad when it ends. The first and second books were my favorites but the third one I had to stop because it got a bit morbid.

The 4th book, the Galaxy and the Ground Within

I’ve been listening the audiobooks and the narrator is the best I’ve ever heard. There are so many characters and her ability to bring each to life is fantastic. Here’s a glimpse of how Becky Chambers describes her process of writing sci-fi from an interview with Wired.

Learning

For the past 4 months, I‘ve been building an app called Free Time that helps you use your phone mindfully. It locks distracting apps and you solve a puzzle or do a mindfulness activity to unlock them.

I have learned SO much building this app. I’ve always been curious about UX design. When I started on this project, I told myself that worse-case scenario, it would be a good portfolio piece. And best case scenario, it could become my main source of income. The dream is that it could support me so I can create any kind of art I want, rather than relying on commissions.

Last week, I found it was approved by Apple to launch in the App Store when I’m ready! I could barely believe it. I’m doing one or two more weeks of beta testing before I launch. If you want to get early access, you can get on the waitlist to beta test it here.

I’m looking back at some of my first designs and I feel so proud of myself for how far I’ve come. I totally fell in love with UX design through this process and am curious to see how that will unfold outside of this app.

Making Art With

I just got back from an 11 day trip to Paris with my mom! It was an amazing vacation that I am beyond grateful to have shared with her.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was being able to sketch and paint en plein air together. My mom was trained as an art therapist and has been taking watercolor classes since she retired. Being able to go to beautiful places together and quietly make art together was so special.

My memory passport is almost filled with stamps!

Speaking of quiet, my Quietest Places in New York book is officially on pre-order! You can read that announcement here if you missed it. I submitted my book proposal for my second book in the series, which will be Quietest Places in Paris, right before I left for France. This trip was so inspiring and got me very excited to create it.

Listening to

When I was on the flight home, I re-watched Interstellar, one of my all-time favorite movies. It really made 3 hours zoom by on an 8 hour flight, so that was an excellent life choice. The soundtrack by Hans Zimmer is fantastic and I used to listen to it while I work. Highly recommend. Listen here.

Watching

I always save the most embarrassing part of my newsletters for my paid subscribers so here we go…