I've been on Instagram since 2010.

That's not a fact I say with pride exactly, but I don't say it with shame either. For a long time it was genuinely useful — a source of inspiration, a way of feeling connected to people who made things and cared about things, a window I could press my face against when I felt isolated in my own life. I built real habits around it. I organized my looking around it.

What I didn't notice — not fully, not for a long time — was how slowly the water was warming.

I've been thinking about the frog in the pot. The one who doesn't jump because the temperature rises so gradually that nothing ever feels like a threshold. That's what it was like for me. The platform changed in increments that were each individually forgettable, and I just kept adjusting, kept showing up, kept treating it as the thing it used to be.

It was the dating apps that first taught me to recognize this feeling — that slow realization that what you signed up for and what you're actually participating in are no longer the same thing. The moment when you finally let yourself fully see the damage that's been quietly accumulating. Instagram had that same shape. I just took longer to look.

I took a month off first. When I came back to post — to "share what I was working on," to do the thing you're supposed to do — it felt hollow in a way I couldn't unfeel. What I wanted was nuanced conversation. Actual feedback. The kind of exchange that leaves you thinking about something afterward. What I was getting, consistently, was fire emojis. Heart emojis. The default acknowledgment that means: I registered your existence for half a second. That's not connection. That's just noise shaped like connection.

So I left. I've been reading Cal Newport, doing some research on phone addiction and what extended algorithmic exposure does to a person's sense of their own wants. And what I've found on the other side of leaving is this: I'm less influenced. I'm no longer being served an endless loop of hobby hobby new hobby, each one calibrated to hit the same spot in my brain. I've started to see that a lot of what I thought was genuine interest was actually just the dopamine sequence doing its job. The relief of that realization is hard to describe. I'm getting clearer on what I actually like. What I genuinely want to make.

On the practical side: I'm finally renting my own space again. Small. Modest. Manageable — and that word has become genuinely precious to me. I'm not overcompensating anymore. I'm not trying to inhabit a life I think I should have. Less space, fewer things, more peace than I expected. Cultivating a home from that feels like something I can actually do.

The jewelry work has been shifting too.

When I first fell into it, the limitlessness was the appeal. So many materials, so many directions, so much possibility. But freedom that feels expansive in the beginning can become a kind of paralysis. I had vision without direction, interest without the depth that makes you proud of something. The metal fabrication course changed that. Somewhere in the basic work — cutting, filing, bending, the moment when you introduce flame and the metal shifts and submits — I found focus. It requires embodied attention. You have to actually be there.

Dark Parlour has been shifting too, in ways I'm still figuring out. I'll have more to say about that next month. For now: it's becoming something bigger than a jewelry brand. Something more like a philosophy. Stay tuned.

What I've been reading / watching

I'll be honest: I've been deep in self-help, self-exploration, and business-minded books for a while now. Useful, necessary, but after a certain point your brain starts to feel like it's always being asked to do homework. So when Project Hail Mary drifted into my awareness I thought — fine, let me try it.

I put it on my device, let it play while I crocheted and sewed up a new dress, and finished all ten hours of it in a single weekend. Genuinely sad when it was over.

What got me was the main character's mind — the way it whirs through problems, dissects processes in real time, delights in its own curiosity. There's no love story. There's no romantic subplot pulling focus. What it's actually about is friendship, and teamwork, and what happens when two beings discover that the most profound connection possible is finding someone else who lights up about the same things you do. That was exactly the right story for me at exactly the right moment.

And then Bride! — Maggie Gyllenhaal's film — which is a completely different kind of immersion. I was absorbed into that world from the first frame. The costume design is extraordinary (I have already started sourcing fabric to make my own version of the Bride's dress, obviously), but what stayed with me most was the language. The way the main character speaks, the texture of her inner life rendered in prose — I found myself hypnotized by the speed and depth in her sentences.

Two very different things. Both exactly what I needed.

Something I made for you

All of this — leaving Instagram, getting clearer, peeling back the hobby accumulation — has been pointing me toward something I've been quietly building: tools for people who want to get back into their actual lives. Not productivity systems. Not optimization. Just small, tangible things that make it a little easier to be present.

The first one is ready.

The Pocket Ledger is a single-sheet printable that folds into a tiny 8-page zine — a commonplace book for the real, messy, beautiful stuff of everyday life. Six interior panels: something I noticed, something I want to remember, something I'm figuring out, something my kid said, a small win, something I'm letting go. One blank page for whatever doesn't fit the categories.

There's no right way to fill it. Just write what you don't want to lose.

Use one a day. Use one a week. Fold a stack and keep them in your bag. Let them become a portrait of your life.

→ [Download the Pocket Ledger — free]

Letter size, landscape, one sheet makes one complete zine. Print as many as you need, forever.

More soon. Thank you for being here — genuinely.

— Jem