hello friends,

it’s been a little while. I sent my last letter in early November, then disappeared from digital life. in the meantime, I traveled to the US, got a small surgery — and spent the holidays with my family resting and recovering.

it’s taken me a long time to understand the value of rest and integration work — growing in circles, spiraling around deep truths that might take minutes to understand or explain, but many months or years to fully inhabit. this period of absence, for me, has been full of gold.

{💌 this is: my artist digest for October. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week) called guide.notes}

dear friends,

there’s a saying (attributed to zen buddhism, but who knows) that keeps coming to mind these days:

{💌 this is: my artist digest for September. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week) called guide.notes}

dear friends,

{💌 this is: my artist digest for August. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week) called guide.notes}

dear friends,

{💌 this is: my artist digest for July. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week!) called guide.notes}

~

dear friends,

I definitely fell off the map for a few months while traveling to China and the US, but I’ve returned now. I spent the last few weeks meandering my way back to center — through drawing mind maps, soaking in new ideas, and nerding out on human design.

{💌 this is: my artist digest for April. I also send Friday letters called guide.notes}

—

Dear friends,

hello from China. I’m currently in Hainan Island on the South China Sea, visiting family, being steamed alive in the sticky heat, and eating the creamiest, sweetest mangos of my life with a spoon. The weather, the fruit, and the thrashing waves are here to occupy me as I’m processing all the sensations that come with returning to China after 6 years. Before this, I was in my birth city, Hangzhou.

dear friend,

I have travel brain fog, as well as too-many-people brain fog — both of which are strains of too-much-input brain fog. at the same time, I also have the brain fog of being with family, speaking only Mandarin, eating too much, and feeling barely unrecognizable to myself.

dear voyager friends,

everything you see below, I drew on the 9 hour plane ride between Istanbul and Beijing. I arrived in my hometown this morning, cried while hugging my grandmother, had dinner with my relatives, and already ate a long list of foods and exotic fruits you’ve all probably never heard of before. (many of them, I had never heard of before). everything in China has changed so much, and yet, feels comfortingly familiar.