A Much-Needed Catch Up
a month in my new home, quilt pics, and a seriously tough nonfiction read
Well, hello there! It seems like it has been just a minute since I made the move from Substack, but turns out it’s been over a month? I need to catch you up on how the whole transition has been going, and I also have those promised quilt pictures, several more book recs, and a few family updates.
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The Newsletter Migration
When I made the decision to move from Substack, it was fairly rash and fast ~ as are most things I do. I knew I wanted to move, but had made absolutely no decisions about how or when until I read Kelly Jensen’s piece about her own transition. I decided THAT DAY to make the switch, and after spending about an hour reading about Buttondown, decided to just go with it. I can fall victim to terrible bouts of decision fatigue, so I know that if I want to take action, I need to limit my options from the get-go.
How has the transition gone? Well, I’m a tinkerer, and that week I had extra time. I put in at least 12 hours just doing the back end work of transitioning, and am definitely still learning. Buttondown isn’t plug and play like Substack is, but honestly I’m kind of loving that. It reminds me of my first foray into blogging back in 2007 and learning enough HTML to be able to format things. Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend Buttondown to those without a tinkering mindset and a serious dedication to making it work, but for me, it has been worth it.
I feel so much lighter and freer operating on an inbox-first platform with no centralized publisher homepage. Meaning, my publication is linked to no one else’s. I stand alone. It’s a NEWSLETTER not a Substack. There is no tagging or internal linkage. My newsletter OG hero Ann Friedman just shared that her newsletter hit its ten-year anniversary mark, and she wrote this, “And you have my deep gratitude for your financial support of my long-game newsletter practice! I intend to still be hitting send long after Substack has completed the enshittification cycle.”
AMEN TO THAT. And thanks for being here for MY long-game newsletter practice ♡
To those of you writing on Substack ~ don’t worry, I’m still reading your newsletters! In my email inbox!
Quilt Pics
I promised you last month that I would share more pictures of my sewing creations, and then whoops, didn’t. Here they are! My goal with the quilts was for them to look very much randomly pieced and homey, and I think I achieved my goal. As with many random-looking quilts, however, it was a pattern!
I am so happy I got these gifts to the recipient family well in advance of the new baby’s arrival. The quilted tote bag was a last minute addition, but it made me so happy to have such a special way to package the quilts, and yay for a gift for mom as well as the kids ♡ I have made this bag before and LOVE it - here’s that pattern.
A Hard Nonfiction Read
Remember my OG newsletter hero Ann Friedman? Well, she published an interview with an author a few weeks ago, and the featured book was precisely in my wheelhouse ~ a deeply reported story of immigrants working in the meat processing industry.
I immediately requested Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company by Alice Driver from the library and started reading. I was absolutely riveted for the first half, and while I did feel at one point that maybe this could have been an Atlantic article instead, I learned so much about the chicken processing industry, Arkansas politics, and the plight of the immigrant worker in this industry. If you can stomach it, I recommend picking this up ASAP.
An excellent pairing with Under the Henfluence by Tove Danovich and Meditations with Cows by Shreve Stockton. Also, I was already planning to revisit The Jungle by Upton Sinclair this year, and this book cemented that decision.
A Quick Family Update
There is a saying that a mother is only as happy as her least happy child, and while I would love to be able to say that doesn’t apply to me … it really does, at least to some extent.
It’s brutally hard to be fully happy when someone you love so deeply is hurting, so this past month as been incredibly sad for me watching my oldest’s life and livelihood be completely upturned by the whims of our incredibly dysfunctional administration. Not only was she not able to be paid due to the funding freeze to the National Forest Service and National Parks, but her entire life plan involved conservation work. Work that no longer has a certain future.
I’m happy to report that funding has been restored for the moment, and her AmeriCorps work in California this spring appears to be able to go ahead as originally planned. My mood can rebound along with her fate, thank goodness.
The senior has decided to join the golf team this spring - no more baseball - and it’s fun watching him trying something new. And so fun in general having him want to spend more time with us in recent months, likely due to the influence of his girlfriend. Yay for family game nights and helping them learn to cook together ♡
And finally ~ soccer season picks up again for the youngest next week! It has been so very strange having no extracurriculars to drive her to since basketball ended in December, and I’m excited to have her involved in something again this season. Yay for the annual spring weekends on the sidelines for me!
Okay, whew. Do you feel caught up??? Any questions? What did I miss?
Thanks for stopping by!
