Hello friends,

I'm excited to report that the stickers I designed are available now on Kickstarter!

I made these five sticker designs for Kickstarter's annual Make100 project, which encourages makers to launch a small project with the promise of 100 rewards. My goal for this one was only $100, enough to cover the cost of printing each design. This meant my chance of success was high, and it feels good to see it already reach the funding goal!

Hello friends!

Just popping in for an exciting announcement: I'm launching a very small Kickstarter tomorrow!

You can follow this link to see the pre-launch page and click "Notify me on launch" to follow along!

These 5 sticker designs are the ones I'm launching tomorrow. You can back the project and snag one for your car or forehead!

Yesterday, a friend sent me a short documentary about Mourning Doves. This video was special because it featured her grandfather. It was produced in 1959.

I watched the whole thing because I like birds, especially the common ones that we rarely give much thought to. I also watched it because I knew my friend's grandfather must be proud and I wanted to share those feelings.

It made me think about the work I'm doing now and whether or not I'll ever have the chance to show it to my grandkids. Am I making work that I'd want to show them? Will it make future generations proud? Will it even matter?

Hello friends,

I'll keep it short and sweet because I've been really enjoying my time off this past week and I want to get back to relaxing + designing some cool stickers.

This week I published my 2020 year-in-review and 2021 preview. Check it out if that's something you might be into!

If you want to start working on your own creative projects this year, here are some free downloadable templates (PDF or Notion versions) to help you get organized.

I've struggled with imposter syndrome ever since I decided to become a designer, which dates back to 2014.

My flavor of imposter syndrome looks something like this:

• Because I didn't get a design degree, I'll never be a "real" designer.
• I tell myself I'm ok at design, but not great. Other people are way better than me.
• Because I didn't get a computer science degree, I'll never be a great programmer.

But this week, as I was working on a Squarespace website redesign with a collaborator, I realized just how good I am at design.

For some reason, I'm feeling more creative lately. The feeling started in late November. I picked myself up and started writing 750 words a day. As I write this now, it's 12 days into this month and I've written every day.

This happens to me. I go through cycles. Cycles of feeling energized and creative followed by cycles of feeling exhausted and unmotivated. In 2019, I went through an entire year of burnout 😮

I understand this to be normal. Even though most of the resources online are trying to tell us to "optimize our productivity" and hack our way to our most creative self, we are human. Our biology makes us much closer to a tree, that sheds its leaves in winter and flowers in the summer, than a robot with pre-programmed consistency.

But I am trying to better understand my personal cycles.

Look, I'm a nerd for organizational systems and project management.

I love having a place for ideas and a system for executing them. I love Notion, Google Drive, to-do apps, the whole shebang. On a daily basis, I even use these daily time-blocking templates by illustrator Deborah Ho.

But one thing I can never get into, is habit tracking.

Most Notion nerds have a habit tracker set up somewhere in their pages. It's full of little check boxes with healthy activities like drink 64 oz of water, exercise, meditate, make the bed in the morning, etc. Passion Planner has one too. And don't even get me started on the intricate (ok, impressive!) bullet journaling habit trackers.

My holiday looked different this year, as I'm sure it did for many of you. I cooked food and dropped it off for my parents and sister. Made time for a couple video calls with family and friends. Worried about someone I know who is in the hospital with Covid. Waited by my phone for updates. Ate a metric ton of homemade macaroni and cheese (my Nana's recipe).

Despite all of the sickness and death that has marked this year, I'm still finding so many things to be grateful for. Here is a short list...

1. Time and space to be more thoughtful about, and critical of, the Thanksgiving holiday.
2. The opportunity to make good food and share it, instead of relying on my mom to do all of the cooking.
3. My ability to set boundaries with my family.
4. Friends who came to my very first ✨virtual✨ Bad Art Nite, where we hung out Zoom and made bad art together.

What are you grateful for this year, despite it all? Maybe, somehow, you've found even more room for gratitude. I find gratitude to be a magical, depthless well.

If you're like me, you probably have an abundance of interests and creative project ideas. I used to get caught up trying to "follow my passion" before realizing that advice would never work for me. I'm multi-passionate, and I describe myself as a multipotentialite.

A multipotentialite is someone with many interests and creative pursuits. It stems from the word multipotentiality–a psychological and educational term used to describe people who display aptitudes across multiple disciplines.

Even though I've learned to embrace my multipotentiality, it's still held me back from building my Dream Work Life.

You see, I know that I'm meant to be a solopreneur. I also know that I have many of the skills required to be successful running my own online business. Design, writing code, managing projects to name a few.

In today’s world of online business and social media, there are a lot of resources out there teaching us how to “define our personal brand.”

I used to love this concept. Probably because I’m a designer, and I love branding things! In fact, one of my favorite CreativeLive courses taught by Debbie Millman is called A Brand Called You.

But after struggling through a year of burnout in 2019, I came to the important realization that I am not a brand. I am a person. I struggle with overwhelm, perfectionism, and self-doubt. I need rest and movement and lots of food and water.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with technology. Like many of you, I use a variety of apps, websites, and digital tools to manage projects, listen to music, connect with friends, shop, and get food delivered to my doorstep.

But what if, instead of technology helping us to be more productive, it encouraged us to be more human? What if our phones weren’t designed to be distracting, but instead devices for connection and empathy? How would we spend our time, and our lives, differently?

Most often, I think that technology is trying to afford us humans the freedom and flexibility to spend less time on the tedious stuff. Logically, then we will have more time for the “important” stuff.

But instead, we work more. Perhaps even making up more tedious tasks to fill the time.

Hello friends,

Do you have a difficult time describing yourself to other people? You tend to word vomit whenever someone asks what you do?

I struggle with this. Like a lot. I describe myself with too many words. Designer, artist, software developer, maker, creative, etc.

I worry that if I pick just one, I will be trapped. Limited. Stuck.

Hello friends,

I’m still in-between projects. It’s uncomfortable, as I’m the kind of person who always likes to be doing something.

In , I talked about letting your feelings guide your decision-making process when it comes to choosing your next creative passion project. Right now, I’m letting myself feel uncomfortable, and letting my next project start organically instead of jumping into something new before it feels right.

Hello friends,

How do you prioritize the next creative project to work on?

I'm currently working through this process myself, as I'm almost done building a website for a client.

Finishing a project is exciting! But for a multipotentialite like myself, it is often more exciting to scan the horizon for my next challenge.

I've started taking on more responsibility at work. And while it feels good to be recognized for my skill and earned knowledge, I find myself completely drained at the end of each work day.

I'm an empath and a natural leader. I feel my feminine and masculine energies doing their best to work together, trying to balance managing everyone's emotions with the work that needs to get done. It's exhausting.

I asked my friends, other women in tech, how they nurture their feminine energy while working in a masculine-heavy environment, i.e. any workplace operating within capitalism.

Here were some of their suggestions:

Hi friends,

I used to read dozens of articles and self-help books about how to be more productive. But last year, I hit complete burnout and decided to quit “productivity” cold turkey.

Turns out that optimizing my life to allow myself to work more only left me feeling drained, inadequate, and overwhelmed.

So I threw out all of the traditional productivity literature and hit unsubscribe on the motivational newsletters. I’ve replaced the time I previously spent obsessing over productivity hacks with fiction, bird watching, and baking. Oh and I’ve even started writing again! (This time with more joy and less pressure.)

Hello friends,

I had one of those tough existential weeks. Spent too much time wondering "what is the point?" and worrying that life is passing me by.

So I'm taking some time to reset, recharge, and connect with my creative purpose.

Here's what my personal reset + recharge routine looks like:

Hello friends,

I recently published How to launch a creative passion project today without feeling overshelmed. In 6 simple steps, you could be on your way to making real, actionable steps toward building a meaningful creative project.

This is the exact methodology I use to plan and execute creative projects outside my nine-to-five job. The best part might be the free one-page project planner that I use to get organized.

Reflection Question

Hello friends,

This week I tweaked my back. I wasn't doing anything athletic or impressive, but nonetheless found myself kneeling on the kitchen floor with a red-hot pain spreading from the base of my spine upward.

I stretched in between virtual meetings. Rolling around on the floor while the cat watched (and judged) was a humbling experience.

The next day it felt a little better. I met up with my cousin, who also happens to be one of my best friends. We went for a walk along the river. I saw a Coromander, several flying Snowy Egrets, and two Cooper's Hawks. Have I mentioned that I've become a birding hobbyist?!

Hello friends,

I have been quiet for too long.

Due to my privilege as a white woman in America, I simply do not have to confront racism in my daily life. I wanted to ignore it. To push it off as someone else’s problem to solve.

My silence ends now.