Archive • Sun Showers • Buttondown

February 23, 2022

As a recovering Catholic, I have a complicated relationship with spirituality. I do admit, though, that I enjoy, and sometimes even yearn for, the rituals...

baby love, my baby love

January 25, 2022

So, ya girl has just embarked on a new hyperfixation! I am, thanks to the Instagram algorithm, now the proud owner of a calligraphy pen holder, nibs, sumi...

artistic freedom

January 4, 2022

Hoooo boy, I’m out of practice! I have dropped the ball! Or, we could look at it another way: wow, it was so great to experience my totally planned end-of-...

November 30, 2021

I’ve never been great at keeping dream journals. Journal-journals, yes, sort of, depending on the era of my life, but I’m terrible at keeping up with...

November 15, 2021

Good god, I love a breakup song. Honestly, they’re so much better than love songs, so much more potent. And I say this as someone who’s been in a committed...

October 27, 2021

It’s so odd to be seeing the conflict between the values of before and those of now. Specifically, I’m thinking of the “hustle and grind” culture and how it...

October 5, 2021

I just started reading How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy after ages of it being on my “to read” list. Just twenty-six pages in, and I’m...

September 27, 2021

Whenever I get busy and overwhelmed, I kind of freeze up in my creative practices. I sleep in late, rather than getting up early enough to write. I swipe...

hungry hungry hippos

September 7, 2021

I just finished M.F.K. Fischer’s An Alphabet for Gourmets, which I would read nightly before bed over the past week. I got it some years ago from a pile of...

just. fucking. write.

August 23, 2021

Hello hello, friend. I’ve been slacking on this newsletter, but here I am nonetheless. Somehow, I got to the mental block stage of things, where the stress...

things are not what they seem

I just started a new job and have been meeting so many people over the last month or so. It’s one part big change because I worked at my previous school for...

strictly nostalgic

Did you hear the news? Hear ye, hear ye, the internet has announced that the one, the only, Bennifer is back, baby. Apparently many people have strong...

Michael often teases me for being unobservant. It is true that I once, after three years of living in our home, looked up at the kitchen ceiling and...

Mary Shelley was nineteen when she wrote Frankenstein. That’s a fact that I’ve thought of fairly regularly for over a decade. I believe I was eighteen when I...

Too often, I forget that this writing, this creativity, this art-making is not meant to be a bother, an experience of harrowing drudgery and militaristic...

why you so obsessed with me?

Okay, so lately I have been binge-listening to a podcast called The Dream that I heard of through the anti-MLM subreddit. Season one is about MLMs (multi-...

character studies

This girl right here is on summer vacation, my friend, and I’m not trying to brag, but I 100% understand if that announcement sounds gratuitous. Maybe it is,...

Although the Monterey area doesn’t have the kind of seasons an East Coaster would recognize, any local will tell you they exist, and that each is magical in...

writing into existence

Have we done today’s prompt before? I could ctrl-F through the newsletter archivces, but I also kind of don’t care because I like to write the weekly prompts...

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a loop of endless self-improvement? Ultimately, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, to be driven by positive growth. In...

quantity, not quality

I started doing The Artist’s Way, which I’d only heard of a few years ago, last week. For some reason, before this I’d thought of it as “an old person’s...

read like a writer

This year, my goal is to read forty-five books. For the past two years, I’ve tracked my reading on the Goodreads app (friend me! I’m @ashleyshaffey) and...

you've got this

I know that one of the primary rules of the internet is “don’t read the comments,” right there next to “don’t feed the trolls.” I usually steer clear from...

I’ve sewn forever, it feels like. In high school, I’d go to Goodwill and buy clothes with the intention of altering their length and fit or frankensteining...

I’m on Spring Break this week, so I solemnly swear not to complain or speak flippantly about time, stress, or exhaustion to anybody who is out there working...

beware the ides (yes, I know it passed)

Today I was talking with my friend about how March is so long this year. She looked at me with an eyebrow raised and said, “it’s always long.” Which, yes, is...

right here, right now

I took a baby break last week because Sunday, my usual newsletter day, Michael and I got up at 3:30 in the morning to drive down to Southern California to...

I just finished Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library this weekend and it has me thinking about choice, opportunities, regrets, free will, and all that good...

words of affirmation

February 23, 2021

Woah. Today’s prompt is #31 (okay, actually it’s # 32, but I accidentally shifted the count months ago, so I’m just going with it, let’s not quibble) and it...

go forth and brag!

February 15, 2021

Funny funny me. I talked last week all about the danger of sending the newsletter late and what a big deal it is to get it out on time, and now this week...

February 8, 2021

Hello, friend, and welcome to another newsletter. I’m going to be honest with you and let you know that this weekend flew by too fast, I didn’t do enough...

February 1, 2021

Last year meant a change for some Americans around WASPy expectations of “politeness.” It was a reckoning for some, a lifting of a veil, a reality check. A...

hey, good lookin’

January 25, 2021

If you’ve been reading this newsletter since last year, you may remember a little prompt back in May (I labeled it #6, but it was technically #7, and...

hopin' and wishin’

January 18, 2021

If you’re anything like me, hope is a kind of scary thing. When people ask if I’m an optimist or pessimist, I usually say optimist; however, when it comes...

January 11, 2021

I don’t have much to say in my intro this week. As you’ll see in the prompt, I’m not feeling like making the best of things or engaging in gratitude. Those...

January 4, 2021

It’s the first newsletter of 2021 and I’ve been feeling writer’s block about it all day, so I popped on a guided meditation to help focus myself and maybe...

new year, who this?

December 28, 2020

‘Tis the season for reflection, for plans, for resolutions. This may not feel like the best year for all that (look back at your 2020 resolutions, if you...

December 21, 2020

Yesterday I went to an herbal dream pillow workshop. My friend knows the facilitator and encouraged me and another friend of ours to join. I signed up...

the end is nigh

December 14, 2020

Is that subject line ominous enough? What I meant to say was “look! It’s December 13th! This year is almost over!” But, as 2020 has shown again and again,...

a lil ebb, a lil flow

December 7, 2020

Is anybody else feeling the pressure to perform? Maybe this is a silly question. Maybe this is a question with the most obvious answer of all of 2020. Of...

no, i haven't given up on sun showers

November 30, 2020

I come bearing apologies. To you, yes, but I’m also under no illusion that my oh-so-many readers (big LOL here) were waiting with baited breath for the next...

hello! hello? hello!

September 16, 2020

I am happy to be in your inbox again. I wanted to share with you Mello’s excellent response to our last Sun Showers newsletter. I also highly suggest...

untouchable joy

August 31, 2020

Right now I’m obsessed with the band Whitney’s new album of covers, called Candid. I’m the kind of person who becomes deeply enamored of albums. When I find...

August 18, 2020

Well, school started last week and it officially kicked my ass. If you’ve got family or acquaintances questioning the dedication of teachers or the need to...

a monday newsletter, just for you

I spent much of yesterday, more hours than I’m willing to calculate, finishing sewing a shirt. I am, by no means, a master sewist (a term I somewhat recently...

some meditations on meditation

Do you meditate? It’s something I fall in and out of, though my intention is always to be a regular super-meditator– someone who gets up every morning and...

I’m not sure about you, but tensions have felt pretty high in my life for the past week. Life in the age of COVID-19 presents many opportunities for stress,...

time for delight

Today I started reading Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. In each of its essayettes, he explores something that is currently delighting him. He gave himself...

Sorry for skipping a week, but I’m still here and ready to write, and I hope you are, too! Last Sunday time got away from me because of trying to balance a...

ready to write?

When I started this year I gave myself a challenge to write more. Well, to be honest that’s a resolution and challenge I give myself every year. Over time, I...