Hello dear Reader 🐉

Pirates, ye be warned: this issue will be different. And although it will be novel long (I'm so sorry), I want to cut to the chase. I'm not gonna lie, I rewrote this a few times. I had stuff to say, but upon reading it again, it was WAY more negative than what I'm actually feeling. Nope. Like Lauren Sanderson says, this won't be my truth.

Bottom line: this past two weeks have been both super hectic, and very fuzzy in an annoyingly sluggish way. I got super sick, with what I suspect is Covid, after a trip to Ikea; I still am recovering but getting better. I taught my first two classes for the M1 Typo at ECV. And I continued to settle in the Arkive, which required a lot of infuriatingly tedious admin and errands.

As someone who has been craving it her whole life, I'm adulting at an alarming rate. And boiled down plainly, it comes to this: the more I get everything I ever wanted, the über less my tolerance for bullshit. In this case, what I call bullshit is anything that, put extremely simply, isn't pure type design.

And I've been struggling by far the most with type design. Now - I constantly do my best to try and become a better person. That is, with learning, the quest of my life. On an incredibly positive note, I've made insane progress on the independence and fitness fronts, which as you now know, is with purpose the three pillars of my entire life. I really can't deny it. I'm changing a lot, hard, fast, and I'm making enormous progress. At least I got that for me, which is nice.

On the other hand, man, work has been tough af. I especially struggle really hard with my presence on social media. I feel like I'm posting stupid shit about myself and my life, constantly, to people that rightfully follow me exclusively for type, and so that could not give less of a f about. Stories in particular are a pain point. If this feeling is true or not, it does NOT matter to me. I feel like it, period. And I'm trying to compensate, but it's a mountain to pass.

I really do not want to sound ungrateful. Myself and my psychiatrist, that I've been seeing since 2017 and whom I trust beyond human words, cried on our session this week. Because we realised together this is the best I've EVER been. For real. I've never been going better; I've been struggling for 10y and I got everything I wanted in one month. It's me, I'm the problem it's me. I am the one who's overwhelmed and having difficulties to manage. I'm trying to juggle: finishing fonts, starting new creative ones, teaching a lot, a fitness journey, settling into a new apartment and the processes it requires. Launching my foundry, now that I finally have time to focus on it, and getting to know better a friend that is not me for once. I'm not doing a good job handling all this. I have ADD way too much for it.

But enough ranting. I want this issue to be positive. Again: this is, flat out, the best I've ever been. I also reached over 200 days sober from alcohol recently. My biggest flex rn is I have no idea which day I am at. It does not matter anymore. I said one year. It will be one year. This is the exception that makes the rule: I do what I said I would do.

Let's go through this update together point by point.

• independence win → my biggest progress point, to be honest. I'm crossing tasks left and right on this aspect. Mostly, I've been really tightening my Obsidian setup, and the beauty and point of it is that it's forever in progress, but I'm getting where I want to be with it, which in turns tremendously helps my productivity. I really do want to write an article about my setup.

• fitness win → I bought my very first lifting belt, appropriately in a beautiful lavender colour, and broke one of my PR for deadlifts, which are my favourite exercises ever. My best deadlift, back in 2024, was 100kgs 1RM (I'm 1m53, so yeah). And I reached 60kgs 4x8 last week. I'm really, really, really starting to enjoy lifting, and I wish I could have the guts to go to the gym more, but I HATE when it is packed and it always is. I've also been SUPER consistent with my routines, and I've made a lot of progress in my baby calisthenics practice. My next goal is to have a proper 4x12 set of pushups, but I can only do one set of 12 for now :)

• type design win → I had one of the most creative ideas of my career so far on a random evening. I was thinking of adding a filtre on my Mac to get the red light on evenings, and upon seeing the accessibility settings, I thought: if you can control the pointer with your head, why couldn't you use it to draw stuff with the pen tool on Glyphs? So I did just that. It was extremely fun, and I think there is a LOT to be done with it still. I've also progressed on a few different typefaces, but nothing substantial yet urgh.

And for media:

• gaming → the rumours are true; I've picked up TOTK again, and maaaan, I have no idea why I stopped playing it in the first place lmao. The summer before I went to TypeMedia, I had nothing to do whole waiting for classes to start, and I played it for up to 9h a day. I love this game. A lot. I'm far into endgame, too, which makes it super relaxing, cause I can just wander around with OP gear and enjoy exploring and discovering stuff. In general, in games, what I absolutely adore is the feeling I get when, although I know the map by heart, I still manage to get lost. Cyberpunk 2077, especially with Phantom Liberty, and TOTK are the only games that ever brought me this. In real life, my process I like for discovering a new city is to randomly take a metro or bus station, and try to find my way back to my accommodation by myself. And I do the same thing in games but with fast travel points. In terms of gaming, I was also for a few evenings back to Diablo 3. Now, absurd humour is by far my favourite king of humour. And I fell asleep one evening while playing a Greater Rift - which made my paragon 600 crusader die. It still stops me in my tracks dying from laughter when I think about it. I don't know if this ever happened in history.

• show → incentivised by my friend who hardcore stans Toji and Maki, I've been continuing to enjoy my way through Jujutsu Kaisen. I'm starting episode 32, so the Shibuya arc; and man, I'm the type of person who immediately spoils myself absolutely everything because I HATE not knowing, but let me tell you, I am scared af lol. I'm getting really involved into the story, I'm really going through every emotion known to man. JJK reminds me a lot of this song by Ashnikko; I used to be a supermassive fan of them, and I still enjoy this song a lot.

• asmr → I've been enjoying the channel of Graham ASMR. I'm pretty addicted to his whispering voice, and I enjoy his content a lot too. Notably, the writing editing.

• movies → still no movie this issue; it's just not my thing I think, but I've been eyeing HARD some projectors. Especially inspired by this YouTuber I absolutely adore, yukiboy. I'm currently rewatching his entire channel, and I can feel the vibes he has in his flat at the core of my being.

• reading → I'm finishing up Designing Your Life on Audible. I don't think it really applies to me, cause honestly my life is pretty awesome atm, and I have a lot of trouble with books where the authors present themselves as know-all gurus, which I kinda feel they do. But I'm also at fault in the sense that I HATE not finishing books. So I have 20% left and I will get through it lol.

• music → my taste recently has been oscillating between trashy phonk, as per FREAKING usual this year, and going back to the love of my life, Lana Del Rey - esp Blue Banisters, esp Dealer, so cathartic. I've also absolutely SLAUGHTERED this GORGEOUS song by Suki Waterhouse. It reminds me of what is still in my top 5 songs of all time, Bad As The Rest by Jessie Murph. Also, I've started getting into KiNG MALA more, because I've always liked her music, but I found out recently that this particular picture, which I strongly believe is the closest I've seen to my feminine ideal lol, was in fact of her. I had no idea, so funny.

Ok. Basically, these past 2 weeks, the theme has been: SIMPLIFY. My life, routines, and habits. For the next two weeks, I want the theme to be: BUILD. Like Uk'otoa, man. SIMPLIFY. BUILD. GROW. FINISH. DRAW. FOCUS. TEACH. FAST. LIFT. Everything is swirling in my head, and I want to obey, but I guess the only order that matters is ACT. Damnit friends, I just have to execute. My life began when I got the keys to the Arkive. It's not even been a month. I need to allow myself the grace to blossom.

I won't promise anything for next issue cause we saw how this goes. I just want to see where my desire to type design takes me. But at least, trust me; I'm the best I've ever been, and this REALLY is just the beginning. I have the environment, the time, the mindset. I'm almost at Baldur's Gate.

Infinite thanks for reading.

Take care ⚔️🔠
Ando