From the Compost Heap header. A pencil style illustration of a compost heap with flowers and plants growing around it. A bee buzzes by and a white rabbit hops by.

  • There’s some good in the world Mr. Frodo. ⛰️

    Samwise from Lord of the Rings says "There's some good in the world Mr. Frodo. And it's worth fighting for."

    Samwise: It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

    Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?

    Samwise : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

    This is what I needed this week. I’m sharing in case you needed it too. If you’d like to hear Samwise himself you can watch the scene here.

    We are all going through it.

    So today I’m sharing some resources. First for mental health and then accessible forms of advocacy against the Shadow.

    Last month I listened to the audiobook of You Will Get Through This Night by Daniel Howell. I can’t recommend it enough to anyone struggling even a bit with mental health (and who isn’t?)

    Dan is a YouTuber who experiences chronic depression and social anxiety. He worked with mental health professionals to create a practical guide to supporting your mental health. Dan’s writing style and personal anecdotes make it feel like you’re talking to a friend who gets it. Particularly when listening to the audiobook. (And did I mention he’s British? Love an accent.)

    Black and yellow book cover for You Will Get Through This Night by Daniel Howell.

    You may even find the book (or audiobook) at your local library so be sure to check Libby.

    So many of the tips are simple, but hard to prioritize.

    I enjoyed it so much I think I’ll re-listen to it each winter.

    An embroidery frame holds a cross stitch that reads "I'm Fine". Back cover shows the reverse of embroidery hoop which is a tangled mess of navy blue thread. Text at bottom says March 2025. A Kindle Curiosity Zine.

    Last year I made a zine with self regulation ideas that you may find useful.

    SURVIVAL TIPS FOR UNPRECEDENTED TIMES Make time for things that regulate your nervous system. 1. Go for a walk. 2. Compose a photograph. 3. Write a letter. 4. Blow bubbles. 5. Paint. 6. Plant seeds. 7. Read a book. 8. Breathe slowly. 9. Bake. 10. Curl up in a blanket burrito. 11. Watch the clouds. 12. Hold hands. 13. Dance. 14. Watch a children's 15. Doodle. film. 16. Start a compost heap. 17. Brew a pot of tea. 18. Write a poell. 19. Squeeze clay or dough or putty. 20. Build blocks. 21. Learn something new. 22. Text a friend. 23. Trace your hand. 24. Buy a box of crayons. 25. Go stargazing. 26. Make a collage. 27. Listen to music. 28. Draw a rainbow. 29. Watch a bird or an insect. 30. Take a hot bath.

    You can read the rest here.

    I also have to share this beautiful painting by Amie McNee.

    Hand painted love letter by Amie McNee says, "During tragedy we must make art. Art keeps up human during inhumane moments."

    This is for anyone who feels their creative projects are frivolous or unimportant. Or anyone who is struggling with sharing their art right now.

    Please don’t stop. We need it.

    At the same time, if what you need right now is deep rest and reflection, that is an equally important way to tend your creative ecosystem. And is essential for making art.

    Find Joy

    Another important way to support your mental health is to find sources of joy. I loved this queer twist on this Caemlot inspired romance, Gwen & Art Are Not In Love. It’s a light read, YA romance (no spice), with neurodivergent-coded characters. The author Lex Croucher is queer and nonbinary.

    Gwen & Art Are Not in Love A Novel by Lex Croucher.

    I’m also on the third book in the Seaborn trilogy (queer pirates with magic) which I’m reading with the Livingstans book club.

    Seaborn by Michael Livingston book cover. Blue background with gold details and two pirate ships: one sailing and one flying.

    Fight despair with action.

    We all have different strengths and capacities. I’ve shared before that advocacy action items are often for able bodied and neurotypical people. Here are some ways to get involved if you aren’t able to protest and may struggle with phone calls.

    Or learn about mutual aid. Here’s a recommendation and gifted book from Libro.fm (an indie alternative to Audible that supports local bookshops):

    “We know that books can’t fix everything, but they can help us show up for one another. Mutual Aid by Dean Spade is free on Libro.fm for the next week (until 2/2).”

    Even hobbits can do their bit to turn back the Shadow.

    Flat lay photograph of Bag End watercolor painting by paint palettes

    You’ll hear from me again mid February. I started weekly emails when launching Entwined & Ember and I’m going back to a slower pace for a while.

    Take care,

    Sarah signed with a swoopy S
    Read more: There’s some good in the world Mr. Frodo. ⛰️

  • Trenches, I am in them.

    While the neurotypical world is chanting “new year, new you” many autistic and otherwise neurodivergent folks are just struggling to get the train back on the tracks in January.

    Our family finds the holiday season quite difficult. Even with our best intentions to slow down and do Christmas in our own ways the change of routine and excitement always seems to tip us into dysregulation. Add to that distressing news, weather related pain flares, and chronic illness* and I have been having a particularly hard time.

    Yesterday I spent most of the day in acute pain laying on a heating pad and wondering why my body had suddenly turned against me. I’m hurting today, but less intensely and trying to type this up while I can manage to do so.

    I think it’s important to show the struggle and not just the highlights reel we’re all encouraged to curate nowadays.

    If you’re not fine I made this for you a few months back.

    Another regulating tool I can recommend Marina Gross-Hoy’s gentle workshop The Art of Beginnings. (Coming this weekend!) I love Marina’s work and although I can’t attend live I’m planning to brew a nice cup of tea before I watch the recording.

    The art of beginnings title over an oil painting of tree branches

    I’m am looking forward to Marina’s gentle presence as we begin piecing together our daily rhythm this January.

    When I have the capacity I’ve been working on prototypes for a series of collagraph prints to represent my creative process (based on the data from my 2025 creative ecosystem pie charts.) †

    I’m playing around with the form of a meandering river bed, and used the data to create four different paths for visual art, self publishing, blogging, and zines. Here are some mock ups in Procreate.

    Then I’ve been testing different printmaking techniques. I’ve decided on collagraph (a process where you collage a plate to print from) with an unraveling cord.

    The final print will be four different meanders overlapping each other printed on the same page. These will go out to my print subscribers at the end of January and will also be reproduced on the cover of January’s zine.

    Collograph prints of deep blue meanders of a river as printed from an unraveling cord

    I’m keen to get this project done, but my body has been forcing me to pace myself and I am trying to listen.

    Here’s a clip of me pulling a test print.

    The inspiration behind the shape of overlapping meanders is from last year’s mood board and the meander maps of Harold Fisk. I’ve learned that my process ebbs and flows and will be writing more about this for January’s zine.

    I also wanted to share a tip for anyone who’s interested in tracking your time.

    After last week’s newsletter one of you kindly sent me the EARLY time tracker app which does almost the same thing with much less friction. I’ve been playing with it for January and honestly it will save a ton of time that I spent tinkering with spreadsheets. (Thanks Katie!)

    Vintage illustration of ourboros dragon biting it's own tail

    Over the past few months I’ve also been working on the Alchemy (Trade & Barter) portal on my website. It’s framed as an immserive choose your adventure story and you can read it here.

    It’s a whimsical invitation to exchange energy and art outside of the framework of money. Art for art. Book for book. Zines for zines.

    Time Travel banner. Hand drawn illustrtation of TARDIS in space surrounded by swirling lines and stars.

    Last January I opened a 26 year old time capsule and made a zine about it.

    Time Capsule Zine Cover with Crayola Stickers and Rubber Stamps

    Two years ago I wrote Hello from a Human Jungle Gym – a reflection on time and energetic capacity.

    Nested rainbow hearts drawn with crayons. Rainbow sorted colored pencils and art supplies to the left.

    That’s all for now.

    According to my timer app it’s been over an hour of typing (HOW does this take so long??) and my back is warning me to wrap things up. I’m going to queue this up without proofreading again. Thanks for your generosity and understanding.

    I’ll be back next week to announce a new project.

    Take care.

    Sarah signed with a swoopy S

    P.S. Yes, the title is a quote from Daniel Howell. If you know you know. 😉

    FOOTNOTES

    * I’ve recently been diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses, but have not had the spoons to sit down and write about the experience. Soon. Maybe next month.

    † This is for the ILSSA open call to diagram your creative process.

    Read more: Trenches, I am in them.

  • I’ve been waiting 26 years for this.

    January’s Zine

    This month’s zine is a collaboration between 38 year old me and 13 year old me. I made it with stickers and journal entries from my millennial time capsule – created in 1999.

    To celebrate waiting 26 years to open this time capsule I’ve made a full color zine this month! To go with the Crayola vibes I used rubber stamps instead of my typewriter this month. Sometimes it’s nice to get your hands dirty.

    Patrons watch your mailboxes. The rest of you can buy a copy from my shop.

    I was SO sure there was a Tamogotchi inside! But the only “artifacts” were a dried out gel pen (I’m 90% sure it was dried out before I put it in) and a McDonalds Beanie Babies Happy Meal bag. I remember being really confused about what to include that I wouldn’t somehow miss in the next 26 years. 😂

    What would you have put in a time capsule to represent the year 1999?

    Printed images for mood board in a pile on my desk including maps, trees, spirals, artifacts, hag stones, reflections, etc. My typewriter and antique keys are also on the table.

    In the Studio ✂️

    Something I realized during NaNoWriMo is that I want to make my noveling process more interdisciplinary. My first step was printing out images from my novel’s mood board. Holding these in my hands and moving them around was incredibly regulating after an overstimulating holiday season.

    10/10 would recommend paper mood boards.

    I’m planning to pin these on a cork board so I can continue to move them around rather than gluing them down. I may even use string. (I have a long standing thing for conspiracy corkboards.)

    The added benefit will be keeping my story visible to my conscious and unconcious mind throughout the year. Here’s a time lapse since I’m not on Instagram anymore.

    Over the last month I’ve realized (reading Ray Bradbury & Dorothea Brande) that my creative ecosystem needs more time for dreaming and ideation. So my word of the year is Reverie and I made this phone wallpaper as a visual reminder. The painting by John William Waterhouse is titled Boreas.

    I’m also starting a “writing from life” practice – separate from my self reflective journaling – to keep up my prose writing throughout the year. I both need space to think about my novel and space to write. I’m using this gorgeous spreadsheet to track my progress. Something I love about it is that you track time as well as words. Time researching, writing, prepping all counts. There’s tons of flexibility in setting goals and the spreadsheet even encourages you to allow for missing days.

    My kid is 5 1/2 years old and this feels like the first time I’ve had the energy and capacity to stay up late writing most nights. (Brain fog in the morning means waking up early never worked for me.) I’m so grateful to home education for giving us the flexibility to set our own hours.

    Reading 📖

    I posted my 2024 reading wrap up to my blog.

    My favorite reads were…

    Seaborn by Michael Livingston

    Pirates, magic, queer characters, and grounded historical details bring this world to life. The sequel Iceborn comes out later this year!

    Seaborn by Michael Livingston book cover. Blue background with gold details and two pirate ships: one sailing and one flying.

    All of the Discworld books I read by Terry Pratchett.

    And these books on the writing process:

    Zen & the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

    A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry Pratchett

    Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande

    Reading these together really formed a constellation of creative process. Observing what overlapped and what differed. I learned years ago I can’t use another creative process wholecloth, but reading about other people’s experience can help demystify the process. Studying early drafts of Tolkien and Sanderson’s work is really doing that for me as well.

    Digital Foraging 🍁

    Time Travel banner. Hand drawn illustrtation of TARDIS in space surrounded by swirling lines and stars.

    This time last year…

    Hello from a Human Jungle Gym is a reflection on time and energetic capacity. I had similar goals last year, but continued to sink too much time into Substack. I’m hoping that making the big jump to Beehiiv will help me realize some of these intentions.

    We’ll see what happens long term, but I had twice the open rate on my last email as I have on Substack recently. People are starting to treat Substack like a social media and posts get lost in the feed.

    Ways to Support drawing of a white rabbit hopping into flowers

    The Compost Heap is handmade without the use of AI. 🐝

    Support doing things the old fashioned way by joining my Patrons ($5) and I’ll send paper copies of my zines with the coolest postage stamps I can find.

    Not into snail mail?

    Here are other ways you can support.

    • Share with a friend. (It’s free!)
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    • Reply to this email and suggest a book, a link, or something else that you’ve been loving lately. 🥰
    Drawing of a tin can telephone and the words Let's chat

    I’d love to hear from you.

    Hit reply to email me directly. Or ask about doing an art / zine / book swap!

    Thanks for being here.

    Sarah signed with a swoopy S

    I appreciate you.

    Compost Heap Illustrations by Gracie Klumpp of Leave the Fingerprints. 🐞

    Read more: I’ve been waiting 26 years for this.