When my team went to New Orleans for a meetup in November, I had a chance to see my friend Pam, who trained me when I joined Automattic a little over ten years ago. She is one of the most creative people I know. She’s a natural writer with a clear voice — I feel like I’m in a room with her when I read her blog — and she sews beautiful clothes.
She also binds books (check out this cool time lapse of her process). When I saw her in New Orleans, she had a gift for me: a journal. That she made! With her own hands! She bound it with paper that has line drawings of flowers every few pages, pasted colorful floral endpapers inside, covered the book in green cloth, and attached a ribbon bookmark with a leaf and a flower charm on it. So much gardening love 😍. As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly what I would do with it. It would be my sabbatical journal.
I saved it for five months, and on my first official day of sabbatical, I created my first entry. I’ve written in it every day of this first four weeks of my sabbatical. I’ve also drawn a little something to illustrate every day.
It’s funny, I like the process of writing, but I rarely go back and read what I’ve written. I do like to go back and look at the drawings, though, even though they’re so amateur. Drawings take a lot less effort to consume. I love flipping through pages and getting little visual reminders of my sabbatical so far.
Back in January, a friend at work pitched an idea on our internal watercooler blog: what if we start a creators club, with the end goal of presenting our work as an online exhibit? Before this happened, I had set an intention in January to draw this year, so I thought, what the heck, and I signed up.
We had a 12 week timeline to create our piece of art. For 10 of those 12 weeks, I wondered what I would make for the exhibit. I drew in my daily journal with ink. I doodled. When I set my intention in January, my goal for 2024 was to create a botanical journal. But as I drew every day in the early part of the year, nature and botanicals weren’t what I enjoyed drawing. Instead, I enjoyed drawing everyday objects, little reminders of quiet time in the morning with my coffee, or car chats while getting boba with our daughter, or a relaxing cocktail at the end of the day.
You see where I’m going here?
As I drew these little things in my journal, I wondered, I’m already doing this journal, how could I build on this to make something… more? Something extra, so that it’s special for the exhibit? I thought intentional composition, paint, and working on unbound paper were a good starting point. From those constraints, and the fact that I was running out of time, I finally decided to draw and paint a list of my favorite drinks. It’s called Wet Whistle. There’s a little more about it on the Creators Club website we launched today, along with creations from others who work at Automattic and like to make art.
Today is Saturday, and my husband is home. As I write, I smell the warm scent of bread he’s baking. I recently heard an idea to switch the end-of-day question from “How was your day?” to “What was your happiest moment from today?”, and as of right now, at 3:08pm, my happiest moment is smelling this bread. I don’t know if there’s a cozier, more comforting smell in the world. Maybe cookies baking.
I’ve completed my gardening vacation. I spread all the mulch. I counted the number of times I filled the wheelbarrow, and it more than doubled my estimate of 50 barrows per pile: I moved 107 wheelbarrows for the pile out back, which I assume means I spread 100+ wheelbarrows from the pile out front as well.
Once I finished the mulch, I filled the bird feeders with seed, and I washed the bird bath basins, set them back on their pedestals after winter, and filled them with fresh water from the hose. I saw a little pink finch splashing in the one by our bedroom window this morning.
I still have garden stuff to do, but I’m gardened out for now. The fertilizer and new plants will have to wait for another weekend. With my two remaining days before going back to work, I want to return to my sketch journals. After completing my four week 10-minutes-per-day drawing challenge, I discovered that, surprise! I enjoy drawing as a method of journaling. I don’t complete an entry every day, but I do manage 2-3 journal pages per week. I enjoy the process of drawing little doo-dads from my days, and unlike my written journals, I actually go back and look at my drawn journal pages. I enjoy the little delights I’d forgotten about.
To help keep me going, I signed up for a 12-week creators club at work where we each committed to making something to exhibit at the end of the 12 weeks. I didn’t know what I would make; I only knew that I wanted to keep drawing, and I’d probably use pen and ink. We’re now 4 or 5 weeks from the exhibit, and I still don’t know what I’m going to make. I seem to like the mundane — I gravitate towards it in both my writing and my drawing. I enjoy daily nothings, just little delights. I also like lists. The list assignment in week four was one of my favorites from my January drawing challenge: I drew my ink bottles. I’m considering a list drawing for the creators club. Maybe a sketch list of 10 boring things about me, or of my favorite drinks.
The final weeks of the 30 days of drawing challenge included several assignments I wasn’t crazy about, all of which included drawing human figures. On those days, I grudgingly did the exercises, but I derived no joy from them and have therefore not included them in this post.
This was good for me to learn: it helped me figure out what does bring me joy in drawing. I loved the lettering exercise, and I loved one of the visual storytelling assignments: we drew three random objects, then pulled words out of a bowl to go with the drawings to tell one-word stories that were actually kind of profound. For example, I drew a fountain pen, and the word I pulled for that one was Forgotten. I’ve not been writing much lately (because I’ve been drawing), and that one was eye-opening. I also found I love drawing small objects like my ink bottles, my pen pouch, and an imperfect baguette.
letteringdrawn journalingone-word storiesdrawn listswhat I learned from 30 days of drawingAssignments from week 4 of 30 Days of Drawing
I really like the idea of drawn journaling, and being a list-lover, I enjoyed the illustrated list, too so I bought a couple of books for inspiration (Lists: To-Dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists by Liza Kirwin and Draw Your Day: An Inspiring Guide to Keeping a Sketch Journal by Samantha Dion Baker).
Drawing is still very new to me, so everything could and likely will change. On the days of assignments I didn’t like, the ones that involved drawing people, I was interested by what I chose to do instead to scratch my drawing itch. On those days, I found joy in simple drills of learning how to shade and make textures and patterns using pen and ink.
It’s a good thing I’m rejecting perfectionism in this 10-minutes-per-day drawing habit thing I’m doing, because the quality of my drawings took a pretty deep plunge in the third week. Enough so that I’m embarrassed to even share them here. But the theme of the week was to be silly and have fun, and to definitely not take myself too seriously or feel like the drawings had to actually be good.
The challenges included drawing with your eyes closed, with your non-dominant hand, and upside down. They also included only drawing negative space, exploring shading by drawing an alien in sunlight, and drawing a subject three ways with your body: once using just your fingers (no wrist or elbow motion allowed), once with just your wrist, and once with just your shoulder, holding your arm out straight and moving only at the shoulder joint. I drew a blood orange.
And it was fun, and silly, and I didn’t take it seriously. In fact, it loosened me up enough to try using a paintbrush with my inks to add a little color. I hadn’t been brave enough to do that before. In the spirit of bravery and posting embarrassing stuff on the internet, here are my silly drawings from the third week of my 30 days of 10 minutes a day.
eyes closed and left-handeddrawing upside downthe space around my ivyfinger, wrist, and shoulder blood orangealien in the sun
I recently finished a book, Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish, that had a surprising twist at the end. It’s a self-development book I read for work, so was reading in the context of how I show up at my job, and particularly for the purpose of developing decision-making skills. I expected your typical business-y productivity book (which it is, though it’s wiser and more insightful than most I’ve read), so I was surprised at the end of the book to see a chapter called “The Happiness Experts.” What does happiness have to do with good decision-making?
Parrish distills good decision-making down to two things: knowing how to get what you want, and knowing what’s worth wanting — what really matters. The consideration of happiness helps us make decisions based on what really matters.
The happiness experts he seeks wisdom from at the end of the book are elders in their 70s, 80s, and 90s: people have lived a long life, who are facing death, and who have the perspective of many years of living to know what really matters. One of the items those elders list as important* is to savor daily pleasures instead of waiting for big events. We spend the vast majority of our lives in the mundane day-to-day. If we want to tip the balance towards more happiness, the every-day is the place to find it.
I am all in on this. I love the mundane. I love lounging around in my leisure time and laughing with my husband and kids. I love writing and drawing with my pretty inks. I love sitting by a crackling fire and reading novels. I love standing at the back window and watching the birds, squirrels, and bunnies. I love walking around my neighborhood and seeing the trees and mountains, smelling the air, and listening to wind in the leaves. I love finding beauty in the shape of an ink bottle, delight in my peanut butter and honey toast, awe in nature, curiosity in people-watching, comfort and coziness in my slippers, a surge of love when I smell our daughter’s vanilla perfume, hear her shoulder her swim bag, or taste the latest flavor of bubble tea she’s drinking.
The second week of the 30 days of drawing challenge I joined was all about delights. Needless to say, I had fun with this week. I had two long flights so I had lots of time to play with, and I spent more than 10 minutes on some of the drawings. I was absorbed in the activity of making marks on the page, and it brought me pleasure, and I had time, and I had no reason to stop. I feel good about that decision.
Day 7: something that delights meDay 8: delicious delightsDay 9: delight in natureDay 10: blind contourDay 11: clothes that delight (my slippers)Day 12: delight through our senseA week of drawing delights
*Other items on the list of things elders say matter in life are saying things now to people you care about, spending maximum time with your children, working in a job you love, and selecting your mate carefully.
Bloganuary writing prompt
What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?
Butterfly Mind 