Every year artists, writers, and makers make the same plea. They call out in chorus: Shop small! Shop local! Shop indie! Every year I feel the pull toward small business. I want my money to go toward creative, entrepreneurial people instead of massive, unethical corporations. As I daydream about handmade ceramics, I also feel the barriers that block me. How do I sift through the internet to:

1. find items that I appreciate

2. from makers I trust

3. at prices I can afford?

Shopping local can feel challenging. However much I want to demand that you shop small, I have to ask the question of myself first. How can I remove the barriers? How do I make this process easier so even people like me—distractible, penny pinching, easily overwhelmed, picky—can support small businesses. Two answers come to mind.

I wrote a book. It’s known to happen in my house, but I don’t talk about it much online. Why? It’s uncomfortable to share about a manuscript that hasn’t left the nest. The book is still in need of an advocate who sees its value, understands how it will help readers like you, and shares my vision for its future. My writer friends out there know what work I need to do next—I can see your Hunger Games’ three finger salute from here. Thank you. May the odds be ever in our favor—but for the rest of you, let me start by telling you why this book needs to exist:

I didn’t feel ready to lead a therapeutic art session. My anger and helplessness all jumbled inside me. Each small task felt far more difficult than it should’ve. But I needed to tidy my house and my heart enough to welcome people into my home.

The news last week brought back a lot of memories. Old feelings I’d forgotten still live inside me. When I was 10 or 11, my older brother stood on the patio with his bb gun. The afternoon was quiet. No adults around. I stood nearby to watch him aim. He squeezed the trigger—and the bb ricochetted off a block wall. It hit me in the chest…

How does one sum up a good summer? My instincts say I must type out a long list of all the things I did. But listing it all—camping, Grand Canyon, painting a room, swimming, rearranging this, building that—doesn’t quite do it.

So let me start with a question: Have you ever made kimchi?

It’s been a while, friends! I am the throes of everything and nothing. It’s that liminal phase where I’m working with my eyes on an eventual deadline that seems like it will never come yet is also coming far too quickly.

Time is weird, isn’t it? Wibbly wobbly.

It feels strange to show you the in between. I don’t have a new event or a new product. No final anything to share. In lieu, I’ll tell you about the projects that I’m working on:

My first event of 2025 is coming up, guys. I’ll run a table at ANACON 2025: Anaheim Central Library, from 10am-4pm on Saturday, April 12th. I have been slow about sharing, because—well—I’m a tiny bit nervous. And excited. And nervous. Why is that?

When I color, I remember laying on the floor with my sisters. Carpet pile made marks on my elbows as I scribbled in a coloring book, my feet kicking behind me, the room growing dim as the sun set. We focused so much on the colors that we sometimes forgot to listen to my dad as he read out loud to us. Honestly, what good is Swiss Family Robinson when you’ve got Victorian dresses to make into rainbows?

Want to know something exciting? Since I started making videos again, my subscribers went from 74 to 101 in one month. I know those are small fry numbers, but that sudden hop means I’m doing something right! I like it when I get things right. A rare and fleeting feeling.

If you haven’t checked out my youtube yet, now’s a great time. I haven’t written website updates for each individual video, so I’m dumping the latest 6 for your perusal. Enjoy <3

Each event I do is not just a sales-hunting, skill-building experience. It’s a heart-healing experience. Let me give you a little context:

A relative once asked me about an upcoming craft fair. I could share very little before they interrupted, “maybe I’ll be able to drop by,” and then paused. The air between us felt thick…

One summer afternoon, my entire craft fair melted in a heat wave. Vendors hid in the shade behind their tables and potential customers wandered past. It was my first craft fair, too. And being new meant I was unsure of everything. Would my preparations work out? Were my displays enticing enough? An even scarier question: was my art good enough?

I started a monthly therapeutic art group last year. Establishing groups is kinda what I do by now: I found people who were interested, got a Saturday scheduled, prepped a project, and emailed my people. Did I know what I was doing? Kind of. Ish. Did it matter? No time to worry about that, because the wheels were already turning...

This summer, we scraped together a traveler’s breakfast and left our airbnb to find Kyobo Bookstore, a sprawling underground bookstore in a Seoul subway station...

I am a scattered person, but I bet a trillion dollars you wouldn’t guess by looking at my home. I keep my decor minimal. I donate excess to create a few inches of margin in my cupboards and closets. My organization is meticulous. I have a huge whiteboard in my bedroom with four task lists written on it. Check marks line the sides of each list.

From that very curated description, does it sound like I’ve got it all figured out?