Completely rethinking my beliefs about and approach to creativity and the creative process after listening to the latest episode of The Telepathy Tapes.
Never been more thankful for my natural autistic intolerance of protein powders and shakes (it’s a taste and texture thing).
AI will never be your friend: “The only world where loneliness is lessened is a world where humans are given a chance to be closer to other humans, not one in which they become a host for a digital parasite hanging around their neck, draining their life in service of profit for a tech company.”
In the last nine months, ICE has spent $71 million on weapons, a staggering 600 percent increase over the same period last year. Unconscionable.
The mysterious and important project I’ve been working on since May is finally finished and I’m so (SO! (!)) excited about and proud of it. Behold: the Macrodata Refiner’s Word Search Puzzle Experience, a compendium of Lumon-approved word search puzzles/a Severance fan art project created and designed by yours truly.
I’m planning to share many more details about this project in the next week or two. For now, a mini photo dump, because I’m too exited about and proud of it to wait any longer to share!! (!)
I’m so thrilled with how it turned out and can’t wait to share how I, someone who had never even opened InDesign before, took this idea from my brain to the page.
After a nearly three-year-long, mental-illness-induced hiatus, this summer I finally got my slightly more mentally stable ass back out on the trail. Huzzah!
Toward the tail end of Mount Defiance and Starvation Ridge, crying on the inside, wanting so badly to be done.
To celebrate, I thought it’d be fun to do a “hiking wrapped” for the season.
Number of trails hiked: Six.
Total distance hiked: At least 56.6 miles (91 kilometers). Due to an egregious glitch in the AllTrails app, I have no idea how far I actually hiked when I hiked Mount Defiance and Starvation Ridge. The general consensus is the trail is at least 12.1 miles (19.4 kilometers), so that’s the distance I’ve gone with here.
Shortest trail:Angel’s Rest – 4.6 miles (7.4 kilometers).
Average trail distance: 9.4 miles (15.1 kilometers).
Total elevation gain: 13,477 feet (4,108 meters).
Least elevation gain:Oxbow Loop – 633 feet (193 meters).
Most elevation gain:Mount Defiance and Starvation Ridge – 5,984 feet (1,824 meters), at the god-awful rate of 1,000 feet per mile (20% grade) for at least five straight miles.
Average elevation gain: 2,246 feet (684.5 meters).
Most memorable hike:Lower Punchbowl, Tunnel, and Twister Falls. Of all the hikes I went on this summer, this is the one most similar to the hike that spiraled me into acute mental illness in 2022 (it was the hike with the most exposure and the narrowest sections of (exposed) trail), and I got through it on my own without incident. Shout out to my brain and nervous system.
(I think I did the imperial-to-metric conversions correctly? Sorry if not! (I’m not the math-y type of autistic).)
At the summit of Tom Dick and Harry Mountain, with Mount Hood in the background.
Other takeaways
Knee sleeves. After reading so many reviews and trip reports about how steep the trail is, and knowing how janky and cranky my knees are on level ground, I wore my knee sleeves (a lifting accessory) for the first time ever during a hike while hiking Mount Defiance and Starvation Ridge. Complete game-changer. I will never hike without them again, especially on steeper trails, and I can’t believe it took me this long to even think to wear them on the trail. I highly recommend investing in a pair if you find yourself hiking trails that aren’t compatible with your knees with any sort of regularity. The two main brands are Rehband (the brand I wear) and SBD.
Trekking poles. This summer taught me that along with knee sleeves, trekking poles are a middle-aged hiker’s best friend. It’s pretty incredible how big of a help they can be, especially during steep descents. I’m glad I invested in a pair when I had the money to do so. I would’ve been so fucked without them this summer.
Fanny pack. Another new day hike staple. I got real sick of having to stop and take off my backpack and dig through the top pouch every time I wanted to grab my phone to take a photo, or when I needed chapstick or a tissue or a new piece of gum or a small snack or a hair tie or whatever. So I took my ass to REI and bought a fanny pack (the exact one I bought was on clearance and is no longer listed on their website, sorry!). Another game-changer. Like knee sleeves, I can’t believe it took me so long to add this item to my gear.
Maps, music, and podcasts. Downloading every piece of media there’s even the slightest chance I’ll need (or want) while on the trail—or during the very likely scenario of driving stretches of road that don’t have service—the night before my hike is the move. Trail maps, directions to/from trailhead, music and/or podcasts to listen to, etc.
Earbuds v. AirPods. If you’re going to listen to anything while hiking, I highly recommend wearing earbuds that loop around your ear v. AirPods. Like these. For safety’s sake, I wear only one of them and when I have something playing, I keep the volume pretty low. I think the volume on the ESCs is easier to control than it is on AirPods, the audio quality is better, the battery lasts longer, and there’s much less risk of them falling out of your ear and then you falling off a cliff while reaching after them.
Granola. The good news is, I recently discovered not all granola is gross. The bad news is, I learned this months too late for my summer hiking season. The other good news is, now I know and have another compact trail snack option for my next hiking season.
Early bird gets all the cobwebs. The biggest downside to being the first hiker on the trail for the day is you take all the cobwebs straight to the face. The best solution: waving one of your trekking poles in front of you as you hike.
Carbs. The best part of any strenuous hike is the carb-loading I get to do in the day or two leading up to it and again immediately afterward.
Experience/d. I have experience hiking. I’m not an experienced hiker. There’s a difference, and it’s important. There’s a lot I have yet to encounter; there’s a lot I have yet to learn. In many ways, I’m very prepared, even over-prepared, every time I step on a trail. In many other, equally important ways, I’m just as under- or unprepared.
Ramona Falls, Mount Hood National Forest.
Parting thoughts
My original plan was to hike once a week through at least September, ideally October. By mid-August, some health issues (not mental illness) began flaring and I had to take a break. I’ve not hiked since. I’m frustrated I got in only six hikes this summer, and I’m happy I got in six entire hikes this summer—it’s six more than last summer, and the summer before that.
Finally, and most importantly, my biggest takeaway from my time on the trail this summer: I wish I’d known when I was 17 what the Pacific Crest Trail and section- and thru-hiking were—I think I would’ve found on the trail what I spent too many years in the military unsuccessfully searching for.
On Sunday evening, a personal blogger I’ve followed since 2011 announced in her newsletter the end of an era: the platform that hosts her blog, and therefore her blog, was shutting down on Tuesday (yesterday). Twenty years of posts—two decades (!) of experimentation and inspiration and encouragement—are no more. I’m devastated.
Elise’s blog was the first of the genre that I found and followed all those years ago. Social media as we know it today wasn’t yet a thing; Facebook and Twitter were still toddlers, and Instagram and Pinterest were just babies, both having launched less than a year prior (and you still needed an invite to join Pinterest!). Personal blogs were the era’s social media. And Elise’s was magic.
Year after year, she posted at least five days a week, sharing, among other things, her:
creative adventures (memorykeeping, photography, DIY crafts, knitting, sewing, quilting, painting, pottery, home renovating and decorating, etc.)
favorite recipes (I especially loved her “40 Pizzas” series, in which she and her husband made 40 different pizzas, often entirely from scratch, including the dough and sauce)
foray into flower and vegetable gardening
experiences as a small business owner
life as a twenty-something military wife with an oft-deployed partner
experiences with pregnancy and parenting
travelogues
book reviews/reports
gift ideas and link round-ups
She also offered various at-your-own-pace e-courses, mostly simple sewing projects and basic Photoshop Elements and HTML skills. From the beginning and through the end, her blog was a little bit of everything. I love that she never niched down.
I love, too, that she kept her blog hers—it wasn’t cluttered with or cheapened by annoying ads or popups, it wasn’t spammed with sponsored posts or guest bloggers, it wasn’t overloaded with unnecessary features (“features”) or tech, and it stayed true to the aesthetic roots of personal blogging. It always felt authentic and deeply loved and lived in—the website equivalent of Olivia Laing’s home. Since I first found her blog, I’ve admired her willingness to proceed without certainty; to be okay with—enthusiastic about, even—being a beginner, and living in the messy middle; her confidence in herself.
Elise’s blog was the first to show me the many worlds of possibilities that could be accessed by creating and sharing and connecting online. Her blog is how I learned about Project Life, and it’s why, in 2012, I began blogging—two overlapping creative outlets that led to some pretty great creative opportunities for me in a past blogging life, and that continue to be hobbies I enjoy today, almost fifteen years (!) later.
It feels impossible to overstate how important her blog has been to me over the years. I was still finding inspiration in it until its end, browsing it at least weekly, sometimes daily. She built such a treasure trove of creative inspiration. There was always something new to find or learn.
It feels impossible, too, to ignore the reality that the loss of Elise’s blog, and the Typepad ecosystem as a whole, is part of a larger loss: the loss of art and creativity and curiosity and culture (and the things those things beget—compassion, empathy, connection, critical thinking), which is inseparable from this country’s current economic and political landscapes; the proliferation of AI; the ubiquity of surveillance tech; planned obsolescence; enshittification, and the disappearance of physical media and ephemera. We’re losing so many special corners of the internet and it makes me really sad (and angry (and worried)).
I’m so grateful to Elise for sharing so much, and for doing so so consistently and for so long—and for leaving her blog up indefinitely after she stopped posting to it daily in 2015 and after she stopped posting to it altogether in 2022.
RIP to enJOY it/eliseblaha.typepad.com: 2005 – 2025. Gone, sadly. Certainly not forgotten. (Cue Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You.”)
A glimmer of good among the grief: thankfully, Elise’s Instagram lives on (for now), as does the current iteration of her newsletter.
* * *
UPDATE – October 15, 2025: I’ve just seen that Elise uploaded her entire blog to WordPress. There are no categories or tags or archives, and some links may be broken, but her whole blog has been preserved and she’s continuing to share it with us all 🙂
Hike number six of the season, which was also my final hike of the summer: Ramona Falls Loop, a seven-mile loop along the Pacific Crest Trail in Mount Hood National Forest, about an hour outside of Portland.
This trail is fairly flat—there’s only about a thousand feet of elevation gain overall—and therefore very dog- and kid-friendly (dogs must be leashed). I saw a handful of families with children of various ages camping in the backcountry, including one family with younger kids (they looked to be early elementary school age) on a multi-day backpacking trip.
I first attempted this hike in early June 2022. I went much later in the day than usual and right as I approached the river crossing it began sleeting and then snowing, which I, an unseasoned Oregon hiker at the time, didn’t expect so close to the start of summer. The river was flowing much faster than I expected, and the water was freezing. Combined with the surprise weather, being out there on my own, and my naturally extremely anxious and catastrophizing brain, I was too nervous to attempt the river crossing. I turned around and walked the mile back to my car.
This time, I went much earlier in the day and much later in the season, crossed the river just fine both times, and finally finished this hike.
Like many Oregon summer mornings, it was overcast when I began (shortly after 5:30 am).
And like many Oregon summer mornings, less than two hours later, the sky was completely clear and the sun hung high.
Most of this hike is through tree canopy, some of it very thick overhead, which is a blessing on clear, hot day. There are only a few short stretches where you’re directly exposed to the sun. Because I went counterclockwise, I hit most of these stretches at the end of my hike. If you go clockwise, you’ll hit these stretches at the start of your hike; or, if you begin early enough on an overcast day, you’ll avoid most of them altogether. I recommend going counterclockwise; it provides a much more dramatic first visual of the falls.
Per usual, in the days leading up to this hike, I checked the trail’s AllTrails page for new reviews/comments. There was a single one that mentioned how enormous the falls are in person; how photos don’t clearly convey the size of the thing. Reader, that hiker was correct. This thing is massive. Look how tiny I am in comparison!
There are several spots to camp next to and just beyond (or, if you’re going clockwise, just before) the falls. Also just beyond (or, if you’re going clockwise, just before) the falls: incredibly beautiful cliff faces of rusty orange and milky blue and grey rock (?).
These cliff faces were enormous. They looked so slick and smooth and sharp and, with the sun rising overhead, they appeared at times to glimmer and glow. There was nothing about these cliff faces in any of the AllTrails comments/reviews I read. Coming upon them was a very unexpected surprise, and a much better unexpected surprise than sleet and snow and a rising, raging river.
I wish I’d been able to better capture their beauty with my iPhone camera.
By the time I hit the river crossing on my return, the day was fully awake. Unfortunately, the sun rising over Mount Hood made it impossible to get a photo of the mountain in which it didn’t look completely washed-out.
It was still early when I hit the river crossing on my way back—a few minutes after 8:00 am. I wasn’t ready to leave yet. The sun felt so nice, the scenery was so beautiful, and no one else was out there. So, I set up on some wide, sturdy logs, and spent some (more) time taking it all in.
This hike is fully in the backcountry. As such, there’s no cell service beginning about four miles before the trailhead. If you attempt this hike, make sure you’re prepared for the water crossing and for being completely out of cell service range; check recent reports about trail and river conditions in the days leading up to your hike. Download your trail map and any music or podcasts you plan to listen to on the trail before you leave home. You’ll be able to easily navigate back to the main road without GPS—there’s plenty of clear signage, and most of the time, there’s only one way you can go.
The parking lot is huge. It could easily fit probably a couple hundred vehicles. Both times I’ve been here, there’s been at least one porta-pottty; best to come equipped with your own toilet paper. The road leading to the trailhead is single-lane in some stretches and has some pretty gnarly potholes, though there are significantly fewer of them, and they’re much less gnarly, now than in 2022. Pay attention and, if you, like me, don’t have a rugged outdoor vehicle, maybe go a little slower than you think you need to. What a bitch it would be to pop a tire out there on a narrow-ass road several miles from cell service.
Do y’all wanna see one of the most autistic things about me? Behold, my collection of security envelope patterns.
About two years ago, I saw a photo from a fellow memorykeeper who’d used a security envelope pattern as the cover page for a mini album (I can’t find any photos of the project to link to, sorry) and thought, What a creative idea! With the unfulfilled intention of using them in my own memorykeeping projects, I’ve been collecting security envelopes ever since.
It’s a slow-going process. I don’t receive much mail that arrives in a security envelope, and the mail that I do is mostly from the same few places, which use mostly the same few patterns. Two years in, I have only about 40 patterns in my collection.
(This number is lower if you don’t count different colors, scales, and weights of the same pattern as distinct patterns. For example, I count the three “brick” patterns in the photo below (second, third, and fifth from the right) as three distinct patterns; while the scale of each is the same, the color and weight are not. Similarly, I count the fourth pattern from the right in the photo above and the fourth pattern from the right in the photo below as two distinct patterns; while the scale and color of both are the same, the weight is not.)
Most of the envelopes in my collection are from mail I’ve received directly. Some of them are from mail other people have received and then—knowing I collect them—mailed to me. Two of them, I found on the ground while out walking.
Ever the amateur archivist, in an effort to build a record of circulation for each pattern (or to contribute to an existing one that I don’t know about), I keep track of when I receive or find each envelope and, when known, who sent it.
Slow-going as it is, the passive collecting of these envelopes has been one of my all-time favorite projects. Every time mail arrives, I’m excited to see if I’ve been blessed with a new pattern; when I am, it feels like Christmas morning.
Two years in, I have two main takeaways: (1) many of the patterns in my collection that I find most interesting are printed on envelopes sent by state or federal government entities, and (2) there is a serious and worrisome decline in the appreciation and prioritization of ephemeral art and design that is very obvious when looking through larger collections that include envelopes from earlier decades. You just don’t see branded (or colorful) patterns very often anymore. When I tell you I almost completely lost my shit when this branded Capital One security envelope arrived a few weeks ago. You would’ve thought I was an actual child on actual Christmas morning pulling a rare Pokemon card.
Despite my original intention, I’ve not yet done a damn thing with these envelopes. I do have a handful of project ideas. Before I attempt any of those ideas, I’m going to scan each deconstructed envelope.
Want to donate your security envelopes to my collection? Who am I to refuse. Please get in touch (kelseyetcetera @ gmail dot com).
This project is still going strong and also I’m looking forward to ending—or, some might say, sunsetting (heh)—it at the end of the year.
May 27, 2025, through June 30, 2025.
The sun rises about an hour and a half later these days than it did during the height of summer. Most mornings, this time doesn’t overlap with a natural stopping/breaking point in my workout. There have been more times during this stretch of photos than I’d like to admit that I’ve completely forgotten to take a photo until my workout’s over and I’m walking to my car. One morning, I’d already gotten in my car and was about to drive away before I remembered to take a photo. Oops. The good news is, there are no rules for this project. Forgetting to take a photo (or multiple photos) wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Or the project.
July 1, 2025, through August 7, 2025.
Surprisingly, winter offered more dramatic sunrises than did spring or summer. I thought for sure the sunnier months would’ve offered more stunning sunrises, in terms of both frequency and intensity. Maybe I just missed them. Or maybe not? Given how cloudy many spring and summers mornings were, I’m not convinced I did.
August 11, 2025, through September 15, 2025.
If everything goes as planned, there will be 56 more gym parking lot sunrises between now and the end of the year.
