By the grace of whatever powers that be, I was blessed with a coveted spot in the Spring 2026 security envelope pattern swap, a twice-yearly international snail-mail event for nerds hosted by the Office of Collecting & Design. How it works: each participant receives five names and addresses to send at least five different patterns measuring at least 2 inches square to.
Thrilled as I was to make the cut, I was also stressed the hell out!! I wanted to send samples of less common patterns since most people already have the more common patterns in their collection, and also I didn’t want to cut up (ruin!!) any of my envelopes, an idea that physically pains me. A conundrum. Ultimately, as I flipped through my binder of envelopes, I considered only those patterns that I had at least two envelopes of, so that at least one of each pattern would remain in my collection intact. To the five addresses I received, I sent 2-inch-by-2-inch samples of six different patterns:
On account of the autism, I keep track of where each envelope in my collection comes from (and the date I receive it). I think it’s fun to see which patterns different businesses, organizations, and industries tend to use (the most visually interesting patterns in my collection come from mail sent by government agencies). For the curious, the patterns I sent came from (from left to right): OHSU, Tricare, the VA, the VA, USAA, and USAA.
To date, I’ve received five patterns each from four different people:
Of the 20 samples I received, 10 are new to my collection, and nine of those 10 are patterns I’d not seen before, either in the wild or online.
I loved seeing that orange pattern and the branded ones—so few of the security envelopes I encounter are branded, or are a color other than black, grey, or blue.
It does bother me a bit to have only a small sample of these patterns and not entire envelopes, and also I’m very grateful (1) that sending full envelopes isn’t a requirement to participate because I wouldn’t be able to part with five entire envelopes of five (or more) patterns, and (2) to have been made the cut for this iteration’s swap and to have received each of these patterns. I had a lot of fun participating and hope to snag a spot in at least one more future swap.
Back in November, Pinterest successfully influenced me into Swedish death cleaning several decades early by placing in my feed a single pin related to the practice at exactly the time I began outlining a plan for a hypothetical move that I might be able to make in two to three years. Perfect timing! Why not turn a traditionally end-of-life decluttering practice into a mid-life, possible pre-move decluttering project? And why not get as much decluttering done as I could before the new year and start 2026 extra light and fresh? Four-ish months later, I’m finally and officially done (“done”).
I don’t own a ton of stuff to begin with (visual busyness and clutter easily overwhelm me (autism)), and I’m a pretty organized person by nature (also autism), so the project didn’t feel daunting to me. Still, my son and I definitely had extra stuff, and a few things would benefit from improved organization. The project took me longer to complete than I would’ve liked, mostly because (1) I didn’t have many spoons or much space to go through things; leaving things out to go through them here and there wasn’t an option because of how dysregulating visual busyness and clutter are to my nervous system, and because of how small my apartment is; and (2) I was committed to how I got rid of things.
To start, I made a list in my phone of the stuff I wanted to get rid of. Then, I organized the list by items that could be rehomed, those that could be recycled, and those that had to be thrown out.
Anything that could be rehomed, I either gifted to friends or my daughter, set out in free boxes, or donated to places and organizations that redistribute items directly to people who need them for free (as a rule, I will not donate to organizations that turn around and sell donations). For example, I donated clothing and small household items to the Portland Free Store; I donated books and unused stationery and paper items (planners, notebooks, greeting cards, etc.) to various Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood; I donated old magazines and various memorykeeping and craft supplies that I’ve had in my collection forever and won’t ever use to SCRAP PDX; I donated extra hygiene items to the mutual aid lockers at Always Here Bookstore; and I donated food that we wouldn’t eat before it’s sell/best by date to my neighbors and various free pantries in my neighborhood.
Anything that could be recycled, I recycled rather than threw out. For example, I recycled old electronics and cords, pens, ink cartridges, etc., at Staples through their recycling service; I recycled stained or otherwise damaged clothing, bedding, and other textiles via Just Porch It; and I recycled old paint through my county’s hazardous waste disposal program. Thankfully, all of these programs are free where I live.
I had three items that weren’t free to recycle: two laptops and one very old and very slow 27″ iMac, which I loved and was sad to let go of. Because these items had personal data on them, I took them to an electronics recycler who removed all three hard drives, destroyed two of them, and, at my request, gave me back the other one. All in all, it cost me $37. I also paid about $5 to have a huge stack of papers shredded at Staples.
I do realize that paring down possessions years before a possible move is a little…ambitious. Consider: Starting now affords me time to think about what I want to do with items I’m undecided about without feeling rushed into a decision it’s more likely than un- that I’ll regret (I say this from experience, as someone who has moved long distances several times).
In addition to paring down my possessions, I used this project as an opportunity to better organize some of my paper items, and some of the stuff we keep in storage. For example, I better organized my product manuals, which I keep in plastic sleeves in a binder, by grouping them by room instead of by type; I went through a stack of things my kids have made for me and organized them by child and approximate year; and I bought a large zippered bag (with handles!!) to store all the signs and posters from art builds, rallies, protests, and other direct actions I’ve participated in.
Initially, I considered buying a large, flat box with a lid that opens up (like this) for these items since for now I store them under my bed. Then I learned how much large, flat boxes with a lid that opens up cost (hello???) and decided to look for other options. I’m happy with this one. It achieves my original goal—it easily stores under my bed—and has the added bonuses of being much more affordable, much easier to carry than a giant box, and, unlike a cardboard box, rain-resistant, which could come in handy during a move.
In general, I don’t like to store stuff. I don’t even like having my kitchen cabinets or the sections of my TV stand (etc.) full (or anything under my bed!). It stresses me out when every space in a home is crammed with stuff, even when it’s behind a closed door or in a drawer (or under a bed!). For better or worse, “out of sight, out of mind” is not a thing for me.
Ideally, I’d keep only seasonal and occasionally used items in storage. Christmas decorations, suitcases, painting supplies, things of that nature. Because my apartment isn’t big enough for all of my books, or to display most of the memorykeeping albums I’ve made over the years, many of those items are in storage until I move into a larger living space, along with our seasonal items. Thankfully, my rent includes a small storage space in the basement of my building.
I also used this project as an opportunity to better organize the items we do keep in our little basement storage space, and, to no one’s surprise, made a spreadsheet to inventory it all. Whenever we do end up moving, I’ll already know exactly what’s in which storage container, and where each container is located. This information will also be helpful when having to figure out how big of a moving truck or pod we’ll need.
One of the highlights of this project was finding the only three items in my possession that I’ve not been able to place for years. I knew each of these items were somewhere in my apartment, I just didn’t know where. Turns out, they’d fallen into the very bottom of a box—as in: under the bottom flaps inside the box—while moving boxes around when my son moved in with me. It’s kind of a miracle I found them, which happened only because I lifted up the flaps to break down the box for recycling and saw them.
The photo strip is from my first time in a photo booth, the summer I turned twenty-one. RIP to true old school film photo booths.
The concert ticket stub is from the Warped Inside Tour lineup that New Found Glory headlined at the Roseland Theater a billion years ago. The venue itself is upstairs. That night, during one of the opening band’s sets, the floor began to buckle and break and the venue evacuated the building. After what felt like forever we were allowed back inside and the show continued, with New Found Glory playing their set on the ground floor. My friends and I ended up right up front, directly in front of the stage, and I left the show with a set list, given to me by Chad himself.
For the last several years it has been my life’s mission to find this ticket stub so I can have it framed alongside the set list, a photo I took (on a film camera!!) that night, and a sticker I bought from the band’s merch booth. These few things are some of the only physical items remaining from my youth and for that reason alone are some of my most prized possessions. I screamt an actual scream when I found the ticket stub.
I bought the brass crane embroidery scissors at Cargo in 2020 simply because I think they’re pretty—I have no practical purpose for them; I don’t think I’ve ever actually used them—and have missed looking at them since misplacing them a few months after I bought them. I’m happy to have them back at my desk.
Another highlight of this project was looking through and inventorying my newspaper collection. More about that in a future post.
If you’re interested in adopting or adapting Swedish death cleaning as your own pre-move or spring cleaning approach, my main suggestions are:
Store items in a way that makes sense for you (and your family, if relevant). For me, this means storing like items with like items, and using durable storage containers, most of them clear, that will double as already-packed moving boxes when the time comes.
Create an inventory of the items you store. Include information like what containers you’re using, what’s in each container, each container’s dimensions and volume, the location of each container, how full each container is, etc. You might also keep a list of any empty containers you end up with, to help avoid accidentally buying new containers that you don’t need because you forgot you have empty ones waiting to be used. I recommend doing this in a spreadsheet.
Label your storage containers, especially your non-clear containers. If keeping a spreadsheet, you might also print each container’s inventory and affix it to the top of the container’s lid or place it inside the container.
However long you think the project will take, budget at least twice that amount of time.
Dedicate a container to items you’re not sure about. The point isn’t to get rid of everything. The point is to make considered decisions about what to get rid of. It can take time to make those decisions.
Store personal keepsakes—anything you don’t want others going through, ever, even after you die (journals, photos, letters, etc.)—in the same container(s) and label the container(s) very clearly as, for example, “personal items, do not go through, throw away without opening when I die.”
If you’re interested in rehoming and recycling items similar to how I did, research rehoming and recycling options in your area before you break ground on the project.
Also before you break ground on the project: choose a “yay, you did it!” reward to gift to yourself when you complete the project. My reward: supplies for a new craft project.
Whenever I visit a thrift store, antique shop, or other secondhand marketplace, I always (always!) search every (every!) nook and cranny for pinback buttons. I love them so much. In the early years of the pandemic, I found the best buttons at Monticello. There was a vendor who had a suitcase and glass display case full of vintage ones, and I would spend as long as it took to sift through every single button each time I visited.
I officially began my collection for about $10 in September 2021 with a few buttons, all carefully selected from the suitcase pictured above.
My collection is mostly thrifted, slowish-growing, and still relatively small—only (“only”) 49 buttons. This is partly because, to date, I’ve bought only buttons that I find in person (I’m a tactile shopper) and the vendor who sold the best buttons—and had the largest offering—is no longer selling (sad!). It’s also partly because I venture out specifically with the intent to find new buttons only once or twice a year. As much as I enjoy long and expensive walks through any varietal of secondhand marketplace, they’re social and sensory overload for my brain (and are not in this economy compatible with my bank account), so I don’t visit often.
Yes, being both a tactile shopper and easily overwhelmed by shopping is a frustrating combination. Such is my autistic life. And anyway, visiting such marketplaces for such a specific purpose so infrequently works out fine because the selection of buttons at any one place doesn’t change often.
During The Great Pinback Button Blitz of 2026 last week, which nearly doubled my collection overnight (well, over two nights), I also visited Hollywood Vintage, House of Vintage, and Really Good Stuff, all without luck this time. So it goes. The thrill of the hunt is a big part of the draw for me, even as the sensory and social experiences of shopping are absolutely not.
Also in my collection are two buttons I didn’t thrift. I acquired them before I began intentionally collecting them: a “KEEP ABORTION LEGAL” button that I received at a rally/protest I attended at the Supreme Court in 2019, and a souvenir button from the “Spirited Republic: Alcohol in America” exhibition at the National Archives Museum in 2016 (I miss DC so bad!!!).
Another reason I love pinback buttons: they make fun magnets. Years before I began collecting vintage ones, I began buying new ones specifically to turn into magnets. All you need is a pair of pliers to remove the wire fastening mechanism, strong glue, and small magnets. I use this glue and these magnets. The magnets are pretty strong, each holding several (literally seven) sheets of (8.5″ x 11″) paper without slippage or slow sliding.
Other magnets in the above photo that I could find links for:
The “i’m autistic please leave me alone” sticker was a freebie included in an order from this shop.
For now, my vintage buttons live in a thrifted bowl on one of my bookshelves. I’d like to eventually display them on a hanging pin organizer—something like this, or this—that I make myself. Until then, I leave you with these fun stamps commemorating the pinback button, the pinback button museum (so fun), and the only button I’ve come across that I really wanted to buy and, sadly, wasn’t for sale.
One of the benefits of being terminally online in this godforsaken era is that, every so often, I stumble upon corners of the internet untouched by AI slop or Epstein et al., and that remind me of how cool and fun the internet once was and still can be. What “cool and fun” means will differ depending on who you are. As someone who has been oversharing online since before social media, I’m partial to the personal blog. The less niche and more all-encompassing, the better. Today, I’m sharing three personal blogs I’ve recently learned about—all via Twitter—and that I’m enjoying reading.
I spent the entirety of 2024 and much of 2025 recovering from my 2023 suicidal era. As such, I’ve not been hitting traditional milestones or collecting traditional achievements these last couple of years; everything I have, both tangible and in-, has gone into surviving my own brain.
At the end of 2024, I made a list of things I did for myself over the course of the year that helped me begin climbing out of the abyss. It was a very short list of very simple things. It was also the start of a new practice. Today, I’m sharing the things I did for myself in 2025 that most improved my life. They’re still mostly small things, and many are just accommodations for my and my son’s neurodivergence.
In roughly the order in which I adopted each habit/routine:
Weekly check-ins. In early 2025, I implemented “weekly check-ins.” They’re basically rebranded family meetings for my household of two. Every Sunday morning, my 15-year-old and I sit down and review the upcoming week together using a very rudimentary agenda that we fill in throughout the preceding week. This weekly practice has helped me run our household more efficiently, and it’s helped us both better budget our time, executive functioning, spoons, and expectations for the upcoming week.
Aligned my days with my natural circadian rhythm. For better or worse, my brain is an early bird. Most days, I’m wide awake before my alarm, which is set for an hour that many people consider “the middle of the night.” At the very end of 2024, I stopped fighting against my natural circadian rhythm and began experimenting with living my life by it. By early 2025, I’d settled into a daily schedule that works incredibly well for me and my overactive autistic brain.
Without question, of everything I did for myself last year, this is the most consequential. It has been profoundly helpful in every domain of my life, and I’m eternally grateful to (finally, and at least for now) have the privilege to accommodate my needs in such a significant way.
Changed my volunteer commitment to accommodate my autism. In 2025, I left two volunteer positions that I loved but that were both too late in the day for my overactive autistic brain and required more sensory and social battery than I have. After much searching, I found a different volunteer position that’s a much better fit: it’s closer to my apartment, it’s earlier in the day, it’s quiet and still and repetitive, and there are never more than four people (me included) in the office at one time (and often there’s just two of us). Plus, the employee I’m paired with and I get along really well, I enjoy and am good at the work, and I feel valued and appreciated there.
Created a landing zone for my AuDHD teenager. My son and I live in a very small apartment. My autism cannot handle visual busyness, or things being out of place. His ADHD means that he tends to place things down wherever he is in the moment, creating small piles of stuff all over the goddamn place. To diffuse the resulting frustration and tension, I bought a large laundry basket for him to dump his stuff in (it was, thank god, on sale when I bought it). My only rules: as soon as its contents begin overflowing onto the floor, he has to move stuff into his room, and it needs to be gone through and cleaned out each week during or after our weekly check-in, regardless of whether it’s overflowing.
Amazon Sundays. To add some friction to my spending habits and to reduce my personal carbon footprint (which is negligible and a scam of a concept invented by the advertising and PR industry, I know), I decided early in the year to order from Amazon only on Sundays (excepting time-sensitive issues and extenuating circumstances).
This practice has worked remarkably well. I’m making fewer impulse purchases, which has reoriented my relationship to instant gratification in general, and, sometimes, between the time I add something to my cart and end up purchasing it, I find it locally and give my money to a small business instead of to Amazon. 10/10. Big recommend.
Bought a large carabiner for grocery bags. To corral my reusable grocery bags, I bought a carabiner large enough to clip to a grocery cart handle. No more frustration over bringing too many or too few bags into the store with me. Or over having to dig my bags out from beneath my groceries when I get to the checkout. Or over the bags being strewn all over my car. Now, they live clipped to the carabiner around the passenger seat headrest. When it’s time to grocery shop, the entire collection comes in with me, clipped to the shopping cart handle. At the end of the trip, the unused bags clip back to the headrest. After I unload my groceries, I put the empty bags on my front door’s doorknob and the next time I go out to my car they go back on the carabiner. A very small thing that’s made a very big difference.
Invested in a primo portable outdoor/sunning setup. When it’s nice out, I spend a lot of time outside. Last spring, I bought myself a fancy tanning lounge chair, a large and durable outdoor-friendly bag, and new beach towels. A huge boon to my mental health. I love that the whole setup is portable: I used it basically daily in my apartment’s “front yard,” and brought it all with me to the river whenever I went.
Learned how to cook meat on the stove. It’s amazing how much less frustrating the very frustrating (for me) experience of eating is when the meat that you cook is not either completely burned on the outside and still totally raw on the inside, or perfectly cooked on the outside and super fucking dry on the inside. My current stove-top-cooked meat go-to: perfectly golden-brown, perfectly juicy breaded chicken breast.
Invested a digital meat thermometer. A life-changing, essential tool for cooking meat that is neither under- nor overcooked. It’s kind of unbelievable I lived my whole life till this last summer without one.
Started using food-safe latex gloves. A godsend for someone who both cooks meat daily and hates (HATES!) the sensory experience of touching raw meat. Cannot believe I didn’t think to invest in these gloves earlier.
Beefed up my makeshift home (apartment) gym. Once upon a time I had an actual garage gym (RIP). Once upon a time I will again. Until then, I have the walkway outside of my apartment building, and my living room.
When I relocated to Portland at the very start of the pandemic, I brought only the equipment I could fit in my car. In March 2025, I invested in additional equipment that enables me to do much more at home (so many more options for activities!), where I don’t have to wear a mask. Bonus: outdoor workouts on nice days. A dream.
Began hiking again. I’m eternally grateful to my unreliable and mentally ill brain for cooperating enough to allow me to get in six entire hikes last summer after nearly three years off the trail.
Reframed “lazy days.” I stopped calling them “lazy days” and started calling them “cozy days,” “slow days,” “restful days,” or “restorative days.” A very helpful mindset shift.
Started using a visual timer. It’s hard to overstate how helpful this small change has been for my neurodivergent household.
Added a signature that includes my “inbox hours” to my personal email. Around mid-year, I added a signature to my personal email that clearly communicates my inbox hours and boundaries around access to me/my time. A game-changer.
Swedish death cleaning. In early November, I began the unplanned project of Swedish death cleaning. I’m almost done (so close!) and will have more to share once I’ve wrapped it all up.
Adjusted a plan that wasn’t working instead of catastrophizing, spiraling, and giving up. The plan that wasn’t working? My plan to centralize and organize my digital photos and videos. This plan fell apart very quickly, and I spent most of the year stressed out about it and not working on it at all. A couple weeks into Swedish death cleaning I had a realization, and then an idea for a new plan.
The realization: I don’t need all of my digital media to be in a single place, or for it to be perfectly organized. I need it to be easily findable. What’s important to me is (1) knowing where my digital media lives, (2) what lives where, (3) how to access it, and (4) important dates. The whole point of this project is to make it easier for my kids to find the memories they’re looking for when I’m gone.
The new plan: Spending a few minutes twice a week swiping through the “on this day” photos on each of the services I store my digital media, deleting and tagging photos as needed, and capturing special events/dates in a spreadsheet as I go. It’ll take an entire year to complete, sure. It’s worth the reduced stress.
Tracked my rest between sets. In the final few weeks of the year I began carrying around a mini whiteboard at the gym to track my rest between sets, to ensure I’m not taking too much/that I stay on track with my sets. It’s also helped me learn optimal rest ranges for my body. Another game-changer.
A few bonus bits:
First, seeing this image last year was life-changing. I do realize that will sound dramatic to some (many?). Consider: autism, and its accompanying literalism. All this time, I’ve struggled to keep pace with my peers, wondering how everyone seemed to have much more energy for and much less difficulty with basically everything than I did (do). Until I saw that image, I didn’t realize that “being consistent” and “doing your best” are relative, contextual, and dynamic. I very much thought “being consistent” and “doing your best” meant showing up at your best-ever 100% every single day for every single thing, not showing up at your 100% for that day. Which…explains a lot.
Lastly, two very important things I learned about myself last year:
I don’t enjoy watching movies in the theater because the sensory and social aspects of the environment are too overwhelming and I have no brainpower or -space left to actually concentrate on and take in the movie. I wrote more about this in this post.
The same reason explains why I don’t enjoy shopping for clothing in person: the sensory and social aspects of the environment are too overwhelming, leaving me with no brainpower or -space to actually focus on how the clothing I’m trying on fits or feels. When I get home and put the clothing back on, I almost always end up hating how it fits or feels (or both!) and have to return it, which means venturing back into an extremely overwhelming and unpleasant environment. And so it goes, forever and ever. This is why when I find clothing that I like, I buy as many multiples of it that my bank account allows and hope that said clothing is never changed or discontinued so that when I eventually wear through everything I bought I can simply reorder them online (sadly, this is rarely the case).
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 🙂
Without exaggeration—and as someone who is not into birds and is very easily overstimulated by the noise they make—this documentary about extreme birdwatching is the best YouTube video I’ve ever seen, and among the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. The concept, the humor, the storytelling, the pacing, the production, etc.: exquisite. Please please please watch it without googling anything about it.
Shout out to the filmmakers for turning YouTube ads off for an optimal viewing experience. From the pinned comment on the video: to support their work you can donate directly and/or purchase Quentin’s field guide.
In my phone I have a note titled “Why didn’t I think of this!!!” It’s a list of creative projects that I (1) think are clever, fun, and smart, (2) wish I’d thought of, and (3) find inspiring and generative. Today I’m sharing some of the projects on that list here.
Food diaries and a cookbook
Leaked Recipes by data researcher Demetria Glace (photography by artist Emilie Baltz) is a cookbook of more than 50 recipes—and the stories behind them—that were found in some of the world’s biggest email leaks (Enron, Hillary, Pizzagate, Wikileaks, etc.). Genius. Though it’s useless to me on a practical level as a stereotypically extremely picky autistic eater, I wish I’d bought the book when I had the money to.
Sylvia Plath’s Food Diary, a Twitter account—curated by writer Rebecca Brill (who also runs @sontagdaily) and illustrated by painter Lily Taylor—that tweets “everything sylvia plath ate according to her journals, letters, poems, the bell jar & other texts.” That’s literally it. No added context, just excerpts. Love. For more about the project: an interview with its curator.
What I Ate for Lunch and Why, a blog that documents almost every lunch the blogger behind it ate from May 2008 until early December 2015 (and a few entries from 2017 thrown in). Extremely my shit. As the type of autistic who eats the same thing prepared the same way eaten out of the same container or off the same plate using the same silverware while sitting in the same spot at the same time every single day for months and months and months on end before switching things up, the sheer variety of foods eaten is impressive, fascinating, and incomprehensible to me.
“Cognitive Behavioral Therapy While Running” is a hermit crab essay by writer Megan Williams. A hermit crab essay is one that takes on an existing form or structure of another type of writing. In this case, Meg’s essay is written in the form of a CBT worksheet. So, so good. (Here is an archived version of it, in case Twitter dies or doesn’t let you see it without logging in or creating account.)
I love little glimpses into other peoples’ lives so naturally I love the classifieds. Over the years, I’ve read a handful of books and articles on the history of the classified ad, and a few pieces of work wherein the writer interviews the people behind the items they list in the classifieds. No one does it better than Miranda July (website, Instagram, Substack) in It Chooses You (I love everything she makes). In the book, a project she took on while procrastinating on another, she and photographer Brigitte Sire travel around Los Angeles, interviewing and photographing “a random selection of PennySaver sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways.” A dream project.
Illustrator Carson Ellis‘s latest, One Week in January: New Illustrations for an Old Diary, is one of my favorite projects of the year. In it, she pairs new illustrations with an old diary that she kept for only a week before abandoning it—the year was 2001 and the entries document her first week in Portland as a young artist living with other artists/friends in a warehouse in southeast. I’m such a sucker for stuff like this. Sadly, I missed her author talk at Powell’s. Happily, I made the opening reception of her show at Nationale, which featured original paintings of the art in the book (sadly, I left way earlier than planned because my social and sensory batteries ran out way faster than anticipated). More about the project and an interview with Ellis here.
If you grew up in the 90s with AOL chat rooms and AIM and also enjoy peering into the private parts of peoples’ lives, you’ll probably love People I’ve Met from the Internet by Stephen van Dyck as much as I do. The book is a memoir—in the form of a very long annotated list—of his sex life as a gay teen on the early internet. It’s one of my all-time favorite projects. The concept and material are just so good—and similar-ish to a project that I’ve had in the works since 2017, which also draws inspiration from Sophie Calle’s True Stories, Carmen Maria Machado’s Inventory, Emily Spivack‘s book Worn Stories, and The Museum of Broken Relationships.
Pixel art
This Google Sheets pixel art by artist and creative director Kara Haupt blows my mind. I’m endlessly impressed by people who have a brain that works like this because mine does not (or at least, it has not yet), even when I’m given a pattern or instructions to follow.
I’m also deeply in love with Diane Meyer‘s work, in which she stitches pixelated squares directly onto photographs. Her entire portfolio is incredible. I especially love the scenes from Berlin and the 1970s class photos. (Meyer’s work reminds me of Anna Von Mertens‘s project “As the Stars Go By,” in which she hand-stitched onto large swaths of black cotton the star rotation pattern at different violent moments in history (Wounded Knee, Hiroshima, the assassination of MLK Jr., 9/11, bombings of Baghdad, etc.).)
Security envelope patterns
I can’t get over this curated collection of security envelope patterns. Hoping to craft something similar (I haven’t—yet), I started collecting security envelope patterns earlier this year after seeing a memorykeeper whose work I love used a cut-out from one as the title page for a mini album she made back in 2016 (she took her projects offline years ago and I don’t see an example of it anywhere on Pinterest so I can’t link to it, sorry!). When I saw the zine-like project I almost died. Both ideas are impossibly cool and creative.
Years ago, Austin Kleon shared a link to a home tour with writer Olivia Laing. It immediately became—and remains—my all-time favorite home tour; it’s a comfort video for me, and I return to it often. The place is incredible. Full of art and books and beautiful and sentimental objects and ephemera, it just feels so cozy and eclectic and loved and lived in. It feels, too, very authentic to its inhabitants. And that English garden/yard—be still be still be still, my heart. It’s giving whimsy. It’s giving cottagecore. It’s giving Secret Garden.
Did you catch the part where she talks about her home being a love story? As an autistic who spends much of my life at home, where I have far more control over the sensory and social environment than I do outside of the space, I love this idea—and its sibling idea: your home can be a love letter to your life.
On October 9, 2023, I wrote a list in my phone titled “Things I would do if I had the confidence, patience, time, spoons, in-person community to help/support me from day to day, etc.” There are 14 items on that list. The first two? “Quit my job” and “Start blogging again.”
A month after beginning this list, on November 9, I quit my job. And now, a month after that, on December 9, at way-too-early-o’clock on a Saturday morning because of course the one day a week I don’t have to wake up to an alarm my brain decides I should be up hours before sunrise, I’m starting this blog.
Yes, I caught it: 9-9-9. No, I didn’t plan it. I also didn’t plan for the first two items on my list to be the first two that I crossed off it—and in the order they’re listed, no less.
I’ve no idea where this blog will go or how frequently I’ll post or how long it’ll last. I do know that this blog will be a personal blog (a long-lost and much-missed relic of the [g]olden days of the internet), hence the title and tagline, and that I’d like to keep this thing going for as long as it feels good and fun.
That last bit is especially important. I don’t want this blog to feel like a job, and I don’t want to feel like anything/everything that I share here has to be “perfectly” crafted. I won’t be following any sort of must-do blogging formula or format. I won’t be optimizing my posts for SEO. I won’t be plastering this thing with pop-ups or sponsored content or other ads. And I doubt I’ll be finding or creating a niche or sticking to one topic.
As was customary in pre-social media personal blogging, I imagine this blog will be a combination digital diary/scrapbook/file cabinet/to-do list/notebook, and will include all sorts of things (hence the “etc.” part of its title): photo dumps, link round-ups, book reviews, personal/creative projects I’m working on, thoughts on parenthood, my experiences as an autistic and chronically mentally ill person, people and things that inspire me, people and things that enrage me, trauma and therapy, activism and advocacy and organizing, COVID (which is still a real big, real bad thing), a record at my attempts to complete various items on my “Things I’d do…” list, etc.
What I’m saying is: I’m going to let this thing become whatever it’s meant to be. And I hope that what it’ll be is place for me to organize and quiet my chaotic brain, which, by the way, feels like this:
Truly, the most accurate representation of my autistic brain that I’ve ever seen.
I also hope this blog will help me find community (I am very lonely), and that it’ll help other people feel less alone in their thoughts and experiences, too. And as long as you’re not a fascist or bigot or other variety of asshole, I’m happy to have you along for the ride. Hello, welcome, thank you for being here, etc.
