This was originally sent as a newsletter for Of Pens & Paintbrushes. If you’d like to get this directly in your inbox, you can sign up here, at the Newsletter sign up page.
First off:
The long-awaited new ink formula is available. (V2, also known as Everglades.) There’s two new colors released as well – including Longing, an almost-black storm cloud blue, and Arsenic Green, an olive-ish green. They join Verdigris (emerald green), Nightshade (a striking purple), and Aqua Tofana (a brilliant aqua blue.)
There’s also four new Bebe fountain pens (as of this writing) and the first Bebe Rollerball. If the ones in Chaos Magic are missing when you go to check, I am turning more pens in that material. I know a lot of people were waiting on those, but do check out Fortune, Hallowtide, and Blue Oxide, too.
There’s also a bunch of beautiful holiday-lightbulb-shaped bottle stoppers, perfect for either your own delight or gift giving. Personally, I want to get a bunch of wine bottles and line them up with a whole rainbow of stoppers, but the purple one has already been snagged, so I’ll have to go make more to complete the rainbow before I can do that.
Also? This year’s Snowflake is in progress. I wanted this update done before I threw myself into that wholeheartedly, so expect to see that soon.
And off we go.
I saw someone post on social media this week asking for people to give them reasons not to go walk into a lake and not stop, because everything in the world and all the people were horrible and awful.
I realize they were probably just venting. I’ve done similar before.
It made me pause though, because part of me wanted to give them a list of reasons, even if they probably didn’t want reasons so much as validation and acknowledgement of their existence. (Been there, done that. Deeply relate.)
What stopped me was understanding that someone else’s reasons for not walking into a lake won’t ever be enough for long. You need your own. Reasons you made up, found, created, dug up, stumbled onto, ran face first into, cobbled together from whatever you had on hand that made the bird locked in your rib cage flutter awake.
Of course, I don’t know anyone who wants to be told that when they’re tired, frustrated, lonely, or feeling invisible. You just want to feel better. You’re tired of working, struggling, fighting; of trying to make-do with what is supposed to be enough, but isn’t. You want an answer, you want to know what will make it better, when you won’t keep having to chase a reason to keep going, to not want to walk into a lake and keep going.
The thing is, no one reason is guaranteed to help make it worth going for every single person, every single day, even when it’s one you made up yourself. Knowing that you are allowed to create, make up, find, discover, and change as you will what gives you a reason to keep going, and do so as often as you need to and want to, as often as you’re called to change it?
That does help a bit, I’ve found. Knowing that I get to decide on and create meaning helps make the shenanigans of living worthwhile.
Knowing that it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else helps more.
Wishing you things that wake the bird sleeping in your rib cage,
A.Markov
(I pointed out that it was difficult to walk along the bottom of a lake after it was above your head without leg weights, because complaining is what this person does as their social media shtick and it would count as giving them the attention they wanted.)
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This was originally sent as a newsletter for Of Pens & Paintbrushes. If you’d like to get this directly in your inbox, you can sign up here, at the Newsletter sign up page.