There are 9 new Mini Fidgets, 6 new Fidgets, and 3 new Bebes in the shop in a wide variety of colors, including several seen in short clips on social media and YouTube. (And technically TikTok, but you can find them all in any of those places.)

The Bebe in Fortune is stunning, and the Fidget in Lancelot has the most elegant marbling, but there’s also few rare, nearly gone Limited Edition materials in this release. I personally feel like I deserve at least one gold star for not keeping the Fidget in Silver Lining and the Mini Fidget in Gilded Ruby. They’re older materials I no longer have the casting notes for, and they are either gone or mostly gone.

Outside of social media captions and technical updates, I’ve been short on words lately. Some of that is from working – a lot – and some is not feeling like what I have to say is relevant to anyone but me so there’s been no need to put it into words. It’s not felt important to document trying to eat enough and sleep enough (don’t laugh, I’m trying) and maybe even read the books on my night stand and work on the paintings and new pen material collection. And then there’s the rare, protected, Florida panther eating our geese – that’s a difficult thing to explain if you’re not from here – juxtaposed against mundane things like how I that can’t remember the last time I put away my clean laundry, against the surreal spur of the moment invitations to theater nights with conversations that run to 2am. How do I find words to explain this life to someone else? It’s barely believable to me, and I’m living it.

What’s wild to me is that all I’ve done is say yes (and occasionally “why not?”) as often as I can get away with, for as many years as possible.

For someone who was one sideways glance away from an anxiety attack just going to the grocery store just six years ago, that’s one hell of a shift. I don’t know how many people would believe me if I said that I got here by doing the things that scared me, and that I did them scared and uncomfortable, over and over and over again. I taught my nervous system that this new thing wasn’t going to kill me, and that it could stand down – one message, one phone call, one grocery trip, one chorale rehearsal, one pen or art show, one symphony, one last minute Eddie Izzard ‘Hamlet’ performance at a time.

Courage is miserably uncomfortable, yes, but courage combined with a willingness to say yes is why I find myself getting excited updates on a rare apex predator from my adult kids, and planning my outfit for the Symphony again, while also being a little deer-in-the-headlights overwhelmed with the amount of deeply satisfying but challenging work that goes into my pens and art.

How do you find the words to explain that dime-store-novel-life you currently live is all because you decided that you’d rather be scared out of your wits than live one more year wondering what if after you thought you’d lost everything worth living for?

Courage might be miserably uncomfortable for a bit, but regret will eat you alive.

The worst thing that happens is you find yourself learning about how the panther hanging out near your house can easily take down adult cows with your wide-eyed adult kids, and trying to identify animals on black and white trail cams at 1am for fun.

-A. Markov