7 Things I loved this October

Slowing down, tarot illustration, and calendar recommendations

Welcome to my roundup of things I loved over the past month! If you’re not interested in 7 Things, you can specifically toggle off these emails in your account settings.

Thank you for the incredibly heartwarming, supportive comments on last week’s post about quitting my job 🧡 I am very inspired (and surprised!) that many of you have also taken the leap and I so appreciated hearing your insights. Wherever you are in your career or creative journey, please know that you are welcome here!

Here are the seven things I loved in October:

1. Upon leaving the office for the last time, I strolled over to a bookstore and bought my first Rider-Waite/RWS tarot deck. This deck was published in 1909 and still remains the standard. Pamela Colman Smith created its beautiful 78 illustrations, and many now call it the RWS deck to acknowledge her important contributions along with those made by publisher Rider Company and mystic A.E. Waite. Check out The Queen of Wands: The Story of Pamela Colman Smith, the Artist Behind the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck to learn more about her life and work! If you’re generally curious about tarot, I’ve been pulling a card every morning and learning its meaning through the Labyrinthos app and “my tiny tarot zine”.

2. I visited New Orleans for a wedding and popped by Slow Down NOLA, which may be the best shop I’ve ever been inside. The space is filled with artist goods, vintage, sustainable fashion, books, and zines, and best of all, they have a Snail Museum of Miniature Art!

   

3. Though Brooklyn is experiencing its warmest Halloween yet, the decorations are alive and kicking. I get such pleasure walking to and from yoga class and seeing the brownstones decked out in spooky, lit up with komorebi.

   

4. I finally was able to watch Perfect Days, a movie following the content and contemplative life of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Afterwards I enjoyed mulling over the below video essay on the many media narratives centering ambition, versus the relatively few stories about contentment that Perfect Days does so well. Do you have any other media recs similar to Perfect Days? Studio Ghibli films and the healing fiction genre come to mind.

5. “Slow” has been a burgeoning theme this month as the seasons and I both transition into an inward phase. I’ve been relishing writer

   Rachel Schwartzmann
   ’s new book Slowing: Discover Wonder, Beauty, and Creativity Through Slow Living. The volume is beautifully designed and invites you to read a little bit each week, with guided prompts for reflection. A favorite quote below:
   
   ”If craft is practice, then maybe creativity is forgiveness—an acceptance (even warmth) toward a lack of finite output, an opportunity to not be too hard on yourself when nothing comes out. After all, there is effort, and that’s all we can make…But we can’t stop—not really. We can only slow, which helps us see backward and eventually move forward.”

   

   Rachel put together a style edit for her book! The background here is a thrifted dress from Lisbon which matches perfectly.

6. Another book I enjoyed is The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss. It’s a hefty art book on the process of 43 artists with accompanying sketches, notebook scribbles, and stages of work. I loved reading about writer Sheila Heti, who believes that the ‘show, don’t tell’ approach to writing a novel is no longer necessary—”you have TV.”

   

   Sheila Heti’s many notes that eventually comprise a book

   I also found inspiration in artist Amy Sillman, who is “insistent that her painting—the final painting, the painting others see—is…an arbitrary choice, like a game of musical chairs, where the music stops and that’s the work. The obliteration isn’t defeat. That’s the point.”

7. Looking forward—it’s calendar buying season! I’ve been seeing lots of gorgeous calendars available for preorder. This year I used jychoioi’s daily calendar and in 2025 I’ll be using Im Jina’s, both Korean illustrators. I’m also eyeing these tempting monthly calendar options from Lizzie Lomax (UK), Ro Farmer (Canada), Hiller Goodspeed (US/Canada), Rare Press (US), Naomi Wilkinson (UK), and Aiko Poole (Japan). If you have any favorite artists who make calendars, share them below!

Calendars: Im Jina (top left), Ro Farmer (bottom left), Hiller Goodspeed (right)

Today’s the first of November, and the US election is fast approaching. Please please please, finalize your plans to vote—our planet depends on it! And if you’ve been spiraling or doomscrolling about the election, may I point you to Oliver Burkeman’s latest newsletter, specifically this excerpt:

You might then feel your way back into the world you do inhabit, the real physical environment and the flesh-and-blood people, and remind yourself of anything you appreciate about all that. (Ignore any social media addicts who tell you that, in a time of crisis, this constitutes escapism. Is this what we’ve come to – that paying more attention to the reality around you, and less to frenzied online fantasies, gets condemned as taking your eye off the ball?) From there, you’d ask what can actually be done about the subject of your worry, in your world. Depending on your situation, that might involve voting, canvassing, donating, or possibly much more. Or it might involve the underrated activity of not necessarily doing anything overtly political at all, but of more devotedly embodying, in your everyday actions, the kind of world you take yourself to be fighting for.

Voted early this year!