🏁 finishing + remembering + missing

ISSUE #168

MAKING FINISHING

The upside of writing an almost weekly newsletter since 2022 is you can look back and see patterns emerge. This is also the downside if those patterns reveal something you would rather not see. Or, maybe not. Maybe it’s a positive to see those negative things that might otherwise go unnoticed – and then have the opportunity to course correct.

I talk a lot about what I’m making – it’s one of the three things I share every week. But what I could see is that it’s a lot of starts, working on, trying, testing… and not a whole lot of finishing.

Not that I don’t finish anything but I have a (very strong) tendency to get excited easily, start a lot of things, and get distracted – very easily.

I have a punch list on my phone of projects that are soooooo close to being finished – they need just one more thing or just a little more work. This week I focused on getting a few of those items across the finish line:

• I started off with an easy win and finished binding the Wisdom Decks with new, smaller screw posts – that I’ve had since last July. 😬

• I finished the Makeist Postal Club (MPC) month of May birthday cards (apologies to early May dates. They’re on their way – Happy Belated Birthday!)

• I finished the international MPC birthday cards for the rest of the year, all stuffed, stamped and ready to mail.

• I finished a collaborative zine* that I had been in my court for months. This one has been really nagging at me – taunting me from my To Do list. Then I realized there was a reason I had been procrastinating: because I thought of a much better format! And now I’m glad I waited – but also glad I can cross it off my list. 🏁

* I will share more on this soon – after my co-collaborator has had a chance to review it.

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LOVING

Sometimes the best part of a meal is the thing you don’t eat — a menu, a matchbook, a postcard, a tiny recipe zine. That’s why I loved the menu project. Why I’ve started making mini recipe zines for dinners at our house, featuring the dishes I’m serving. And why I loved this article about restaurants bringing back postcards.

Not every experience comes with a takeaway, but when dinner does, it’s my favorite part: a little piece of physical ephemera that helps preserve the memory of a great meal.

📖 READ
Restaurants Are Still Printing Postcards? It Has Nothing to Do With Mail →

Pictured above: postcard and matchbook from Dove’s Luncheonette

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THINKING

I’ve been thinking about my parents this week. My dad would have been 84 on May 8. His birthday was always within days of Mother’s Day, so we would often celebrate them both together.

Happy birthday, Dad. And Happy Mother’s Day to my mom.

Miss you. 🩷

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pictured above: my Dad walking (a much younger) me down the “aisle” of our wedding on the back patio of Enoteca Roma.