June favourites: Committing to my creativity

One thing I really want to use this space for—especially as it grows—is inspiration and connection. It’s really easy to feel like we’re alone out there (look at you, fellow WFHers) so sharing is so important.

And part of that is sharing all the goodies we’ve found, learned, experienced, and loved over the past month. I’ll be publishing a roundup of my own favourites on the first Thursday of the month, but I really want to encourage you to share yours in the comments! It can be big or small, mundane or magical, but what helped you slow down and reconnect this month?

Here are mine.

1. My new camera

This roundup really isn’t supposed to be about big expensive things, but it would be disingenuous to not start with my new Canon EOS RP because it has really ushered in a whole new era for me. I’ve loved taking pictures since I was nine and got this bad boy as a gift. I’ve gone through a few decent cameras since then, but as I’ve been trying to reconnect with the world in the past few months and Put Myself Out There more, photography has become the main driver to do so.

I decided to lean in and commit more fully to photography as a hobby, and part of that was buying a full-frame mirrorless and holy hell, it feels like I’ve been taking pictures with training wheels on until now. I’m obsessed with the quality of the photos it produces, and it’s been a huge motivation to get out of the house and explore the outdoors since I got it. Game changer.

2. Journalling

Cue the collective exasperated sigh at yet another recommendation to start journalling, but please bear with me. There’s a lot of bullshit out there when it comes to journalling, and most of it is intended to make you spend money or feel guilty that you’re not journalling the “right” way. That’s dumb.

I cracked open a new journal this month with the sole intention of using it to plan business stuff—this newsletter being part of that. And what I’ve rediscovered is that people aren’t lying when they say that writing stuff down with a pen on actual paper is powerful stuff. Writing it down makes it real, in a way, and untangles the mess of thoughts in my brain so I can start to pick apart the truth of it all.

I set zero intentions with my journal—again, it was supposed to be a business planner—and yet I find myself actually looking forward to scribbling furiously in it every night. Sometimes I find myself writing out deep thoughts, sometimes content ideas, and sometimes I’m just brainstorming a new Instagram bio. It doesn’t matter. It’s my space to be messy.

3. This newsletter

Is this a cop-out answer? Regardless, setting a goal—and a public-facing one too!—to write this newsletter every week has been forcing my brain to do a lot of thinking different from the thinking that I use for work, which has been making me feel a lot more productive and accomplished. It’s also given me something to work on in the evenings, which in turn is keeping me away from TikTok (although, damn you Zuckerberg for launching Threads and giving me another avenue for procrastination—follow me here).

4. Snap peas

Bear with me.

Every morning, I go out into the garden to take a look at how all the veggies survived the night. Inevitably, I snag a snap pea to snack on while doing so, leading my husband Mike to refer to these excursions as “Rabbit Time.”

Rabbit Time proves, every summer, to be one of the more grounding exercises in my day. It starts me off strong: in the garden, hands in the dirt, tending to small things.

5. ASMR

I have joked about ASMR more than once, but TikTok finally served me one too many oddly satisfying videos of people gently whispering that I had to head to YouTube and try one out. Unfortunately, they’re awesome. Something about it seems to snap me into a flow state—whether that’s for sleep, or for getting focused on deep work, something I’ve been struggling with lately. Sarah Lavender has been my go-to.

That’s it for me! What were some of your favourite things in June?