"When is suffering useless? When it only turns us in upon ourselves, when it only makes us sorry for ourselves, when it changes love into hatred, when it reduces all things to fear." - Thomas Merton

Hi, friend,

I am so glad to report I am doing so much better! It's a combination of good reading, good supplements, and good time to myself. I am so relieved.

I think the AI-depression is really, truly passing now. And I'm coming to terms with and healing from a lot of my ambition-related life changes. I have a new office, a lot of freedom in my work, and things on the home front feel manageable (if never actually peaceful).

(I write a bit way too much about that a couple sections down)

Thank you for sticking with me through the turmoil.

I don't know how to create and show up when I'm feeling low, even though for many people that's actually when they get real good at being expressive. My approach seemed always to be very melodramatic (AIM away messages...) OR nothing at all. So I defaulted to nothing at all because I'm so mature now. 👀

Learning how to express feelings through art or sketch is also very new to me. I see a theme of a lot of eyes and sad or tired-looking people in my sketches. I like how they look. Sometimes I draw them when I'm happy, too, though, so I wish my mom wouldn't read into it too much 😂.

Let me take you on a tour of my pen life!

Links that renewed my faith in humanity

Let's bring back a good old fashioned curated link roundup! Here are some long-form pieces I've been enjoying lately:

​Chelsea is a YouTuber I like (YouTube) and she's vlogging single life in NYC and going back to school in her 30s. Part of me is living life through her, since she has full control over her days and time. Part of me just likes pretending to live in NYC sometimes.

​Spacemakers is new to me (YouTube) but I immediately binged hours of this real-life declutter and reno. Dani is so relatable! Inspired me to get and install a couple organization pieces and my home is feeling way more awesome.

A final YT pause (Fr this time)

Listen, I'm sorry for jerking you around. I kept trying to make my YouTube channel work for me. But while I'm very proud of what I was making, it started to feel like pushing something uphill.

I am going to just write for a while, and take a step back from being a content creator. What if we're just cozy and I don't have to set up my desk and find a quiet minute and strain to seem interesting?

So, yes, I gave myself the final permission to just let it lie for now.

The videos will stay up, but I'm just going to be a normal human being for a little bit.

I'd like to keep sharing here—it feels a lot more like sending a letter to a friend and that's a very comfortable place for me. And I get a lot out of reflecting via writing, personally. Video feels way too much like I need to be interesting, which is hard for me, and attractive in a young way, which is a frustrating feeling.

I also wonder how much of my love of YT is just a pandemic leftover—we all left IRL relationships and made parasocial attachments with faces on our phones. And now that's the only way I feel like I can connect with stationery friends? I dunno, it's messy.

Feeling better (A deep dive on family roles)

If you'll permit me a little rambling, I've had some breakthroughs in therapy about all this life change. I'll break it up into sections because damn this got long.

Grieving my business

I had to grieve the business I'd built as a business coach and writing teacher. I am so proud of myself and impressed frankly that I saw the signs and pivoted. If I hadn't, I'd be in a very, VERY bad position right now (Shout out Ed for his candid advice about this over the years!). But I did, even though it hurt, and I phased away from coaching and back into client work as a writer "before" the crash happened to me.

It was hard though, I can't deny that. I felt at once: worthless, faithless, like the past 10 years of my life had led me to a horrible end, that all the rules I'd lived by were expired and there was no place for me in this new one. I was really sinking there for 12-18 months. It felt like entrepreneurship had been a poison and I was finally dying from it.

Downshifting from platform-building

Really, looking back, I had embraced the idea that my whole worth and contribution as a human being had to be in business. And any pulling back from that, or perceived failure in that, was "the end" for me.

So to go from that to the majority of my demands being housekeeping, managing kids schedules, keeping my husband's life going while he went back to work.... WOOF.

I imagine it was a taste of the whiplash a retiree gets after 40 years of work only to be dropped into a garden.

I had to grieve that and be miserable for a long time. I definitely did that, lol. And of course I've got health issues going alongside this, which left me managing chronic fatigue and brain fog and despair along side much of this. There were good moments or days, but the string of months since late 2024 in my personal life has been mostly miserable and difficult.

Over the past month, I hit on a supplement that's done wonders for me (Ashwaganda/L-Theanine mix) and read a few books that reoriented me spiritually (CS Lewis' The Great Divorce and Mere Christianity, and Thomas Merton's No Man Is an Island) and it's gotten me to a refreshing headspace.

Better late than never, but I'm reconsidering if the purpose of my life and soul is economic productivity.

And if I reconsider this, maybe I'm not meant to feel like crap for "just" being a human being and a mom. And maybe I don't have to create "content" about it and feed into this algorithmic system we've landed on.

...As much as I might once have wanted that or live it vicariously through channels like Chelsea's or even following the ups and downs of Taylor Swift's career.

Changes in my house

This shift has aligned with a big physical shift, too—giving up my office. My glorious office and my very first pen haven.

It happened in phases: first I welcomed my husband's desk and things into my office, losing about half of it. Then I lost everything but my desk by moving our oldest kid into the room. Then it was clear I needed to get my desk out of there, and we converted the master closet into our office. (It's huge, the set up is amazing). We'll put some IKEA wardrobes in the master once I set up the plans.

But this shift from.... "Dominant" office position, a whole room just for me and my business.... to losing half, losing most, then losing all... it really allowed me to process this shift and come to terms with my new position.

Childhood lessons about my worth

At the risk of oversharing and going on too long, the therapy side of things let me explore the roots of gendered family roles and, frankly, misogyny, from my childhood. The idea of "just" being a mom, of losing my identity in serving the three men in my family... it's been a mind f*** to say the least.

I don't have it completely figured out yet, honestly. But the truth is that I WAS putting work on a pedestal and sacrificing my whole self for the idea of being successful in that way.

My house was neglected, clutter was piling up, things weren't functional in a scary hoarder way (our master shower was out of commission and without a floor for more than a year!). In ways that were simply unhealthy. My husband wasn't on top of it either, for personal reasons that are his.

In the past six month or so, we've set so many things right around our house. I've cooked actual meals and showed up for school things/taken the lead on having the kids ready for things.

I'm still not in a 100% happy place about this, because this is the pattern that was in my family as a kid. I was the only girl with three older brothers and there was a definite "Men work on important things outside the home, and women arrange all the household things to cater to men and make their work possible" theme to it. It's more nuanced than that, but that's what's in my psyche a lot of the time.

Frankly, there's an element of this that's like.... If I had a wife, I could have done it. Why do *I* have to be the wife?

Do I ultimately want that work-focused life? Was that my destiny, or was this? What's my happiest self's relationship with work and family?

It's hard to calibrate with all this! I don't have the right answer yet. If you're single and without kids maybe this sounds like a horror story. It certainly would have to me 15 years ago!

Fumbling around for the center of it all

I'm walking around these thoughts and experiences carefully, and I'm making changes slowly that feel good and align with the contribution I want to make and the family I want to have. It's in such a better place right now.

Reading The Great Divorce really helped, to kick me back into thinking about myself as an eternal soul. This is all much bigger than "work and family." I want the big right answer, not the little one. So I'm looking for it. And the quote I opened with was a big red flag for me....

My pain and suffering was 100%, without a doubt, turning me into a resentful, belligerent, grumpy, loveless person. I could feel it and I could see all the signs, a "dumb animal" that just wanted to be put down (like from another part of the Merton book).

I knew that was the wrong way to go about it, but I was just responding to my suffering. And the antidote showed up on the page, too:

And frankly, I was not loving God enough to be happy about the suffering or to be willing for anything to be burned away. So I didn't/don't have the answer here either, but I feel like I got some very important signposts to stop, reconsider, reorient, and see what happens.

I'm seeing what happens—it's mostly good so far.

Pen update (New BENU, new Sailor 1911L)

A few additions this month!

I finally took the plunge and hunted down a Goulet exclusive BENU Euphoria in Earl Grey on r/pen_swap for a great price. I wish it had a bit wetter/thicker line, but I might touch that up at the next pen show with Damien.

(A nibsmith can, for $15-30 bucks, tweak a pen to your liking. I do it a lot.)

The Earl Grey coincided with a lovely gift from a friend, which completely floored me with surprise (Thank you Sarah!) when I opened a Birmingham Pen Company box and it had a bottle of Burlywood in it.

It's a perfect creme caramel with a ton of shading, which is exactly up my alley. It's like a combination of Robert Oster Cafe Crema/Gold Antiqua with a hint of Teranishi Nostalgic Honey in the lighter parts (a top 5 ink for me). So, I am HAPPY ABOUT IT.

I'm also playing around with inks this month. I ran out of Diamine Writer's Blood (my favorite for my Carene) and decided to get SPICY and put in a sheener. I'm not so big on sheen, but I do like Ink Institute's Shadowsnow, which is a match for BPC's Tesla Coil but it doesn't rub off.

I also picked up a GREAT DEAL on pen swap for a black/silver trim 1911L M. I was going to use it as a donor cap for my ringless... but the nib kills! I can't ditch it! So now I have two black Sailor 1911Ls haha. But one is ringless, one isn't, so it's different enough for me.

I also picked up two inks this month: Sailor Kamoshika, which is like a muddy plurple (pinkish purple brown). I haven't found the right pen for it yet! And then Iroshizuku Shin Kai. I want to try that out in the Hazy Moon when I've worked through the Nostalgic Honey that's in there now.

And here are a few pieces of art for this month.

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Travel plans

As a part of my new life, I am actually going on a proper vacation to see a friend in a couple weeks! I'll take Princeton, NJ by storm. If you know any stationery hot spots there, please let me know. But I'm excited to pick my 10-14 pens for the trip, and get some art in around town. Here's what I'm thinking so far:

1. Grey decimo - Asa gao
2. Silver VP - Salt Water Taffy
3. Pirate's Life 1911L - Rikyucha
4. Earl Grey - Burlywood
5. E95 M - Olivine
6. E95 EF - Syo ro
7. E95 F - Doc black
8. Black 1911L - Sui gyuoku - might change the ink though

My Carene probably needs to stay home because it's been burping lately, and Hazy Moon will stay home because it's too precious and expensive. Same for my Stylosuite.

(I don't really need flex nibs when I'm out and about because I see those more for addressing envelopes and writing nice notes.)

So this represents more my drawing set, and sturdy drawing pens made of metal (AKA the e95s all fit in a great short sleeve, so it's easy to toss in on things.)

Looking at this list, I bet I can cut things down more. But pens don't really take up all that much room or weight, and I love options, so who knows. What I'm really planning around is built-in space:

• 3-pen rickshaw for the E95Ss
• 4-pen built into my galen portfolio
• Then I either add a 3-pen for tall pens, OR I could go all in and pack a 10-pen galen case. That's the real decision here.

Later this summer, I'll head to the beach where I also take pens. And then probably I'll hit up the DC Pen Show just to show support and enjoy the scene. I won't be teaching a class this year. I wish I had the health and bandwidth to do it, but I'm just not a single 20 year old anymore. God I wish I'd found this stuff when I was 20. But oh well! Embracing my life! :-P

Thank you for being here with me, and please send me pictures of your pens if you have got anything interesting going on this month!

Sarah G.

P.S. if you like the emotional atmosphere here, invite a friend to join us. here's to more time chilling and resting among friends.