love letters

a casual retrospective on feb. and ongoing projects

I’m not the biggest “new year’s resolutions” person but I do like setting intentions and affirmations. One of mine, over the last couple of years, has been to cultivate a creative practice. This is a thing that has taken a few different forms. I ordered a gouache paint kit a few years ago¹, took a couple of sketching classes with friends last year, have been working on film photography since last feb, and am coming back to writing now.² So much of research and graduate school is about swallowing huge amounts of information and so much of therapy is analytical and internal. Sometimes I just want to make something that I can touch with my hands- something that can live outside of my head.

The most recent of these projects has been a mailer, which I collaborated with my dear friend Alicia to develop. I was looking for a place for my monster romance thoughts to go while I work up the motivation to actually get it polished for publication, and it sort of started as a joke, but then Alicia, design-witch that she is, actually breathed life into the idea. Now we call it To Lovers, In Jest. I’ve included some of the key pieces of our valentine’s day mailer (which actually has still not reached about half of its intended recipients for unknown reasons… USPS and I are fully beefing, apologies if you were supposed to receive one and still haven’t gotten it) below for your perusal, but the most important piece of context is in the letter, below:

god knows i love a footnote. and look at the image in the top right! that’s alicia’s own sketch!!!!

It was nice to pay so much attention to something. The envelopes were pink, the stamps were the love forever stamps from USPS. We were able to source most materials from small/local businesses. Shoutout to my guy Sergio at The Printing Garage off Bedford in Williamsburg, who printed all of these in record time and even resized them exactly as I needed them. We commissioned art from [at]_beidak_ on Instagram, and even commissioned a rubber stamp, Alicia’s own design, to seal the envelope from Casey Rubber Stamps in LES (unfortunately, it was not ready on time due to a series of errors mostly having to do with the fact that Casey Rubber Stamps is held together by duct tape and cat hair)³. I got to hand-address and seal and mail all of the envelopes. It was just nice. It was nice to get to make something that I felt proud of, that I got to do with a friend, and that didn’t feel commercially motivated.⁴ Getting to see Alicia work her magic is such a gift and our shared pinterest board is a never-ending source of delight for me.

If you feel like you have something to say about monsters, medievalism, and gameplay and would maybe want to write for the zine, let me know! You’d get added to the mailing list for your contribution :)

Other things I’ve been working on lately:

• clinical externship interviews for school, which are finally overrrr. keep me in your thoughts and prayers because I have match day on Monday and

• a syllabus for a class I’m hoping to teach— funny enough, this is not for school, so keep your eyes peeled for more news on that

• a newsletter on olfactory ethics in romance. this is slow-going, probably a spring break release lol

• a couple of beta reads this month, both of which were excellent. I’ve been really lucky to be commissioned for some really special work. can’t wait to rave about all of it when it’s announced.

Anyways. In the past I’ve had more complicated or messy feelings about valentine’s day, but this year I found myself more upbeat about it. I was taking the train home from one of my jobs that day, and every other person on the subway was holding a bundle of flowers. hard not to love that.

hope your feb was lovely, and tell me what your creative practices are, if you’re so inclined.

please commend alicia on her excellent poetry skills in addition to the gorgeous design work here

possibly my favorite piece of art ever. look at his bloomers. the spurs. the shy posture. i’m gonna get this printed into a proper poster and stick him on my wall. for the mailer, we had this printed onto a vinyl sticker, for waterbottles and notebooks and such.

this came in three color varieties <3

1. the most short-lived of these hobbies, I fear

2. thank you to my psychiatrist and buproprion for making this possible

3. said affectionately. love you casey rubber stamp. not your fault you keep going tiktok viral and can’t keep up with business demand.

4. I don’t personally feel a need to monetize this project, but supplies are getting more and more expensive, so it’s possible that we will solicit donations/funds/contributions in the future