Summer Staycation, Doctor Who, and No Journalling Prompts—REST!

Heya, how are you holding up? I spent the fourth of July weekend tackling some much-needed (and long overdue) decluttering/reorganizing projects I started at the beginning of the year, but abandoned in March. As soon as PocketQuest took hold, much time was spent designing Pinching Tarts, engaging with amazing new-to-me designers, and brushing up on my layout skills for both print and digital.

Now, I’ve got an improved, functional kitchen that accomodates an air fryer and more countertop space for additional baking and cooking experiments. It’s a relief that this leg of the Great Decluttering is done, because I only have three more major projects to go: the abyss that is my office, the garage, and a mountain of books and games that haven’t ever truly been organized or catalogued.

I also got the chance to practice my watercolor painting and finish knitting a cotton, T-shirt cowl. The character depicted is called the “Sage Beast.” I redrew the lineart from the Furbeast Forest: Beastly Botanicals II coloring book (available from Furbeast on Etsy) onto cold press watercolor paper, so I can’t ethically call this character my original art. Fun to color, though!

At present, I’m prepping for my appearance at the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium and forgot to tell you that I’m bringing limited quantities of themed earrings—colorful dice and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland replete with hearts, bunnies, playing cards, and (most importantly) tiny teacups. The earrings, along with print copies of Pinching Tarts and into shadow: an exploration of personal fears, will be available for purchase at the show.

Other than a pile of words, I’m taking it easy for the rest of this month, if not the summer. This year, I’ve felt a bit like the Doctor in “Heaven Sent,” chipping away at a room-sized chunk of diamond until it breaks or I’ve carved a passage through. Part of my process to rethink my work has been to re-examine how I’m spending my free time—which is why I’m no longer volunteering for SFWA. If my math is correct, I’ve volunteered for the organization approximately eight years or so. It’s time. Plus, my absence is an opportunity for others with fresh ideas and enthusiasm to step up.

Speaking of Doctor Who, I’ve set down my controller and have been getting caught up. The Fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, is delightful. Just pure joy. Pure, emotional, passionate, chaotic, beautiful joy. I’m sorry to say I wound up abandoning the Thirteenth Doctor’s storyline partway through, mostly due to accessibility issues on streaming platforms, and am now filling in those gaps. And, for perhaps the first time, I don’t have any trouble adjusting to the massive changes, a new-and-less-grumpy doctor, or Ncuti’s take. The decisions made regarding the Timeless Child were clever to me, because the original limit of generations felt like a narrative restraint. Now, there’s a possibility of reconnection, of finding their home, of hope, growth, and closure in a new, perhaps more contemporary, way.

More than that, however, being angry about a narrative change exhausts me. I remember how the discourse around why we couldn’t have a woman Doctor, even though it’d already been established that the Doctor’s regenerations were gender fluid, required too much of my brain-and-heart space at the time. For a character that’s 50+ years old, I suppose it is worrying when change occurs, but the old episodes never go away. The other Doctors don’t suddenly vanish because the new character is having their moment. And, perhaps even more importantly, in Who none of the other doctors become irrelevant or forgotten. All of them matter to the character, to the story, to the whole wide universe.

Doctor Who has been my happy place, and the show’s been a wonderful reprieve from the election and its persistent, repetitive ads. Watching the show is also a form of rest—something I’ve been mulling over recently. So, for this month, I’m abandoning the journalling prompts and encouraging you to do the same. Rest.

If you’re feeling guilty about that word, rest, I’d like to politely remind you that rest is necessary and part of being human. The states, in particular, was built on the Puritanical idea that one’s self-worth is tied to one’s productivity, and I’d like to kindly toss that notion into a lava pit and never think of it again. Rest is important and, like all things, is best taken in moderation.

So go on, take a nap. Find your favorite book. Grab a cup of a beloved beverage. Bake some cookies. Draw. Paint. Listen. Wander. However you rest, whenever you rest, take a beat. Immerse yourself in doing (or not doing) what you need to feel refreshed.

‘Til next time! Fare thee well!

- Monica