the april report

prepping for Middlemarch and a lot of photos from the last month

Hello, my friend

Today, I am sharing my REPORT for April —

• Reading and recent acquisitions

• Enjoying some time off

• Preparing for Middlemarch!!!!!

• Opening lots of sticker packs

• Raving about the art of ceramics and its healing power

• Treating myself to things I loved as a kid

Reading less than usual…

I’ve been reading a lot less lately and I’m actually so okay with it.

I’ve been unbelievably busy at my day-job, where I’m the full-time lead writer on a global sales content team at Pinterest. We’ve had so much going on during “Q2” and I find myself solidly brain-fried at the end of the day. Between drafting net-new messaging outlines and developing new content types, to editing existing works and auditing cross-functional work for governance…I feel like I’m speaking jargon and living for the weekend.

[I feel I must caveat this that I love my job and I love being busy. But that doesn’t mean the corporate grind is the mode I want to be in all the time. I’m glad I work for a company that gets it.]

Instead of leaping into a book after work, I’ve found a lot more comfort in going for a walk or going to the pottery studio. When I do read, I like to make it feel like a special occasion. So instead of posting-up at my work-from-home office desk, I head out to my favorite coffee shop instead. Preferably in a very bright sweater that feels like a blanket.

Enjoying time off

From the end of April through the middle of June, my family and I are in constant celebration mode. Birthdays (including a new niece in my life!), anniversaries, and reasons to raise a glass are all packed together in just a few weeks.

Plus, Pride and Prejudice was back in theaters so you know we had to go!!

If you’re ever in Utah, I cannot recommend THE PIZZA YARD enough! It’s delish food in a gorgeous setting.

My husband and I recently celebrated our tenth anniversary with a staycation, including day trips to Top Golf (my swing is getting good, look out world!), our favorite pizza spot in the mountains, and a marathon binge-watch of our new favorite show, Hacks on HBO Max. (Jean Smart is PERFECT and I have the biggest crush on Jimmy!)

Again, if you’re ever in Utah, don’t miss Baby’s Bagels downtown. Handmade everything, absolutely delish, DILL PICKLE CREAM CHEESE.

The kale ceasar salad, pictured below, is the most perfect salad in the whole world and I am willing to drive an hour into the mountains for it. Heck, I’d be willing to drive 4 hours for it. I’d plan a whole weekend around it (and have!). It’s the *best.*

A roasted apple, squash, and spicy ricotta pizza, pictured with the most beautiful and perfect salad ever created on land or sea.

We also, of course, made two separate trips to bookstores and ended up buying a pile each time. It’s the season of both of our birthdays, so we justified a few extra purchases. Here’s what I picked out most recently:

• Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm

• Tillie Olsen’s Silences (I found a gorgeous old used copy at Ken Sanders) and I’ll tell you more about it as we wrap our close reading of Yonnondio next week!

• Vicki Tan’s new book, Ask This Book a Question (full reflection coming soon!)

  • Full disclosure: Vicki so kindly sent me a review copy of her book because after hearing her talk about her new book during a meeting at work (we are colleagues!), I offered to share it with all of you because it’s a perfect example of how smart people talk about closely reading and the intellectual practice of learning to ask great questions. So excited to share more with you soon!

• A beautiful, new-to-me travel journal by Edith Wharton from her first trip to the Mediterranean, The Cruise of the Vanadis, complete with gobsmackingly beautiful photography from a Wharton enthusiast. I started reading it immediately, on the car ride home, risking motion sickness and nausea, because I simply cannot handle the excitement of new-to-my-knowledge Wharton texts. She writes so patiently and lovingly about travel.

I always find the most unique treasures at Ken Sanders

Preparing for Middlemarch

Ya’ll!!! It’s finally time!!!! We’ve been exchanging fun messages for months now about getting ready for Middlemarch and it’s finally time!

We’re going to slow read this absolute classic together, from May 26 through August 18. The full schedule is coming soon with a detailed breakdown of which chapters to read for each week, so you can get prepared.

I’ll also make sure to include my recommendations for getting through super long old books so you can stay focused, stay motivated, and stay the course with me when the reading gets tough!

Anything advice or tips you want me to include? Tell me in today’s comments!

I am so freakin’ excited to read this novel with you! It’ll be my first time reading it, and my fourth George Eliot text (I still haven’t emotionally recovered from Adam Bede and I read it nine years ago…)

I can’t wait to dive in with you!

Opening lots of stickers

I’ve been scrapbooking lately. It’s so much fun but also a little bit tedious. My favorite part is going nuts with stickers and stamps and ribbon to decorate the page after I’ve got all the photos taped down.

I’ve been loving the cute sticker packs you can find on Etsy and there are even some small creators selling stickers on TikTok shop that I’ve had great experiences with.

I’m firmly in my crafty girl era, and I love it.

Raving about ceramics

Speaking of getting crafty, I am continuing my ceramics journey and it’s going so well.

I have genuinely never, ever thought of myself as someone artistic or creative enough to have a hobby like this…and then guess what? I go throw clay and it turns into a wobbly pot or a gorgeous little ash tray or an adorable vase and I realize all these stories I tell myself about my creativity are bullshit!

Being an artist doesn’t require perfection or an articulate theory of why you create or a salient purpose behind every piece you embark on. Newsflash: creativity isn’t a PhD, Haley!

It’s so much simpler than I’ve made it out to be, and each time I go throw clay, I have these tiny breakthroughs. I learn something about myself or about how clay works or about how intuitive it is to build things with your hands.

It’s so much fun. Here’s my favorite piece to date: a bright green bubble vase that is the perfect height for storing pens, pencils, and paintbrushes.

Treating myself to ice cream sandwiches

I don’t write, or even talk, about this very often. But I have learned that it’s really not an uncommon thing at all to develop some strange stances toward food when you have a blood-sugar-related disorder or syndrome, like PCOS (which I have!). I didn’t realize until I started treating some of my underlying issues that I’ve got a quite dysfunctional relationship to the idea of “treats.”

In fact, it has been almost a decade since I have kept ice cream in my freezer at home. At some point, I made a rule with myself that I wasn’t allowed to have ice cream in my freezer. I could have frozen fruit. Even frozen chocolate or cookie dough to bake into one cookie at a time. Two weeks ago, though, I bought a box of ice cream sandwiches and I have loved having them after dinner.

I’m really starting to realize that the more I embrace my creativity and the more time I spend doing things like ceramics and writing in coffee shops and going for walks…the more I open myself up to change my mind about the rules I’ve made for myself. The safer it feels to re-examine what I’ve taken to be true, and to invite myself to change whenever I want.

Like a little lump of clay on a wheel. I can be anything I want. I can change the rules. And I feel better, and flow easier, when I loosen my grip and let it ride.

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Thanks for reading, friend

These REPORTS sometimes feel quite indulgent—like I can’t imagine who’d care to read this type of writing from me. But I really have come to love this little framework and way of sharing, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

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