Welcome to the Fluffbucket Diaries, which could also be pitched as “Further Proof That I Have Significant ADHD.”
I don’t necessarily hope to monetize this thing, though that would certainly be nice in my situation. Rather, I’m looking to use this space to market my fledgling Etsy shop so I can expand my sales beyond the used postage stamps — which are fabulous, don’t get me wrong — that have been flying out the door to the wonderful junk journalers, collage artists, and crafters who use them for their projects.
But it’s still kind of a personal space. I’ll also share my artwork, share random updates, and let you know what I’m watching, reading, listening to, and thinking about. Yeah, kind of bloggy stuff. (My favorite newsletter remains Austin Kleon’s weekly missive, and his advice to write a newsletter I want to read persuaded me to give this a try.)
And yes, I do have a blog. I’ve had one for years. But it’s been dormant for a while because (a) I have grown to dislike the platform it’s on, and I can’t figure out how to port it over to another place; and (b) I’ve not felt like writing much since I was laid off in March. But the idea of a newsletter intrigues me, and this new platform is promising. This is likely an overly ambitious hope, but I plan to make this a weekly thing.
(I also owe a few friends email; if you’re one of them, I promise to catch up this weekend.)
Onward.
This Week’s Artwork
I’m in the middle of another art challenge on Insta, so I’ve been sporadically churning out artist trading cards (ATCs) for that. Here’s one of the latest.
What’s for Sale
I just listed packets of used Christmas postage stamps on Fluffbucket Finds for your junk journaling and cardmaking enjoyment.
Notebook
This part of the newsletter will be my sandbox, as it were. (Having just completed a mini-tour of Midwest cat cafes before my daughter started school this week, maybe it’s not a great idea to use that term.) I might use this to babble about my family, my job situation, cats, pop culture, neurodiversity, or sports. (Go Padres! Beat LA!) As it stands, I don’t have much to blather about at the moment. Not that I’m not thinking about any of those things; I’m just tired right now, which in itself may be enough of a statement.
The Bucket List: Five for Friday
Here’s where I rip off Austin Kleon and others who list their five, 10, or whatever things they’ve been checking out or thinking about lately.
That “New Heights” podcast episode with Taylor Swift. I don’t identify as a Swiftie, necessarily, but I do like Taylor Swift, though I do like Jason Kelce more than Travis. It was nice to see TS in a loose, relaxed, freewheeling chat like that.
“K-Pop Demon Hunters.” Yeah, I know. I watched it twice when C and F (the husband and teen daughter, respectively) were out of town. We do a movie night at home on Fridays, where we select a movie via a digital wheel with several titles we intend to see; it’s been driving me nuts that KPDH hasn’t turned up in recent weeks. Crossing my fingers that it happens tonight, because I have the taste of a 12-year-old girl.
The Padres are now atop the NL West standings. I have enough sleep problems without being up with West Coast baseball.
I deeply hate job hunting. I hate that the job market sucks, especially for people in their late 50s. And I really, really hate L*nkedIn with the heat of a billion suns.
I spent half of this week on the road through Wisconsin and Minnesota with F’s Spotify road trip playlist packed with J-Pop vocaloid songs. I’ve been killing the earworms since we returned home with Black Sabbath and Oingo Boingo. Make it all stop.