How come it is spring already?

Things take uneven time sometimes, and it is okay

Hello, dear reader,

The year has started with the deepest hibernation period that I ever had. I did not fell into the “achievements of 2023 hustle” or into “resolutions for 2024 bragging”. As it felt very appropriate to end this year like that. Quietly and observantly. I will lie to you if I tell you that I spent this time in solitude. Far from that actually. It feels like I was accumulating words and ideas I would love to share with you further on. I started to write some of the dispatches, but then I lingered in the middle and stopped. I never wanted this email list to be something forced and shallow. So I waited.

A few new people subscribed during the time of my silence and I thank you for that. Here I share what I discover when I go along my creative journey in hope it sparkle some ideas in you. Not all the people are artists by profession, but my strongest belief is that we all have our creative paths.

Since I dispatched the last time, I published some videos and also made very vulnerable and very much needed step of opening my buymeacoffee account. I think it was actually a reason I stalled with a new letter here. As this letter was supposed to be about promoting the way people who enjoy my work may support me with money. I procrastinated in search of a perfect way to deliver it. But there is no perfect way.

Let me introduce my buymeacoffee where (for now) you can subscribe for a membership or make a single donation, and also don’t hesitate downloading my planner spreads which are free to grab. They might be printed out and attached to your fridge or the wall, and help you navigate life. I plan to do more of those downloadables this year. Your support will mean a world to me. Thank you.

Actually I liked how versatile buymeacoffee became, I remember it being just for donations. Now it is a whole system with donations, memberships, wishlists (I save up for the tripod), digital shop and even commissions.

Talking publicly about my buymeacoffee is more scary then going to a very cold sea water.

I welcome you to subscribe to my YouTube channel and have a look at the new videos. I published 7 since the last email (wow, me!). I dearly love all of then, but according to YouTube this was particularly the best of them. So I will link it here, but go and check others please.

To not make this dispatch too long, I say goodbye now and thank you for being here. Since the last time I wrote to you, I went to our Turkish village, Turunc, for the deepest emotional closure. And after I went to Russia and finally brought our dog to Spain. I also filmed at lest 4 vlogs, 2 music videos, and worked on some lettering and art works. I also faced a couple of failures, and cut some ties. It would be too intense to tell it all in one dispatch. But stay with me, and I will tell you everything and more.

best wishes, Vera

(below are the links to what I loved over the last few months)

What did I enjoy lately?

• Nick Cave on pillars of a Meaningful life

The first is humility. Humility amounts to an understanding that the world is not divided into good and bad people, but rather it is made up of all manner of individuals, each broken in their own way, each caught up in the common human struggle and each having the capacity to do both terrible and beautiful things. If we truly comprehend and acknowledge that we are all imperfect creatures, we find that we become more tolerant and accepting of others’ shortcomings and the world appears less dissonant, less isolating, less threatening.

The other quality is curiosity. If we look with curiosity at people who do not share our values, they become interesting rather than threatening. As I’ve grown older I’ve learnt that the world and the people in it are surprisingly interesting, and that the more you look and listen, the more interesting they become. Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world. Having a conversation with someone I may disagree with is, I have come to find, a great, life embracing pleasure.

I read Nick Cave’s dispatch The Red Hand files, but this one came from the Marginalian.

• Long time pen friend of mine from Manila published a book which I am absolutely going to get for myself. We know each other with T. from long long time flickr times of early 2000s. T. is of an amazing talent. Just read the description, maybe this book is also for you.

T. De Los Reyes’s collection And Yet Held is for people who live on the margins, who are creating their own path in the world where merely existing becomes an impossibility, and where living a life on one’s own terms is an act of courage. Knowing it takes a certain amount of gumption and surrender to lean towards vulnerability, this book is meant to be held by someone who is looking for poems about love and discovers it is also poems about the self—and in that discovering recognizes, “Finally, I am found.”

• One cannot have too much of Nick Cave. He was asked if he misses his home which is Australia. And as clear and poetic as he usually does, he did a beautiful take on the idea of home and identity. As I sometimes have those days of sadness and grieving of the life I used to have, this gives me inspiration and I feel less alone.

• This pierced my heart.

• And this song lulled and healed me a bit.