Milk Jug Luminaries — Looking Back at One Year on Substack
Milk Jug Luminaries — Looking Back at One Year on Substack
A flag in the sand after a full year on Substack + weekly art and illustrated journal pages for Week 5 of Illustrate Your Week
“Poetry is inspired by the elements of random thoughts, an overflow of gazing at the unseen.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson
Hello and happy Sunday! This is a “here I am; this is me” post as I mark one year of writing and sharing on this platform. This is also still a regular Sunday post, so the weekly art appears above ⬆️ and below ⬇️, and I like to think there is poetry woven throughout.
Thank you for reading.
Amy
(Note: This post contains a number of lists and is too long for email. Please click through to read in a browser or the app.)
Illustrated Journal Week 5 for 2024
This is a glimpse of part of my pages for Week 5 for Illustrate Your Week 2024. The portrait of the woman with the gum was fun. I pulled a couple of similar photos and could easily do a small series. There was a good bit of pencil and colored pencil smearing this week. It’s okay. These pages are not meant to be displayed. They are a process and a record.
A few months ago, I started pulling a list of some of my favorite posts. I thought I would make an index to help catalog the posts. Then, realizing I was approaching the one-year mark, I thought I would wait and look back on my first year here today.
What I immediately noticed when I started scrolling the archive was how many posts there have been and how many I had already forgotten I’d written. The podcast, with almost 500 episodes, was always the same. Looking back on episode titles was always disorienting, and doing so a year or even years later can be similar to wandering near a bridge or an overpass and looking at layers of paint and graffiti on the concrete. When I look back, I see hieroglyphics of a sort, a palimpsest of the quotidian, scrawled and stitched, drawn and woven, erased and covered, stretched and interleaved.
Real life keeps moving forward, monotonous at times, hurtling at others, but always ticking forward, and the string of shows (and now posts) appear in the rearview mirror, breadcrumbs, maybe, but more beautiful to think of them as luminaries, milk jugs with flickering candles within.
But I worry. The beautiful mental image of the candles is what I want, but I worry. They should be tea lights, for safety. So tea lights, plastic and hard, a flimsy little switch, but with infinite batteries because that sustains the whimsy of the glow, the iridescence, the color, the filtered view, the warm flicker.
Where does this trail lead?
This is a path for travelers lost in the dark, lost in the night, lost at sea. A lighthouse keeper I would be, in another life, a life where I had more courage, pockets full of sea glass. This is a colorful trail, a dance of light for those who are looking.
Who am I to mark this trail and tend this light?
I am simply someone lost in the margins, sliding backwards down the hill of life, casting words as I go like Harold with his magic purple crayon, calling for a bridge, a castle, a dragon. Would that I could draw the things I need or fix all the things in varying states of breaking. I would draw a friend, a cup, a roof, a dog, an orchid.
When I look back, I often catch specific words that float free, even if I don’t immediately remember the nooks and crannies of a post. I think of “No More Whammies,” of Spock and Captain Kangaroo, of sea glass, a jar of prompts, rainbow pencils and rainbow hair. I think of one-staple books, of hanging my son’s still life, of gratitude cloaks, dappled light at the lake, affirmations, morning routines, morning poetry, and so many rabbit holes. I think of herons, parrots, and crows, lists and memory, signs and symbols, and fortune tellers, little folded bits of whimsy and playful divination. Single words and phrases rise to the surface, but when I open any post, there is always so much more.
I hope, at times, you read for the musicality of the reading and that in the end you feel something. I hope you finish and write a haiku or draw your hand, your coffee, a teddy bear, or a toy dinosaur. I hope you are inspired to document your world or write a letter.
When I first started putting my writing here, which I still refer to as my podcast on a page, I didn't realize how a year of consistent posting would open me up, give me space to move beyond the "here are a few things" newsletter approach I envisioned. I didn’t realize this would open the door again for essays and the quiet intimacy of letters. I came here, initially, thinking I would mostly share "how to" information for people interested in keeping an illustrated journal.
But once I started writing, the floodgates opened. This was what I needed. This space invites and enables so much more.
YOU have invited and enabled so much more.
Some Posts from Last Year
I'm going to share a few overlapping lists, a way of reflecting on my year and curating some posts from the archives.
Some of My Favorites
Perspective, herons and crows, flamingos, and a tiny book on happiness
A Marathon in 5 Parts (and doors)
The "Philosophical" Series
Posts that Contain Comic or Graphic Novel Panels
Paneled art is a recurring element even though the posts don’t always talk “about” the panels. Combining my words and illustration is an ongoing goal. You can find comic art in these posts. (In 2024, I am working on a weekly diary comic list series as part of my weekly post.)
Posts that Contain Sketchnotes
Fun with Fortune Tellers (Episode 305 sketchnote)
Glimmers, Sea Glass, and Gratitude (Keep Going by Austin Kleon)
Practice, A “Listicle” Sketchnote, Comics Panels, and Tattoos
A Podcast Birthday, Rainbow Hair, and Creative Life (Episode 487 sketchnote)
Messages in a bottle and a Neil Gaiman sketchnote (Neil Gaiman’s “Make Good Art” speech)
The "Morning Stories" Series (morning poems written during 100+ days of morning in 2023 and shared as Instagram stories)
Posts About Illustrated Journaling
A Few Favorite Book Mentions
I talk about a lot of books, and you will have to scroll in these posts to find them, but here are a few favorites:
Look Again (by
)Written and Drawn by Henrietta (by Liniers)
The Parakeet (by Espé)
Draw Your Day for Kids (by Samantha Dion Baker)
Notes from a Sickbed (by Tessa Brunton)
Anaïs Nin: A Sea of Lies (by Léonie Bischoff, translated by Jenna Allen)
Post About Series and Other Challenges
Into a New Year
Maybe it strikes you as grandiose for a little publication like mine to stop and call out a one-year milestone. There are not a lot of flags to fly. I’m invisible here. But it was important for me to stop and dig around in the archives. (There were more than 150 posts in the last year, which includes the weekly Illustrate Your Week prompts post.)
This post helps me see where I started and where I’ve been. I don’t know what the next year will bring. I plan to just keep writing. That seems to be the obvious path forward.
I keep setting up the milk jug each week, turning on the light, hoping I find the readers who are out wandering in the dusk. But I also delight each week in seeing what colors may shine from within the jug, what the pastel line of flickering light looks like up close and from afar.
The moon this week was more yellow than any moon in recent memory. It was days after the full moon. I walked into the kitchen and the yellowness reached for me through the break in the trees out the window. It looked like someone was shining a gold-tinted light on it.
Thank You
Maybe it took 3,000 words, but today I mostly wanted to say thank you. There are a lot of ideas that circle around about what these spaces and posts should look like and should be. I just keep reminding myself that there is no single way.
I need this space and what it offers.
I’m just me. I’m just sorting out my life, dealing with my failing memory, struggling to make ends meet, worrying about what’s next, watching a lot of TV while I draw at night, and generally sliding downhill. And yet in the midst of doing that, I’m always looking, trying to find a little bit of rainbow, the glint, the halo, the reflection on the wall. I hope I can give each of us a window or a door through which to look or to walk as we think about our lives and the meaning that we create and the value our art holds in helping us be more mindful and embrace the quotidian.
Writing for and to you gives me a specific lens, a nib I return to again and again and find comfort in. No matter how moody or anxious or negative I may be in any moment, when I start writing, I look for the light. I look beyond the clouds and the rain and find strands that glimmer.
Thank you to those who invited me here. Thank you to those who read each week, share coffee, and then draw with me via Zoom after or share your Illustrate Your Week pages at Instagram. Thank you for embracing my awkwardness, for looking past my loneliness, for ignoring all the 911 calls and hospitalizations in the last seven months, for sharing a book or a joke or a song here and there, a sign or a symbol. Thank you for giving me a space and helping me create a space.
The Weekly Bits and Pieces
📕 Read-along: Week 5 notes for Sidewalk Oracles (even if you are not reading the book, there is a sequence with a dog….)
🎯🖋️ Week 6 prompts for your illustrated journal
Made It?
Thank you for reading today.
One of the benefits of having a small publication is that your comments aren’t just tally marks on the page. I try to reply to everyone. I try to meet people where they are and with whatever they bring. I love knowing if you enjoyed a post (or a piece of art) or if something had particular resonance. But I know people are likely to comment if I open the door to say, simply, “I was here.” That, too, has meaning.
What is coming up this month that is important to you?
Dirt paths? Untrodden forest walks? Cobblestone streets? Sandy shore? Rocky coast?
What did you draw or read this week that you especially enjoyed?
If you are a new reader, how did you land here?
Thank you for reading Illustrated Life. Please consider subscribing to receive the weekly email. Writers need readers, and I am grateful for every reader!
Paid options are available for those who can and want to support the substack, the podcast, and the #illustrateyourweek prompts. Subscriptions not your thing? One-time donations are always appreciated.
Prepping for an upcoming craft show in March.
I love a sandy shore, but cobblestone streets are just ans enticing. I like seeing glimpses of other peoples lives as I go past. Snippets of lives being lived completely separate from my own intrigue me.
I really enjoyed the repetitive background in my pages this week. Very meditative.
Good morning Amy. I found your words this week to be poetic, exampled by your answers to these two questions: Where does this trail lead? and Who am I to mark this trail and tend this light? Thank you for revving up my sleepy Sunday mind.