3 joyful beginner pursuits

Delighting in delayed gratification

Thank you for being here! If you are a free subscriber and enjoy this newsletter, I would be grateful if you would consider a paid subscription to support my creative work.

---

Back in February, I shared a post on embracing beginner-hood, inspired by a conversation I had with the wonderful

Dan Blank

. In that post I shared a few things I was considering trying: palette knife cake decorating, learning about gardening and medicinal herbs, and writing a novel. Since that conversation, the beauty of being a beginner and letting go of self-judgement has come up in many other conversations, such as in this episode with the glorious Mimi Ison on preparing for and embracing midlife and beyond.

Mimi is totally right. There’s something so liberating about embracing the joy and fun and likelihood of lousiness! Today I want to share 3 joyful beginner pursuits I have stepped into this spring/summer. (And in case you are wondering, I did try palette knife cake decorating for Violet’s birthday and the idea for writing a novel completely went out the window!)

1. Medicinal herb exploration

In June, I started my journey of becoming a glorious witch. While I was able to enjoy the English lavender from my herbal CSA (Muddy River Herbals) immediately in the form of a beverage, the French lavender salve I wanted to make was an exercise in delayed gratification. The process was not difficult but involved steeping lavender in olive oil and stirring it once daily for four weeks. (I remembered to do this by putting “Stir lavender” as a recurring to-do item on my to-do app.) After four weeks, Violet and I made the salve together—heating the oil with beeswax and shea butter in a double boiler then stirring in lavender and tea tree essential oil. The project was easy, fun, and felt pretty damned glorious. 

And over this past weekend I delighted in preparing a new drying space in my kitchen window for medicinal herbs. I also rescued and propagated a very scraggly aloe plant. It led me to set up this Glorious Witch highlight on Instagram LOL.

2. Planning my first garden bed

The other week I had the great delight of spending a couple of days with my beloved friends Jen Vento and Morra Aarons-Mele. Part of our loose, unofficial agenda was gardening talk, which I especially love because we have spent most of our waking hours together collaborating as baller digital strategists and consultants. Morra and Jen are both self-taught gardeners and hearing their ideas, experiences, and recommendations took me from a space of total overwhelm to joyful curiosity. We talked a lot about the beauty of the long-game with gardening, both across seasons and years, and our conversation spurred me to start working on plans for this little ~5 x 7 foot area. It was entirely covered with weeds and I spent an afternoon digging it all up. My plan is to make a small medicinal herb garden, because hello, GLORIOUS WITCH! Also worth noting—and I was just talking to

Asha Dornfest

(my longtime gardening muse) about this—I fully embrace the fact that given that this is my first attempt to start a garden from scratch, it could very well all die off and I will need to back to the drawing board. I know you are in charge, Earth.

3. Wheel throwing

Last month, I tried using a pottery wheel for the first time at Commonwealth Clayworks and it was pretty awesome to walk in thinking, “This could very well be a disaster and I am going to have fun!” The process was challenging and so very fun and I am just delighted about my two little wobbly bowls! There was a couple week period after the class while the studio double fired and glazed the pieces and I was prepared for the fact that due to my fledgling efforts my bowls would explode in the kiln, but they survived!

Given that my consulting work has been very involved and enriching and requiring of deep strategic brain work, I don’t think it’s an accident that I’m delighting so deeply in these tactile explorations. On that note, I’m not exactly new at canning—though I only tried it again last year after a 20-year break—but this past weekend, I busted out my canning supplies to process a homegrown zucchini gift, pickling cucumbers from my favorite farm stand (Pete's in Walpole, NH), and CSA green beans, which was SO SATISFYING. Oh, and that's mullein drying on those three racks in the background for congestion-relief tea (#gloriouswitch).

I’m already planning on a farm stand run + canning session later this month. Canning is another beautiful example of delayed gratification and I am grateful that this hobby is within my reach.

How do you feel about being a beginner? What would you try if you could try anything tomorrow?