Days 6 and 7 of the 100 Day Project (ink on paper, 2026)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
I wake up at midnight to F’s anger. Her blankets are tangled, lost to her flailing limbs, and my eyes take too long to adjust to the night. Even in sleep, the anger spills out of her like a river, threatening to drown everyone in sight. In the daylight, I’m plenty busy cowering around the 24 pounds of her wrath, but the night offers me enough of a shield to sleepily wonder: Dang, she’s angry. Is this what I’m like?
Her eyes are still closed while I sort her sheets, but she cries from behind a darkness only she can see and feel. I cover her body gingerly, wincing with her every movement, wanting to comfort without disruption, wanting to help without getting burned.
I climb back into bed and lay awake for hours. The shadows on the walls are nice, not too severe. I think about drawing them but know I won’t. My body is aging. I’m learning to take sleep when it arrives and to forgive each time it refuses. What’s the use in holding onto anger?
Outside, it continues to rain. I love the rain always, but especially at night. I love the thunder, the majestic sound of earth crushing our dreams and concerns. I think of how the day will hum pleasantly when I throw open the back door in the morning, fresh with the fragrance of damp earth and new beginnings. I think of my sleeping children, each replete with their own combinations of worry and joy, each with a mind they’ll learn to affectionately wrestle with, or so I hope. I think of T, sleeping on top of the covers in a too-warm-for-him-home, and I think of how I am changing, really changing, like a cobra shedding its diamond-studded skin, like water rising up to become vapor, and for the first time in my almost-over thirties, I am tormented by absolutely nothing.
TUESDAY
I sit on a panel for Penguin Random House’s Author University alongside Chris Guillebeau, Allegra Goodman, and Phil Stamper. We’re here to discuss writer’s block, creativity, and advise authors on remaining inspired through the various stages of publishing—the actual writing process, through various drafts and revisions; the marketing work as we prepare to push a book out into the world; and the publicity process, which continues long after a book is published.
The questions themselves are routine but important: How do I maintain boundaries and protect time for creative work? What rituals and routines help me muddle through writer’s block? How do I encourage others to locate and encourage their own creativity?
As I answer each question and listen to my peers’ responses, I understand that advice, in life and in writing, only goes so far. I can’t think my way into a healthier parent-child relationship or into emotional regulation the same way I can’t think my way into writing better sentences. Instead, I have to do. I have to try. I have to fail.
Although all four of us have successfully found a way into our writing and into the world of published authors, we grapple with the same setbacks, and our advice reflects what works for us. The confidence I hear in our voices is built from years of trial-and-error, from years of listening to how our bodies and minds respond to certain environments and challenges.
All of us, despite our successes, struggle: self-criticism, repeated rejection, the impossible struggle between paid and creative work, and, always, the pressure to sell more books. All of us take advice from others and try it on for size. Sometimes, it fits. Most of the time, it doesn’t. A large part of why the four of us were chosen to sit on this panel and advise others is because none of us have, yet, given up. And that makes all the difference.
WEDNESDAY
N loves doing seek-and-finds so much that I was over the moon to receive an opportunity to illustrate my own for the HIDDEN OBJECTS section of SPARK, a magazine for young children.
HIDDEN OBJECTS in the January issue of SPARK Magazine (2026)
Since it was for the January issue, I wanted to draw a winter scene—and since N laments about how easy most seek-and-finds are, I wanted to make it challenging. I went with a detailed, ornamental tree scene, with various objects embedded in and hanging from the bark.
A close up of HIDDEN OBJECTS in the January issue of SPARK Magazine (2026)
When I sent in the final files, my art director made a few edits. He felt some of the objects were too difficult to find for such a young audience, and swapped them for some more obvious ones.
When we received our issue, N finished the seek-and-find within five minutes, told me it was too easy, and moved onto another page full of puzzles.
Such is life. My children are hard to please, but I am not — thank you to my editor, Katie, for such a fun assignment, and to my art director, Mark for bringing it all together. You can check out SPARK magazine here.
THURSDAY
“With each new stage of life, we outgrow the strategies that worked for us at an earlier stage. We find ourselves in an environment that pelts us with more challenges than our current self can manage. If we don’t grow bigger, we can become bitter. When our problems become too big for us, our healthiest response is to expand our capacities. That growth is qualitative.” —Mary Pipher
FRIDAY
After she’s gone to camp, in the early
evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes
from the rosewood table, and find a dinky
crystallized pool of maple syrup, the
grains standing there, round, in the night, I
rub it with my fingertip
as if I could read it, this raised dot of
amber sugar, and this time,
when I think of my father, I wonder why
I think of my father, of the Vulcan blood-red
glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a
broken-open coal. I think I learned to
love the little things about him
because of all the big things
I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.
So when I fix on this image of resin
or sweep together with the heel of my hand a
pile of my son’s sunburn peels like
insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,
I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have–as if it were our duty to
find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.
—Little Things by Sharon Olds
Of all the things you can put in front of your eyes, I’m grateful that my little letter is one of them.
If you’d like to support me, please buy my books. My art prints and line of greeting cards make excellent gifts for yourself or a friend. You can also hire me for your next project—I’d love to work together.
xx,
M
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