What I call a good list!

a hodgepodge collection of things I’ve been looooving lately

Jun 04, 2025

This edition of Gentle Musings is filled with what has been creatively meaningful and inspiring to me lately.

I’m sharing this with the hopes that it feels expansive and grounding to read.

This is also to practice a new form of writing on here, more off-the-cuff and exploratory. Here’s the thing, a thing I’ve been transparent about since the beginning: I value your attention in a big way. I’m very conscientious about the privilege of having my creativity received by readers dotted all over the world. This awareness has me fluctuating between a drive for excellence and overthinking every sentence, wondering how it will land and ultimately wanting it to be useful in some way.

Last September, I shared about wanting to have this space as a creative in-process journal with drawings, thoughts in-process, gestures, songs woven through, associative connections that might feel more blurry to some. Soft and experimental.

I haven’t honored that creative desire… partly because it feels like a risk. It’s more obscured and more revealing—a different craft for me.

Today is a day of dipping my toes in. I don’t know where it’s going and I hope you stick with me in it!

When I first started a newsletter—literally shaking and nervous but extremely compelled to move forward without knowing why—I ended up writing about a snail. This wasn’t planned.

The first newsletter was titled CREATIVE GUMPTION (I share about what that means to me here). It also included this photo of roses:

In it, I wrote about stubborn creative desires. I wish I could tell myself then that I’m going to end up in transformational conversations every day supporting women to engage with their most stubborn and daunting creative desires.

In the first few newsletters, I started to share something called Resonant Resources. These were round-ups of inspiring things with the invitation for readers to share what was resonating for them lately, too.

I never knew if it resonated or if it went directly to the digital trash bin, but I kept sharing them.

Over time, I’ve learned the funny thing about hitting publish and putting myself out there is that I have a lot of silent but loyal readers. You might be one of them.

I’m a silent but loyal reader of many publications! So as a reader, I get it. When I’m putting myself out there, it can be hard. Maybe you can relate if you also self-publish work. It’s been a secret blessing because now I don’t hold my breath for likes or replies, I just dig deeper into my commitment to this work.

Years ago, I heard the writer SARK say: never assign meaning to silence.

She shared this in the context of reaching out to Maya Angelou a number of times to be her mentor. Silence, more silence… And eventually, Maya Angelou ended up being her mentor.

I’ve always been scrappy but also defaulted to assigning meaning to silence. This opened up a new perspective, especially in the practice of sharing my voice and living out loud.

Over time, many of these same readers sent messages months and years later about how meaningful old newsletters were to them and some even became cherished long-time clients.

All that to say, today is a Gentle Musings of Resonant Resources and it’s stirring up some memories. And also: if you’re putting your creative voice out there and it’s all crickets, keep going. Your people find you and your work will find them in perfect timing—really.

Now onto a hodgepodge collection of things I’ve been looooving lately. I hope you enjoy.

Let’s go!

Joanna Macy on colossal anguish and befriending your despair (4 minute video). She’s 96 now!
The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena). THIS MOVIE. This is what I call a painting movie—each scene is a moving painting. Highly recommend.
OBSIDIAN. This is a note-taking application that is stored locally on your computer instead of online, it’s highly customizable, and links your thinking. I started using it a few years ago and it has continued to be one of my holy grails. I have one for personal scholarship that includes thousands of notes on all things creative process. My quote collection, something I started over 10 years ago, also lives there. And daily personal notes. Then I have one for public stuff: drafting Gentle Musings episodes, curriculum design, etc. And another for my client notes for 1:1 creative support sessions so that their data is protected. A couple years ago, I taught about how to craft a body of work in Obsidian… I’ve been thinking of making a video tutorial of that. If you’re interested, let me know!
Slowly watching parts of the documentary Peewee as Himself. Paul Reubens is a creative genius. Here is a two-minute clip of an interview where he actually interviewed as himself for the first time (1981). I mean… his presence!
Making what I call my ‘home binder’. This has go-to recipes, a list of life admin tasks like taking shoes to the cobbler or mending a coat, a list of the next books to read, special summer drinks I want to make like sekanjabin sharbat and Italian soda, my simple end of the month ritual (this is when I review what’s in the pantry, do certain cleaning tasks...), etc. These things used to live in Notion, but Notion has been feeling noisy and distracting lately—no matter how simple I try to make it, I’m craving analog. If I put these in a journal, I’ll eventually completely the journal and forget about the info, so they live in my beautiful, handy home binder.
I’ve been loving
So Informed
as a calmer way to stay up to speed with news. Jess, the writer behind it, sends out two extremely helpful features: U.S. News You Might Have Missed This Week and Good news to keep you going.
Rajiv’s videos on Youtube. All of them!! I love everything Martha Stewart from the 90’s and Rajiv’s aesthetic and skill is in the same vein. I’m a BIG fan.
This video about meal prepping for $2 meals (all vegan). I’ve been trying to meal prep for about a year now and it always gets pushed off because it feels overwhelming and unsystematic. I started by making the cashew sauce, pickled onion, seasoned seeds, and the cabbage to start (all in the video linked above) and have been building up from there. It was immediately clear that prepped food = massive decrease in mid-week stress. She also has another great video on high-protein meal prepping.
Hot water + tons of grated ginger + a generous amount of honey + raw ACV = my favorite new morning drink. Now that the heat is climbing, I imagine this will be delicious iced.
This quote by Ross Gay in Inciting Joy: “Grief is the metabolization of change.”

Thank you for reading, thank you for being here.

XO
Maggy

PS: When I was stuck in bed recently, I redid Regarding Dew’s homepage (for desktop view). I’m still working on mobile, but it felt great to get that coded! Check it out if you’re interested. There’s also a peek at something coming up 🧪