52 Weeks Wrapped

Spotify don't sue me.

52 Weeks is a whole year old, so thanks everyone who has come along for the ride and welcome everyone who has just gotten here! I thought I’d share a few stats and some things I’ve learned along the way. This will not be about “monetizing your substack” because that is not what this is for me.

In honor of the year anniversary, I unlocked all my posts from the year so you can go back into the archives and have a read through if you like. I also am linking a few of them in this newsletter.

First some background, when I started this newsletter last year, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing or why (honestly, I still don’t but I have slightly more clarity now!) but I knew that I wanted a space where I could post longer form things, experiment a bit and have more of a sense of community than Instagram. I wanted to share the day to day ups and downs of being an illustrator book maker parent.

I also wanted to see if I could do this for a whole year every single week. Hence the name, 52 Weeks.

It was an experiment. An experiment in consistency. And experiment in generating content every week. An experiment in connecting. And an experiment in seeing if this was something I even liked to do.

So was my experiment a success?

I think so.

I posted 44 times in 52 weeks. I missed 8 weeks of posts, so about two months, but never all in a row, so hopefully you didn’t miss me much when I was gone. I’m pretty proud of only missing 8 weeks and I think that a lot of that has to do with how I structured the project for myself.

I told myself that every Friday I would sit down and write a newsletter. Sometimes I had time to think about and sketch what I was going to write before Friday. Most of the time, I was flying by the seat of my pants. But, somehow, that worked, for the most part.

I told myself that it didn’t matter WHAT I posted, as long as I posted. I wanted to get used to doing something every week, I wanted to see IF I could do it. I figured, the content would come because there was so much happening every week, surely I could find SOMETHING to say. And mostly, I did.

And I made a bunch of comics, which was another thing I really wanted to experiment with doing.

Was it INTERESTING what I had to say? Well, that’s something only you can answer. I’d like to think SOME of it was interesting at least, and enough of you are here and reading that it must not have been too uninteresting! (Or maybe it’s because you are my friends and being supportive, but either way I will take it!)

In any case, although I didn’t post EVERY week, I feel like I posted enough weeks to feel like I can call my experiment a success.

And not only that. Beyond the consistency, I had so many lovely conversations with friends and strangers about my posts throughout the year and that in itself made this experiment a success.

Somehow, there are over a hundred of you now and while that may be small compared to the giant newsletters out there, I never thought one hundred people would care about my scribbles and want to read this little newsletter every week. So thank you for being here. I appreciate every single one of you.

My goal was to do this for a year, but now that the year is up, I’m not ready to stop. Writing/drawing/sharing this newsletter has been a bright spot (and a bit of motivational panic) at the end of every week. So I’m going to keep going in 2026 and hopefully you’ll come along for the ride.

What you’ll get is more of what you’ve been getting. A peek into the chaos of my life and my practice. Deep thoughts when I have them, off the cuff scribbles when I don’t, more sketchbooks because I love them and book stuff when I can share it.

I have all sorts of ambitious plans for what I want to share in this newsletter in 2026, but knowing what my schedule looks like for next year most likely most of that won’t happen. Regardless, those ambitious plans mean that this newsletter still excites me, and as long as it does, I’ll keep showing up, one week at a time. I hope you will too!

Thanks for being here!
See you next week,