Our Holiday Letters Are So Late They’re Early
One of the beginner watercolor exercises from Sketching Scottie on Patreon
I’M ONE OF ABOUT 20 STUDENTS in a sketching fundamentals class. We meet weekly on Zoom for ink & watercolor instruction and real-time practice. The class includes a shared workspace where we post our assignments and chat with each other and the teacher. Last week’s homework was to sketch a favorite meal.
Even more than I love seeing how other people draw and paint, I loved seeing what people eat.
One student drew an open-faced caprese sandwich and I could practically smell the basil. Someone else drew the fixings for her favorite cocktail. Another drew her homemade cinnamon rolls.
These peeks at each others’ meals felt like little portals into each others’ kitchens; little invitations into each others’ lives.
I noticed a change at the next class meeting. The atmosphere in the “room” was warmer and more relaxed, and the strangers in their little Zoom squares felt more like classmates.
I found myself wishing we could meet for a potluck.
For my favorite meal sketch, I drew my current breakfast obsession: Greek yogurt bowls with berries and homemade muesli. Here’s the muesli recipe (sketch included).
I DROPPED THE BALL on sending our annual holiday letters last year. After writing them out and gathering all the mailing supplies, I just…didn’t send them.
January came and went. The letters sat in a pile on my desk. February arrived, and still those letters sat there, weighing on me. I finally told myself to drop it already, it’s too late to send holiday letters and anyway no one would miss them.
And then I thought: wait a minute, what am I doing?
Now, of all times, when trust is evaporating, and every cultural alarm on the planet is going off, I’m throwing away an opportunity to reconnect with the people I know and love?
Now is the time to grab any thread of relationship you’ve got and PULL IT CLOSER.
I rewrote the letter to better speak to the moment. I copied the letters onto bright pink paper and set aside a few evenings to stuff and stamp envelopes. Rael slapped the labels on and yesterday, we put our ridiculously late holiday letters in the mail.
Do I deserve applause? No. Will this change the course of history? Probably not. But we’ve opened up a hundred little human portals. We sent a hundred little invitations into our lives.
Perhaps these kinds of choices, made by each of us over and over again, matter more than anything.
