Hooboy it's been a tough month! I hope you've been doing better than me! Lots of things have happened, mostly good, and I have no idea how to sum it up nicely in a lil intro paragraph so let's just hop into it! This month's newsletter is a long one...

Last month in the party, we were all about rest, specifically rest as a rebellious act. To that end, we got together to play Cozy Town! Which is a ridiculously cute tabletop game about collaboratively imagining a fantastical, cozy world and bringing it to life through map-making.

The game works by using a deck of cards to prompt players to think about what's happening in town through the seasons of the year.

We ended up creating a town based on the Icelandic folklore of the hidden folks, or elves. Our map followed the lives of these elves in a cozy town, with hot springs, sheep, and a magical yarn highway for travel. You heard that right! A magical highway made up of yarn! Instead of cars, the elves ride crocheted fish.

We really got into it! 2.5 hours went by quickly, and we barely finished a season. It was a wonderful way to escape into a different reality and practice creativity and building on each other's ideas.

It's such an easy game to run! Head over to itch.io to learn more or pick up a copy.​​

This was also the first month of our new book club, the Slow Page Society! We've been reading Our Hideous Progeny (which is pretty damn good!), a fiction book about a relative of Frankenstein.

We get together twice a month to discuss what we're reading. Our book club is about trying our best to read and interact with books. In addition to reading, we also have discussion questions and activities about what's going on in the book, so that people who haven't caught up can still participate. It's a bit non-traditional in that you don't HAVE to read the book to enjoy the book club, but we also do talk about the book.

In our last meeting, we created origami plesiosauruses (plesiosauri?) to create our own crystal palace, like the one that existed in London full of dinosaur sculptures.

It was good, chaotic fun trying to complete this piece over a video call with other folks. I'm so proud that we got it done! ​​

I've been doing some interviews with people in technology to learn more about their needs. I want to be sure that The Party is actually solving the real problems faced by people in tech, and not just what I perceive to be the issues, based on own my experience.

There seems to be a theme...An unsurprising theme, but here's a little bit about what I've discovered so far:

Might be a good time to check in on your tech friends and see how they're doing. Check in with yourself while you're at it, too!

If you've been feeling burnt out, isolated, exhausted, or eternally stressed, maybe there's an area in your life that you can impact to help. Use a circle sectioned into 8 slices and then label each slice after something that's important to you, things like:

• Mental health
• Finances
• Social needs
• Personal development
• Community action
• Health
• Rest
• Chores even!

Whatever is important to you. Grade yourself from 0-10 and add a dot in each square, using the center of the circle as 0 on the scale and the outer line of the circle as 10 on the scale. Connect the dots and now you have a visual on how things are going. Where can things be improved? What power do you have to affect it? Can you lean on friends or family?

Another month complete in The Party's alpha phase! I'm grateful to have such wonderful people in the community.

We had a lot of events in August! Things are considerably slower in September, while I take a step back and think about what needs to be updated, based on our community pulse survey.

Top insights:

One word description - Chill, New!, Cool, Social, Cozy

100% said The Party makes them feel less alone or less isolated.

80% said it added more playfulness to their lives.

60% said it helped them make new connections.

Not bad but there's still room to grow! Especially in finding ways to reduce burnout. I'm considering doing some pilot cohorts next month to see how this could help create connection and more opportunities for games and personal growth.

I'm part of a cohort for entrepreneurs called One and All. I'm very lucky to have local resources to help me learn about starting a business, and then how to keep it going. We meet once a week to talk about what businesses need and also to connect with each other.

A couple of weeks ago, we worked on making mood board for our business. Mine is pretty ROUGH! I chose to use my hands to cut out shapes by repeatedly folding edges over and then carefully pulling it apart along the creases.

I chose to keep it rough like this because so often I chase perfection when done is good enough in most cases. I'm building a community that doesn't exist right now. It's something that I feel is needed, and I'd much rather learn with this community and grow with it than pour over every detail, without even knowing if this will work for those folks. Yep, a rough mood board that I can look over at and say "Keep going, even if it's not perfect. We're learning as we go."

There are three symbols peppering this mood board:

• circles, to represent community
• triangles, to represent change and growth and
• zigzags to represent challenges

Altogether, a pretty playful mood board!

Next month, I'll be doing a workshop/presentation combo wombo on how play (simple games, storytelling, and roleplay) can help us rebuild comunidad* at work, even with limited time or resources. I'll share more on LinkedIn as we get closer.

It'll be during Techqueria's Summit, a free 3-day virtual conference for Latine tech professionals and allies. It's open to everyone! And this year's theme is about community.

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*community in Spanish

It's been a difficult month for me, full of migraines, chest pain, and fatigue. I have chronic migraines, usually about 5-9 a month. But lately, it's more like 14-18 days of migraines. This means I'm in pain for most of the month, and when I'm not in pain, I'm experiencing a migraine hangover, which is as fun as it sounds.

So I tried a new med this month to see if I can curb these migraines. At the same time, I tried another med for getting ye olde digestive system under control, since it's been out of whack after removing my gallbladder last year.

It's unsure what, exactly, is the culprit, but I've been having more chest pain, and face flushing. I'm wondering if it's hidden anxiety caused by hormones freaking out post gallbladder removal. It's such a weird experience because consciously, I don't feel anxious, but I'm having all the symptoms of anxiety (and then that gives me conscious anxiety!). The chest pain and new med combo is how I ended up at the ER, where they found nothing but...you guessed it, gas.

Tsk tsk. I'm sharing this with you because bodies are loud, complicated teachers, on their own schedules, and mine has been giving me quite the crash course in listening lately. If you’ve ever had your own ER-for-gas story (or something equally as fun), consider this your reminder that you’re not alone.

And underneath the humor, what I really want to say is my disability and health challenges shape how I show up in this community, and they remind me why spaces like The Party matter. We get to be real people together, whatever that looks like, and that’s the whole point.

On a lighter note, some interesting things from around the web

Interactive Art

An interesting piece of art exploring overlapping timelines.

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Art World

See what people have created on your neck of the woods or add your own art!

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