Sonya Cheney

Writer. Witch. Creatrix.

onward + embracing what might be a futile effort.

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Another hideaway in my backyard

I saw a post–an Instagram story–earlier today that sparked a feeling of unfamiliarity in myself as I was, of all things, brushing my teeth. It was a pair of people in a park working on zines together, and I found myself wondering where that part of me went over the past few years. I’ve tried repeatedly to put out a new zine, even getting so far as writing, printing, and pasting a few pages together, but I can never seem to follow through. As much as it feels like something is missing in not creating zines in any regular fashion anymore, I also can’t find a desire strong enough to do it.

I also realized over the past few months that I don’t write poetry anymore. It’s as if I forgot how to do it one day. I forgot how much I enjoyed it, the feeling of sitting outside with a blanket and notebook and water bottle just writing. Instead, my days became full of toddler time–a different kind of joy and commitment, as I’ve changed diapers and cooked meals and generally tried to keep him entertained. Through it all, I just–forgot. In the best weeks, I would work for a while on my young adult novel, but after almost two years, it doesn’t feel much further along than after I finished the first draft. (Someday…, she says with fingers crossed.)

As you might notice by looking at the date of this post and the one before it, I haven’t found it in myself to blog in over a year, either. I’m not sure why, because blogging feels at least somewhat less–futile?–than assembling an entire zine that only four or five people will read. It’s not that maintaining a blog is easier, but rather that it’s more immediate. I can write for an hour or ten minutes or five days, and I can hit publish as soon as I feel satisfied with what I’ve put down on the digital page. As long as I don’t look at my blog traffic, I have no idea if only five (or zero) people read my posts, compared to selling zines and knowing exactly how many copies I’ve sent out of any given issue. And to be honest, it’s pretty easy for me to ignore the traffic numbers these days. Consider it just one more IDGAF side effect of another year going by.

The most recent page in (one of) my art journals.

I suppose, after a year’s hiatus, an update of sorts is in order. Let’s do it in the form of a currently list, shall we?

Currently

Watching // lots of YouTube–scrapbooking and art journaling channels, plant person channels, and witchcraft channels mostly
Reading // She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Listening // podcasts: Someplace Under Neith, Last Podcast on the Left, Faculty of Horror, Sounds Like a Cult, and Good Mourning Nancy; plus a lot of emo + riot grrl playlists on Spotify
Making // prep/foundation pages for my Week in the Life scrapbook for next week’s community documenting period
Feeling // sad, grieving over the loss of my sixteen-year-old cat Charlie last week; grateful for the kind of life I get to live each day with my family
Planning // trips and visits with friends, all the way through November!
Loving // oddly enough, summer days. I was never much of a summer person growing up, and it still isn’t my favorite season (autumn, of course), but I’ve found ways to enjoy it so much more over the years, and I’m finally appreciating days full of lemonade, playing in the yard with Finn, and forever attempting to maintain a vegetable garden. (Spoiler alert: This was not my year.)

handmade, cottagecore, and intentional living.

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It’s a mystery exactly why I started knitting in high school; I simply don’t remember. The best I Can recall is that I just thought it was neat, so I gave it a try. I do remember that an aunt of mine had taught me years earlier, when I was about seven, but by the time my interest rekindled as a teenager I was learning all over again. I started with the usual basics—scarves, mostly; some simple rectangular pouches; fingerless gloves with holes (only holes, no gussets) for thumbs. It wasn’t until a few years ago, ten years or so after I’d even started, that my skills really began to branch out. Now my sock drawer grows plush with handknits and several knitted tops and sweaters fill my closet space. Another sweater sits currently on my needles. I would estimate a good thirty percent at least of my brain is taken up by thoughts of knitting.

Until I was about thirteen, that same aunt of mine lived on what was once my great-grandparents farm and became hers. As I was growing up, the land was home to pigs, chickens, honey bees, and cows. Emus even graced the space for a time. (What a strange time.) My memory of collecting eggs is faded, but it’s there, keeping company with the memories of fresh honeycomb, waxy and sweet; spicy, red and white radishes from the garden rinsing in a colander in the sink; scruffy barn cats giving birth to barn kittens; and never quite getting the hang of ice skating out on the pond. Backyard badminton. One Christmas at the piano, pretending I could play. It feels like a dream or a period film. This is what they mean when they say the word nostalgia.

I only signed up to TikTok for the aesthetic—specifically, the cottagecore aesthetic. I have wasted many an hour staring at my phone screen, drinking in these dreamy, vintage-filtered videos like cold lemonade on a hot day. I still can’t get enough. The soft pastels, the pastries and berries, the soft breezes in the greenery on my little phone screen. It was comforting; it is comforting. And it’s inspiring. It makes me want to bake cakes and sit in the grass with a picnic. Aesthetic labels—any label—can be limiting, but they can also be such a jumping off point to who you are on one level or another. And as Whitman said, I contain multitudes—but it can be helpful to identify those multitudes sometimes.

Last weekend, I finished my first skirt, the Picnic Skirt from my #makenine2021 post, and I am in love. I want six more, one for every day of the week. I’ve been so satisfied with knitting my own wardrobe pieces over the past few years, and now I want nothing more than to expand that into sewing vintage-inspired pieces. It’s so hard to find affordable, plus size vintage (or vintage-inspired) clothing, and even then it won’t necessarily fit quite right. My Picnic Skirt is, in fact, a little big, but that’s fine because it was my mistake and it gives me the chance to learn how to adjust it. It’s an opportunity that I’m glad to have—and if I’m lucky, with my birthday will come a dress form that I can use to have an easier time with making my own pieces. (I am shuddering with excitement at the thought!)

These seem to be disparate thoughts and stories, I know. But I promise, I have a point. Maybe it’s a result of connection overload; maybe it’s a yearning for simplicity in a time when things seem anything but. I find myself grasping more and more for less screen time, more earth time. I want desperately to tear myself from my little black box and plunge my hands into a bowl of flour and water. I am literally nursing an aching thumb from so much scrolling in the past week, and it makes me remember a time—because I remember a time—when phones had cords and buttons that clicked and beeped and you never knew who was on the other end when you picked up.

There’s nothing wrong with the advancement of technology; it’s an amazing endeavor that brings so much good to the world around us. But I’m finding myself searching more often for the ever-elusive concept of balance between the screen and the simple, the connection and the disconnected. How do I stay connected to distant friends I’ve made over the years without feeling handcuffed to Instagram? Without constantly thinking about my phone? Without feeling that damned phantom buzz in my pocket in the hope that someone responded immediately? And that’s my biggest concern these days, just staying connected to the people I care about most. I spent much of yesterday going back and forth over the possibility of deleting my Instagram account entirely. I settled on unfollowing another two hundred accounts that did not, as they say, “spark joy.”

In the spirit of my One Little Word this year, one concept I clearly need to cultivate is “balance,” and I’m still figuring out what that looks like. I know it’s a lot of slow living and finding beauty in the everyday. I know it’s a lot less time with my phone at the corner of my vision so I can always keep one eye on it. Maybe it’s finally deleting Instagram; maybe it’s not. But for now, it’s settling into my chair to knit this cardigan I’m working on and trying to appreciate the click-clack of the needles as the only sound around me.

currently | january 2021

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I’m sitting here at my kitchen peninsula (my new writing space for #momlife reasons) as I type, Finn upstairs napping, laundry running in the washing machine, dishes in the dishwasher, and dinner prep going in the oven. I stared at the blank screen of Scrivener to work on a new scene for my novel but after ten minutes have only managed to tear 87 words from my brain. I know exactly what the scene is, but it hasn’t finished percolating, I suppose. I can’t focus.

This morning I was struck by the possibility of resurrecting Whatsername, my personal zine, and since then it’s been one of the only things on my mind. I’ve really stepped back from the zine community, both reading and writing, in the past couple of years, and there’s a hole in my heart that zines used to fill. In considering starting back up, the possibilities feel endless, while at the same time my mind rings with the question: “What’s the point?” A lot of what I’ve been doing lately has been haunted by that thought. What’s the point of learning to watercolor? What’s the point of making all of these scrapbook albums? What’s the point of knitting myself a sweater?

What’s the point of pouring my heart out in print?

And maybe I won’t. I don’t know if I’d even want to go through the hassle of putting it online to sell. My ideal? To find a satisfying way to consolidate what Whatsername was into this blog space. On the one hand, I love writing out book reviews, craft project overviews, and miscellaneous other “blog style” posts. But I also love the heart and the word vomit of personal zines. And while my scrapbooks are becoming a place for that kind of thing, I also recognize my compulsive need to (over)share my personal writing with the greater world–even if that greater world is only, like, two people.

It’s funny; the January prompt for Book of Me from the Awesome Ladies Project is “Currently,” and I didn’t know how I would approach it. I still don’t as far as the scrapbook goes. But there’s something about the fact that currently is how I chose to approach (and title) this impromptu blog post that, if nothing else, makes me chuckle.

Things are hard right now, on the micro and macro levels. There is so much inside me aching to get out: feelings, stories, tears. Venting in “close friends” Instagram stories isn’t enough, and it isn’t productive (even if it sure as hell felt good last night). After setting intentions for the New Moon last night revolving around my writing, my finances, and my health, I think relaunching the spirit of Whatsername–in whatever form that takes–is going to be a major part of that.

it’s just not my thing. (and that’s okay!)

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I think I’m quitting YouTube.

That’s not the biggest revelation given that I’ve only made three videos, but after making a couple of podcast episodes and a time lapse, I’m not sure I love videography. The time lapse was probably the most fun I had of the three, and I do hope to make more of those as I improve, but the podcast–it just isn’t my thing.

Working in video a few times reminded me of how much I love (and prefer) writing and blogging, and in fact it’s inspired me to approach my blog in a few new ways. I want to write more about my knitting. I want to write more about what I’m reading. I want to write more in general. Writing is my best mode of communication; my thoughts run much too slowly for video, I think, and that’s okay. The number of times I would just stare blankly while filming, trying to remember what I was saying or figure out how to say it was just not efficient enough for me. I much prefer the low-key, low-stress approach of sitting down with a coffee or tea and typing to my heart’s content without feeling the pressure of the silence as I think–in part because I can play music in the background as I work.

I guess to say I’m “quitting YouTube” is a little overdramatic. I was pretty flexible and uncommitted from the beginning. I am taking the thoughts and ideas I had for the channel, though, and planning to find ways to incorporate them here. Also, I’m still considering the idea of live streams while writing and knitting–but maybe I should just join in other people’s streams instead. Maybe I’m not the hosting type for this kind of thing. I’m okay with that. I’m not going to lie; it’s a little disappointing to realize it’s not my “thing,” but I’m also not in love with it, and at least I tried.

To be honest, my biggest concern is that no one is interested in reading my blog. It does take more effort than watching a YouTube video (or twelve, as I am known to do during nap time), and it’s not always as easy to subscribe these days to keep up with posts. As usual, I have a lot of thoughts and I don’t know how to communicate them all–which is part of why I’m leaning into writing and blogging more than the more immediate craft of vlogging and podcasting. I’m much more eloquent in the written form.

I have a lot going on at the moment–oh, how hard I am working on Preptober!–but I want to finallyfinallyfinally sit down and make something of a schedule because, honestly, I kind of just forget about my blog sometimes. I have so many ideas but get distracted by other things (including Finn, which is totally reasonable, but still). What I really need is, as usual, a list. A list and a routine. A daily check in to remind myself of my goals because I spend a lot of my time doing laundry and I do not want to spend all of my time doing that.