Newsletter #05: June already?!?
Welcome to the fifth monthly-ish newsletter from Practice, a startup helping people make joy from their creative hobbies.
We hope everyone has had a good start to the year. Somehow, we’ve blinked, and it’s already June. This newsletter is really living up to its “monthly-ish” name 🫣 In the months since we last sent a newsletter, we’ve been busy making progress on our app, learning a bunch, and making things.
So keep reading for updates on:
what’s new at Practice
things we’re reading and writing
what we’ve been making recently (our Practice feed)
Check it out below ⬊
What’s New
Our app continues moving towards an alpha state and we are very excited to get it out into your hands. Soon!
We are still doing some bug bashing and have a few more features to launch and test before we bring in our first wave of users. But we get closer and closer every day!
We’ve been testing out some Practice tenets and ideas in a new form: in-person workshops. These are technically hosted by Erica, but they are providing interesting learnings to the whole Practice team about pacing, quick wins, challenge level, and more. We hope to incorporate some of these learnings into the app and overall Practice ecosystem.
We have a way to go to meet our goal of talking to 50 creative hobbyists in 2025, so we’re still hoping to find more people who have found deep, intrinsic joy in their craft, across a wide range of creative hobbies. We love learning from folks and talking about all things hobby-related, so:
If you (or someone you know) is passionate about a creative hobby and would be open to sharing your experience, we’d love to chat. Email us to get the convo going!
Related Reading
Some highlights from our weekly-ish blog, Practicing
Here are a few posts you may have missed since our last newsletter:
A big blow to Big Craft - Joann perished, leading to a state of mourning for many crafters. Erica wrote about it a few times, including this somewhat spicy post about lack of customer empathy. And now they’re back…kind of?
An appointment with my bathtub - the importance of carving out and protecting time for the things that make you feel good (like crafting!)
Find your spoon - a rallying cry for seeking passion and joy through craft
There have been a lot of other posts since our last email newsletter, so head over to Substack to see them all! And subscribe to never miss a post.
🦾 Co-Intelligence: a book about AI
Ethan Mollick’s NYT best selling book, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI is a super accessible and interesting primer on AI and how to work with it. He uses tons of analogies and examples to illustrate his points, so it should be interesting to AI experts and skeptics alike. While it isn’t directly Practice related, it poses questions about the role of humans vs. AI, which is interesting to ponder when thinking about creative hobbies (check out Erica’s and Ben’s posts on the topic). Pro tip: listen to the audiobook, which is mostly narrated by the author but punctuated with text-to-speech AI reading relevant segments. So meta!
🥑 🍞 MHE: Millennial Hobby Energy
Anne Helen Peterson wrote a piece about millennials and hobbies that was fascinating! She describes how, as kids, millennials were led to believe that hobbies were linked to achievement and how, as adults, they struggle to see hobbies as something simple or joyful, and more of a challenge to-be-monetized.
She shares an alternative approach (which felt very Practice-y):
“[A hobby is not] an obligation, but a state you’re always returning to. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it doesn’t have to be organized, it doesn’t have to depend on other people. It just has to be yours.”
Worth a read! (Hat tip to Practice supporter, Ariel, who originally sent us this piece.)
🎙️ Is this thing on?
Erica had her podcast debut as a guest on Kathy Oneto’s podcast, Sustainable Ambition where she talked about miniatures, seeking balance, and the origin story of Practice. She wrote about the stressful—yet satisfying—experience on Substack.
Give it a listen on the podcast player of your choice.
