Newsletter #04: Kicking off the new year
Welcome to the fourth monthly-ish newsletter from Practice, a startup helping people make joy from their creative hobbies.
Oh my, this monthly-ish newsletter is really living up to the “ish”—it’s been 2 months since we’ve sent out our last one. We have some catching up to do!
In this month’s newsletter you’ll learn:
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 test app is live and on our phones RIGHT NOW! It’s still just for the internal team as we work through some bugs and details, but it is soooo fun to be able to track sessions and scroll the feed. We can’t wait to get it ready for primetime—aka shared with the waitlist, aka most of you! Huge shoutout to Jake! (our amazing CTO who has made our dreams a reality)
As we’ve awaited the joyous arrival of the app, Ben and I have been using a makeshift form to track our creative practices. In December, we reviewed our data to learn more about our making habits. We learned that I tend to craft on Thursdays, and Ben is more of a Tuesday/Wednesday maker. I tracked 61 crafting sessions from June to December, clocking over 200 hours of making!
But beyond the stats, we saw cool patterns, fawned over our progress and accomplishments, and got all kinds of warm fuzzies. Was very reaffirming that Practice is going to be GOOD!
Read more about it in this Substack post.
We have gone DEEP on a few hobbies and done tons of research already, but we have set a stretch goal to talk to 50 creative hobbyists in 2025. We’re hoping to speak to people who have found deep, intrinsic joy in their craft, across a wide range of creative hobbies.
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. Reply to this email to get the convo going!
Related Reading
Some highlights from our weekly-ish blog, Practicing
Here are a few posts you may have missed:
Practice "Wrapped" - We mentioned this above, but we jumped on the bandwagon and reflected on 6 months worth of making
Filling my cup(s) - Erica describes her relationship to work, and how she finds balance
Meet an expert: Dr. Anne Kirketerp - a look into the work of the creator of Craft Psychology and advisor to Practice
In the two months since we’ve last shared a newsletter, there have a been a bunch of posts, so it was hard to pick just 3 to highlight here! Check out Substack to see the rest.
👵🏼 Channeling your inner ‘Grandma’
Parents.com recently shared an article titled: “Old-Fashioned 'Grandma' Hobbies Are Boosting Teen Mental Health—Here's How” which had us both chuckling and nodding. First off, it used the phrase “grandmacore” which is enough of a reason to share. But the article also notes that teens are “putting down their phones in favor of ‘grandma’ hobbies” and getting a ton of benefits “including connection with peers, greater life satisfaction, stress reduction, and more.” Which makes sense since as you all know: creative making is self-care!
🧶 Casting off gloom
Are the kids alright? Because in addition to grandmacore-ing, they are apparently using knitting to combat darkness and gloomy thoughts about the state of the world (more on that later). This Guardian article was chock full of eye-rolly puns but also some wonderful quotes, like: “If you feel like you’re spending too much time on your phone, or if you feel lonely: pick up a hook, go to your local knitting group and find some other people.” And this one (which really struck a chord with us): “People have suggested Loraine sells her creations. But ‘I don’t want to monetise my hobby,’ – she wants to keep every ounce of enjoyment to herself.”
