Using my stickers

A plea for remediation of my sticker-xiety

I love collecting stickers. The designs, the small size, the memories that go along with them. One of the most recent—a round, teal beauty with an airplane and the words “pack up & go”—is a gift from a recent surprise trip Patrick and I took to New Orleans.

Right now, that sticker is tucked under the ribbon of a cork board with some others. There’s one with a hashtag #LoveYourNeighbors, a few from National Novel Writing Months, a mermaid, and a couple of Mars Rovers from my Spirit & Oppy book launch a few years ago.

There are still more stashed in the drawer near my seat on the couch, more by the stamps and stationary, and more upstairs. I’m not even sure what they all are at this point. What they have in common is that the backing is still in place.

They aren’t actually stuck on anything.

I think part of me has always been a historian, an archivist. I love to collect and sort things for reference later. One of my great joys is thumbing through a box of newspaper clippings or postcards or coming across a stack of stickers. I get fresh perspectives on the past and sometimes find a gem or two to put in the mail for a friend. In truth, “sticker-xiety” is probably also my particular brand of anxiety because, although I enjoy looking at them, most of me really longs to use them!

My friend Kelsey visited Pittsburgh this weekend and on our errand for dinner ingredients she asked me about this newsletter since I haven’t written here in a while.

Because I have been writing.

I’m almost always writing. In my journal, scraps of paper, my Notes app. Collecting thoughts, ideas, poems, memories. That’s most often where the first draft of my newsletters come from too. But I’ve been afraid to use them.

What if I stick them to the wrong thing? Or I commit to one location and later regret the placement? What if they get dirty where they are placed, or the edges start to peel, and people think “yuck, that lady’s got so many old stickers on her car…” or her laptop, or her water bottle.

Somewhere along the way, this newsletter has started to feel like my sticker collection. As the months passed and I got further away from having written, it’s been harder to come back to. What insight can I share that makes all of the lapsed time reasonable? What if I look back later and wish I would have written something different? Used a different word? Ended in a different way?

But I love the community here.

I read a lot of other Substack newsletters and respond in the comments, I get ideas of new things to read or write or watch. And I never find myself judging those writers and their decisions.

So, I’m going to start using my metaphorical stickers again, which is to say writing newsletters. With the understanding that there’s probably not one correct way to use them, but it’s still worth peeling the backing off and sticking them somewhere. And here’s as good a place as any.

Maybe it will be the inspiration I need to start using my actual stickers too. Though I admit, I need some remediation there. So consider this an open call for ideas from reasonable, rational sticker-users everywhere.

I’ll put the metaphorical stickers right here, but where the hell can I put my actual stickers? (additional ideas appreciation in the comments…please help).

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What I’m loving right now:

• The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning on Peacock (TV)

• This episode of Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jane Fonda (podcast)

• The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay (essay collection)

• Your Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith (memoir)

• Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy (novel)

• These Aldi hammocks! (hammock rec from self-appointed Aldi ambassador)

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