The Journey Continues

New Format, Longer Adventures!

For the last year, I have been exploring and learning a wide variety of skills: I’ve learned how to whistle through my fingers, I tried selling my art at a market, I learned how to use a shepherd’s sling, and I published a book! It’s been an amazing ride.

But…

I also feel that in bouncing from skill to skill every week, I don’t have the chance to delve deep and really refine my skills as much. 

I started the channel with the assumption that the basics of any skill could be acquired in about 100 hours (hence “Journey to 100”). However, this rapid pace of cramming one subject after another, and reverting to 100 minute challenges when there simply wasn’t enough time is going to leave me burnt out if I don’t change. And if it leaves me burnt out, when learning new things is one of my favorite things to do, it runs the risk of leaving you, the viewer, burnt out if you feel like you ought to be able to master any skill in 100 hours and run into setbacks. 

As much as I wanted to prove that learning new things was easy and took no time (I wanted to prove this in the hopes that more people would embark on the learning journeys they have yearned to for so long), alas, it does not fully reflect reality.I want to encourage and motivate you to learn the skills you’ve always wanted to learn and to go out and achieve the goals you’ve always wanted to achieve. I don’t want to sell you a lie that leaves you more frustrated than you started.

So I’m shifting direction in my channel a little bit. Some things will change, and others will stay the same. 

I will still be learning new skills. 
I will still always believe that it’s better to Just Start.
Start before you’ve read all the literature on the subject.
 Start before you’ve finished all the youtube videos on the subject.
You will learn infinitely more by starting and getting actual experience than you will watching someone who has years of experience show you their polished work. 

But 

I won’t limit myself to 100 hours or minutes or reps as a format anymore. 
I won’t jump to a brand new skill every week never to touch it again anymore. 

Instead, I am going to have 5 themes that I follow on a monthly cycle. They are as follows:
Week 1: Learning Japanese. 
Week 2: Writing another book. 
Week 3A: Learning Adventures in Woodworking. 
Week 3B: Painting/Art Adventures
Week 4: Other 

“Other” will be an open week where I can continue to explore shorter content or revisit one of the main topics. I do want to have the freedom to continue to explore some of the shorter format learning adventures if I want! 

All in all, I’m VERY excited for this to come! I can’t wait to share in the adventure with you!!! 

Book, Art, and Discounted Decluttering Art Print Links!

My Book: Annelise and the Pendragons: Liberation

Discounted Decluttering Art Print Order Form

My Art Shop

@k.verbruggen_art

@k.verbruggen_writes

Youtube channel

Last Months Videos

My First Attempt at Embroidery: DIY Author Sweater Patch.

I took a stab at embroidery in order to embroider a commemorative patch for my first book onto my Author Sweater!

Decluttering: Making Space to Learn New Things!

I have too many projects that I’m never going to get around to sitting in my room. And looking at the potential of a project is draining my mental energy. It’s time to declutter.

About the Premise of My YouTube Channel: Here’s How I’m Fixing It

I lay out the shift in focus of my youtube channel in greater detail.

Making Frames With No Experience: Things Went Wrong

I embark on my first woodworking escapade. It does not all go to plan.

Progress Tracking

Sometimes I need to remind myself that progress continues when you don’t quit. You just have to keep plodding forward. Here are some goals I have and my progress toward those goals.

Book Progress (Claire and the Man in the Moon):

Words written Goal: 70,000
Words Written Actual: 4959
Remaining: 65,041

Youtube Monetization Progress:

Subscribers Goal: 1000
Subscriber Actual: 558
Remaining: 442
Watch Hours Goal: 4000
Watch Hours Actual: 1715
Remaining: 2285

Work in Progress

Here is a draft of the opening chapter of my new children’s book, Claire and the Man in the Moon. It may yet undergo major changes between now and its final version, but I figured I’d invite you into the process!

Claire and the Man in the Moon

Chapter 1: The Wolves

The warm glow of a single candle flickered against the wall of the kitchen. Little Claire rubbed her eyes as she shuffled through the doorway, the cold from the stone floors leeching the heat from her feet. She shivered. Her father’s figure blocked her view of the front door he had just entered through. He closed the door behind him with a click. 

“Claire, what are you doing out of bed?” He asked, his voice laced with concern.

She reached her arms up to him, and he swept her into his arms. 

 She tucked her face into his neck, his short black beard scratching against her skin. “I had a bad dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

Claire shook her head against his neck.

Her father sighed, and patted her back. “All right. Let me get my shoes off, and I’ll tuck you back into bed.” 

Claire;s head shot up. “No, please. I don’t want to go to bed.” She shivered again as she remembered the terror from her dream.

“Claire, sweetheart, you have to sleep.”

“What if the dream comes back?” she whispered.

Claire’s dad gave her a long look. Finally he said, “How about we go for a walk? It will give the bad dream some time to forget where you sleep.” 

“Yes!” Nighttime walks with Papa were the best!

“But after that, straight to bed, understood?” 

“Yes, Papa,” Claire nodded.

He set her down on the kitchen floor. Claire danced from foot to foot as the cold from the floor started to make her feet ache. Her father poked his head into the bedroom next to the kitchen. She heard the murmured conversation as he let Claire’s mom know that he was taking her for a walk. He then lifted her into his arms once more, and ducked back out the door. 

He lifted her over his head and settled her across his shoulders. She wrapped her hands around his forehead for balance. 

His long steady strides carried them through the small vegetable garden that framed the front of the house, then through the gate and out onto the dirt road that ran the length of the village. At the end of the road was a large pen where the occasional bleach of a sheep could be heard. Claire knew that her father had just finished putting the last of their sheep back into the pen before he had come home for the night. 

Her fathers’ shoes crunched along the rocky path that led past the sheepfold and to the fields beyond. Claire looked up at the stars above her as he crossed the open field. The stars burned bright and clear against the unblemished night sky. 

“Papa, let's go to the clearing,” Claire suggested, her eyes glittering with excitement. Her bad dream was quickly becoming a distant memory. “The stars will be so pretty there tonight.”

Her dad chuckled. “I think you’re right.”

They entered into the shadow of the trees that lined the far edge of the field. The light of the stars was now obscured by the canopy above them, and the deep shadows closed in around them, but Claire was not afraid. She knew that nothing could hurt her when her Papa was with her.

Ahead of them, the pale outline of a ring of white mushrooms was barely visible. Her father skirted around the ring of mushrooms, careful not to set foot  inside the fairy ring. Every child in their village knew that if you set foot inside a fairy circle, you were liable to be whisked away by the fairies and never return.

After a few more minutes of walking quietly, they came to the clearing. The forest around them completely cut out any light from the neighboring villages, and the stars above, which before had burned bright and clear, now blazed with an almost Holy Light.

“Papa, can you tell me the story?” Claire asked.

“Which story is that, my dear?” her father asked, but there was a laugh in his tone because he already knew what story she was asking for.

“The Lady and Her Knight, of course.” It was Claire's favorite story, and she always asked for it.

Her father chuckled, took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts and the strands of music that he would weave into the story. Then he began to sing, his deep, resonant voice carrying through the clearing into the darkness of the forest around them as he sang the song of the lady and her knight and their undying love.. 

 Of how long ago, when the world was younger, and the moon closer, and the fairies still danced in the glen on every full moon, the lady Morwynna bestowed her love on the noble knight. Their love grew and blossomed until it was a thing of beauty for all the world to see. 

Of how the Grand King Thordigen had rallied his knights to defend the kingdom. And there, on that bloodstained field, the lady’s love had taken a mortal arrow. His life slipped away from him measure by measure, and none of the healers had any power to save him.

Of how the king, unwilling to see his loyal servant be yielded up to death without a fight secured passage with the wild fairies dancing under the light of the moon to the celestial court. He journeyed with his most valiant men and the wounded knight to the land that swayed with azure fields, and rivers of  auroras to petition the Shepherd of the Stars who sails his silver moon across the sleeping sky for a wishing star: a clear bright beacon of hope that might spare the life of his noble and beloved knight. 

Claire could almost envision as she looked up at the sky that rained pale light into their clearing how it must have looked in the land of the sky when the king and his knights went to petition the man in the moon. 

“Papa,” Claire interrupted, “how do you get to the land of the sky?”

“Well,” he said, “in the song they enlist the help of the fae folk to get there.”

“But how do you find the fae folk?”

“I don't know, sweetheart. I think they usually find you.”

“What about a fairy circle?” Claire asked.

Her father shook his head. “If you step inside a fairy circle, you put yourself at their mercy. The chance that they send you where you want to go is very slim. They are much more interested in making merry and enticing you to dance with them until the world runs out of days.”

“But what if you have to get to the land of the sky? Is there any other way?”

“Well,” her father said, thinking, “if the knights used the Milky Way to get back down to earth, it stands to reason that you might be able to use it to get up to the land of the sky.”

“How would you find the way onto the milky way?”

Her father shrugged, lifting Claire along with his shoulders, causing her to giggle. “I don't know. Do you want me to finish the song?” 

“Hmm, maybe not. I don’t like the part about the lady’s endless tears so much. It's too sad. I would rather stay here in the clearing, where I can see straight through to the land of the sky, where the knight hasn’t had to go away forever and the lady hasn’t started crying yet.” 

They stood in silence for a little while and drank in the sight above them. Claire could almost imagine that she could see the stars on their nightly race across the sky if she stayed very still and hardly breathed. 

“Papa, is the story real? Like, really real?” Claire asked. 

“Hmm. I don’t know. But I think that there is a little bit of a really real story in every pretend story. I just don’t know what parts of it are the really real parts and which parts someone made up.” 

Her father stopped abruptly and held up a hand. Claire fell silent, her ears straining for what her father had detected. There, in the distance, came the sound—the howl of a wolf. Claire shuddered.

Then came answering howls, from all around them. They were close, and there were many.

She could feel her father’s shoulders tense beneath her.

“Claire, I need you to listen to me carefully,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument and no questions. “You're going to climb this tree, and I want you to stay up there until I or another grown-up comes and gets you. Understood? You don't come down for any reason. No matter what you hear, no matter what you think you hear, you stay in this tree until a grown-up comes to get you. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said. She was scared of the wolves, but she knew better than to give any other answer at this moment. She didn’t want to leave her dad. She didn’t want her dad to leave her. But she knew that her duty in this moment was to obey. 

He carried her over to a large sturdy tree and boosted her up to the lowest branch. It was beyond her father’s reach, but by lifting Claire up above his head, she was just able to catch hold of it and pull herself into the safety of its branches.

“I’m going to lead them away. I love you Claire,” he said. 

“I’m scared.” 

“Climb up, Claire, and stay up until a grown-up comes to get you. You’ll be safe up there. I promise.” But her father's tone was laced with fear, which was something she had never heard before. 

Tears sprang to her eyes. “Yes, Papa.” Her father disappeared into the darkness. Claire climbed in the pitch dark, feeling her way as she went. She winced as her bare feet scraped against the rough bark.

The howls grew closer. Then she heard her father shouting, his voice fading into the distance as he led the wolves away from her tree. The howls faded into the distance. She heard an animal yelp as though it had been struck, more howls, continuing to fade into the distance.  Claire strained her ears for any sound of her father, but no sounds drifted her way. 

Claire clung to the branches of the tree. The night grew cold, but still, she did not leave her spot. Silence fell, and the only sound to be heard was the wind rustling through the branches of the trees. 

Her fingers grew stiff and cramped from clinging to the branches. Her feet ached. But still, she stayed where she was. It wasn't until the distant horizon turned pale that she heard the sounds of people looking for her. In the distance, she could hear someone calling her name, and calling her father's name.

Claire called out for her father. She needed to know that her father, too, was safe. After a few minutes of calling back and forth, her mother appeared at the base of the tree, arms outstretched. Claire clambered down the tree, slipping and scraping herself on the way down. When she finally reached her mother's arms, she could see that her mom had tears streaming down her face.

"Mama, where's Papa?" she asked. Her mother simply cried all the more. Her mother's embrace allowed the trickle of warmth back into her frozen limbs, but her heart chilled with fear. "Where's Papa?" she asked again and again. No one would tell her where he was.

And her mother could not stop crying.

A Final Quote

‘Till Next Month