I fall off the wagon with my art journal more often than I'd like to admit. The book closes for a few weeks, sometimes longer, and suddenly opening it back up feels like this whole complicated thing. So I don't. And then I'm standing in my studio spinning my wheels, feeling flat, wondering where all my ideas went.

They didn't go anywhere. They just had nowhere to land.

My art journal is my paper brain — the place where everything starts, whether it's a splash of watercolor or a scrap taped in sideways. None of it has to be good. All of it is information. So this year, on my birthday, I wanted to give myself (and you) a reason to get back in the book. Not to fill it. Not to finish anything. Just to reconnect.