The last time I wrote a newsletter was a month ago, and I wrote about how I wished I could take a break and fix everything.

While I haven't done that exactly, I have had a pretty spacious month personally and professionally, and I've experienced so many moments of serendipity during these widened spaces of time.

For example, I found myself with time to skip my usual Instacart order, and instead went to the store myself and walked up and down the aisles, checking out foods I've never tried, and taking photos of packaging that I found inspiring. A photo I took that day ended up being the primary inspiration for a new branding client I just started working with.

Another one: I bought a picnic basket on Facebook Marketplace during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, and creepily followed the seller on Instagram. Years later, she's become one of my best small business friends in Jax, owner of Levity Interiors, and we are getting ready to embark on a big project together to make her digital space as amazing as her physical one.

And this: I had a free Saturday morning a few weeks ago, so I decided to learn how to repair our broken piano myself instead of hiring someone. It made for a really sweet moment with both of my daughters as they learned how to snip the old plastic elbows off each lifter and replace it with a new one. The eldest one wants to take piano lessons now, after yearssssss of me trying to get her interested.
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It left me wondering, How can I cultivate this? How can I find what I don't quite know I am seeking?

For me, the answer is in the tricky practice of clearing the road of distractions, but embracing the detours.

It’s allowing the time to indulge in the pleasures of search and discovery. Muddling through a recipe without asking Google how to do it. Seeing a knickknack on someone's shelf and asking about it. Meeting someone on Facebook to buy houseplants and becoming instant best friends with their pet donkey (true story about my dad and his bestie, Violet).

There's an art to finding something when you're not looking for it.

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Random Round-Up

• We launched several sites in the past month, including a brand-new site for Budwell. Channeling 90s rocker energy was pretty fun for a kid that grew up on only Michael W. Smith (#iykyk).
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• I didn't buy much during Black Friday, but I did buy this fragrance and this makeup set... and absolutely zero gifts. Oops!
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• On Instagram, I shared these results from a cool A/B test we did with a client using a tool called Intelligems, where you can A/B test designs, prices, and even discount strategies. In our test, we were able to quickly show that the redesigned navigation was performing wayyyy better than their old version. Felt great to launch that conversion rate booster right before BFCM!