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Hi! We're in everyone's favorite season. It's also many people's busiest season with work, school - life. Maybe you're tired, excited, feeling quiet or loud. Wherever you are, welcome, let's take a breath and pretend we're in Egypt for the next few minutes.

From Egypt to New York

Over the last few days, I kept feeling an urge to write, before the feeling of Egypt disappeared from the tip of my fingers. Literally the tip of my finger - I had this little oval-shaped numbness sitting on the right side of the tip of my right thumb since I spent half a day learning stone carving in Luxor.

4 hours in the workshop was apparently enough time to leave a callous-to-be on my right thumb. 14 days later, every time I held a cup, I could still feel a twinkling sensation shimmering through that patch, but the roughness faded a little bit every day. Recording and reflecting before the callous-to-be disappeared felt important to me.

Egypt and its people, both ancient and modern, showed me ways of life I had not experienced - how one can live, and how I can live. I only had 2 weeks in Cairo and the west side of Luxor, but the impact it left shocked me - how can so little time produce so much impact on a person?

I am leaning into that question and exploring with you Egypt’s impact on how I look at art, what kind of traveler or leader I am practicing to be. Starting with that little callous on my thumb.

Stone Carving

Hamdi, my stonecarving teacher, is a multidisciplinary master artisan who excels in both ancient Egyptian stone carving and traditional woodworking. His classroom is an old and robust long table in the hallway of his home, with piles of uncut limestones in the front yard and flies buzzing around us relentlessly.

Hamdi didn’t speak much English, but somehow that didn’t make the learning any less effective. He demonstrated carving a face into his stone while I watched him closely and memorized his gestures with my fingers and knife swooshing and curving in the air, then I went and experimented on my own piece of stone.

I was so intensely staring at him in action and trying to absorb his muscle control, that he had to pause a few times, gesturing to me to back away and give him more space.

The lack of verbal instructions made me extremely present with his body and movements. I was mesmerized by his control of muscle, how he was able to create the gently raised cheek and luscious lips that looked so smooth and elegant - such softness out of hard, rough limestones!

Learning almost entirely through my body instead of brain was a very novel and exciting experience for me. It’s engaging a whole different set of my learning muscles! And it was such a confidence booster finding out just how capable my muscles were, especially since I failed PE from elementary school all the way to college. (I almost couldn’t graduate college because of my lack of athleticness.)

My plan was to carve the Egyptian cosmos - an image of the sky goddess Nut, the earth god Geb, and the air god Shu. (See below photo) But 3 hours in, I was so drawn to how ancient Egyptian artisans did the eyes that I decided to ditch the plan and paused working on Nut and other gods, and asked Hamdi if I could deep dive on how to do the eye without his magical touching-up. He looked surprised but agreed to pivot.

It was an hour of the most glorious flow and backache - I was exhilarated, extremely focused, and curled up like a shrimp for so long that my back was shot. And I did an eye that’s got defined lines and gradual curves! Hamdi gave me a thumbs up, took the eye I made, and freehanded a carving of my right thumb in the back - a thumb of approval, maybe?

On our way out, Hamdi stopped me and gave me one of his carving tools, so I could continue the work back home. He didn’t say anything more than a gentle smile and 'for when you go back’, but I felt…everything.

The wounded 12-year-old girl who teachers deemed lazy and talent-less in art, she finally was understood, acknowledged and appreciated. They were wrong, she was just not a good fit with that education system.

That 12 year-old part of me that carried educational trauma was able to finally let go of the belief that I was a worthless student not deserving to learn art. I felt content and lighter. I felt a certainty about my relationship with art.

Which made me quite upset with myself when I noticed the eye was missing on my last day packing. In the midst of farewell chaos, I accidentally left the eye I spent the last hour of the workshop working on.

The 12 year old me groaned loudly - ‘great, now we’ve got nothing to show for all that work. Mom, dad and the teachers would not see how good and hard-working I was.’

I told my friend Iola about the incident, half hoping Hamdi hadn't thrown out the eye and she could retrieve it for me, but also not keeping my hope up - it’s merely a practice piece, why would Hamdi still have it?

Dear Iola texted me a few days after I got back home. ‘The eye’s retrieved.’, she wrote. I stared at that text for a while, feeling a full circle being completed in front of my eyes, fully in awe that this experience was meant to be. For this is only the beginning and I will go back to Luxor, even if just to study the ears and nose with Hamdi.

Try this: What season are you in right now?

I like giving myself seasons. Finding and naming one feels festive and grounding, and it gives me clarity - a loose direction for the next 2-3 months.

A season can be a mood, a state of being, or an area of focus. Yours can be in a word or two, a phrase or sentence, whatever feels flexible yet anchoring to you.

If you’d like a starting point, pick any question that intrigues you:

• What has your body been feeling lately?
• Which emotions have been showing up more often?
• What are you drawn to? What can’t you stop thinking about?
• Where would you like to be 2-3 months from now (end of the year or Jan. 2027)?
• Where do you want to direct your resources (time, energy, money)?

Once you have a theme, put it somewhere visible, and simply let it marinate. No need to turn it into a habit or ritual unless something wants to arise.

Right now, I’m in the season of orange (the color), writing, and trial-and-error learning.

I’d love to know what’s yours! Reply to this email and share what’s coming up for you.