The Field Guide to You: July 2026
Look for the signs 🐦⬛ ✨ 🌸
I was walking up my front steps the other morning when I heard an unfamiliar bird sound high in the trees.
I opened my Merlin app to find out what it was.
A woodpecker.
As I was trying to get a better look, it flew down and landed right in front of me.
When people subscribe to this newsletter, I send them a little gift—a phone screensaver with a woodpecker on it.
I’ve never told you the story behind that illustration.
Two summers ago, I was floating down the river in Yosemite National Park.
I was about two years into making art for myself.
Many of my old design clients had quietly disappeared. I didn’t mind. It gave me more time to do art.
The only problem was my paycheck.
I kept hearing the same anxious thought:
How will you ever make enough money doing this?
And every time it surfaced, another voice answered:
Just make the art.
I’d carry on.
But those fears would creep in.
And I would think: How is this going to work out?
And again, I would hear: Just make the art.
That afternoon, drifting beneath the pines, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I knew I was exactly where I was meant to be.
Looking up at that wide blue sky, floating on the cold river, I suddenly knew everything was going to work out.
I wasn’t going to look for more clients.
I wasn’t taking on work that pulled me away from what I was building.
There was no Plan B.
A woodpecker landed on a tree just a few feet away.
I’d never noticed one before.
A dragonfly landed on my knee.
A deer wandered over and licked the tree.
We were all at peace together in this little part of the universe.
As if it were all written in the stars.
We just had to listen to our instincts to know what was next.
Every time I see a woodpecker now, I think of that afternoon.
And every time one appears unexpectedly—like the one on my front steps this week—it feels like a message from the universe.
Just keep making the art.
The theme for July is: Signs
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