Pleasure
- Kendall Adams
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
What I'm Listening to:
My word of this year is pleasure. As I was perusing https://dreamymoons.com.au/ and shopping for my new year planner, I came across the Aphrodite journal. It got me thinking how disconnecting from my body I become when I’m anxious or unregulated. I can’t say I ever really learned to be connected to my body, with the repressed queer religious upbringing that we don’t have to get into today. It’s already expensive (but worth it) shipping these journals from Australia, so I added some tarot cards while I was at it.
This journal has guided prompts and describes pleasure rituals. As I’ve welcomed this new year, I have begun to recognize these moments more throughout my day. Enjoying the softness of clean sheets, the coziness of a hot cup of tea. Most of them, I’ve realized, have revolved around aromatherapy- lighting candles and burning sage, baking sweet treats, decorating with fresh flowers.
Speaking of connecting with my body, I have decided to become a competitive athlete of speed puzzling. Yep, I just found out that they have state, national, and world speed puzzling contests. 2025 worlds was hosted in Spain and the solo winner was from Poland with a time of 39:44 for a 500 piece puzzle. Isn’t that incredible. I signed up to compete at states in Dallas in February so you bet your ass I’m training until then. The craziest part is that headlamps are explicitly banned.
This guided journal has helped me to better set goals and intentions for when I use it, instead of being overwhelmed by a blank page and the expectation to express yourself. I hope this year’s planner will be a slice of life. I want to be able to look back on it and remember all the great things I will do this year. Last year’s journal felt like practice for that, but I didn’t stick with it or challenge myself to document enough. I also didn’t leave my house much. And that was okay, but I would like to do more fun things.
I’ve been craving a space to share all of my silly things I create, because I want to navigate away from instagram for obvious reasons. I want to be able to share a picture of my banana bread or talk about my puzzle times or document my sewing journey. I have such a range of hobbies but it would be cool to share them all in one place. I hope to use this space to do more of that in this coming year. Although a part of me dies every time they update the site to more aggressively advertise ai options. I want a corner of the internet that I'd just me and friends and crafts and no nonsense! So welcome to the new year on this blog, a space for me to share the things I make, because I've been making a lot of cool things lately. So get cozy, and expect to see lots of latte art, crochet creations, and crusty crafts.
So without further ado, I present to you the puzzles of 2026 thus far, with times and approximate piece counts (because I can’t remember everything, seriously).
Obviously, we had to kick the year off with the Cerby puzzle. Not one single color, just black and white. Look how happy and smug I was to finish it. He's got big baby eyes. Fun fact: puzzles are never the amount of pieces they advertise. 1000 piece puzzles are often 1026 actual pieces due to the grid size. I spent so much of my teen years watching Futurama and doing puzzles seriously, I am the adult I always wanted to be.
Wow, hi! You scrolled to the end, you must be hungry. Have a slice of banana bread that baked while I wrote this.
Lots of love and hope for what is to come,
Ken and Cerb
