Off the Grid, On With the Show

a call for guest posts and some news

This is a quick post to give you three things: two pieces of excellent news and an invitation to those of you with something to say.

From August 23 to August 30, I’ll be completely off-grid — no phone, no email, no Substack, no sneaking peeks at comment sections under the covers. Just me, a suitcase, and an undisclosed location where they will, blessedly, take my phone away.

The Invitation

While I'm away, I'm turning my platform over to other voices. I've already lined up a few guest posts from people I trust deeply — friends, fellow writers, and the sorts of brilliant minds who routinely help me think straighter (or at least think better-crooked).

Honestly, most of the clarity you attribute to me probably just comes from me parroting something smarter they once said while we were blathering in Discord.

That said, I have two open slots left, and I’d love to fill them with writing that will challenge, comfort, or surprise this readership while I’m away. If you’ve been mulling something over — a personal essay, a political meditation, a cultural critique, a eulogy for a discontinued snack food that broke your heart — pitch it. Length can vary. Tone can vary. I regularly read and listen to voices I disagree with — just make it interesting. (And not boring is a low enough bar that you shouldn’t feel intimidated.)

I probably won’t have time to reply personally to every pitch, so if you don’t hear from me by Tuesday, August 12, it’s a no — sorry in advance!

Email hollymathnerd at gmail dot com with “pitch” in the subject line. Deadline for finished pieces: August 19. If this goes well, I’ll probably start offering a guest post weekend once a month going forward, so if not this time, don’t despair!

Student Loan Exorcism Progress (Excellent News #1)

Because so many of you bought limited-edition prints of my drawings, today I paid off my smallest student loan. This lets me snowball that payment into my next-smallest loan, which means there’s real, honest-to-God forward motion now. I cannot thank you enough. It is the most powerful anti-depressant imaginable to be seeing actual traction on getting free.¹

All of the originals have sold except two, so if you’re interested in an original you should move fast. Details on what prints and originals are available, shipping times and rates, etc., are here.

The newest offering is a super-limited-edition Red Radio Flyer, of which there will be only 47 printed, total. Why 47? It’s one of my favorite prime numbers. 53 and 47 are sexy primes — that is, primes that are six apart. (A future print will have only 53 to complete the pair.) I like this pair because they add up to 100, which makes my mathematician brain hum.

Beautiful Craftsmanship Still Exists (Excellent News #2)

I’m going to be a nervous flier, naturally, so I’m planning my airborne time to be productive drawing time. That means I need a drawing board that would fit in my sketchbook holder — and without the stupid clips I never use, that would damage my (beautiful!) sketchbook holder anyway.

My sketchbook holder has room for enough pencils, and a pocket big enough for erasers, blenders, etc., that if I had a drawing board I could turn it into an all-in-one traveling drawing studio (assuming TSA doesn’t confiscate anything; please God….).

my beautiful sketchbook holder

the normal, ugly drawing board with a clip I never use and that makes it useless for carrying in my sketchbook holder — and notice the artist’s tape doesn’t stick to it very well anyway

So after checking all the artist’s websites and finding that what I wanted does not exist, I asked my friend

J. Daniel Sawyer

to make me a drawing board without clips that would fit into my sketchbook holder.

It is a rare kind of joy — the kind that makes you pause and grin like an idiot — to have something made just right: tailored to your exact needs, built beautifully, and by someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

And Dan totally came through. They’re gorgeous, the artist’s tape works better than it does on the standard ones, and I cannot wait to take it with me on my trip.

In addition to my general principle that I whine and focus on difficult topics plenty here — good Lord, the total number of posts that come up with searches for depression or suicide — so I should post about happy things, too, I have another reason for sharing this.

It’s summer, which is when nerds like me (and many of you) start giving thought to holiday gifts. (I’m unusually good at choosing gifts; see my guide to doing a good job at this here.) I absolutely love the fact that when I find someone who knows what they’re doing and can produce beautiful gifts, I get to share them with y’all — so I wanted to let you all know that Dan’s work is lovely and he’s taking orders. He does more than just woodwork; he’s got a forge, where he sometimes is when I call only to find he’s in the forge using blowtorches and such, so I asked him to summarize his offerings for this post. He said:

I like to make beautiful things, especially when they're functional. Wood, bone, leather, metal, mixed media, it doesn't matter — if it can be made of stuff, and it's going to make someone's life better, prettier, or more interesting, I want to have a go at it. Here are some pictures of things I've done, from knives to hooks to hair pins to truck hooks to drawing boards.

He’s going to publish a “how to build it” post showing how he made my drawing board, so if you’re interested in these things you should subscribe to him. His storefront doesn’t show all of his offerings — he specializes in custom made orders — but you can also see some of his work here. (He also does video and audio work — every time I’ve published a post with a clip making fun of Sam Harris or anyone else, it was Dan who did the clip.)

Conclusion

I’m really looking forward to seeing what great ideas y’all have to fill up my vacation time, and to this time away — to unplugging fully, sleeping deeply, and remembering what life feels like when it’s not constantly pinging.

But I also love that this space won’t go quiet while I’m gone. It’ll hum with other voices, other minds, other angles — and that’s exactly what I want.

Thanks, as always, for reading, thinking, supporting, and surprising me.

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1. Side note: instead of doing what I’ve done for years, and paying extra on everything, I highly recommend the debt snowball method, which I have recently switched to. Pay minimums on everything but the smallest, then attack the smallest and roll that payment into the next-smallest. Getting things actually paid off instead of just having everything be somewhat ahead of schedule feels amazing.