A baby snail is born 🐌

Friends,

After painting hundreds of snail dudes, and with a promise of more snail paintings to come in my lifetime, I’m happy to share with you a new home I’ve been building on the interwebs: snoringsnail.com and @snoringsnail on Instagram. We are a small stationery shop that celebrates letter writing and the good, slow life.

Fun fact: any friend who signs up for Snoring Snail updates will receive a special edition “Galactic Baby Snail” postcard in their first order! You can do that here.

The first set I’ll be launching is a moon series inspired by the seasons. Like all good creations, it was born from necessity when I ran out of postcards and decided to create some of my own! This was the spark that gave birth to Snoring Snail, and here’s a sneak peek at some of my sketches:

Don’t ask me how I know this, but Snoring Snail is the train that will take me to Portugal. It’s like a prototype of the home, the community, I will build there. And you, as my friend, I know will be a part of this community. When I first had this idea to create a snail mail focused company, my inner critic with the red glasses and a red pen held me back and said, “Wait a second… weren’t we working hard at our day job and saving up money to make your Portugal dream come true? What is this, painting snails? Stop playing and get back to work.” (Yeah, I know... She can be scary. 😱) But after having tea and talking it over with this inner critic, I realised the road she was suggesting I take to achieve my dream was indeed short… but I took a closer look and... Wait! WTF, that looks like quicksand and a huge cheese grater that shreds your energy and time into this huge insatiable machine!

As my super chill partner has reminded me multiple times this month, “Direction is more important than speed.” With my compass recalibrated, it’s time to step out of the unwieldy speed boat I’ve been trying to pilot and look for an old pirate ship where I can fix the rudder and smoke my invisible pipe having leisurely talks with the albatross in the sky... and maybe write a letter or two to you.

Yo ho ho!
Haruka

P.S. I’m adding a new “soul spark” section at the end of my newsletters. I hope they inspire you as much as they inspire me.

✨November's soul spark✨

Take a 5-minute break from your day and listen to this story about a city guy who followed his own spark to become a falconer.