Doing Just Fine October 2025 Dear Reader, It’s the last three months of the year, and I’m ready to tuck away for winter. I’m ready to tuck away for the entire next year. I’ve sent my latest manuscript off to my agent, and by the time she sends notes back it will likely be too late in the year to submit to publishers even if I could turn revisions around fast. Although I had hoped to sign a book contract this year, I’ve accepted the slower timeline. Maybe it will happen next year. Maybe this...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Doing Just Fine September 2025 Dear Reader, I hope you had a good August. That month has always seemed to run me down. It wasn't historically hot, if anything it was cooler than years past. But my body only knows the press of humidity and heat, and it is weary of it. We decided against taking any big trips this year, and that too casts its own pallor over me. Everything becomes same-sy on top of the daily dissonance of living and working in the states. I've noticed the stories I'm pulled...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Doing Just Fine July 23, 2025 Dear Reader, I'm writing to you out of my normal schedule to celebrate LINH LY IS DOING JUST FINE's one year anniversary! I'll be enjoying sweets, and I certainly think you deserve a treat too! If not dessert for your tastebuds, how about 70% off the audiobook? My spoonful of warmed pie and melting ice cream toast will be to Linh Ly, my dear readers, and the future. I'm taking August off from the newsletter and will catch you back in September when I've hopefully...
4 months ago • 1 min read
Doing Just Fine July 2025 Dear Reader I am sitting with two opposing feelings. On one hand, the joy of the one year anniversary for Linh Ly is Doing Just Fine is July 23. And on the other, the horror of the year being half over. I’d also bet that I’m not alone in feeling like these past six months have felt like six years. Should we have been better prepared for this feeling, having survived the ongoing pandemic? …and what’s next? Horror and joy! That’s the theme to life these days. I really...
5 months ago • 1 min read
Doing Just Fine June 2025 💖💖💖 For audiobook lovers ~ Linh Ly is 50% off through June 3! Get your copy! 💖💖💖 Dear Reader, This month's card instructs me to "break free from belief systems that hold back your transformation." I can't help but think that if it were that easy, I would have succeeded a long time ago! I'm about to embark upon edits to my latest manuscript at the advising of my dear agent, who I am indebted to for being the one who has to tell me "not quite yet." For me, it works...
6 months ago • 1 min read
Doing Just Fine May 2025 Dear Reader, The card pull for this month is chamomile, representing inner peace. Since the last time I wrote, I’ve crocheted two pairs of socks. To have made socks after only crocheting scarves with wandering edges in the distant past…I’m impressed with myself and sitting with that joy for as long as I can. I noticed the strangest thing recenty — that maybe I have started to feel okay? Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I noticed that I was feeling okay. Maybe...
7 months ago • 2 min read
Doing Just Fine April 2025 Dear Reader, This month’s reminder/card pull is cordyceps. Oh, that parasitic fungus! How appropriate for spring as compost is mixed into the soil. I am reminded that death returns nutrients to the earth to begin again. In the early years of the pandemic, I deleted an account on one of those book tracker sites because I calculated that the list of books I had added “to read” would take me an absurd amount of years to get through. I like finishing projects, though...
8 months ago • 2 min read
Doing Just Fine March 2025 Dear Reader, This month's reminder is Motherwort's strength. I spent last weekend tending to plants, adding fresh soil to potted plants, and planting heat-tolerant flowers near our door. I'm tending to my first yarrow to learn to identify it in all its stages of growth. I’m trying indoor peppers because I’d like to produce and dry my own. My body is sore from the digging, bending, and carrying. It's a nice feeling, a reminder that I extended energy and to move...
9 months ago • 2 min read
Doing Just Fine February 2025 Dear Reader, I’ve deleted social media from my phone again. Social media, for me, is only BlueSky. In the past two months, I’ve deleted my other social accounts. It feels like it’s been longer. A day feels like a year, hence the app removal from my phone. It feels like I’d done all this work to restore myself for the past few months, and then it was completely gone again. I have no surge capacity to deal with everything around us. If you’re feeling the same way,...
10 months ago • 2 min read