Mushroom Pigments, Natural Inks, and Fall Struggles

burnout isn't linear but finding little joys helps

I struggled back and forth on writing a follow-up issue to the last, trying to make it polished. So many folks emailed or commented here back and forth with me about the complications of ethical brand design under capitalism. I’ve enjoyed the conversations immensely, and take great comfort in that I’m not alone in my ennui around it.

This issue feels most natural if I frame it as a collection of my thoughts and the creative explorations I’ve been undertaking recently that have been gently mending my burnout.

1.
Burnout is such a funny thing: it’s almost pitched as being this simple thing where once you realize you have it, you can reduce your work (in theory), take a bit of distance from “overworking” and then in a few weeks, or possibly even a few days, you’re back to being a productive member of society.

This hasn’t been my experience, and I’m sure matches almost nobody’s experience. Burnout mending I’ve realized for me isn’t just about taking space, it’s about doing the right things while I’m taking space away from work. It’s not just as simple as sitting around relaxing and doing non-work things like household maintenance or such. For me, it’s important to actively push myself to engage in hobbies or activities that are positively mentally stimulating in some way: art, reading, research, some kind of dabbling in a creative endeavour of some kind.

And yet, it’s really difficult to motivate yourself to do these things when you have the combination of burnout-depression and burnout-aggression where small inconveniences feel like large frustrating events. To combat such things, I’ve created a notion list of all the activities I want to do in this last half of the year, as well as some basic self-care reminders (workout, take a bath, paint my nails so I don’t pick at them, etc.)

The list has been helpful beyond measure: I reference it frequently, and even added images to each listing so I’m visually met with the inspiration that made me want to do that activity in the first place. I’m happy to say that I’ve already done 4 things off this list in the last week, and I think it was thanks to the images.

A sample from my projects list - I can open each task up and see details about how to do it, more inspiration photos I put in etc. I organized into sections like ‘Natural/Art/Mental Health/Gaming’. It’s supposed to be a list for everything fun. No chores!

2.
I’ve been feeling bad I made promises about posting weekly in September and then gloriously have failed at that. Despite working on my burnout and SADs with daily sun lamp and morning pages, it’s still frustrating to not have capacity to work on everything you want. The guilt seeped into this post as well and made me procrastinate on posting because somehow it feels a post like this in a string of personal-style essays here on this space is “low effort”. But it’s not, and the personal essays always perform the best! Not that I really care about metrics for this. But I get a lot more replies and lovely conversations going on these styles of posts! :) I can return to some more serious essays when I’m ready. It’s better to take things at the pace I can manage than trying to push and failing and achieving less than I could have if I took it slower. This is me giving permission to myself to write weeklyish and return to writing detailed, researched essays when I’m ready.

3.
It’s decidedly Fall now. As soon as September 1st rolled around, my Substack inbox was filled with excited posts about the autumnal season being the best of the year.

Contrary to seemingly everyone, I don’t like Fall (anyone else? haha). The weather is fickle, the rains start (it’s not a crisp, dry fall on the Pacific NW Coast, it’s a soppy fall where the colourful leaves don’t last very long), seasonal affective disorder creeps into my life, and wasps get particularly aggressive. I struggle to find a part of the season I enjoy. But I’m endeavouring to change it this year: I want to find the joy of the season in some way. I think the key is mushrooms. I want to learn to make lake pigments from natural dye baths (just need a few supplies), and I want to learn specifically how to extract pigments from mushrooms, turn them into lake pigments, and then, eventually, buy a glass muller to turn these pigments into my own personalized watercolor palettes.

I was inspired to learn mycopigments from the Mushroom Color Atlas, which is a beyond-incredible resource about all the pigments you can extract from mushrooms.

A whole rainbow is available: from these blue/greens to oranges, yellows, reds, puruples and more. It’s beyond cool to explore.

I’ve decided I’m going to take a local class this year on how to properly and safely identify, forage, and collect mushrooms locally. It’s later on in the season, but I’m excited. I don’t plan on foraging to eat, so that definitely removes most of the risk in a wrong-ID but I still want to learn about foraging correctly and ethically.

4.
While actualizing my project list, I decided to try and salvage a dyebath from my purple basil. It was bought with dye intent, but after being sick the entire summer I wasn’t able to give it the sun it needed and it was now dying (haha) at the end of the season. A more detailed post coming soon on Strandline if you want to know more about it, but here’s the result.

It produced a greenblue colour after I messed with the PH to extract more pigment from the leaves. The fabric (cotton) dyed a lovely desaturated bluegreengrey.

5.
As a tangent off of this, I want to learn how to make lake pigments. This is the process of turning a standard dyebath (usually created through either boiling the material or through an ammonia solution if you’re working with lichens) and make it a shelf-stable powdered pigment. You can do this with any natural dye you extract by adding the right combination of alum and soda ash until the PH is correct and causes a separation of the pigments. Once that’s done, you can rise the pigment and dry it on a coffee filter. It’s then shelf-stable and you can store it in a vial and eventually mill it into a watercolor paint in the future. This video has an excellent demonstration of how easy it is to make a lake pigment!

6.
This is where my head’s been at these last few weeks. I am hoping that with direction on personal projects that are outside of a screen and outside of design, the mending can continue. Thank you to everyone who reads these issues weekly; as much as burnout is hard, Substack and this community brings me such joy. To everyone who’s written me and had a conversation with me, thank you. It’s a lovely joy to talk with you all!

---

What personal projects are you working on or looking forward to doing?

Do you also struggle with autumn?

Got any ideas for me on other ways to love the season?

I would love to know!

---

---

Thank you for reading!