The Bonsai Diary on Kickstarter

I'm excited / nervous to announce that The Bonsai Diary will go live on Kickstarter at 7am on Wednesday, June 4! As much as I've enjoying making home-printed and hand-bound copies, it really wasn't sustainable for me. If you're looking for a professionally-printed copy, please consider pledging -- and recommend to a friend!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stickydoodler/the-bonsai-diary?ref=cz802x

Actual play with Logan Juliano, Ph.D.

Just last week, Logan Juliano at UCLA posted their impressions of The Bonsai Diary:

If we let it, The Bonsai Diary uses imagination to ground us in the here and now. Attention to embodied presence is itself a form of love. And that attention doesn’t need to belong to anyone, doesn’t need to be owned.
The bonsai we trace may span imagined centuries, outlasting any single Grower's lifetime. We are practicing care for timescales that dwarf our quarterly reports and political cycles. As author and artist, the Diarist will determine how different Growers express care to the tree over time.
Games like The Bonsai Diary don’t substitute fantasy for reality; they are invitations to investigate the intersections of nature, time, and ourselves, with as much openness and compassion as possible. We can't enact what we can't imagine.

Dr. Juliano's piece is a beautiful meditation on what it means to care slowly.

What's more, Dr. Juliano is also hosting a series of three online sessions to play through The Bonsai Diary, with each session including a light guided meditation session. According to the description, "No one is turned away for lack of funds. If the registration fee is cost-prohibitive, please email for the link."

I have some mixed feelings about Kickstarting The Bonsai Diary that I'll repost here from BSky:

Prepping a Kickstarter for The Bonsai Diary has been an exercise in tonal contrast. I designed this journaling game to be slow, intentional, contemplative. But the psychology of crowdfunding is all speed, urgency, FOMO.
Plus, I don't want stretch goals that add more "product" to an overburdened world. I'm only getting this game professionally printed because I know home printing is a barrier to a lot of people accessing the game.
Life is contradictions, I know. Anyway, come give The Bonsai Diary a follow if you're into slow, intentional, contemplative experiences. DO IT NOW! 😝

In that spirit, here again is the link to the Kickstarter. It's my very first one, and I hope it succeeds: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stickydoodler/the-bonsai-diary?ref=cz802x