CHOOSE A LIFE YOU LOVE 🩷Our 2nd Water Bearer Cup Has Arrived~ Yay!!With Love, AlwaysCHOOSE A LIFE YOU LOVE 🩷MAY 21, 2026

Our 2nd Water Bearer Cup Has Arrived~ Yay!!

Yesterday I had a bit of a day where I was in a funk.

I missed my walk, missed my vitamins, and was all around meh, so today I really wanted to jump back on choosing a life I love, and am pleased to report that today I did all four drips.

Nourished with my vitamins (this is an amazon affiliate link for welleco super greens which I use daily)

Calculated My Worth $8,588,000 (My worth is infinite. My contribution grows daily. Both are true!)

Documented Value ~ shared an opening about Print On Demand (see below)

And then — the fourth one which I’ve been doing pretty good with lately:

I contributed something today.

What I made wasn’t a book. It wasn’t a chapter. It wasn’t a poem.

It was another piece of story merchandise!!!

Yes!!!!

I received the first shipment/test products for the POD Water Bearer Mug!!!! (And I also did some work on the website too which I’ll share with you in a moment too!)

WHY A MUG?

The Water Bearer series has been with this project for a long time now and is at the point of what I would call 75% complete.

For me…. 75% is a good number.

It means that part of project is ready enough to shelve to Amazonand as a “finished” part of the Choose A Life You Love project, and yet at 75% it still has 25% room to be opened up later and re-worked if ever I feel inclined to do so- though right now I don’t think that will occur

Anyway….The Water Bearer….. the woman at the well….. the cup that runs dry……the slow, sacred work of learning to pour something back into yourself….and also….the moment that the woman at the well in the poem is handed a cup and her entire life changes.

Somewhere along the way, I started thinking — what would it look like to hold that story in your hand?

Not as a book on a shelf.

Not as a piece of writing on a screen.

But as an ordinary object.

Something you reach for in the morning before the day has begun. Something that warms your hands while you’re still half asleep.

In the book Driven, Cara gets a handmade cup from the local potter at the craft market, and I wanted to do that too. I wanted to give back and support another woman’s small business and get our cups handmade with love….and I did do that….and I love love love love love our handmade cups!!!!!

But I need to be honest.

These handmade cups and gift baskets are expensive. Paying a potter to custom make even just one cup costs a lot of money, which I am ok with.

But let me be honest.

Most ordinary mums and women cant do that kind of pricing everyday~ not for themselves, or another person they love.

Which leads me to the newest addition to the story merch family:

The Choose A Life You Love POD Cup.

PRINT ON DEMAND — THE SMALLEST POSSIBLE BEGINNING

I chose print on demand because it fits multiple practices. firstly, it’s sustainable, you can print on demand, or you can print just a couple like I did for this first run, and not need to waste resources on things that may not sell.

Print on Demand means no inventory. No risk. No big investment past-me has to recover from. Just a design, a listing, a quiet little doorway into the story world for anyone who wants to walk through it.

It’s also a cheap, accessible piece of merch I could create with the tools and budget I have available — and that feels right. These first pieces shouldn’t be precious…they should be reachable. Something a stranger could pick up on a Tuesday for the price of coffee and cake.

Because sometimes a life doesn’t change with a grand transformation.

Sometimes it begins with choosing a cup you genuinely love reaching for, or that someone else has thoughtfully gifted you.

WHAT THE LISTING LOOKS LIKE

If you want to see the listing from today, it’s here on the etsy shop— the Choose A Life You Love Cup, our low cost reflective story mug, or you can order direct from the website here: https://choosealifeyou.love/product/choose-a-life-you-love-cup-reflective-story-mug-merchandise-pod/

Part poem. Part philosophy. Part reminder.

For coffee. For tea. For field notes. For slow mornings and late-night thinking and all those thoughtful little corners of everyday life.

THE DRIP BECOMING A STREAM

I keep thinking about that line from the Drip practice — if one day what I create earns something, that’s the drip becoming a stream. The stream becoming a river. The river finding the ocean.

I don’t know if anyone will buy this mug, though of course I hope someone…somewhere will.

I suppose I’m making it because creating is part of what this project is — and because I want the water to be for everyone~ including you & including me, and as much as I love handmade and supporting small biz, I also understand that in this economy today not everyone at this moment in their lives can do that right now…and that is 100% perfectly ok…we can still choose a life we love…think of someone we love (including ourselves!) and gift a small object in the world that says: someone made this with love and good intent. Someone thought of you.

That’s the drip.

That’s the gift.

That’s today’s small offering — placed gently into the world and released with love.

In addition to sharing the mug listing, today I had another thing to share with you overhauling the website <yet again><groan!!!!> Omg, this feels like a forever ongoing thing, but the harsh reality is that there are so many parts to the project it’s been a hot mess for myself, Ai, or anyone else to even understand what this project is or where all the pieces fit together. And that doesn’t make me love my project. It makes me want to stop creating and sharing as it’s simply becoming too much, and I really don’t want to do that.

So…..I stripped it back to basics.

Started with anything that I loved…

it was 

<what?> 

<I’m not sure>

it was something….

a feeling ……

not quite proud because I’m not even sure how I feel about the Water Bearer Part of the project anymore…but more like just…oh wow…that was thoughtful…thanks for sharing…I suppose that’s where I ended up feeling about the whole thing.

Anyway….if you want to check it out the new index page, you can find it here: choosealifeyou.love

Until tomorrow,

Much Love,

N x

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