Hi, I’m Sarai.

In 2021, after a lifetime in cities, I moved to five acres in rural Oregon. I came looking for a slower life. Instead, I found that my old habits and hurried mind came with me. The setting changed, but I didn’t—at least not automatically.

This newsletter is the ongoing work of that change.

I write about what it takes to feel vivid rather than rushed—not through productivity systems or life optimization, but through attention, ritual, and the rhythms of making things by hand. I explore what I’m noticing in my own life: the pull toward presence, the resistance to it, and the slow practice of waking up to the life I already have.

Some of what I write takes the form of longer essays, following a thread until I find something I didn’t expect. Other pieces are shorter dispatches—observations from the garden, the changing seasons, or a morning walk through the woods with my dog. All of it comes from the same question: what makes a life feel alive?

By day, I’m the founder of Seamwork, an online community that helps people sew a meaningful wardrobe. I’ve been sewing for nearly thirty years, and making things with my hands remains central to how I understand the world.

But this newsletter is where I explore the larger questions that hover around the edges of that work—questions about time, attention, place, and what it means to dwell fully in your own life.

If you’re someone who suspects that the answer to feeling rushed isn’t doing more, but attending differently—this might be a place for you. I send letters a few times a month, and each one is an invitation to slow down and notice your own life a little more closely.

Subscribe below and I’ll meet you in your inbox.