moreeviecase
issue 4
October 2026




Welcome to the October newsletter.

Below is the PDF / magazine format of the newsletter (recommend version).

As per the last newsletter, I’ve also kept the original blog format below (boring version).

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on anything mentioned. Or anything else! Enjoy!



 


Click for magazine epicness! 


October newsletter (blog format (magazine is cooler icl...))

October has been crazy busy. When someone asks me how life is, or I when write captions for my weekly dumps, I often say it is ‘busy’... I don't think past Evie knew what busy could mean!

As as a result, the newsletter isn’t as well-written or clean as I would like, but that’s okay. Something is better than nothing!  


October rundown

To try display the crazy-ness of this month, I thought it would be best to break it down into some stats. Here’s a few…

New internship: 1
Exams: 4
Group projects: 1
Cities: 3
Soup Sundays: 3
Runs to de-stress: 6
Wake ups before sunrise: too many to count

But what a privilege it is to be busy with so many exciting opportunities and beautiful experiences! It's kinda epic that this is my life. Even if it is crazy busy and slightly stressful at times, it's all part of the fun.

... November is looking to be a bit calmer though, thank God.



What I’ve been thinking about

Earlier this month, a friend and I went to an event called the ‘Bring Your Own Book Fair’. You didn’t have to bring your own book, and no books (in the novel sense, the sense in which I usually think of a book first) were being sold.

So the name was slightly misleading. The event was great though. The “books” at hand were zines, booklets, pamphlets and a whole array of other works of art or writing on paper. A creative interpretation of the word  “book” for a creative event.

Growing up I remember being taken to art galleries and museums quite a lot. Even now, going to a gallery or museum takes me back to the feeling of being a child in a space filled with so much human creativity and innovation. Going to this event felt like that. Overwhelming, in many ways, but also exciting and inspiring, almost playful too.

That playfulness was present in the art at this event. It was all considered and carefully curated, but with a sense of fun to it too. We talked to one artist who told us about how she had felt limited and uninspired with what she was creating and decided to try drawing with her non-dominant hand as a way of to find a creative spark again. We asked if there was anything she learned from the experience and she showed us the two types of art she now made. Though her original art was beautiful and perhaps more developed, this new style she had discovered within herself was beautiful in its own way too. It felt more creative and whimsical. She said that this new style felt like she could have more fun.

This idea of playfulness and fun with art reminded me of an episode of a podcast I listened to a while ago. The writer who runs the podcast speaks about how art should be playful; to be creative, you have to be open and almost uninhibited, as though you were a child again. This is why AI cannot make art, he says, because it has no memory, no whimsy; it’s simply an algorithm.

If drawing with one’s non-dominant hand is a way of being playful with physical art, what is the equivalent for writing? My friend and I discussed what an answer to this question might be on the cycle home. The best idea of an answer we had was writing in another language, but even that does not translate directly (ha ha).

Pondering this question of playfulness and the idea of taking a child-like approach to what you do, I realised that it doesn’t need to be limited to art. It can also apply to everyday life.

Because just as being a child is being a beginner, there are new ways to be a beginner as an adult. At the minute, I feel as though I am a beginner in so many areas of my life it’s almost overwhelming – as though I truly am I child again, getting to know the world and understanding my place in it from scratch. Whether that be learning to live in a different country, removed from the cultural context in which you were raised, working a new job or being a student at a new university.

And that’s difficult! The internship I’ve particularly struggled with. I’ve entered it with limited experience in the working world and feel so aware of this. There’s so much I don’t know or understand yet (both in terms of tasks and the film distribution industry more widely) and I know that. But knowing that you lack knowledge does not give you any more knowledge. It just makes you more aware of your own naivety.

I had a similar experience last year at the beginning of third year when I finally grasped how huge the field of literary studies is and how much I did not know just as I was starting to work on my dissertation (convenient timing!). As difficult as this was, I eventually figured out that sometimes you just have to accept your own naivety and not let it make you spiral to the point where you give up and don't do anything for fear of getting it wrong.

I’ve felt this naivety with my current studies in relation to what I’ve been writing in this newsletter too. In August, I wrote about the impossibility of communicating the true feeling of an experience. In class this term I learnt about the crisis of realism in literature, which explained what I was trying to say so much better. Literature had already felt, witnessed and moved forward from the problem I was having decades before I reached it myself.

And so, while I’m a beginner at my job, feeling stupid and naïve is not new to me; it’s an ongoing thing. And in a weird way, that’s actually quite nice. I know now in a way I did not last year that that even in spite of all that I do not know, I will learn and the difficulty of being a beginner will pass.

So comes the question, why not embrace it and have fun with it? It’s certainly easier said that done, but I’m trying to give it a go.



What I’ve enjoyed

We’re losing all categorisation with this section this month. Going crazy out of bounds. This definitely is not because I have not had the time to enjoy reading or watching as much as I usually do… at all.


I ate the best donut of my life this month. And for anyone who knows me (as you all thankfully do!), I love a donut, so have eaten many in my time. If you ever visit / visit me in Amsterdam, ask me to take you to Anook Bakehouse - the home of this creme brulée donut! It was heaven in donut form.

I’m still only reading for university, not for pleasure, at the moment. However, I do have a new unit starting next month that sounds much more my speed so I’m excited to (hopefully!) be able to recommend some good books from it. Trevor Noah’s memoir Born A Crime is the first of these, and it’s really solid. I found it was a great way to learn about apartheid in South Africa from a unique, personal perspective, and also to just learn more widely.

I watched only one film this month: Sense and Sensibility. But what a grand film it was to be the only one! Very autumnal and very Jane Austen, tugging at the heartstrings, as well as many violin strings too (...the score is gorgeous).

I had a bit of a hard, just rather busy week around the middle of the month. Heated Rivalry got me through it. God I love this show; it’s like comfort food in TV form. It may be known online for having a lot of sex in it, but it’s really so much more than that. It’s incredibly tender and heartfelt, and beautifully made and acted. Strongly recommend.

Soup! More on this in the next section…


Where help would help

A niche request, perhaps, but if you have any good soup recipes, I'd love it if you could share them.

As you might have seen / heard, I've started a weekly tradition of having friends over for soup on Sundays, an event aptly named Soup Sunday. Soup Sunday is all about the transition between weeks, catching up on the past week and looking forward to the next, and, of course, enjoying soup with friends.

Each soup has been tasty, but none have been 10/10s so far - for me, at least. So, I'm on the hunt for some epic soup recipes. If you have one (or more) of these, send them my way!



Goodbye until next month

As always, thank you for reading! As busy and intense as this month was, I also really enjoyed it. Even with all the deadlines, early mornings, runs squeezed in in the dark and so on, I'm happy and feel lucky to have all the opportunities that I do.

That being said, I am excited for November. Still lots of lovely stuff planned, as I had with October, but less that makes it all feel very high pressure!

Wishing you all all the best wherever you are reading this from,

Evie

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