06/08/2026
Summer is the only time this gets to happen.
During the school year, we are running. Alarm clocks and packed lunches and homework and the particular exhaustion of a Tuesday in March when everyone is tired and no one will admit it. There is no slow. There is no wandering. There is just the next thing and then the next thing after that.
But summer? Summer is when Cohen and I go to the library together. Just us. No agenda. No timer. We walk in, we split off, we find our corners, and we come back to each other with whatever pulled us in. It is one of my favorite things we do. And it only gets to happen now, in these weeks, before the fall schedule swallows us again.
I am a creative and a marketer by trade. I run BS Marketing + Media Co.; I spend my days in the work of storytelling, content strategy, brand voice, and helping small businesses and organizations show up online in a way that actually reflects who they are. It is work I genuinely love.
And I will tell you something I believe all the way down: the library is where my creativity gets fed.
Not a podcast. Not a course. Not a conference. A library. Free. Quiet. Full of people who sat down and chose their words carefully because the words mattered to them. When I read, I become a better writer. When I become a better writer, I become a better marketer. When I become a better marketer, I serve my clients better. It all connects. It has always all connected.
Summer library visits are not a break from the work. They are fuel for it.
I am launching The Library Diaries today, a weekly summer blog series where I take you with me every week to a different library. I will tell you about the building, the neighborhood around it, the spaces inside worth knowing, the book I picked up, and the quote that followed me home. And I will keep connecting the dots between what reading gives us as mothers and what storytelling gives us as creatives, because those dots have always been the same dot for me.
Week 01 is live. Carmel Clay Public Library in Carmel, Indiana. A Java House coffee shop inside the building that opens before the library does. A teenager who still shows up willingly. And Joan Didion reminding me why words are everything.
https://www.bsm-co.com/blog/summer-library-tour-ccpl
And tell me: what is the one book that made you want to create something? I am serious. Drop it below. I want to build a list.
Discover why one Indiana mom makes the library a weekly ritual and how raising kids in libraries shaped everything. Week 01 of The Library Diaries features Carmel Clay Public Library in Carmel, Indiana, with book recommendations, favorite spaces, and a heartfelt look at the cost of nothing and the v