Hello.
Welcome to The Spark Journal. I'm Chris Gonzales, a writer and freelance editor originally from Oklahoma City. For the past eight years though, I’ve been living and traveling in an RV full-time with my wife Chelsea and our kids Brendon and Matilda.
I started this site under the name Unretrofied in October 2010, relaunching it as The Spark Journal in July 2014.
I write about a number of subjects here, with a general focus on creativity, writing, mindfulness, craftsmanship, and things that delight, with a splash of geekery thrown in for good measure. I like to think of it as a place for creative geeks to stop by, enjoy their morning cup of coffee, and read things that stimulate their minds and inspire them to do their best work.
Subscribe
There are two main ways to keep up with this site:
Subscribe to the RSS feed.
Follow @thesparkjournal on Twitter.
Elsewhere
In addition to this site, I am a regular contributor at Tools & Toys and its sister site, The Sweet Setup. Both are owned by Shawn Blanc and they're a lot of fun to write for.
On the side, I've run a small business called Stellar Edits, offering editing services to boost the writing of indie creators. 🚀 (Currently on hiatus)
I also enjoy taking the occasional photo, and as such I have photo-sharing accounts all over the place. Here are the main ones:
You can also find me on Reddit (u/sparkjournal) and Goodreads (sparkjournal).
Colophon
This site is built and hosted on Squarespace, using a heavily modified version of the Pacific template. (Now with a night version! Try switching your device to dark mode and enjoy 🌙)
The RSS feed is powered by FeedPress.
I happily manage all my domains through Hover. I will never again register elsewhere.
All my writing is done on an iPad Air 2 (with some light editing on my iPhone 11) using Editorial for iOS.
The logotype you see at the top of the site is set in Devinne Ornament by URW Type Foundry, while the body text, headers, etc. throughout the site all use FF Tisa Pro.
RSS Sponsorships
I do not currently have an RSS sponsorship system in place, but I am quite open to the idea. If you have something you'd like to advertise to an audience of smart creatives, get in touch!
Affiliate Link Policy
I use affiliate links when linking to certain products on Amazon, iTunes, etc. I do this only for products I stand behind, so if I've linked to something in this way, you can trust that it's worth your time. It costs you nothing extra to click, and helps me keep the lights on around here.
Get In Touch
If you have a love letter, question, or comment, feel free to email me at chris@sparkjournal.net. If you just need to hit me up real quick, I'm @Gromble on Twitter. Alternatively, you can use the contact form below.