It's okay to still be on the journey...

Hi friend! And to my fellow queers, Happy Pride!

What follows is an excerpt from this month's substack post and above is a photo I took in our garden recently as a gift for being on this journey with me. Without further ado, let's begin today's topic!

I always want to be farther than I am…

And by that, I mean, I’ve always been a person who wants to be at the next step already or have grown more or accomplished more than I currently have. I always thought that resting was when it was hardest for me to reckon with the wanting. But as I’ve been plodding along on the fourth draft of my romantic thriller, I’ve realized that it’s also hard when I’m doing things. Which is rude because if I’m working toward something (in this case, sending my book out to agents), I should be able to turn off the part of my brain that is like “this should’ve been done yesterday.”

For example, I’ll have really good writing days (like the weekend I wrote almost the entirety of act 3 in two days), and then immediately will be like omg why didn’t I do this like 3 weeks ago instead of today?

Why am I so mean to myself?

I’m trying this new thing where, instead of being mean to myself for being mean to myself, I am reminding myself (and also therefore you all) that everything happens in its time. I have a full time day job, a partner, a small business, other hobbies, an endless TBR, a garden, a dog son, and (occasionally) a foster puppy. My life endlessly feels like one of those triangles that’s like “you can only pick two.” But every end of the triangle has more than one thing on it, so I’m having to pick one of those before I even get to pick two.

I’m sure there are even things I forgot to put on there… but you get the picture. Being an adult with responsibilities is hard. And sometimes I get overwhelmed so I abandon the triangle completely to scroll on TikTok or watch an entire season of Good Girls. As you can imagine (or perhaps that’s your life too, because the busyness is present in so many of our lives), it can be painfully impossible to make time for writing some days, even though not making time is equally painful.

One of the ways that I cope with this feeling is by turning everything in that triangle into a to do list. I think if I can check it off (I journaled, I walked, I revised a chapter, etc), then that will make it all doable and will give me some sense of accomplishment.

What's the point of a checklist?

What I’m realizing in both my creative life and my life life is that so often, in pursuit of checking things off, I miss their purpose. If I just hurry outside to water the garden, I might miss the way our little seedlings have gained new leaves over the past few days. Or the way we have two tomatoes that are almost ripe enough to pick. If I try to multitask while hanging out with my friends, I might miss the little things they tell me about their lives because my brain isn’t built for two places at once (as much as I wish it were). And, if I go through a draft writing/revising simply to solve problems and finish it enough to send out to agents, I might miss the feelings and nuance of what those scenes and chapters could actually be.

That’s what happened with draft 3 of my pet sitter romantic thriller. I had my to do list and my spreadsheet and it was all working, until it wasn’t. I got almost to the end and realized that the puzzle pieces were all laid out on the table, but none of them were connected. I had been so busy making it make sense logically that I didn’t take the time to help it feel right emotionally. So, here I am, letting myself take longer so I can experience it fully. My hope is that by letting myself stare out the window while I feel into this book, instead of hurrying to finish it, the story will feel fuller and brighter (and creepier) and it’ll be something I feel immensely proud of and not just something I checked off my to do list so I could get to the next step.

Thanks for tuning in

This is the first in what I hope will be a collection of posts and thoughts on my website. There will be a wide swath of what these posts cover and it'll fall under both Kat (the author) and Kat (the human) in a way that I hope is fun and mirrors a lifestyle blog of sorts. Feel free to subscribe to The Nine Lives of Kat Korpi (aka give me your email in the form at the bottom) if you want these delivered directly to your email.