You have to let it take what it takes 🌷
changing takes effort, but it also takes time.
Last week, I wrote about the effort required to forge a new path for your EMERGING SELVES. I believe we must be the ones to change our lives, that no one else can do it for us.
Yet on the other side of that same coin—because yes, it takes effort—but it also takes time.
You can’t force a butterfly’s chrysalis open before it’s ready. Nor can you crack an egg apart before the baby bird is done growing. Do either, and you’ll just wind up with some gross, undercooked goop.
This is not a permission slip to sit around waiting for the perfect moment to change, but it is an urging to not force the process.
Let me give you an example…
In August, I published one of my most popular essays—Why I’m walking away from a thriving freelance writing career. There, I wrote about the ways in which monetizing my craft was killing my spirit, and the ensuing decision to drop all the client work that had been stealing my creative energy away from the writing I really wanted to do.
But there are two ways in which I need to disrupt the tidy narrative I put together last summer:
I’ve actually been working to get away from client work for almost three years.
And six months later… I am still doing some of that client work I vowed to stop doing.
I’m going to break those down one at a time.
1. Changing my work has been a years-long process.
Let me take you all the way back to the spring of 2022. I was single and living on the side of a volcano above Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. I had been freelance writing for over three years. My days consisted of drinking fresh ginger papaya smoothies, writing and doing yoga in the sun, and swimming in the lake. A dream, right?
However, these are direct quotes from my journal at that time:
“I don’t know, I feel sad… I want to carve out the time and space to work on my own projects and business instead of just churning out client work.”
“I really am done prioritizing selling my words to other people. I want to write and speak for my own projects, my own ideas.”
And maybe my favorite, if only for its clarity: “I feel really called to quit my client work.”
And to give 2022 Katie some credit, she (sort of) did!
That April, I told all of my clients that I would not be continuing to work with them beyond June. When the summer came, I went to northern India and started a yoga teacher training as a way to make some money while I started doing the writing I really wanted to do.
But somehow, for the next two and a half years, the siren call of client work always beckoned me back. The cycle went like this:
Drop client work.
Try my hand at something else.
Run out of savings.
Go back to client work to make some money.
Become creatively and energetically burnt out.
Drop that client work and start the whole loop over again.
Which leads me to the fact that…
2. I am still doing client work that I hate, to this day.
Unfortunately, I am still in the clutches of this cycle. In August, I told you I was dropping all client work. I picked up some jobs around town (dog-sitting! nannying!) until September, when a client I hadn’t spoken to in three years offered me a copywriting retainer that made my eyes light up with little cartoon dollar signs.
I convinced myself that at that price tag, it was actually the perfect way to pay my bills while I worked on the writing I really wanted to do—even if I had to write sales pages to make it happen.
If you want to know how that actually panned out, you can go back to the archives from September-December and see how distracted and strained most of my writing felt. The truth is, I was immediately consumed by the client work I had just vowed to stop letting sap my creative energy.
That reality came to a screeching halt when just a couple weeks before the holidays, that high-ticket client emailed to say they suddenly no longer had a pipeline of projects for me. I read the email during the last few minutes of a hike, when I uncharacteristically checked my phone from the trail.
The icy slap of failure hit me first, my stomach going leaden with dread.
But as I looked up at the crisp bluebird sky, where the winter moon was already showing its early evening face between the tree branches, I understood: this was not rejection. It was the redirection I needed.
A month later, the dust has settled, and I can finally accept that I am once and for all—truly—done with client work. I have two projects left to finish, and I’ve already notified both of those clients that this will be the end of our work together.
The past few years have made this very clear to me:
as long as I am invested in someone else’s vision, I cannot be fully invested in my own.
As much as I like to romanticize my choices, I know that the next few steps on this journey will not be perfect or even particularly rosy. But I would rather find different ways to help pay the bills than keep giving all my creative energy to writing for other people’s businesses.
For now, I am only interested in doing the creative work I want to do—which includes this newsletter and MUSE CLUB.
In the last essay I wrote, I was passionate about the fact that,
“When new parts of ourselves begin to emerge from their chrysalises, they must do so with excruciating effort.”
I have years of experience in trying to swim upstream without anything actually changing. Sometimes, you just need to summon the gumption to crawl up the riverbank and find a new stream to float down.
To wrap this up, I’ll leave you with one last excerpt from that same 2022 journal:
“I guess it’s good to remember that there’s no timeline, no deadline on this stuff. It’s not linear—I just want to follow my gut and stay curious…
At the end of the day, it does take time and effort to make these things happen.”
Honey’s Toolbox is here to help you refill your creative cup and put your ideas into action—from prompts to spark your imagination to gentle nudges that get you moving. Grab a few tools my friend, it’s time to start tinkering alongside your creative spirit.
1. Read ’s prayer for acceptance
One of my favorite writers put together a beautiful little book of daily devotions—which I’ve written about before. I’m not a daily prayer sort of person, but reading these sweet and simple devotions has become a daily ritual while I drink my coffee and settle into journaling each morning.
I want to share the prayer from January 16th, which I’ve returned to almost daily since I started working on this essay:
“Complete acceptance of whatever is happening in my life is the way through today. It is the way forward, it is the way of the present moment, it is the beginning of devotion. While I may be in opposition to something in my life, I practice the willingness to accept it as a tool for peace.”
2. Watch this brand new interview series
I happened across this new and super creative series: the Stargazer Interviews. The host interviews musicians while they lay side-by-side inside a living room fort, gazing up at the “night sky.” It’s lo-fi, simple, and surprisingly intimate.
It’s also a relatively new series with relatively low views. I find it inspiring to see someone else at the start of making their dream a reality. It’s certainly encouraged me to keep making MUSE CLUB as dreamy and incredible as I can.
3. Go hunting for the creative genesis of your idols
Last time, I shared a link to a 2019 vlog Doechii made before she was big. I wound up going down the rabbit hole a bit, watching a bunch of her old videos—shopping blogs, story times, and amateur music videos. There’s something really special about seeing glimmers of the celebrities we idolize in their pre-fame, “normal” selves.
While not everyone has a digital footprint as iconic as Timothée Chalamet’s, this week I encourage you to see what you can find when it comes to the creative genesis of the people you look up to most. Whether it’s personal letters Virginia Woolf scrawled to loved ones, or David Lynch’s early student films, it’s helpful to see the ways in which we all must get our start somewhere and somehow.
4. Try this new group newsletter tool
Another relatively new project, Letterloop.co is an app that takes your answers to different prompts and weaves them into a regular newsletter for everyone in your group! A great way for distant friends or family members to stay connected.
I’ve really enjoyed seeing the marketing by the founder, you can tell this is a real passion project for her. I’m excited to see Letterloop is gaining traction—let me know if you give it a try!
That’s all for now.
Talk soon,
Katie