I don’t know what has gotten into me but whatever it is I’m loving it and I’m endeavoring to maintain it.

My head has been full of so many exciting visions over the past month and simultaneously I have been so in the mood to make things with my hands 🤲 Excellent synchronizing.

It started over the holidays. My boyfriend’s babushka taught me how to make pelmeni (Ukrainian meat dumplings) from scratch (recipe) and this is where the motivation started building. There was a lot of baking and cooking with his family and I tried to help with anything I could. It felt SO good to get my hands into something and make delicious and beautiful things with them.

Dennis and I painted a flat rock with a natural hole near the edge (perfect for a hook) that his mom picked up on one of our hikes together and we turned it into an ornament for their Christmas tree. His mom told me about how each ornament had a family memory attached to it. I felt honored that I could contribute a memory to the tree.

At some point I expressed my interest in embroidery to Dennis’s mom and she showed me some beautiful embroidery her aunt made. Then for Christmas, Dennis gave me a most wonderful gift: a cross stitch pattern of my beloved cat Bastian (deceased). At the time he was purchasing this, he thought he was getting a deal on a completed cross stitch. To his surprise he got a pdf instead and after a friendly back-and-forth with the seller he figured out that he had actually bought the pattern. After chatting with the seller and seeking advice from other cross-stitchers on reddit he came up with an even lovelier gift than his original plan: a kit for cross-stitching the pattern ourselves. So since we’ve been back, he and I have been enjoying this project together most nights and its been so fun.

I’ve always been a very imaginative and creative person, especially when I was a kid, but for the past several years I’ve felt very blocked, unable to create things I’ve wanted to. I would either lose the motivation too soon or be unable to muster up any motivation at all to get started. Inspiration for what to even create that felt uniquely my own self-expression was also severely lacking. What it boiled down to was that I had an extreme fear of creating something that wasn’t “correct” (ultimately a fear of failing) which prevented me from creating anything at all for myself and being too much of a perfectionist people-pleaser when making for others.

At the end of 2024 I finally had a heart-to-heart with myself that something needed to change. Like, really change this time. This couldn’t be how I kept living, growing more regretful with each passing year. It was absolutely now or never. So, I spent the entirety of 2025 doing deep inner work that helped me resurrect my writing practice. This was the thing I had been grieving the loss of the most.

When I was a child I wrote all the time. I mean I’d write stories and whole chapter books that impressed all of my teachers. But sometime in my teenage years I stopped writing because it apparently wasn’t cool. Then in my late teens, when I started regathering some sense, I made attempts at writing again but felt deeply disappointed in anything I produced. It was so perplexing. Off and on throughout my twenties I wrote blogs but that was about it. Some of my writing I thought was pretty okay, there were a few gems here or there, and a lot of it I didn’t like very much but tried not to care. I also tried off and on to keep a regular journaling practice but hated everything I wrote on paper and felt too discouraged by it to ever keep it consistent.

I’m thrilled to say that last year I finally broke out of this! I’m writing again! Practically daily. And I genuinely love everything I write even when I recognize it’s an utter mess. I’m just so thrilled the ideas and words are flowing through me again. Especially now that AI is what it is, I even feel a bit proud for my words to sound as human, raw, and imperfect as possible. I do make edits where I feel its needed and I go through and zhuzh up word choice and arrangement to my liking, but I’m intentionally leaving space for imperfection to exist. I’m not overly concerned about typos or incorrect grammar. I cherish them like finding hidden gems. I love for my writing to be as distinguishable as possible from AI so that people know I definitely wrote it and pulled it out of my brain with no assistance. I’m also sort of attempting to respond to a deep collective yearning I’ve been sensing (maybe its just me) for there to be more human realness in social media spaces.

Since last year was such a major success for me in freeing myself from writers block, I’m continuing and deepening the work I’ve been doing that made that possible by applying it to other creative practices this year. In general I’m working on mastering flow (as I mentioned in my last email) which will involve me increasing time spent utilizing my will and prioritizing above all, time spent “between breaths”.

What does that mean?

Active time = time spent utilizing will
Neutral time = time spent “between breaths” (momentarily pausing for rest)
Passive time = time spent acquiring/receiving

So, less of my time will be spent passively (meaning less reading, less learning something new, less fucking off scrolling on my phone, etc.),

More time will be spent utilizing my will (by going out and doing the thing, whatever the thing is, i.e. teaching more, networking, promoting events I’m planning, making more art, etc.),

And I’m prioritizing, above all, spending more neutral time.

Neutral time is the most difficult time to spend well, if at all, for a lot of people. Yet, it’s the most essential. This is time spent with “nothing coming in, nothing going out”. This is the time that allows for all of creation to occur, and when you properly balance all three types of time, you create flow.

So what is neutral time and how should one spend it?

I’ve touched on this in previous emails (here, here) but to give you some idea I’ll share my loose plans for how I might spend neutral time this year.

The cross-stitch project is just the beginning of this!

Once that project is completed I’ve created a list of several other creative practices (that I either used to do or have always wanted to learn) to use as suggestions for active and neutral time spending this year.

Here’s my list:

All of these, besides resting/daydreaming could be active or neutral. Active because I’d be moving my ass to do something I’ve been intending to do for a while. Neutral because once I do it enough that it becomes habit, I develop a rhythm with it that allows me to reach a liminal state of mind where I’m neither out-putting, nor in-putting, but rather I’m in a flow state that allows for my body and mind to pause from the influx of impressions and everyday busy-ness and grind.

Btw, I’m most excited for weaving this year! I just got my first loom! I’ve wanted to learn to weave since I was twelve and first read my favorite book of all time: Juniper by Monica Furlong. This year I’m making it happen (active). This means to begin with I’ll spend some passive time learning how to do it. Eventually, with enough practice (active) I’ll develop the rhythm of it where I don’t have to think about what I’m doing and it’ll just flow (neutral). That’s where the magic will happen 😉

So active time is when you are consciously choosing to do something, with the intention to make something happen. Neutral time is when you are in a sort of rest mode - like either literally resting, or doing a rhythmic chore like dishes or folding laundry, or doing something you enjoy like a craft where you can sort of “turn your brain off” while doing it.

*Important note: It’s no longer neutral if you’re, say, doing the dishes but listening to a podcast at the same time. Listening to a podcast would then make it passive because you’re now taking in information. Reading a book, watching tv, even if its for fun its all passive because you’re taking information in. Nothing wrong with it in moderation. Too much passive time = an overloaded brain that eventually leads to a forced neutral (force quit or a crash) and no ability to take action without a big intervention.

I’m not setting expectations too high for actually doing all of these practices or completing any specific projects this year. I don’t want to burn myself out with grand plans, high expectations, and rigid schedules before I establish a rhythm with anything. I’m just gently placing these on the table as potential ways to spend my time well, so that I’m less likely to get sucked back into old habits (an excess of passive) I’m trying to break out of. The creative practice ideas I’ve placed on my suggestions list are things that fill me with excitement, but I’m not forcing myself to do any one in particular. Therefore I won’t feel any shame if I don’t do them which will make it less likely that I’ll lose motivation to do any of them at all.

Since the holidays, the flooding in of visions, and this growing urge to make things, my hands would rather be pushing a needle through fabric or shaping dough instead of clickety-clacking on the keyboard (unless it’s to write).

This year is going to be different in my business. I’m getting craftier. Literally.

So what does this mean for Capella Cora?

Capella Cora, the outer shell of my business, will be dissolved eventually and I’d like to take you with me on this intentional journey of breaking down and growing anew. I’ll be allowing whatever wants to come forth from this transformation to arise organically, instead of in the forced manner I feel it’s current iteration has been. The core of my business, consisting of my values, visions, and who I am as a human being, will remain and become refined to inform what the new shell will be.

As far as the work I’m doing currently (marketing and business design), I have a wealth of knowledge to share, and as a lifelong spiritual/self-improvement seeker with training in many modalities, I have a unique perspective on how to tie these seemingly opposed topics together into something that could greatly benefit small businesses in a more holistic way. I’m not letting this go. I have bold ideas (workshops, workbooks, maps, etc) waiting to be launched and received by people ready to put the effort in. No longer am I force feeding this information to anyone. If you want it, you’ll let me know, I’ll inform you of how you can get it, and you’ll come get it. That way you’ll be more likely to successfully absorb and implement it.

Last year I endeavored to learn about why I was stuck in the less than desirable patterns I kept finding myself in and I DID THE WORK to make real change occur.

This year I’m weaving new patterns. Patterns that express the person I am now and the person I want to continue to grow into.

Until next time,

Kayla

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