I'm back here

It’s been a while since I last wrote here.

I’ve been in a more inward phase, where attention has been inside the work rather than on sharing it. At the same time, life has been full in very real ways: relocating back to Finland, starting a new business, and re-establishing my creative and professional life in a new context.

For some time, I found myself navigating many directions at once: creating, building structures, exploring new ways of sharing, and trying to understand where my energy actually wanted to go.

Over the past year, I also found myself questioning in what way I wanted to share my work. I felt I was gravitating away from instructional ‘how-to’ content with step-by-step guidance, and after close to 30 years of teaching singing, I found myself less inspired to talk about singing technique and more drawn to what sits underneath it all.

What’s become more interesting to me are the deeper layers underneath creative work itself: identity, creative process, artistic direction, resistance, vision, and the question of how we actually build lives that can hold what we want to create.

Over time, I’ve noticed that the things creating the most friction in our lives are often the places where we’ve held onto versions of ourselves that we’ve already outgrown. It’s as if they become too small to hold what we are becoming.

I’ve been through this kind of transition before. Years ago, I gradually moved away from identifying professionally primarily as a music educator, while singing and artistry started taking up more space. Then, supporting creatives in their creative process, projects, businesses, and life vision started emerging alongside the identity of a singing teacher and vocal coach. And now another identity shift is unfolding.

Alongside my own creative process, I’ve continued working closely with artists and creatives throughout this time: supporting their voice, creative process, projects, and the development of their artistic vision.

So while my writing became quieter, my work itself didn’t. If anything, it has deepened. I’ll share more about that another time.

This current shift feels connected to a broader life transition as well, as I’m navigating a phase with significant changes in a woman’s life: perimenopause. It’s like an invitation into something new and still largely unknown. It feels like an initiation of some sorts: a process of integration, where different parts of the self come together, older versions fall away, and certain old narratives are released.

Transitions - whether they’re related to hormonal changes or other life changes - are usually also bringing up discomfort. As you’re expanding beyond what you were, you’re being called to step out of what you have grown to see as comfortable and known. The other week, I was reminded of a YouTube video on how lobsters grow, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what Dr. Abraham Twerski says about growth there: that discomfort and stress are often signals that something in us is trying to grow beyond its current shape.

I think creative life can feel like that too.

Over the past year, I’ve been rethinking where I want to share my work. Social media, and even traditional email newsletters, have started to feel either too fragmented or one-sided for the kind of creating, sharing, and conversations I want to have.

On social media, ideas move too quickly with too many distractions. I’ve always been more of a long-form type of person, and there are several reasons I feel less drawn to feeding systems built around constant dopamine loops and short attention cycles. Social media can be a glimpse into something, but it isn’t the place where you can create depth.

That’s why I’m returning here to Substack, and I’m moving my email list here as well - so if you’re reading this, you’re now here with me 😊

I’m not returning here simply to restart a newsletter: my intention is to build a deeper body of work around artistic identity, creative process, creative life design, and what it actually takes to turn creative vision into lived reality.

I think this ongoing process of shedding old identities, allowing new ones to emerge, and learning to trust those transitions is also a big part of what I’m interested in exploring here.

More and more, I find myself drawn toward the conversations, questions, and work I could talk about for hours.

Over the coming time, I’ll be sharing writings, explorations, and reflections around creative life, along with ways to work more closely together. The podcast is coming back, and I also like that I can include video or live video streams.

Some of this work comes from my own artistic practice. Some from my work with artists in deep transformation. All of it is shaped by being in the process myself.

I’d also like this to be more of a conversation.

I’d love to hear where you’re at in your own creative life right now. What’s been shifting? What are you questioning, building, returning to, or trying to move toward?

You’re welcome to leave a comment or message me directly.

I’m happy you’re here!

-Katja