You must be the one to change your mind

are you ready to embrace the void?

today’s photos are from Uttarakhand, India, 2019.

The leaves are beginning their mass exodus from the trees. Neighborhood squirrels are storing up their food in little pockets of earth. Everything is starting to go out in a blaze of red and orange, one last firework display before the deep gray of winter sets in. 

As nature plays the game of letting go, it feels like a good time to turn inward and do the same. 

This October, I’m considering: 

• am I holding myself to visions set by a self that no longer exists?

• what am I ready to release? 

• how might I make space for something new to emerge? 

Changing your mind is a trademark of being alive. But the capitalist machine we live in wants us to believe there is more power in stubbornly maintaining the same old form, rather than branching into new ways of thinking and being. 

These ancient structures rely on the idea that success means accumulation and predictability. But this approach leaves little room for embracing what we don’t know yet and the transformations that fluidity can create.

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“Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.”

— Tiny Beautiful Things, by Cheryl Strayed

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We are who we are—until suddenly, we aren’t anymore. 

Would you rather cling to what no longer feels alive and true, fruitlessly willing its heart to beat again? Or are you able to embrace the void, trusting that what emerges next will be exactly what you need?

There’s no rule saying how you felt yesterday is how you must feel today, what you thought yesterday is what you must think today, or who you were yesterday is who you must be today.

What a thrill—that we can change our mind! Even though we often can’t know what to do until we do it “wrong.”

When you’re trying to get somewhere new using google maps (or, ew, apple maps), it can be hard to tell where your phone wants you to go. You can see your little triangle self sitting there, but it’s impossible to tell if you’re already facing the right direction. 

The only way to find out? 

Movement, in any direction. It doesn’t matter if you go the right way or not. 

Once you start moving, the map sorts itself out. You might nail it on the first try by pure chance, or more likely: your app hesitates for a second, then plots a new route based on where you’ve headed. 

In either case, you were never going to figure out where you needed to go by staying where you started. 

You can only learn what direction to go in by taking the first step.

When you want to create something new in your life, there is no wrong way to get there. There is simply movement in any direction—which will always be generative in some way—or no movement at all. Movement is all that is required, even if it is in the entirely wrong direction. 

Five autumns ago, when I left my English teaching job in Vietnam to become a freelance writer, I’d planned a laughably convoluted route to get myself there.

Here’s what I’d cooked up: I’d travel through India and Nepal on my way back to the US, picking up a Wilderness First Responder certification in the process. This would allow me to work as a wilderness therapy guide out west, with eight days on and six days off. On those six days off, I’d write. I figured this was the best way to create a successful freelance career. 

But just before my WFR course in India, I did a 10-day Vipassana retreat in Nepal (you can read more about that here). Meditating for ten hours a day, without speaking to another soul, shook loose everything I thought to be true.

One question kept circling back: is pursuing a whole other career, one that would require me to buy a car and move across the country, really the best way to become a freelance writer?

The answer was clear: if I wanted to be a writer, I should just focus on writing. No need to create a detour with a completely different career just for the six days off in a row.

And so I readjusted my grand plans and started moving directly toward what I wanted to be doing. It wasn’t easy, but it was a step. And that’s all change ever asks of us: to start moving, even when the way forward isn’t perfectly clear. 

I wouldn’t change that trip to India and Nepal for the world.

I may have gotten a completely unnecessary Wilderness First Responder certification, but I also got the clarity I needed to move towards what I actually wanted (and, let’s be honest, a wildly beautiful and fleeting romance in the Himalayas, a handful of lifelong friendships, and some unforgettable adventures along the way—but those are stories for another day). 

It’s scary, but there’s so much power in letting go of the script and seeing where the winds of change might carry you. Life truly does unfold in unpredictable ways, often leading us to exactly where we need to be.

So I invite you to consider alongside me: 

• What if you didn’t have to hold yourself as a prisoner of your past choices?

• What if you could welcome your emerging self with open arms, allowing your true desires to guide you?

• What if you could begin anew, without needing to know the whole map?

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Honey’s Toolbox is your weekly go-to for filling your creative cup and putting 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. Get to know your emerging selves

If you’re also in a season of sensing the quiet arrival of new versions of yourself, here’s a playful, empowering journaling practice that can help you lean into the qualities of who you’re becoming. 

What’s fun about this process is that it lets you give names, personas, and even aesthetics to these new selves, making it easier to consciously step into them:

• Who are my emerging selves, and what names would I give them?

• What qualities, habits, or desires does each new self embody?

• How does each self dress, move, or express themselves in the world?

• What are the guiding beliefs or values of each self?

• What actions can I take today to start embodying one of these selves?

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2. Read Anne Lamott’s reassuring op-ed on aging

Essays like these make me excited to continue getting older. I can almost taste the bliss she describes as an aging person giving less and less of a fuck, instead becoming more engaged with the simple richness of the world around her:

“How to live? On any unremarkable day, I wake up more curious than I used to be about what’s in store. Today is going to unfold as it is going to unfold. I am not going to be able to corral it like a horse. I hate this, but less and less…

How to live? Simplicity is so rich. My unremarkable days might seem infinitely uninteresting to a youthful person. But older age has given me permission to do what I always dreamed of doing: sit around reading, walk, putter. Busyness and fear constrict us in youth; fresh air and nature free us in old age.”

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3. Deep dive a word

This week I became curious about the word “juncture.” I heard it on a podcast and it pricked my little ear. Then I read it in a book and thought: okay fine, let’s look into this. 

Juncture: from the Latin junctura, meaning ‘joint’, which comes from the Latin jungere, meaning ‘to join.’ 

The root of both “juncture” and “junction” simply represent where two things join together, yet we’ve colored these words with such greater meaning. Which path will you take? And where might it lead you? (And how come words like “intersection” aren’t imbued with this same sense of deeper meaning?)

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4. Learn how the world eats

One of my favorite wholesome Youtube creators is Beryl Shereshewsky, a humble home cook who spotlights the way different cultures around the world use the same ingredients in surprisingly different (and surprisingly similar) ways. 

Each video, she chooses one ingredient and sources recipes from her global community that reflect their unique cultures. She then makes each dish and gives her thoughts. I come away from each episode with at least one new recipe I’m dying to try. Here are some faves:

• How the world eats eggs

• How the world eats avocado

• What the world eats when they’re sick

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That’s all for now. 

Talk soon,

Katie