Begin

Welcome back! After a hiatus I have returned for a new weekly podcast for 2026. I hope you enjoy the more relaxed feel as we start this gentle journey.

Transcript

Hi, this is Katie, and thank you for joining me on the Creating Your Sanctuary podcast. The podcast has been renamed since I last talked, and I did release last episode about that. And I did have to take a hiatus to deal with some health things and also to move countries. So now we are in the Netherlands and loving it here.

It's amazing. And creating our little sanctuary here. So the point of or the theme of this whole entire podcast is about creating things around you that bring you support and bring you quiet and stillness and a place to remember and know yourself. Get to know yourself better because we change over the years. It's something that I've had to learn how to do and sit with and, you know, figure out over all the years becoming, you know, a wife and a mom and all those things. And still discovering new things about myself. So I, the purpose moving forward, as well is to bring kind of, as I have in the past, a subject that tickles my brain a bit.

So as we enter 2026 here, I want to start a new series. I've done a lot of episodes before this. And this time, the tone might feel a little different. It's a little bit more casual. I've changed since the last time I did all of these, I had a theme and a format in my head. So whenever I sat down to record podcasts that, oh, I'm supposed to sound this way. And, and my neurodivergent mind was like, here's the template.

Let's follow it. But this year, I don't know, something in me is like, let's just go with the flow. Let's be a little bit more personable. Let's try to mix things up a little bit. And so I often talk from the top of my head, I have a couple notes, but I don't have like a full script. I think my earlier podcast episodes did feel a bit more script like, but I am going off of some themes that I had, oh, about 10 years ago, maybe a little less, and had written a newsletter that I kind of archived. And now I'm kind of reintroducing.

So I do have like a map of this entire year and next year, and want to revisit those themes that I enjoyed, but in a fresher take, because even when I look back 10 years, there's some things that are kind of dated and, and I've grown and you've all grown and new information and new ways of thinking about things have come to light. So I am resharing and having fresh takes on everything, but I love having like a roadmap in front of me. And this this first subject is, well, topic is about begin, or beginning. And I know this is one of the things that can be really hard for me being neurodivergent. My ADHD side of my brain is like, here's all these ideas, not sure which one I should go with. And then my autistic side is like, where's the structure?

Where's the format? But then where's the reassurance? When perfectionism kicks up, right, I have this, like, I, I fail, I do things wrong all the time.

I learned from them. But there's also this need for my first step to be a solid foundation. So what I'm kind of visually thinking about, because this is January in the new year, um, and something I remember from my early childhood, my dad was climbing mountains. A whim guy. He, he loved nature in the outdoors, but he went to climb Mount Adams with a friend, and I'm trying to think of my uncle was there or not. But I know it was a friend, a couple friends. And he had brought home these, um, things that you put on your shoes called crampons.

And so, um, there's also like micro spikes or ice cleats that you can kind of put on your shoes that are more not for mountain climbing, but, um, these were specifically, you know, because he was climbing in the snow and wanted to put, um, give himself some traction. And so that idea just kind of stuck with me. And when I am like lacking motivation to begin or looking for that momentum, I'm looking for my first toehold in something I am looking for. Everything feels like really slippery and I can't nail it down yet. And that's exactly what I'm feeling like right now making this podcast is like, this is the first thing that I'm doing, um, of the new year and trying to start up like a couple extra projects right now. And it's fun and it's exciting, but when I put my weight down on that first step, I need it to be kind of secure. And so I'm like, where do I put my ice cleats, crampons, whatever you want to call them.

Um, where can I put those spikes into the earth or in the snow and be able to step up on that so that I can just pause and take a look around and see if this is the direction I want to go. So everything kind of takes that first step. And sometimes it can be a physical thing, like just putting on your shoes. For me, it's kind of like, okay, now my brain is like, we can go indoors or outdoors. It opens up more possibilities because. I mean, if you don't have shoes on, it's kind of hard to go outside unless you like live right on the beach or somewhere very lovely. And, you know, we live in a city now and anytime you want to step out the door, you want to make sure you have some kind of shoes on.

But in order to get momentum, I have to think about like, what can I get moving within my own physical body to get my mind working of like, okay, here's the first step and then what's the next. So whether or not I just stand up and jump up and down a few times, or if I just start walking around the house and maybe putting a few things away, or if I go and make a cup of coffee or just something that kind of gets me rolling, I know that I can then kind of attach my next activity to it. Now, it's not really like habits that I'm talking about attaching to, although you can totally do that. And that could be a totally separate episode. But I'm talking more along the lines of like, what can you dig in and get traction with to take that next step after? Because just sitting and not doing anything is really hard to take the next step. And I also, I can very much follow other people's authority.

So if someone outside of my brain, anyone else is like, hey, can you do this for me? Or like, if we're following directions for something we have to do for our city or for our visa here or something, okay, I'll follow those steps. That's outside of me. And I can say, okay, it's this point and then this point, and then I need to get these done because someone else is telling me to do that. But when it's my own projects, my own podcast, my own creativity, my own things, it can be really hard for me to put the pressure on myself to make it happen. And when I don't have that clear, what does it look like when this is done? Then it's really like, well, where do I start if I don't know what the end is going to be?

Yeah, there's a lot of factors that go into it, but that's something I'm really working on right now is like, how do I start things when it's just for me? I mean, obviously, it's for all of you. I'm doing these things for all of you, but it's my own creativity that I want to put out. And I love having those outlets, but how do I hold myself accountable to that? How do I say, okay, Katie, you and I, we're a team, we're going to get this done. So I just want to leave you with some of these ideas of sometimes creating a sanctuary isn't about moving faster. It's about finding a little traction so you don't slip.

It's about figuring out what works best for you, and maybe not everyone else. It's about getting that viewpoint to look around and try to get your bearings. And in that little moment of solitude, questioning, is this the right next step for me? And where am I going to finish this off? It there can be a lot of questions that come up when you have that little viewpoint, right? That you have that traction in and you step up on there. But at least you made that first step.

So I hope you join me on this journey this year and into the following years. But this year as a whole is kind of a capsule, I guess, that I'm revisiting and also have in newsletter form in my Patreon that's linked. And those newsletters are going to have a similar theme, but a totally different outlook as well. So this week's will talk about begin, but in a totally different way as well to kind of mix it up a little bit. So I can have a couple different perspectives to offer you to think about the word begin. So however you're creating your sanctuary, it's enough. And I hope you join me next time on the Creating Your Sanctuary podcast.