We Apprentice to Our Own Material
the work that works on you (plus: choosing online authenticity)
Hey! Iâve officially returned to Substack as my newsletter platform after experimenting with Kit. The verdict? Community over optimization. If you previously unsubscribed through Kit and want to unsubscribe here, scroll to the bottom. No hard feelings. May this year be the year of authentic content consumption (and creation) for us all. Xx, Kelly â¨
Hey, Creative ~
I've been supporting a few writers recently in the process of crafting their books, and one thing keeps coming up: we apprentice to our own material.
Here's what I mean by that. When you want to share an authentic idea1 with the worldâ whether through a book, a course, or a businessâyou will inevitably bump up against the idea in your own life.
I'll use myself as an example. 13 months ago, I shared my ideas around creative dysregulation with the world by writing a short and imperfect book in five days. During those five days, I most certainly met my own creative dysregulation, but not nearly in comparison to the amount I bumped against in the year after.
I recently wrote about my 1-year reflections and how digging into my feelings of resentment led to major personal and creative breakthroughs. You can check out that post here.
By tackling the concept of creative dysregulation and wanting to share it with others, I had to âapprentice toâ the material. It's as if my book was silently egging me on like, "Let's see how much you really know about me." In the process of becoming a teacher of creative dysregulation, I became intimate with my own crippling self-doubt, tendencies toward overwhelm, and that nagging all-too-familiar voice that whispers, "You could just step away and go do something else."
In the past, I'd listen to that voice and add another corpse to my project graveyard. But this was so painfully meta, so perfectly ironic, that I couldnât ignore it. I saw what was happening and leaned in. More than writing a book, I wanted to understand myself and this phenomenon of creative dysregulation. So, as if the concept was my master and I was its apprentice, I humbled myself and said, "Teach me."
I use the word apprentice very intentionally here. Because apprenticeship is different from expertise. Expertise says, âIâve arrived. I know this. Let me teach you from my pedestal of arrival.â Apprenticeship? Itâs humbling. It means weâre still in relationship with the thing. Weâre still learning from it.
Traditionally, apprentices didnât just study a craft from the outside. They worked alongside a master, absorbing the nuances through practice. They fumbled. They tried again. They figured it out by doing.
And thatâs what happens when we share an authentic idea. Weâre not just passing along knowledgeâweâre stepping into a dynamic relationship with it. Our work keeps teaching us, shaping us, pulling us deeper.
Thatâs why it can feel like our ideas come back around to test us. Because they do. The moment we decide to put something out into the world, itâs like the universe hands us a knowing look and says, âOh yeah? You sure about that? Show me what you got.â
At first, this can feel like some kind of cosmic joke. Like, really? I decided to write about this, and now Iâm suddenly living the most heightened version of it? But over time, Iâve come to see it differently. This isnât punishment. This isnât proof that youâre unqualified or that your work is invalid. Itâs just the nature of the process.
Because when we step forward with an ideaâwhen we claim it, articulate it, offer it to othersâwe arenât just teaching it. Weâre inviting it to teach us at level 10 intensity. To work us, shape us, and mold us until the knowledge isnât just in our headsâitâs in our muscles, our bones, our being.
Iâve seen this play out again and again. Friends who set out to teach somethingâwhether through a book, a course, an app, or some other tangible creationâonly arrive at a sense of mastery after theyâve fully birthed the thing. Itâs as if the act of creating something whole and shareable is also what completes their transformation. And once theyâve put it into the world, I often see them naturally moving onâready, somehow, for whatever is next.
To me, this gives an extra-rich layer of meaning to doing something like writing a book. Itâs not just about sharing knowledgeâitâs about stepping onto a path that ensures you deeply know something, inside and out. Itâs a direct route to embodiment, a potent way to become the kind of person who doesnât just understand something intellectually but lives it.
Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the muscle â Asaro Tribe of Indonesia
So, if you find yourself bumping up against the very thing you set out to explore, take a breath. This isnât a mistake. This isnât a sign to stop.
Itâs an invitation.
Embrace the metamorphosis. The mentorship.
Say 'yes' to the apprenticeship to your chosen material. And let it work you as you work it.
Apprenticing to Online Authenticity
One of the things I teachâand therefore apprentice toâis authenticity. Near the end of 2024, it dawned on me that I wasnât being fully authentic online.
How did I know? Avoidance.
Ah, good olâ avoidant attachment flaring up with the internet again.
Since July, I have been avoiding social media, wrestling with showing up on Substack, and struggling with long-form writing. Not because I didnât have things to say but because I wasnât playing a game I actually wanted to play.
The last few months have been deeply clarifying. Iâve redefined the internet game to work for me. That meant letting go of hyper-optimizing subscriber numbers, ditching segmentation, and dropping the mindset that thereâs a ârightâ way to do this. And when I looked closer at why newsletters werenât working for me, I realized something else:
I was torn between two distinct ways I wanted to write:
Writing as a coach and guideâthe kind of writing that supports others, shares insights, and offers something useful. The articles that come through me when I think about my clients or people stepping into their creative gifts.
Writing as Kelly, the human and seekerâfirst-person writing that isnât about teaching but about revealing. Writing for the sake of processing, integrating, and sharing for no other reason than to express something true.
So, I made a new game.
I reorganized things and gave myself clear containers to hold these different voices. My Substack is now home to three (actually, four) distinct sections:
đż Wild on Purpose â My first-person storytelling zone, where I work out the material for my eventual pre-motherhood memoir of the same name. This is where youâll meet me as an evolving, unfolding, vastly imperfect humanâa seeker devoted to the healing path, stumbling through lifeâs lessons with bumps, bruises, and entertaining stories.
đ The Prism â The home of my new coaching business, Prismaraâwhere the writing is more focused on you. Here, Iâll share insights to help you step into your own creative power, embodiment, and transformation. Expect personal storytelling in support of actionable guidance or perspectives (like this post).
đĄ The Imaginal â A fun, niche little project chronicling the journey my husband and I are on to build a custom home within a community in Costa Rica. A home of inner and outer flourishingâbalancing nervous system health, biomimicry, sustainability, and feng shui principles with our unique lifestyles of entrepreneurship, creativity, and (hopefully) a couple of wild kiddos.
đ Wild on Purpose (Podcast Edition) â After a 3-year pause, Iâm slowly bringing my podcast back to lifeâbut in a way that actually feels good. No high production stress, no rigid content strategyâjust spontaneous, alive conversations that feel creatively rich and meaningful. Yes, Iâm reclaiming audio too.
This is the new structure that actually works for me. A way of showing up online that feels expansive instead of draining.
If youâve been wrestling with how to be visible in a way that actually feels good, I see you. Remember, there arenât any rules here. Do you. Hereâs to making the internet work for us.
See you soon, loves đ
Xx, Kelly
PS ~ Iâve been lovingly tending to a new arena for rising and reinventing creative leaders to expand within. The first âPrismara Circleâ will be revealed in the next weekâ a space to do the deeper inner work necessary to bring authentic creations into the world. Iâm so excited to share it with you â¨
Lastly, if nervous system work is on your radar...
My husband,
, is currently enrolling the next cohort of Nervous System Mastery, a transformational program designed to help you regulate your nervous system, increase your resilience, and expand your capacity to be with all of life. Iâm honored to be a guest teacher in this round with a workshop on âOvercoming Creative Dysregulationââ illuminating the important overlap between creativity and the nervous system. If youâre curious, you can check it out and receive $250 off HERE. Doors close tomorrow.An âauthentic ideaâ is one that comes from a deeper place within yourself. Itâs personal and, most likely, confrontational. When I was a Sleep Coach in 2018, the content I wrote didnât matter much to me. It wasnât âaliveâ or authentic to my life journeyâ I was just regurgitating information I read about in sleep books, with my own spin on them. After a year, I could hardly stand the topic anymore because of how dry and boring it was to me. But creative dysregulation, well, that was an authentic topicâ personally powerful, meaningful, and important. It came from me and moved outward, versus an idea coming from the outside world and simply flowing through you as an intermediary step. IMO, authentic ideas are the only ones really worth pursuing and giving yourself to. Youâll inevitably grow into a more evolved and truer version of yourself.