​

Hi there!

Ooof. Ok. This email is hard to write. It's one I've been thinking about for months, and now it's time to put my butt in the chair and write it — and it is harrrrd.

*DISCLAIMER* — I know this email is LONG. I don't like reading long-winded emails myself. But big changes are afoot. This is the context. It's like All Too Well, The 10 Minute Version, mkay?

If a year ago, you showed me a snapshot of what my life looks like today, I probably wouldn't have believed you.

My work life is different.

My home life is different.

My love life is different.

My mental state is different.

Ten years ago I went through a divorce, pregnancy, birth, and launching a business all within the span of a single year. Maybe I'm an all-or-nothing girl, because this year I'm racking up big life changes again. In the last 12 months, I...

• ended a toxic relationship AND unexpectedly fell into an extremely healthy one (so lucky).
• took a hard look at my slowly dying business AND decided to take a full-time job working for someone else (so scary).
• said a heartbreaking goodbye to my 4-legged sidekick of 12+ years AND felt the freedom to enter a totally different phase of my life without him (so painful).
• experienced the lowest lows of panic attacks, anxiety, and depression AND put in the work to heal, let go, and open my heart again (so grateful).

Let's zero in on just one of those massive changes today: WORK. This business. This email list. The reason you're probably on it.

For months, maybe even years, I've let my business, Paper + Oats, flounder. It never quite recovered after the pandemic, and it's been on a steady decline ever since. And so has my motivation to fix it. Back in the spring, I was in a bad place. I was BreakupKelsey™. I was crawling my way out of a chaotic, anxiety-riddled relationship with a maybe-narcissist... and lemmetellyou, your girl was tiiiiired. That's when my friend Katie asked if I wanted to come work for her. She was a Marketing Director in need of a graphic designer, and I was a graphic designer in need of a predictable income.

I said yes to contract work, and for the next 6 months I enjoyed a steady income where someone else was calling the shots. Something I missed terribly after running my own business solo for the last decade. I had serious decision fatigue, and I was so relieved to not have my income directly tied to my performance. (This is something business owners don't talk about nearly enough, but that's for another day.)

After a few months of contract work, I felt ready to make a bigger move. The indecision of just watching P+O fizzle felt worse than actually making a decision on a new direction and GOING. I had been stalled out for years, and I needed to make a move.

But 10 years?! Working tirelessly to grow this thing from the ground up? A blank canvas I had spent the last decade filling with colors and shapes and lines and life? The online presence I had worked so hard to build, the one that was all wrapped up in my identity? This business that's literally older than my own daughter — am I just supposed to... walk away from it? (Not entirely. We'll get to that!)

While it's not completely going away, it has felt like a kind of death for me. A friend on Instagram who went through a similar change with her business said it best in my DMs, "There'a a period of ambiguous grieving. It's just a job, but for awhile it was my whole entire life."

And so I made the incredibly hard, but wildly freeing decision to accept a full-time job at that company — The Virtual Savvy, a positively wonderful company that helps virtual assistants launch, grow, and scale their businesses. I've been a full-time employee for a month now, and the mental and financial weight it's taken off my shoulders is SO right for this season I'm in.

Like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be.

One reason I wanted to shift to this full-time job was to free up some mental space for another thing that I've been wishing I had more energy for — WRITING.

That's where you come in. For the last few years, this email list has been used to share my best design and marketing resources, promote my online courses, and share about my business journey.

But all that is changing now. Starting in January, I'll be shifting the focus of my weekly emails to primarily sharing my writing again. Again? Yes, again. I released my first book back in 2018 (you can order it here, makes a great stocking stuffer!), and then I didn't write a lick for the next year. Didn't even journal. But slowly I got back into the habit of writing, and now I can feel my second book is brewing. But first, I need to flex a muscle that hasn't moved in awhile — sharing my writing again.

That feels harder than the actual writing part. It's the vulnerability that can be scary. Also, imposter syndrome. Who am I to think people want to read about my life?! I haven't shown up online as much as I used to, so it's quite intimidating to start doing that again.

What kind of writing will I be sharing here in 2024? Here's a smattering...

• Single parenting
• Co-parenting
• Dating as a parent
• Breakups as a parent
• Parents, parents, parents
• Big life changes (HELLO)
• Healing through pottery, yoga, therapy, and bowls of pasta
• Burnout, but not just in business
• What the heck I've been doing the last 3 years
• Taylor Swift, I'm sure at some point

​

Oof, what a terribly curated list, but that's part of it. You'll see the shitty first drafts as I build back up my writing habit and start forming ideas for my next book. (And don't get mad at me for cursing, Anne Lamott did it first.)

And while my writing takes a front seat, my courses aren't completely getting tossed out of a moving vehicle. As of now, they'll still be up and live and maintained, so you can keep learning from them as you need to. I just won't be putting much time into bringing in new students or sharing free design-related content like I used to.

This will be my last email for 2023 and starting in January, my regular emails will shift to only share about my on-going journey as a writer and author. I'm not sure yet how often they'll come, maybe every other week or just once a month to start — we'll find out together!

Ok, wow, this was long. But there was a lot of ground to cover.

To recap (TL;DR) —

• This year of my life has been nuts – change upon change upon change.
• I took a full-time job with another course creator's business.
• I won't be sharing design / marketing related content on this email list anymore.
• My existing courses aren't going anywhere, students still have full access and new students can join if they want! I just won't be marketing them much anymore.
• My regular emails will transition to only sharing my writing process (see weird list above).
• I might start a Substack at some point, I don't know? Do we use Substack? Do we like it?
  ​

So what do YOU need to do? You have two options.
​

If you DO want to stay on board for the ride as I start writing again and sharing it again, you can happily go about your day and I'll see ya right back here in January (no action needed).
​

If you DON'T want to come along for this writing ride, no hard feelings! The unsubscribe button is a few lines down, feel free to click it.
​

And finally, the last 10 years have been a TRIP. Truly, truly, I'm so grateful for your support and encouragement as I've built Paper + Oats up from scratch — and grateful even now knowing that season is coming to a sort-of-end. I hope you'll stick around for what's next, I think it'll be good. 😎

See you never, or see you in January — you decide!

💛 Kelsey

​

P.S. If you're on the fence, and you're like PROVE IT, KELSEY, here are some places you can find my past writing and see if you're interested in staying on this email list to read more:

• ​When I decided on my word of the year back in January
• ​When I laughed at myself for deciding that word of the year by the summer
• ​This piece I wrote a month ago about my windshield (I'm real proud of this one. Can I say that? I said it.)
• ​How I make decisions as a chronic people pleaser
• ​A tiny little post I wrote on Valentine's Day that... oof... hits different, as Taylor would say
• Want to just read the full introduction of my 2018 book, Strong Girl, Brave Girl?
  • ​​Click here to download the full introduction PDF.​​
  • ​Click here if you want to buy the whole dang book on Amazon.​