QTSL No. 1 : Hi, I'm Kat

Meet the human behind The Quintessence

Hello and THANK YOU SO MUCH for being here. Truly.

My name is Kat and I’m the creator/writer of The Quintessence. It seemed only natural to write my first post as an introduction. I am starting this Substack at a very strange, unmoored inflection point in my life. I’m in one of those seasons where you have to dismantle everything that came before and (slowly) build a newer, truer kingdom in its place. As much as I have tried to do anything, literally anything besides writing as vocation, I always find myself back at the blank page, grateful to be home again.

Why do us writers fight against writing so fiercely? We know we’ll feel better after we write. We know we’ll feel purposeful and aligned after a focused word spill. And yet, we spend hours, months, decades resisting it with all our might.

I think what I’ve gathered this time around the bend is that we so badly want and are so deeply afraid to meet ourselves here. We want to be known and seen and writing knows and sees us…oftentimes too much and too fast. We want the slow drip of self realization, not the naked truth in black type.

But then there comes a day when life has thrown you such a monumental curveball that you have no choice but to stop overburdening your friends with the same sad story over and over again and stop spending all of your money on therapy and just sit down and let yourself write freely about what hurts.

When you finally spot the summit of the summitless peaks your mind created for you, you have the opportunity to stop schlepping up the damn hill and have a seat and look around. You notice the sky and the birds and the weight of your being. You notice that there may be more than one path available here. You notice that you’re confused and lost but also ok.

So, this is me writing from my confused, lost, okayness.

The only thing that really makes sense to me is that we need more reminders that the world is a beautiful, rich, fascinating, complex place. We need reminders that everything started somewhere. We need reminders that everything isn’t a dumpster fire and, if we look close enough, acts of magic and goodness are happening all around.

So, The Quintessence is born out of remembering.

It’s reminding me in the writing and I hope it reminds you in the reading. Life is so damn beautiful. Sometimes we all just need a nudge to look up and see it.

Welcome, love you, thank you, here we go.

Kat