2024

Hey there! Golly, it’s 2024. How weird is that? As you can see, it’s been a long, long while since I’ve updated here – or anywhere really. I’ve managed to sort of drop offline in any public kind of way and if I’m truthful, it’s been nice. However, I’m feeling a desire to drop giant paragraphs here and so here we go! Let’s see… when I last left off it was during lockdown. We had moved to Washington state. We had two cats and one dog. Since then, we’ve moved back to New England, have two different cats and sadly, zero dogs. I’ve been working fulltime the past 3 years. In that time, I’ve written loads and loads of products and have been published under my own name once. (Check out Letters to Destroy here!) I co-wrote a movie script and last November, I challenged myself to turn the script into a novel – just to see if I could write fiction. Turns out I could – I’m not claiming it’s good, but I wrote it!

This brings to me to where I am now…

I stopped sending my diary out back in 2021. Since then, aside for the projects mentioned above, I haven’t written much of anything personal, and it feels like time to get back to it. I’ve decided to activate the Substack I started two years ago but have only posted on once. Substacks are sort of like newsletters, well, they are newsletters (duh!). Writers can offer some free content, hide some content behind a paywall, or offer all free content or all paid content. I’m planning on doing a bit of both. I miss the days of old-style blogging. I miss keeping an online diary and mailing it out to people and I missing hearing back from those people. Time to amend that.

 I’m going to mostly share about writing. Writing anything and everything – from what to write inside a greeting card, how to write a letter, what’s it like to write books + make products, how to write a NO thank you response, how to structure and write productive lists… everything about writing almost anything. I’m also going to track my own writing projects with regular updates on my word counts, the resources I’m using, the tools that I find helpful and the struggles. (I have So. Many. Struggles.) Fiction is really challenging for me, but I’m determined to figure it out and get better, and hopefully sell my first novel within the next year (or so). Since that kind of content is sensitive (vulnerability! ack!) I think that’s what will be behind the paywall. That and more personal diary entries. If you are interested in coming along, you can sign up below or click here: https://karichapin.substack.com/

 I’m just getting started but having you along with me would feel good and I’d be grateful for your company. Thank you for reading this. Thank you for existing. Thank you for finding you way here and being a part of whatever this turns out to be. Something? Nothing? No matter, I’m glad we’re both here.

2020

Hello. This is sort of like opposite of a postscript - a prescript perhaps? I am not deleting what is below (yet) but it is also no longer relevant content. Since July 1st of 2019 I have changed a lot, and so has the entire world. I took a solo road trip across the US. I spent a bunch of my time in New Mexico going to art galleries and museums everyday and just sort of wandering around journaling and weeping in public, but like in a semi-joyful way and oddly enough it was incredibly healing. Then in February of 2020 my husband was offered a job in Washington state and we literally gave away or sold like 90% of what we owned and drove across the country to see what life has in store if we just keet saying “Yes, and?”. Now it’s the middle of May and it turns out that life had a global pandemic in store for all of us, and I am no longer sending out diary entries. At least not the kind described below. I’ll be sending other types of life updates and a few business ones too - but not the same kind as before. About 4,000 of you signed up for my dairy over the past 10 months or so and I want to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Your feedback, your support, and your friendship during this time has been like the best things ever - and now this is turning into the email I am sending you as my last one - and not the kind of thing that discourages new people from signing up for content I am no longer producing. Pre scripts are hard to manage, yo. Anyway, bottom line: I would love to have you sign up for my newsletter, but the general content and direct has changed from what I offered below, so if that’s your main motivator, sorry. More soon, xoxox

2019

Hi, Friend. I woke up on a random day in March of 2019 and realized I AM NOT LIVING MY RIGHT LIFE. And now, half of the year has come and gone. Today is July 1st and I am nowhere near where I want to be. Many months of staring into space, re-watching every season of GBBO and RuPaul’s Drag Race, and avoiding my feelings at all costs have produced few positive results. Turns out ACTION is very important if you want to see change of any kind. I needed to make some big decisions. I consulted mystics, tarot readers, spiritual healers, trees in my yard, my cats, my journal, and anyone who would talk to me face-to-face or over Skype about what I should do. The advice I kept receiving was: start writing a diary and share it with people - sort of like the blogs from way back in the olden days - think Geo Cities, Blogger and LiveJournal. I am nervous about this kind writing, so I decided it would feel more comfortable to write in a newsletter format vs a traditional blog. (Yes, I know about Medium, but I do not understand Medium, even though it comes highly recommended. I mostly understand newsletters, so here we are.) If you would like to follow along as I work to change my life in seemingly every way possible, and in some ways that feel impossible, sign up below. Wow, this is hard. I feel really vulnerable and I don’t like it. At all.

Being a “real” person is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

And yet… here I go!