Whether it’s a New Year’s Resolution that’s already fallen to the wayside, a healthy habit you’ve been struggling to reintegrate, or a lovely little hobby that once brought you joy – today’s episode is your pep talk to just pick it back up.
No guilt. No shame. No stories about wasted time. The truth is that we all fall out of sync with the things we want for ourselves. Habits are hard to maintain, especially new ones. And dedicating time to cultivating joy can feel hard without sufficient momentum.
So, I’m here to offer myself and you not a kick in the pants, but a gentle nudge to just get the wheels turning again. Even a tiny bit of action might just get you back on the road to your most awesome self.
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Resources, References, and Links
Note: book recommendations include affiliate links. If you buy a copy, I’ll get a tiny commission, and that would be super cool.
Atomic Habits by James Clear. Super great book to pick up if you want to make changes in your life.
An Invocation for Beginnings by Ze Frank. I have watched this video well over 100 times – it’s SO good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g
2025 New Year post – “Intentions Are Better than Goals (Especially for the New Year)” (AKA Episode #28)
Episode #35 – “Cultivating Joy Amidst the Shit Show”
And just for bonus fun, some other motivating posts/recordings:
- “Habits and Routines and Rituals, Oh My!”
- “Start Small and You May Surprise Yourself”
- “In Praise of Gentle Consistency” (Episode #24)
- “Action Fuels Motivation (Seriously)”
Transcript
Note: this transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!
[00:00] None of us are going to be able to maintain momentum on all of the things all of the time. But whatever it is that we were doing but stopped doing at some point,
[00:08] it’s still there.
[00:10] And all we have to do is pick it back up. In order to feel able to pick it back up, though, we often need to unpack the rubble that’s accumulated to get in the way and to cut ourselves some fucking slack.
[00:24] Welcome to Settling Is Bullshit, a sweary podcast about claiming your joy.
[00:29] If you are craving healthier boundaries, a greater sense of purpose, or an increased capacity to feel at ease in your own skin, then you are in the right place, my friend.
[00:38] I’m your host, Kate Blouke, joy activist and life coach to smart and sensitive humans.
[00:43] I’m here to offer you practical tools and playful encouragement to step forward and be your most awesome self. My hope is that each episode will leave you feeling a bit more empowered to make brave choices and claim your joy.
[00:58] Hello, my friend.
[01:00] How are you?
[01:02] Welcome to 2026. I would say Happy New Year, but like,
[01:07] fascism is alive and well in America today.
[01:10] So I’m just gonna say that I really hope that you have been doing things to take care of yourself and cultivate joy.
[01:20] And you know, we are a couple of weeks now in into a new year,
[01:25] and if you’re anything like me,
[01:28] maybe you set some beautiful intentions for the new year.
[01:32] Maybe you even set a New Year’s resolution.
[01:35] And it’s totally possible again, if you’re like me, that you already haven’t done it as much as you thought you were going to do it. And I’m here to tell you that that’s okay.
[01:43] I’m excited to be back at this podcast. I already intended to get back to it sooner,
[01:49] but I’m here now. And when I was thinking about getting back to this and getting back to you, who I have missed so much,
[01:56] I remembered that some time ago,
[01:59] before this was a podcast,
[02:02] I had written a blog post called Whatever It Is, Just Pick it Back Up.
[02:09] And that’s a callback to the very beginning of this blog and podcast.
[02:15] Episode number one of this podcast is Whatever It Is, Just fucking start.
[02:22] And so I thought it would be cute to see what past me had to say about just picking back up with things.
[02:30] Actually, that’s a lie. What happened was I was like, oh man,
[02:33] I wrote that post a long time ago. And then I wanted to listen to the episode and I realized that I hadn’t recorded it as an episode. So now’s the time because we’re getting back into the groove and sometimes we just need a little reminder, a little pickup me up,
[02:47] a little pep talk, being like, hey, you stopped doing the thing and that’s okay, you can start doing it again.
[02:53] That is something that we talk about a lot in the rooms of recovery, is that at any point in your day, you can just hit the reset button and start your day again.
[03:00] You know, theoretically.
[03:03] Often easier said than done. But yeah. So I’m gonna read the post that I wrote all the way back in May of 2023,
[03:12] and then I’m gonna talk a little bit about it. And hopefully you’re gonna leave this episode feeling just like a little and a little bit encouraged that whatever the fucking thing is that you may or may not be being hard on yourself about not doing as much as you thought you were going to do,
[03:28] you could just do it. You could just pick it back up.
[03:31] So here is the original post.
[03:33] You know the feeling. Suddenly you look up and it’s been weeks or months since you did the thing that you used to do every day, and you feel both panicked and exhausted.
[03:43] And the prospect of getting back to it feels like doing a pull up with arms made of noodles.
[03:48] Or maybe that’s just me. Falling out of routine can so easily spiral into avoidance,
[03:53] into guilt or shame or procrastination, or any number of less savory feelings that ultimately keep us stuck. It starts with letting something else take precedence in a way that feels totally reasonable.
[04:04] You don’t have time this morning to do your stretching, but you’ll do it tomorrow. And then tomorrow you check your email before getting to the stretches and get distracted. And then it’s time for work.
[04:12] The day after the snooze button’s siren song gets the better of you.
[04:17] And then all of a sudden it’s been a week or two or six.
[04:21] And then it just feels so much harder to get back to it.
[04:27] Partly because you’ve lost momentum and partly because there’s a nagging sense that you’re having to, quote, unquote, start over,
[04:33] that somehow you’ve lost time and it’s going to be so hard to get back to where you were. Or like me, you feel guilty for falling off the beam of something that mattered to you, and that guilt keeps you stuck in inertia.
[04:45] Oh my God. Side note, like, that’s how I’ve been feeling about this podcast and about writing the blog. Like I haven’t been doing that in a million years. And all of this feels really resonant.
[04:55] Okay, back to the back to the post. But let’s stop staying stuck.
[05:00] Let’s just pick a fucking thing up again and give ourselves a gold star for even a millimeter of forward momentum.
[05:08] It just takes a tiny bit of momentum.
[05:12] Last week I posted to my baking blog oh my God, you guys, I have a baking blog. I don’t ever talk about that, and I haven’t posted to that in a couple of years for sure.
[05:19] But anyway, apparently when I wrote this post, I had just posted to it. Also. Sorry, not sorry for all the side asides in this episode. Apparently that’s the vibe. Okay, so I had posted to my baking blog for the first time in more than two months,
[05:35] a publication gap that was vastly longer than I’d realized. I knew I hadn’t posted in a while, but I was going to get to it.
[05:41] I just had work and school and exercise in this blog, which I also haven’t been posting to quote unquote enough that I had to get through first. There’s so much that can get in the way of forward momentum.
[05:51] Fear, guilt, overwhelm, hopelessness. And there are so many stories that pop up to tell us that we can’t or it isn’t worth it, or we’ll get to it eventually. And those stories are bullshit, but they’re powerful bullshit.
[06:03] Right now, I have substantial drafts of three other posts languishing in my Google Docs.
[06:09] They either began as part of other posts and got long enough to be broken out into their own, or were things I felt inspired to write about two weeks ago but then ran out of steam before I finished them.
[06:18] So why the fuck am I writing this instead of finishing those?
[06:21] Because we have to go where our inspiration takes us.
[06:24] Pushing myself to keep working on something that doesn’t resonate today,
[06:27] that doesn’t feel good or call to me, is just going to make it harder to get going again.
[06:32] Picking up my metaphorical pen and writing something that interests me is the best way to get back into momentum.
[06:38] We don’t have to fight with ourselves to get going again. We just have to sort out what we’re telling ourselves. That’s getting in the way.
[06:45] What gets in the way?
[06:46] I was having a conversation with my best friend last week about how they’ve fallen out of the habit of reading books they like reading in theory, but they dropped off a while ago.
[06:54] It just kind of stopped being something they did.
[06:57] And as we were talking about that, we unpacked something interesting, something that was very sneakily getting in the way because of how they approached Reading as a kid,
[07:05] completing books to win prizes from the library.
[07:08] And because of other ingrained beliefs, memories, practices,
[07:12] they had this internalized notion that once you start a book, you have to finish it before you can start the next one. My friend had started a book a year ago and hadn’t finished it because they rather lost interest in it.
[07:22] And so something inside them was saying, well, you can’t start a new book until you finish that one, which was very effectively keeping them from reading anything else.
[07:30] Maybe you can relate to that, maybe not.
[07:32] I can.
[07:33] My subconscious, or sometimes my fully conscious, manipulative brain says, I can’t start X project until I finish Project C that I started six months ago.
[07:42] Or I can’t go back to this thing because of this other thing.
[07:46] I can’t write a post on this blog if I haven’t been writing on that blog. Or most apropos to this context, I need to write in the morning when I’m feeling most inspired.
[07:55] But I’m doing this intense morning meditation practice and now I just don’t have the time before school work.
[08:00] So then things sit and they languish and I feel guilty and frustrated with myself for not doing the thing.
[08:06] And then since I haven’t done the thing in a while, I feel even more guilty and frustrated and keep not doing the thing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[08:13] It’s not fun,
[08:14] and it’s also not a unique experience.
[08:17] It’s just how adulting goes.
[08:19] We have a lot of demands on our time and energy now that we have to feed and clothe and clean our and house ourselves.
[08:25] None of us are going to be able to maintain momentum on all of the things all of the time.
[08:29] But whatever it is that we were doing but stopped doing at some point,
[08:33] it’s still there.
[08:34] And all we have to do is pick it back up in order to feel able to pick it back up. Though we often need to unpack the rubble that’s accumulated to get in the way and to cut ourselves some fucking slack.
[08:45] We aren’t starting over.
[08:48] Exercise is a good analogy here.
[08:50] If you used to be a runner, or a soccer player, or a cyclist or a ballerina, you still know how to be those things, even if your body has to get back up to speed.
[08:59] If you used to be super into yoga, you still know how to do the poses, even if your body doesn’t do them like it used to. You still know how to ride a bike, even if you can’t go as hard or as fast as you used to you know how to swing a racket,
[09:11] you know how to kick a ball.
[09:12] You know how to throw a Frisbee. So you aren’t actually starting from scratch. We get so caught up in the idea that we’re having to start over, as if setting something down for a time means all the work and effort and learning we did to get where we got suddenly evaporates.
[09:27] But it’s still there.
[09:29] You still have whatever foundation you laid before.
[09:32] It’s just possible that your framing collapsed or the drywall needs to be redone. But you aren’t starting from scratch. And that’s important to remember. You aren’t ever entirely back at square one.
[09:41] This comes up in recovery a fair bit. When folks have a relapse, it can be incredibly hard to come back into the rooms because it feels like starting over. But regardless of how long a relapse lasted, how long it’s been since someone was in recovery, the time they spent sober isn’t go the things they learned and growth they achieved aren’t gone.
[10:00] Head injuries aside, you get to hold on to all of your growth and healing and learning.
[10:04] Even if you stop applying it for a time, even if you backslide into unhelpful behaviors or thought patterns.
[10:11] Somewhere up in your noggin, you did start to form neural pathways for the behaviors and thought patterns that you do want.
[10:18] They just need strengthening again, and that just takes a teeny bit of willingness and effort.
[10:23] I will sing the praises of atomic habits always and forever,
[10:27] and the basic gist is to start small and keep going an itty bitty step at a time. Pull the thing off the shelf and look at it today, tomorrow, hold it in your hands for 30 seconds the next day, make one minor addition or adjustment, and so on until at some point you’re back to doing the thing.
[10:45] Something is always better than nothing when it comes to regaining momentum. And we’re never really starting over. We’re just starting back up.
[10:52] Right now. I need to remind myself that I haven’t lost anything by not posting those drafts I started and abandoned,
[10:59] or for not getting something new up in a few weeks.
[11:02] All of my posts from the last six months are still here. My capacity to communicate ideas in a way that at least a handful of people find engaging is still here.
[11:11] The vast array of ideas I want to write about is still here,
[11:15] even if my capacity to wrangle one of them onto the page has been a bit more elusive. It’s all still here. Not lost, not wasted.
[11:23] I’m not starting over. I’m just Starting up again.
[11:26] And if you need a bit of motivation, watch. There’s a video I linked to to get you started. I watched it every day. I sat down to write my fucking dissertation, and eventually the damn thing got done.
[11:37] And that video is by Ze Frank, and it’s pretty great.
[11:40] So I’ll link to it in the show notes as well.
[11:43] Oh, my gosh, my friends, I needed that pep talk. And I needed,
[11:47] like,
[11:48] read you this post in order to get back to podcasting. Like, I have been wanting to do this. I missed you so much last fall while I was taking entirely too many classes.
[12:00] I am taking a reasonable number of classes this term.
[12:03] We’ll see how well I do in terms of keeping up with the podcast.
[12:07] But, like,
[12:08] just like I talked about in that post, I have a couple of interview episodes that I wasn’t able to get edited before school started.
[12:16] And they’re sitting there and they’re languishing and they’re yelling at me sometimes in my head, the people I interviewed are lovely. They’re not yelling at me at all. They’re fine.
[12:27] But my little brain was like, oh, well, I have to edit those before I can post anything to the podcast. Those are sitting there. They need to be attended to.
[12:37] And the reality is I had to get some traction first. I had to get back in front of the microphone and remember how how, like,
[12:47] full of joy my heart is in this moment.
[12:51] Getting to talk to you and knowing that future me is also gonna get to listen to this. Like, that is one of the things that’s been really cool.
[13:00] I also, in order to, like, get myself back into the groove, listened to some of my older episodes. It was really cute to listen to the post I posted at the beginning of 2025 in which I read a post from the beginning of 2024.
[13:15] It’s so meta.
[13:17] Just talking about, like, setting intentions for the year ahead and, like, thinking about who I want to be and how I want to be in the world. And I want to be giving this podcast some love because it nourishes me.
[13:31] But I also just, like, needed to give myself a fucking jumpstart, a little kickstart. Like, oh, well, if I just read something I wrote previously but never actually recorded, like, that’ll get me going.
[13:43] And it has already.
[13:44] Like, I’m so into this. Like, I’m just so happy to be here with you right now. Like, oh, my God, I’m like, I didn’t even know how nourishing to my soul it was gonna be to hit record.
[13:55] And Start talking into this microphone and to know that I’m gonna edit this and get it posted. And, like, some of y’ all are gonna be like, oh, my God, there’s an episode.
[14:04] This is great. I’m gonna listen, and hopefully you’re gonna get something out of it.
[14:07] And so I wanna invite you,
[14:10] like, I kind of talked about in the post, to, like,
[14:13] think about, like, what that kickstart might be for you. Like, if there’s something.
[14:18] Whether it’s a fucking New Year’s resolution or whether you’ this at some other point in time, you know, like, what’s the thing that you used to do that brings you joy?
[14:28] Especially during these, like,
[14:30] awful, horrific, fascist times.
[14:33] Like, I’m gonna link to the episode about cultivating joy during the shit show because the shit show persists. And, like, we have to tend to our joy. And so I just really want to be a source of motivation and encouragement around that and to be modeling it right here,
[14:51] right now, like, this podcast. And doing this podcast fucking brings me joy.
[14:55] And I, like, intellectually knew that, but kept not doing it because it’s so easy to not do it.
[15:00] It’s so easy to, like, not end up doing the things that nourish us. For those of you listening who are in recovery, like, I know, you know, like, going to a meeting usually makes us feel better, but it’s really easy to not do that.
[15:12] And there doesn’t have to be any, like, judgment or shame around that. It’s just sort of, like, a fact of being human in an overwhelming world where there’s too many things to do all the time.
[15:21] But I know. I know that. That either there is something in your life that you used to do that made you really happy that you stopped doing.
[15:29] And I want to invite you to think about, like, what would be the. Like, easing into what’s the way in? What’s the, like, workaround? What’s the, like, oh, well, maybe I can’t start a whole fucking oil painting right now because getting all the shit out is going to take way too much.
[15:46] But what if I got, like,
[15:48] two colors and a paintbrush and just sat and, like, played with it a little bit?
[15:53] What would that feel like? This is relevant to me right now because I am looking at an oil painting that I painted last term,
[16:00] and I had these, like, aspirations that I was going to do painting over break, and it just didn’t happen.
[16:06] But whether it’s, like, knitting or crocheting or something, or maybe it’s just, like, going on Pinterest and looking for some inspo.
[16:14] Some little inspiration going down the real rabbit hole on the Instagrams and finding things that, like, will get you mentally excited about the thing and then pick something for tomorrow.
[16:29] Okay, so, like, today I. Today I watched a bunch of Instagram, and maybe I saved a couple of little creative ideas that sounded appealing or whatever.
[16:39] Enlist a friend who can be your support buddy for whatever it is that you want to pick back up with and, like, set a manageable goal,
[16:48] you know,
[16:48] like,
[16:49] fucking A.
[16:51] I will not be able to keep to. To do weekly podcasts for you, my loves, while I’m in school. This is not gonna happen.
[16:59] But I. I set the intention at the beginning of January of, like, okay, I want to get at least fucking one episode out. The last episode I posted, you said you wouldn’t hear from me till January.
[17:07] It’s January.
[17:08] I want you to hear from me.
[17:11] And, like, that gets to be enough. But I’m already, like, feeling in my little itchy finger bones that now that I’ve done this, now that I’ve hit record and I’m getting to look at all the little spiky recording doodads on my computer while I talk,
[17:26] I’m excited to get back in and, like, edit those interview episodes. Like,
[17:31] you just gotta do whatever it takes to get you in the headspace.
[17:35] And so whatever the fuck it is, just pick it back up.
[17:39] Just pick it back up. You’re not too old. It’s not too late. It’s not been too long.
[17:44] Like,
[17:44] life is short. Life is long.
[17:46] Time is meaningless and also meaningful,
[17:50] and it won’t get done if you don’t do it.
[17:52] So please, please, please just give yourself the gift of something that brings you joy or something that you know is gonna lead to your greater joy, your greater sense of purpose and fulfillment in the world.
[18:05] And, like, let me know what that is.
[18:07] I don’t know how posty posty I’m gonna be with this, but whatever smoke signal you want to send me,
[18:14] whether it’s on Instagram,
[18:16] emailing me@katettlingisbullshit.com like, I always love to hear from you,
[18:21] and so I’d love to hear whatever it is that you have decided to pick back up with and how that goes,
[18:26] y’ all imaginary friends out there have really just brightened my goddamn day today.
[18:35] This feels so good, and I had no idea how much I had been missing it. So thank you for being you, thank you for listening,
[18:43] and may we all survive another year, friends,
[18:48] and do our best to. To take care of each other.
[18:55] Thank you so much for listening.
[18:57] If you enjoyed this episode, please help me grow the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too.
[19:06] Your support means the world to me.
[19:08] If you’d like to get updates about new episodes, posts and offerings,
[19:12] please visit settlingisbullshit.com to subscribe to my newsletter.
[19:16] You can also find information there about working with me one on one to build your most amazing life.
[19:21] Until next time, remember that I believe in you and that you are fucking awesome.
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