Every day I have committed to moving, making, and mothering. What does this mean? It means that I intentionally move my body; Whether that be a walk around the block, some easy stretches, a full blown workout, or a dance class. It means that I make something creative; Whether that be a fancy cup of coffee, a watercolor painting, a doodle in my journal, a digital illustration, or dinner. It means that I make time to spend with the studio gremlin (my toddler); Whether that be reading a book on the couch together, taking her to the park, having a coffee date up at the local shop, or having an after dinner dance party. I have decided that life is too short to not spend my time doing the things that I love most and these are the things I love most. Moving, making, mothering. So I ensure that in this fast paced world, I slow down long enough to partake in creative acts, no matter how small. Creativity doesn't have to be this big production. It doesn't have to be an evening length show (although sometimes it is-save the date 09.13.2025) and it doesn't have to be a full paint session. Sometimes we can't find that kind of time. BUT I can always find a little bit of time for every day creativity; to describe the color of the sky, to add a new move to our handshake, to take a new route home, to put a seed in some soil, to color with my kiddo. These are the moments I cherish and this week, I want to encourage you to find the tiny moments of creativity in your day to day too. 

​Last week, I missed writing this post because we were sick with the stomach flu. Fun. Anyhow, sometimes I feel like I am running around and around trying to get everything done. Jobs for six arms when I only have two. I like these ramblings. These random thoughts that come out of my brain during Friday mornings when I have committed to this practice of writing. These posts will continue to be a marker. A diary almost of the progress of life and projects. I started these posts as a journal to myself to check in on Gastropod, my evening length work exploring pregnancy and postpartum through the lens of a snail. Now titled, “Slowly, Slowly, we begin again”, and set to premiere in Fall of 2025. I know, I know, I have “set” premiere dates before. But this time is different. In fact, the purpose of this post is to share how I am going to be pulling back the curtain, or the epiphragm, more and more on this project and sharing glimpses into it. Hopefully, this will grow excitement for the project and a following of potential audience members. I can’t imagine convincing 50+ people to come to my one woman show is going to be easy. Actually, its not going to be one woman. Audition notice coming soon for a few additional dancers. We are really doing this. We have a date. We have the space. We have a lighting designer. We have the score (almost finished…ahem, nick? -Nick is my partner and helps assemble my music…). We will be getting save the dates sent out! Via Newsletter and snail mail. Speaking of…You can sign up for my newsletter under the contact tab…As for snail mail, if you send me your physical address, I will send you a letter of love! I have been saying “we” but it is just me…Remember jobs for six arms? While, I have limited time to work on projects, I do work on them. Right now, I have wheels turning on this evening length performance (rehearsals officially scheduled May-June to finish choreography), letters of love in the mail, collages for something special laid out on my desk, a printmaking project on the other…. Which finally brings me to say that a new blog practice is beginning…I am going to continue to share these thoughts, here in this format, but you will also notice a new tab on my site, for a new blog, a more traditional blog (some may say). This new blog will feature, as previously mentioned, a glimpse into process for Slowly, slowly… But differently than this. It will more clearly outline what my process of dance making looks like for those who are in other worlds. On this new blog, we will continue to explore all elements of making, moving, and mothering. It will grow and change, as we do. Because, while we have limited time to work, we have infinite space to work in. 

Beginning again and again and again…We officially have a date for my evening length performance. It is set for September of 2025, on my calendar. On the venue’s calendar. Now time to secure lights and sound. Which I can definitely do…

This project has been a long time coming. Three years by the time it hits the stage and yet I am so proud of the work I have done up until this point and all that this work means to me and will (hopefully) mean to others.

Some projects take time like this. Other projects can be decided on and done in a day. Which is wild. Time is weird. The passage of time gets weirder the older I get and I don’t know that I will ever not feel like I am beginning again and again and again. Life can definitely become cyclical. And why wouldn’t it? Seasons exist in a circle. Round and round we go.

Anyhow, I am excited for “Slowly, slowly, we begin again” and I will continue to share progress updates and tidbits here and there. For the next few weeks, I am going to secure new (bigger and easier) rehearsal space and see about hiring some dancers…You read that right, my solo work exploring pregnancy and postpartum is going to involve some additional dancers. I am no longer playing this work “safe”, I am creating it the way it longs to be. That is what you will see on the stage this September, an evening length performance about pregnancy and snails, in its truest form.

Making time for making work is not always easy as a mother artist but I feel like I am finally figuring it out. For me, that is. Creating looks so different from person to person and parenting looks so different from situation to situation. What works for one parent artist may not work for another. It is easy to compare in this area-to think well if my kid was xyz, I could do that too. But the truth is, our kids are always changing, and we are always changing, and there is only one way to keep creating in the midst of it all: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. I am not the first to have said this, and I will not be the last. But it is so true. Some days, I get a paint stroke on the page-one paint stroke. Other days, I luck out and my husband says, “I’m taking the grem to the park” and I get an unexpected hour to paint. But the truth is, it hasn’t always been that way. For a long time in early motherhood, I felt lost among the care tasks, buried in dirty dishes, and laundry, and diapers, and demands for milk and attention (from everyone, not just my baby); Expectations for how I was supposed to show up, for others, became too much for me to hold. Slowly, over the course of about a year and a half, I had to put up stronger boundaries, learn how to say no and mean it, and consider my yeses for a while before the commitment. I had to reprioritize myself and my creativity.

Since I, myself, was a child, I have always loved to create-to make up stories, and songs, to draw designs for clothes, and create new animal hybrids. Before that though, I loved to move, to run and climb, to dance and perform any chance I got. For a time in my adult life, I pretended that I could be fully fulfilled doing something else as a career. But I now know that I was made to be these things: mover, maker, mama. Having a child of your own can help you see the things you need to hold close to as you watch other elements of your life slip away.

Acknowledging my privilege, that I have support and resources available to me that not everyone has, I will say that some days it is still hard to make the choice to create in the midst of it all; But every time I put a pen to paper or I create 6 seconds of choreography, it is worth it. Somedays are more distracting from this work than others, still I crack on creating in every way that I can, mothering every step of the way and I hope that in whatever season you are in, whatever your life work is, whatever caregiving looks like for you, that you are doing the same.

Hello! Happy Pi Day. I know a lot of my audience are fellow math lovers so I thought we would celebrate. Just kidding! But I do personally celebrate each year with my uncle who is a retired math teacher of 20+ years….Anyhow, this Pi day, I am celebrating something a bit different. It is day 21 of the 100 day project on Instagram where I have committed to creating a greeting card design every day for the next 100 days (or at least progress towards one). Today, I am celebrating the ability to show up for myself day after day. To show up creatively, yes. But also to show up in whatever capacity I need. Some of you may know that I have been attending Dance Movement Therapy once a week for the past few months and I am truly beginning to trust myself again. To trust that I know what I need. That my body will tell me when it is time to move, when it is time to rest, when it is time to play. In the past few months, I have been very proud of the routine I have created within nap time. After leaving my regularly scheduled job in August of 2024, I committed the afternoon nap hours to moving my body and making art and I have been consistently showing up for that. When E started school in January (she goes one day a week), I committed her Friday morning school hours to writing these blog posts and working on my art business, and I have consistently shown up for that. But beyond working in these systems I have created for myself, I have also become more attuned to knowing when I need to make a change and show up for myself in a different way. Yesterday, at nap time, I took a nap. Without guilt, I rested. I have been fighting a cold for three weeks and I took what I needed during that window of time. When you build habits that work for you, you can miss a day and come right back to it, without fear. In January (I think?) I read the book Atomic Habits and he talks about improving your life by 1% every day and how that growth cumulates over time. He also distinguishes the difference between a person who does something and a person who is something. I am no longer a person who makes art and a person who moves my body through exercise and dance. I am a maker and a mover. Being those things means that I do those things, I do them with consistency and automatically. I no longer have to think about doing these things each day. Even when I miss my nap time window, these practices are a part of my daily life and will come up in another way throughout the day. That is the power of showing up for yourself, for the things that matter to you. I am so grateful to be crafting the life that I long to live, to be creating the work I want to create, and to be working towards the goals I want to achieve and as always I am looking forward to sharing them with you.

It is happening…Snail sticker sales are underway which is step one in achieving big dreams for an art business launch. In creating my sales channel, I had to answer a lot of questions about what kind of products or services I offer and it is such a hard question for me to answer. How do you categorize something as broad as my entire artistic self. There is not an all encompassing category for snail stickers, fibers art work, movement workshops, handmade goods to compliment family life, collage, candles, yoga classes, tiny tot dance classes, full scale performance work, choreography, and more. Katherine M Yatsko will not be in the container of one category. My deepest dream is that I will continue to build a life that fully intersects all the things that I am and all the things that I love and I hope to inspire others to do the same. So while my business is categorized as “Miscellaneous Retail” here, and “Miscellaneous Personal Services” there, know that I am bringing all of myself into everything I do. I always have and I always will. Thanks for being here with me.

With which it took me to sit down and write this blog post was astronomical. The effort in which it took me the second time… not as hard.

You see, it’s Monday and I typically write these posts on Fridays. As my husband put it this morning, I am a creature of habit. He’s right; As a busy mom with ADHD, I rely on successful systems and positive habits to drive my days. Without them, nothing, and I mean nothing, would get done. And I would be pretty depressed (and a lot more anxious [than I already am on a day to day basis]). Anyhow, I was telling you about how hard it was to get started today to remind you that it is okay if the things you want to start doing are hard. In the words of Glennon Doyle (and others), we can do hard things.

Now, as I wrote out the paragraph you just read I got up to check my oatmeal on the stove (close to burning by the way, hello ADHD). When I came back, my system had not saved the words I had worked all that effort up into writing. But hey, I sat back down and wrote them again. It can be so easy in life to become incredibly frustrated by setbacks like that…little things…and no judgement if you have experienced that (today even), it happens to me too. But sometimes, it can be just as easy to sit back down and rewrite the words. Sure, they may not be exactly the same, sure they may lead to new topics and build differently than you had thought but that’s okay.

When something is hard, sometimes we have to do it anyways and what I have been wondering in my life lately, is what would it look like if we let it be easy? Not the frustration and the reactions but the joy and the forward action. I don’t remember where I first heard this concept but it is so interesting to me. What if I let it be easy to write my blog every week? What if I let it be easy to parent my toddler with patience and love? What if I let it be easy to move my body with intention every day? To put paint to paper? TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THIS PERFORMANCE. Recently, I was on a podcast; It was a coaching call with Merideth Hite Esteves of Artists for Joy (Artistsforjoy.org) and you can read more about my experience in my most recent newsletter (sign up under the contact dropdown!) and listen to it through her website or Apple Podcasts. On the call, we looked through different lenses to move through the creative blocks I am currently feeling and while previously I had described the distance between current self and future self as murky, by the end of the call, I realized I had the magic to reach through the murkiness into the life I want to live. So here I am letting forward momentum become easy, habitual, systematic, sustainable, and perhaps most importantly, joyful. Even if that means writing this post on a Monday because my Friday had to shift. Systems can shift too.

Sometimes, we just show up. Tonight, I am showing up to write this post because I promised myself that I would write a weekly blogpost and so here I am…writing my weekly blogpost. Today, the words aren’t flowing as easily as they sometimes do. The thoughts are cleared… Maybe thanks to the ten minute meditation I just did. At least that’s working out for me. Anyhow, despite the fact that I feel like I have nothing to say today, I am here. When we break promises to ourselves, we put cracks in the foundation of trust. When we can count on ourselves to show up, even when we don’t feel like it, we continue to learn that we are dependable, that we care. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are times we need to give ourselves breaks and have grace for mistakes so there is definitely room for that too. But right now is not one of those times for me. Right now is a time of writing for the sake of writing, letting the words that come to my brain come onto this webs page so that anyone following along can recognize that they too can show up for themselves. Today, show up for your creative practice, whatever it is. If you promised yourself, keep that promise.

Sometimes finding where to begin can feel like the hardest part but the beauty of it all is that you can begin again. Snails begin again all the time. In fact, they operate in a cycle of rest, run, rest run. Now, I know run feels like a silly term to use when talking about a snail. But truly, they hurry around taking care of their business. They can do that because they have rested! “Slowly, slowly, we begin again” is the new title of my evening length performance work previously referred to as “Gastropod”. Over the past two years, I have stepped in and out of this work endlessly, taking time to rest in my shell and time to emerge and run around taking care of tasks. The performance is coming, at a snail’s pace. No matter how slow the progress, I am so proud of myself for not giving up on the project. In this life, progress often looks different than you imagine it to and the older I get, the more I am able to take things at the pace in which they present themselves. Yesterday was my birthday and I was asked to recount something I had learned in the last year. To my surprise, I said “How to be patient with myself”. I am always learning how to be patient, how to wait, how to wonder. Wondering and wandering, we move on. I am not waiting to begin-I have done that many times. I am waiting for when the beginning leads to the ending. When that moment arrives, I look forward to sharing it with you.