Dear reader,
I finally did it! 🎉

After 15 years (eugh, time passing) of writing and posting content online, I’m finally beginning my very first blog.

Welcome to atlaskatari.com and the blog without a name (yet).

If you’re wondering what I’m doing here or what you can expect from me in the next 52+ weeks, then this is the place to start.

In this post, I’m going to spill it all: How I got here, where I’d like to go, and, most importantly, why you should join me for the ride.

Let’s dive right in.

Where We Begin

It may be lame as fuck to say, but, like any good story, the best place for me to start is at the beginning.

You see, writing has always been my biggest coping mechanism. Living with undiagnosed ADHD & autism—and all the depression and anxiety that comes with that—meant that I had to learn how to cope with life fast. Alone. Because no doctors, therapists, teachers, parents, or adult figures could help me through what was unknowingly going on in my internal world, I was left alone to learn how to navigate my world authentically.

And that’s a keyword you’ll hear over and over again in this blog: authenticity. It means everything to me.

It All Started As A Teenager

That’s why when I was 13 years old, I began writing and posting fan fiction (fanfic) online. It wasn’t just a way for me to develop my writing skills or escape the world around me (though it absolutely was both of those things, too)—posting fanfic was my very first way of me finding community online. This endeavor is still ongoing to this day.

From posting fanfic online to slowly growing a Tumblr blog, I sought out community online wherever I could. But besides a few close friends, I never really struck gold, so I tried moving to the world around me.

At 18 years-old, I moved across the world. From a small city in Alaska to the biggest city in Australia, I thought I’d finally found some community for myself. In fact, it was one of those close internet friends that I was going to visit at first, and that eventually grew to finding some queer friends in Sydney, where I spent nearly a full year living and enjoying.

My Freelancing Begins

It was this period of my life that I was introduced to digial nomadism and freelancing. And from there, my freelancing journey began.

I mean, think about it from my perspective: As someone who’d only ever written for free online before, when I heard that you could get paid to write for others online, it was a no-brainer! Of course I’d do that. Who wouldn’t?

So in the beginning of 2018, just 6 months before my trip to Australia ended, I started my freelance writing journey.

And I’ve gotta say, I think my odds were pretty radical considering the amount of freelancers I’d met in the oncoming years.

In just 2 months, I landed my first client paying me over $1,000/month to write CVs for people in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the surrounding countries.

Within 2 years, I went full-time—3 months before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the entire world down.

Within 8 months of going full-time, I moved out of the family friend’s place I was living (rent-free, I should add), and into my own place where I could house a friend and work & live on my own full-time, working only 16-20 hours per week.

I was living the dream! Or so I thought.

By mid-2021, I’d reached 6 figures, feeling like I’d finally found my dream work and life… But that wasn’t the case.

Where My Freelancing Ended

In April 22, right after I’d taken a 2-week trip to Boise, Idaho for Treefort Music Festival and my birthday, I came home to find out one of my closest friends had passed away the night after my birthday party. A party he was invited to, but never showed for.

After that first experience with close death, everything around me spiraled. I stopped pursuing my next step in my career. I stopped responding to client emails. I stopped posting on social media. I stopped feeding myself healthy meals. I stopped showering. I stopped caring… about everything, everyone.

It was around this time that I was also diagnosed with ADHD & self-diagnosed with autism, which only added to the confusion and list of things I should care about, but didn’t.

I know now what I experienced was burnout.

Hardcore burnout mixed with grief, confusion, and a ton of guilty feelings. Furthermore, this was a cycle I’d been living my whole life without realizing it… until now. Every three years since I was a pre-teen (when I first started experiencing depression), I’d build myself up only to crash out hard at the end of the 3-year cycle.

A New Beginning

Fast forward to 2024, and I started the first edition of The Daily Divergent, a daily newsletter under 500 words for neurodivergent peer support on Substack. And while that ended for a variety of reasons last year, I’m happy to announce it will be back up and running again soon! So if that sounds like your jam, subscribe here.

This time around, it took me a solid 3 years to rebuild myself back up from burnout. A whole regular cycle just to rebuild. Putting the words onto paper makes it feel even more real. More serious.

But it took me that long for a reason. I tried many things during those three years including new hobbies, new partners, new places to live, new family relationships, new jobs, new lives, new me’s.

It took that long just for me to circle back around and decide that, hey, maybe I want to give freelancing another shot. Surprise: I didn’t.

This year, I decided to stop freelancing for good.

In order to get the life I’ve always dreamed of—the life I thought I had at the peak of my freelancing—something big had to change.

This blog and the second version of The Daily Divergent are that change.

Where We’re Going

As you can imagine, I’ve got big goals for this blog.

But after 3 years of burnout recovery, I’ve learned a lot about slowing down, acting intentionally, and living below my means (both financially and energetically).

So, with those in mind, here are my top 3 goals going into this new beginning.

Goal #1: Post the newsletter daily (starting soon!) and the blog every Saturday.

This goal comes down to a simple motto I’ve learned to live by: Consistency over intensity—always.

Goal #2: Replace my current income by the end of the year.

Now, I’m not one to care about money. I thought I did while building my freelancing business, Katari Creative, and, well, look how that turned out.

So this isn’t a monetary goal as much as it is a signpost goal.

Replacing my current income—just $1,500 per month—by the end of the year would not only tell me I’m doing good, but that I’m moving in a sustainable direction for my career and my other goal.

Goal #3: I’d love to reach 1,000 subscribers by the end of 2026.

Again, this goal isn’t about clout or chasing fame.

There’s this essay and concept called 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly. Basically, it claims that you only need 1,000 people to be your ride or dies to “make it” as an artist.

Plus, let’s be honest, 1,000 is a pleasing, round number to shoot for.

How We’re Going To Get There

My plan for reaching these goals is still in development, honestly. I’m still doing my vision work on what success truly looks like to me—what it realistically shows up as in my day-to-day life, how it feels to be there, and what signs I need to look out for along the way.

That’s why my goals are directions, not end points.

That said, if you’d be interested in monthly breakdowns on how I’m going towards each goal, would you leave a comment saying “Me!” to let me know?

Join Me For The Ride

So I plan on posting weekly.

“But about what?” you may be asking.

Valid question!

Here’s my current list of topics I’m interested in exploring:

1. Neurodivergent Identity Breakdowns: explanations on the what, how, why, and who experiences every kind of neurodivergence. (Because “neurodivergent” doesn’t just mean autism & ADHD!)
2. Symptomatic Support: deep dives into how to support the symptoms of neurodivergence such as sensory sensitivities, time blindness, compulsions, and more.
3. Life Skills For The Stunted: neurodivergence can make us “spiky profiles” (way better at some things and way worse at others), and therefore, we have gaps to fill in life skills life communication, hygiene, emotional regulation, and more!

If you want more day-to-day support, I suggest joining The Daily Divergent (our daily peer support newsletter) or our budding Discord community.

Eventually, I’ll be launching digital products (both paid & free) that’ll address all of these topics much more in-depth, with videos, worksheets, live calls, and many more attributes. But that’s not for a while to come.

Disclaimer

I think it’s important to note here at the end that I am not a qualified psychologist, counselor, doctor, or peer support practitioner at any level. I am simply another neurodivergent human being trying to share what they’ve learned to other neurodivergent human beings.

If you are here to seek diagnosis—this is not the place for you.

However, if you are here to seek community just like I was 15 years ago—then this is the place for you.

If you’ve got any ideas on what else I could write about, talk about, or read about, please send me an email at atlaskatari@gmail.com.

But for now, that’s all I’ve got.

Will you join me on my new adventure, new friend?