My Halmoni was on to something.

The image of my Halmoni (grandmother) peeling an apple with a knife in one smooth motion plays in my mind almost 20 years later. I now stand at my kitchen sink rinsing an apple before packing it in my lunch box in the year 2025. I pack it whole. The taste from the apples Halmoni set on my small plate, so cleanly sliced by hand, I will never experience again. Time has kept moving, and I find myself thinking of what I will share with such care.

Sharing is an act of love, and it is pleasing to know we are at work preparing what we have to share - something that 20 years from now I may also think back and reminisce over what we had.

***

Why do we push ourselves? Why do we work so damn hard? What if it leads to nothing? Those thoughts may sound familiar to you. Maybe you have heard a struggling friend convey those questions to you. Maybe you have heard them uttered under a quiet breath. Maybe you hear them bouncing against the walls of your own mind. I would be a liar if I said I have never thought them myself, but amidst all that noise a new thought came to my mind: 

Would I have it any other way?

It has been around four months (only? Dang!) that I closed a chapter of my life and moved back across the state to start a new one. It also dawned on me fairly recently how much new is in my life currently. Not new as in new possessions, but new as in new beginnings. I am taking ownership of a new position in my workplace. I am a member of a church plant starting our new congregation. Of course, starting this new business. 

With so many new horizons it is easy to feel overwhelmed and lost, and of course I have found myself feeling that way from time to time, but there are so many opportunities for sheer excitement, to see fruits of your labor in real time. Fruit takes time. You must cultivate the land, tend to the tree, give it your constant care and diligence for fruit to come, but once it does, it will be sweet, gifted to loved ones, and used for things you would never expect. 

August was a month of planting seeds. This newsletter I will be talking about:

• Continuing slow but steady progress on my fantasy novel

• Starting to find Creative Philomath’s voice on social media

• New and exciting content that will be coming to fruition in the coming weeks

Alrighty, grab a piece of your favorite fruit and let’s get to it!

The World of Tian

This section is a little lighter this edition. The tenth chapter took the longest amount of time to write so far, largely because it was so heavy. After taking part of July to re-outline my story, it has definitely helped my writing by making sure I am able to write scenes that point my main character in the direction he both physically and mentally needs to go.

Toren is now being forced to endure life after an excruciating loss, but he is also coming face to face with the byproduct of his time as king. Where we are in the story, he is on the run and has found himself in a remote village that is suffering immensely under their new ruler. This is important for the story because we are now learning more about our antagonist even though he has yet to be introduced in the present. He is so far like a faceless force that is flexing its power from afar. Toren is starting to see the scope of how far reaching his opponent is, but he is also seeing that the suffering taking place in this town did not start from their new ruler.

At the time of this newsletter, I am now working on chapter 12. More will be discussed in next month’s edition, along with how our antagonist will finally reveal himself!

Creative Philomath: Digging Deep

Script!

Lights!

Hairspray!

Ok, that is not all of what I have been up to, but they have been large parts. Jacob and I have exciting things coming down the creative pipeline, and August into early September has been a time of deep reflection on what we want Creative Philomath to be.

With our mission of wanting to help creatives do what they do best, I have really started to think about the things that I have wrangled with as a creative and new writer and how to convert them into compelling content. This past month:

• Creative Philomath has continued to grow its number of page views on Instagram with increasing engagement as well. We had several high performing posts that continued to reach audiences weeks after they were posted. These pieces of content highlighted our unique stories and showcased the voice of this brand

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• While the experimentation is far from over, I have begun to create a consistent style and tone for videos that is aimed to make people feel like they are “in the right place” when they see our content, that they have sat down with an old friend who is eager to share what they have recently learned.

• To better reach our targeted audience, we decided to put more effort into creating YouTube content, with our first YouTube video coming out in just a couple days! Subscribe to Creative Philomath on YouTube where I will be delving into hard learned lessons and tell our story.

Parting Thoughts

Thank you for taking the time to sit with me here. If you did not grab some fruit to eat, I suggest you do. An apple a day keeps the doctors away and is a great source of fiber!

So why do you push yourself? Why are you working hard? It helps to know your “why” just as us at Creative Philomath keep our mission front of mind. Knowing your “why” can give that extra push on days where it feels much harder than the last, or that feeling of comfort when you feel like no one else sees your work and struggle. 

In my culture, fruit is often associated with family life. Most Koreans will tell you that we grew up with our grandparents slicing us pears and apples while we sat at the TV. It was such a simple act, but one that we always knew was their display of love. 

In case you have yet to get the allegory, we are not making literal fruit - but whatever it is you are pursuing or creating, how sweet will it be to know that it may be something that someone reflects on for years. Isn’t that what all this work is for?

Till next time.

Stay curious & stay passionate,

-JD, co-founder of Creative Philomath