So what’s next for Kaite, or my way by Starlight? I know this blog has been so incredibly quiet… 2023 was a big year for me, a Very Adult Year. I got a new job, a new car, and bought my very first condo-all in the span of a month. My life changed dramatically, in very good ways for the most part, and I let myself settle into what that meant. I though that meant that 2024 would mean that I had Finally Figured Things Out. I was both right and wrong.
So let’s rewind a bit.
Over the last several years I started letting myself dive into new things. After all I’d been the book girl in my friend group for most of my life, but I also then let that shape me as an adult. With the blog and bookstagram. But between BookCon disappearing, the move to video format vs photos online and my ever dwindling bookstagram, along with my discovery of enjoying conventions and the fact that I had just relearned to sew to go to the Bridgerton Experience–of course I needed to make my own costume, thank you very much–I fell back into fandom hard and also found my love of cosplay at the same time.
I think it probably truly started with the pandemic as I feel so many of our lives did. I’d started making tiktoks during the pandemic, mostly Harry Potter related because that was the thing at the time and for nearly as long as I’ve been the book girl I have been that Harry Potter nerd. I’ve been reading and writing in fanfiction since the middle 2000’s. I’m a fandom old now and I loved seeing a new spin for people to connect with one another.
I found out there were folks doing podfics of fanfictions–go check out ETL Echo on AO3–I had loved for years. Oh and LeakyCon that I’d been dying to go to since 2010 at least? It was still around. So I went. I realized that twitter and discord had become the place to be in fandom. I made new friends, I met them in irl ~le gasp~ and enjoyed every new experience.
Around the same time I dove in to cosplay, which I wanted so badly for that to be the Next Big Thing. I made a hugely over ambitious build. I made several others. I had tried several other crafty things over the years (embroidery, crochet, calligraphy). However, with sewing… it just clicked, it’s challenging and interesting. Sewing brings me such joy and I love making things: gifts for friends and family, every day clothes, and deeply detailed cosplay builds. For some friends I am now Cosplay Kaite. It’s how their boyfriends know who I am. It’s defined a huge part of the last few years for me. Finding this side of me that had always been a nerd and loved dress up, and combining that into actual skills.
But like the things I’d loved in the past, I have a tendency to try and make it too much, to put too much into it, to monetize it. But I’d burned out from my old job, from reading and reviewing, to put it shortly from everything that had been me… and then I tried to replace it out for the Shiny New Thing. I started playing the comparison game to other cosplayers. I didn’t mean to, but I felt like I once again I Just Wasn’t Good Enough. I had found cosplay and I wanted to be as good as the folks I looked up to online or that I’d met.
It wasn’t until DragonCon this last year that I finally got to see some of the folks I so admire up close and personal. I watched everything they did to be so successful online. And I realized I didn’t want that.
Maybe it was entering a new decade and becoming comfortable with me, maybe it was saying goodbye to some of the most important and formative women of my life, maybe it was just having given myself the grace to finally rest and enjoy all the little things that I realized I couldn’t do what everyone else was doing and that was okay. It wasn’t that they didn’t enjoy it or that they weren’t kind, but that I felt like I was having so much more fun being there not trying that hard than I would have been trying to keep up with everything that they.
For so many of those folks that is their job. For me? I have a career I love. I am a small cog in a very big wheel, but one that makes big changes. It fulfills me and challenges me. My hobbies round me out into a better person.
And in so many ways I came full circle.
My fandom friends that I met at LeakyCon last year? They pulled me back into reading traditionally published books with a vengeance. We do buddy reads and we always have another book to recommend. They support me in my cosplays, but a number of my book friends and my fandom friends will go to cons with me and not dress up. I’ve had friendships bloom and grow from book friends and fandom friends that centered me. We’ve travelled to see each other and made wonderful memories. And it made me want to start doing more for me and not playing keep up because I loved things that I was doing and the experiences I was having. Which made me want to share about them more.
As Sooz says, I needed to refill my creative well.
So where does that leave me now? In a home I’ve made. Surrounded by books I love, and others I can’t wait to read. With a back dining/guest/crafting room that is full of projects for me to start (and more to finish). With a very small kitchen that I use to entice friends over with home cooked meals because that brings me joy. With plans for travel, as well as a suitcase under my bed full of cosplays and renaissance festival outfits. With a stressful, rewarding, and interesting job that I enjoy and lets me have these fun hobbies. With friends all over the world from all of these things, as well as friends who grew with me and held me up the whole way through.
2024 was a year of growth, a year of sorrow, a year of joy. For all the hard things I wouldn’t trade any for the beautiful wonderful memories I made. What does that mean for 2025?
I’ve missed writing, both writing stories and sharing my adventures and about the things I love here. I won’t promise to be consistent, my brain would never hold to that. But I do plan on coming and sharing more, because once upon a time the internet is where I came to share my passions and revel with others who do the same.
My goals are this, to work on my backlist and share my journey if it makes me happy.
That means finishing the videos of cosplay / sewing builds to put up for others to watch & discuss how to make their own costumes. That means reading the books I have on my shelves that have been yelling at me to do so & telling you about why I loved them. It means cooking more meals here and living the small moments. Finishing things so I can find new things to try and love. I hope that you’ll stick around with me if you’d like to and grow with me into this next chapter. After all that is why I named this blog my way by starlight because we are just all just trying to find our way, and the universe is full of infinite possibilities.
my way by Starlight 
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