The wisdom of our young selves

Happy holidays everyone! Before I introduce you to my high school punk band, Riot Girl, featured above — I want to say thank you for being in on the ground floor with Renaissance Lab and supporting the blog. I’m looking forward to exploring our creativity together in 2026.

I thought I’d close out the year with a reflection on something that’s been quietly reshaping my creative life in 2025: remembering what I knew about myself when I was young.

Young-us knew things

This year I’ve felt connected to young-me in a big way.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I stepped back onstage and started playing music again this year after a 20-year hiatus.

I’ve remembered that young me loved performing. As a kid, I was always onstage or in front of a camera, telling stories and expressing myself. Our kid-gang loved putting on shows for our parents — dressing up, writing stories, creating and inhabiting imaginary worlds.

As a teenager too, even in all the awkwardness, I still loved being in a band and making music with my friends. The image at the top is our high school punk band Riot Girl, circa 2003. (That photo has only seen the inside of our friend group chat, so I’ve blurred faces other than mine.)

On the left below is me onstage with Riot Girl aged 16-ish, and on the right is me onstage with Love Party aged 39.

As I’ve become fully self-employed, I’ve also remembered that I really like dancing to the beat of my own drum. It feels good to be guided by an internal compass and a rhythm that feels interesting and natural. That’s something I knew for sure as a kid. Here’s me age 14-ish, heading to a costume party dressed as a carrot. The theme was not vegetables.

The process of remembering

I’m about a decade into my grown-up creative renaissance, and I’d say I’m just dipping my toe into remembering my childhood creative wisdom and exuberance. It definitely wasn’t my first feeling when I picked up a paintbrush aged 29-ish, after a decade of feeling uncreative. At that stage, I actually felt like I was meeting myself for the very first time.

And it was a whole other decade before I stepped back onstage.

Like many of us, I had a deep post-childhood ickiness around making music, where I just felt talent-less and embarrassed. Not an uncommon experience in general, and definitely not for young girl punk-rockers coming out of the early 2000s.

So I needed to go gently, as we all do. Stepping into the spotlight, performing or making our creativity visible again requires time and care, especially if we’ve been rewarded for being good or neutral or compliant or faultless.

We build our sense of safety over time — and we remember that kids have so much creative intelligence, and we were all kids once! So it’s definitely in there.

For me this year, it’s been remembering that making music (or anything) is not about being good. It’s about having fun and experimenting and expressing ourselves. And stepping onstage is not about perfection or showing off. It’s about connecting with people and creating experiences that bring everyone closer to their own humanness and creativity. All things that young-me knew deeply and intuitively.

The summer of childlike abandon?

As we wind up the year and say goodbye to 2025, I’m wondering what the wisdom of our younger selves has to teach us all in 2026.

Could this be our summer of childlike abandon and creativity? Or our winter of childlike dreaming, if you’re in the northern hemisphere.

Here are some prompts to get us started:

What did we know about ourselves as kids?

What were we drawn to?

What did we make?

What fascinated us?

What felt possible?

And which of these things do we need more of in our lives right now?

Of course there’ll also be things that we are more than happy to leave in the past! So take it lightly and playfully — and let’s regroup in 2026.

Thanks again for being here. If you enjoyed this instalment, send it to a friend / colleague / neighbour — and sign up to the newsletter to get the next one straight to your inbox.

Now for the news.

Doodle Cafe is launching feb 2026!

Doodle Cafe is kicking off on Tuesday, 24 February 2026, 5:30 - 6:45pm at Cuckoo Emporium in Wellington!

Doodle Cafe will be a monthly event where professionals gather to explore our creativity. We get together, we talk creativity and then we doodle around over drinks/snacks/whatever takes your fancy.

Cuckoo is a haven in the CBD and the team are long-time supporters of fun and creativity in Wellington — so I’m excited to be partnering with them for Doodle Cafe.

More info to come in the new year, but if you want to make sure you’re on the list — flick me an email at hello@kateyesberg.com.

Studio life

Last week we marked the first anniversary of ‘Hit It’, Love Party’s debut single and the music video that changed saveloys forever! Check out the full video if you’re curious.

Back in December 2024, this felt like a real coming-out moment for me. My silly side was a secret no longer, and conversations with colleagues/family/friends changed dramatically overnight.

We filmed the music video ourselves on Dayle's phone, in the middle of winter at my Mum’s farm, in the wind and rain and rainbows. Then we edited it ourselves, at the same time as learning how to use our free video editing software.

0% skill, 100% experimental enthusiasm.

And the overwhelming response has been, "It's better than we expected!"

Righteous. I hope you enjoy it too.

That’s it for now. Have a safe and restful break and I’ll see you in 2026!

Creative power to you.

Kate x

Want to learn more about my leadership coaching practice grounded in creativity, or interested in working together? Get in touch at hello@kateyesberg.com