dear friends,

after what seemed like years of savoring a simple, sweet peace, this summer has brought me more ruptures than even I would have wanted, or expected.

and so, I’ve been reacquainted with some chaotic, stormier version of myself that I thought I’d outgrown and archived away — locked into some filing cabinet in the back of my psyche. she is in my daily life again, asking me unthinkable questions, as sharp as swords, and reconnecting me to a sense of mystery, and sublime, terrible uncertainty. she is familiar, but also changed.

these days, I find myself relating to my creative work and business as the most stable, grounding thing in my life. it’s as though a decade of walking in the dark, continually reimagining, making things up as I go — how to share my work on the internet, build systems, create offerings, make a business, be true to myself, as an artist — all of it has coalesced into something that feels… unexpectedly solid.

dear friends,

on hot summer nights, this city feels like a clamoring of monsters — with seven varieties of smoke, the noise of constant conflict, and the extension of claws, tentacles, and jaws. if it weren’t for the wind and the sea, the air would be unbearable.

I felt this when I first visited Istanbul in 2021, and four years later, I still feel it now. this is probably why I stayed — the chaos felt familiar, like a womb, as if what I saw in the external world mirrored what I felt inside of me: a clamoring of monsters, waiting to be fed, placated, or released.

it’s terrifying, of course. creature-like creative force doesn’t know timelines, schedules, or planning. it doesn’t care about quality of sleep, regulated nervous systems, responding to emails, paying bills, or the commitments it said it would do. even if I let it swallow me whole, I’ll then feel the urge to spend days or weeks trying to clean up after it, control it, tame it, make it arrive and depart on schedule.

dear friends,

after I came back to Istanbul, for over a week all I could do was binge read mystery books on the couch. it seemed that sinking into fictional worlds was so much easier than trying to hold the tangled threads of places and past selves my body had reinhabited, and left behind.

reality felt like a strange, fluid, rupturing tapestry, and I had slipped and fallen into its folds. after these months of feverish creative momentum, what I was experiencing, now, was a feeling of amnesia — the inability to remember who I was, what I was doing, or what my job was. what is my work? what is my art? or, as Wendell Berry wrote, in an excerpted prelude to one of my favorite poems, “the world is full of places. why is it that I am here?”

I sat down to try and plan my new course — sharing space camp — and felt a flickering static in my head. my brain was completely offline, but I had things I needed to do; emails to answer, newsletters to write, client projects to manage. I felt sloth-y and melancholic, disturbed and existential.

dear friends,

I’ve been waking up and finding myself hesitantly wanting what you’re supposed to want, at this age — a wedding, a baby, a house.

the wanting feels quiet.

the fear of “not-ready” feels loud.

hello friend,

since the last time I wrote you, there was an earthquake in Istanbul, the city where I live. the ground shaking woke my dog Luna up from her nap, while my partner K lathered on shampoo and paused the water, and people around the city panic-jumped from their balconies. it was terrifying, and it wasn’t as bad as we expected — considering that we live in earthquake country. these are all second hand reports. I wasn’t there.

I was in China, in the green, ancient city of my birth — feasting everyday as a way of consuming the love of my relatives, re-absorbing my Chinese-ness as if sucking it from a tiny straw, attempting to disappear into a sea of faces, like an imposter; like a foreign object on blood soil.

hello friends,

on friday I had my first spring picnic in the park with Luna — and I felt briefly enchanted and shaken out of my homebody/hermit inertia.

this week, winter seems to be repeating itself again, in a smaller variation, like a musical motif. this recursion makes me think about the nature of change — how we move in looping circles through the seasons of our lives; returning again, before every new departure. as if life is saying to us: now, are you ready for something different?

yesterday, on a restless monday, I made scallion pancakes for the nth time, using this recipe. when I was in high school, my mother used to make and pack them for me, cut neatly and layered with paper towels in tupperware containers.

hello there,

it’s spring and ramadan in Istanbul — which means holy month, and a daily bakery line at sunset for hot pide flatbread, straight from the oven. I don’t even love bread — but this I can eat plain, with just butter.

during this seasonal transition, I’ve felt like a vampire, over-exposed to light. I sleep in later and work till midnight, retreating to the comfort of darkness. I’m feeling both restless and private. I took Luna to the park yesterday, and found petals on her paws.

hello friends,

it’s been a little while. I sent my last letter in early November, then disappeared from digital life. in the meantime, I traveled to the US, got a small surgery — and spent the holidays with my family resting and recovering.

it’s taken me a long time to understand the value of rest and integration work — growing in circles, spiraling around deep truths that might take minutes to understand or explain, but many months or years to fully inhabit. this period of absence, for me, has been full of gold.

{💌 this is: my artist digest for October. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week) called guide.notes}

dear friends,

there’s a saying (attributed to zen buddhism, but who knows) that keeps coming to mind these days:

{💌 this is: my artist digest for September. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week) called guide.notes}

dear friends,

{💌 this is: my artist digest for August. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week) called guide.notes}

dear friends,

{💌 this is: my artist digest for July. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week!) called guide.notes}

~

dear friends,

I definitely fell off the map for a few months while traveling to China and the US, but I’ve returned now. I spent the last few weeks meandering my way back to center — through drawing mind maps, soaking in new ideas, and nerding out on human design.

{💌 this is: my artist digest for April. I also send Friday letters called guide.notes}

—

Dear friends,

hello from China. I’m currently in Hainan Island on the South China Sea, visiting family, being steamed alive in the sticky heat, and eating the creamiest, sweetest mangos of my life with a spoon. The weather, the fruit, and the thrashing waves are here to occupy me as I’m processing all the sensations that come with returning to China after 6 years. Before this, I was in my birth city, Hangzhou.

dear friend,

I have travel brain fog, as well as too-many-people brain fog — both of which are strains of too-much-input brain fog. at the same time, I also have the brain fog of being with family, speaking only Mandarin, eating too much, and feeling barely unrecognizable to myself.

dear voyager friends,

everything you see below, I drew on the 9 hour plane ride between Istanbul and Beijing. I arrived in my hometown this morning, cried while hugging my grandmother, had dinner with my relatives, and already ate a long list of foods and exotic fruits you’ve all probably never heard of before. (many of them, I had never heard of before). everything in China has changed so much, and yet, feels comfortingly familiar.

dear kindred friends,

next week I'll probably be writing you from an airport, en route to my hometown / motherland (hangzhou, china) where I'll be for three weeks to visit family. I haven't been back in 6 years.

dear creative friends,

these recent years, my experience of spring has felt like being involuntarily woken up from a delicious nap (aka, winter). I'm groggy, sluggish, and mildly irritated at being interrupted and pressured (by the beautiful weather, no less) to spend time outside.

hello friends,

I'm writing to you from spring in Istanbul - just a few days before local elections, where the streets are filled with flags of politicans' faces fluttering in the wind, and vans playing political songs on loudspeakers. I'm slowly, reluctantly un-hermiting from winter.

these days: I'm listening to Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein on audiobook, and recently watched WandaVision, which touched the abyss in me (I wrote about it here.)

in this letter, I'll share:

dear friends of the void,

in recent days, I've been thinking about nervous system regulation as it relates to working for yourself -- and how the feeling of never-quite-doing-enough is rooted in a survival response.

dear wildfire friends,

I've decided to write and send you this letter on Friday mornings. that way, it feels like a soft exhale, like sharing a leisurely cup of coffee with a familiar friend, or like laying out the fruits of my garden & forest forgaging on the table... rather than something I stress out about on Thursday nights, at 11pm.

dear kindred spirits,

I'm not sure about you, but this week felt like a series of nose dives (hence this late letter). I found myself running towards deadlines, and then crashing afterwards -- with long lists of stuff I still didn't do, haunting me.

dear adventurer friends,

hello there friends,

this month I've been really deep in the work. sometimes this feels a little too much; too brainy-obsessive, like olympic swimming in my own head.

I'm dreaming of: growing gills, taking half days off to wander Istanbul and ride ferries to nowhere, to read more poetry.

I'm asking myself, again and again -- "but what do you really want now?" -- until the answer feels razor sharp, like a blade. Then, I want to let my days be soft.

dear worldly friends,

I woke up at 3:55am today, unexpectedly, (due to a terrorizing mosquito) and decided to start working in the dark. by 10am, I had already been working for 5 hours -- somehow, this changed the entire shape of my day. time morphed into a completely different creature (like, from an anxious rabbit to a giant snake, molting skin).

have you ever experienced this?? I've been amazed, and perplexed.

this week: I launched a podcast, began writing a new series on forming a vision, and reflected on the practice of keeping an inspiration log.

dear kindred friends,

after two weeks of writing everyday about world-building, this week I watched as my mind slowed down into the consistency of mushy vegetables. (hello, luteal phase.)

I woke up some days and felt like an empty lake; totally dry of inspiration, creative spark, or motivation. it was a lot of effort to do one task per day.

past versions of me would've felt super guilty, and berated myself for this. but recently, I've been thinkinga about the vital importance of low tide days / fermentation days / mushy mind days.

Dear wilderness friends,

I'm not sure where January went. I feel like I spent most of it thinking about work -- like living in a locked room with flying keys as questions (like in Harry Potter) -- and I've emerged into February a little groggy and sleepy. Work always feels like a puzzle, half-solved. I'm channeling the feeling of ease.

also, the weather is a tempermental trickster. in Istanbul, winter means brief moments of blinding sun, alternating with drizzling rain, and clouds so moody you think the sky will fall. (and repeat). today, my card pull was The Fool.

this week, I wrote down my dreams for a more nourishing internet, and how we can build it via a daily practice. I made a few visual process maps: web world as water, and a creative digestion flow.

dear wayfaring friends,

hello there. how is your new year unfolding?

I took a little long winter break, where I traveled, over-socialized with friends, and spent (an awkward length of) time with my family. now I'm back in my istanbul life, comfortably hermiting.

since sending my last artist digest, I've been thinking about the form of a digital letter. this season, I'll be playing around and experimenting. I'm always open to suggestions, so please don't write me back anytime, and let me know what you think.

hello friends,

it's been a little while since I sent you my last digest. I know I tend to procrastinate/hermit from groups of people, so from now on, I'll just imagine that this letter is only you and me, here.

where's here, for you? what's going on in your world, this winter?

here's postcard from mine:

dear worldly friends,

this week, I've found myself in an sticky, melancholic mood, accompanied by a hum of anxiety. I know that when my mind wants to control and tighten; when it feels isolated and lonely in the world, when it demands reassurance of the future -- that I'm living from a stuck place.

in moments like this, it feels as though I have no fuel for my fire, no water for my garden, no generative powers -- only a dust storm, rattling in my head. I feel like I will never feel inspired again.

of course, I know this is not true.

dear friends of the creative wild,

this sunday I'll turn thirty-two. this week, I've found myself in a trancelike, Scorpionic work flow -- living a rigorous daily rhythm of creative practices and project sprints, such that I feel like I'm deep sea diving everyday, collecting treasures of the creative psychic world.

I intersperse this with half days of rest: I'm calling it land days, where I do light tending work, or lay in a (metaphorical) hammock, napping, reading, walking, or watching mystery crime dramas. a lesson that I come back to, again and again, is: intense rest is what make intense work sustainable.

dear wanderer friends,

today I woke up to an rainy istanbul ten degrees colder than yesterday. after last week's amnesia, this week I stretched out the days like a piece of taffy candy -- staying up till 1am, waking up before 7am, working a little too intensely, too haphazardly, running towards a list of ambitious daily deadlines.

sometimes, I feel like the act of creation is really just being a plumber of my psyche. all I'm doing is unclogging the flow, giving it form, allowing it to be seen. the alternative is -- a suffocating creative constipation, a slow building anxiety, my ideas, imaginations, and dreams dying a painful un-death...

I create -- in order to feel like a lush garden inside; in order to feel alive.

dear starburst friends,

I played tour guide again last week, roaming Istanbul with a dear old friend I've known for 14 years. we adventured and feasted everyday -- eating so much food that we never wanted to eat again.

then, after she left, I woke up on Monday with a terrible grogginess, like I had forgotten...everything:

dear spirit friends,

last night I came home from a few days in Adana, an ancient Mediterranean city on the far eastern side of Turkey, close to Syria -- famous for its kebabs and being a super macho place, where, (it is said) on the hottest days of the summer, the men take out their guns and shoot at the sun...

I spent my days with my 8-months pregnant friend, living with her Turkish family, walking amongst the pomegranate and citrus trees, and towering cactus shrubs, like this:

dear kindred friends,

I'm writing you a day late, savoring a gentle end to a bad week -- that is, I spent Monday-Wednesday walking through a "dark tunnel of the mind-emotional-prison-abyss," (aka, pms week...) and experienced a mini, scorpionic death and rebirth.

from 3 years ago:

the dark tunnel room — kening zhu

the state of the day

dear friends of the web,

I took this week off to spend time with my partner, who just returned from six months of Turkish military service. since stepping away from work, I've been watching movies, napping, cooking, and thinking about what to cook: maybe, a layered chocolate cake, slow-cooked lamb in the oven, and pickled Korean-style side vegetables.

despite how much I'm enjoying the week, the act of NOT working is actually very hard, and feels a little unnatural. when work is such a part of my sense of self and way of relating/connecting to the world, not working feels like... being an leisurely-astronaut floating in space. I'm feeling groggy, not in a bad way.

dear creative friends,

I write to you from the first day of autumn rain in Istanbul. last Thursday I didn't write, because an old friend visited, and, in stark contrast to my summer hermit life, we spent 12-hour days outside, everyday (see below), and talked so much and for so long, such that by the end of the day, I could not lift a finger to write even a sentence...

dear earthly friends,

sending you a brief note this week, from the middle of a migraine -- and a week of too much world. an old friend I knew from many lives ago arrived and I've been showing her around Istanbul, which can often feel like wandering inside a marvelous headache...

inspiration log this week

dear gentle friends,

last night I dreamed that I was inside a website. I was going in circles and ended up on the homepage, again and again. the structure of a website is very conducive to a dream. and vice versa. (if I can dream about a website, then I can make a website like a dream). all this too say -- I've been so busy with world-building work, I haven't had time to finish my own.

this week, I talked to my partner about the future and realized that I'm at the age where I feel the urge to plan a little -- not in terms of days or weeks, but years -- marriage, children, travel, house -- that list of things that normal people do. those rites of passages that I think I'll want -- at least, my own version of them.

but, thinking in terms of years felt scary -- and suddenly, counting the years (2023, 2024, 2025, 2026...) I wondered: what year will it be when I die? at first, that thought was difficult to hold -- and then it was somehow... liberating.