🗺️ a mermaid castle, a cafe, a hammock
dear friends,
our cafe plan is slowly materializing. on sunday, we stayed up late drawing a floor plan. this week, my partner ran around the city with his friends (cafe partners & master hagglers) looking at chairs, tables, flooring, wall paneling, sinks, marble, fridges, and espresso machines.
after so many years inhabiting and building digital worlds, I forgot just how much it takes to make a built, physical environment. you have to think about things like electricity, lighting, plumbing, and government regulations. the idea of having something real and tangible out there is both exciting and terrifying.
I’ll spend the weekend creating the brand identity for this cafe — something green, homey, and sweet. hopefully, I’ll show it to you next week.
~
🍄 this week: I wrote about relating to my business as a hammock, painted a double-portrait of figs, and started imagining a mermaid castle / memory palace for my childhood. I share more on love & work from my archives.
🏕️ my business is a hammock i weave by hand
a few weeks ago, I realized that what I really want is a flexible business designed to support deep rest. a hammock. I pulled this thread of thought:
my business is a hammock I weave by hand — kening zhu
a place to rest & feel supported to dream
🍒 two figs, a double portrait
every fig I draw feels like the last figs of the season, but maybe I’ll keep eating/drawing them until October. whenever I open a fig, I can’t resist admiring them.
two figs, a double portrait — kening zhu
an irresistible urge to paint more figs
🪸 imagining the mermaid castle (part 1)
this is a web world I’m working on — a digital memory palace for my inner child. I decided to call it “the mermaid castle.” I tell the story of how it was born, and share some exercises I completed, excerpted from my house on the webs course.
imagining the mermaid castle, part 1 — kening zhu
a digital memory palace for my childhood
🔮 messages from the archives
the internet i long to visit, build, and inhabit
imagining the worlds where I want to spend my time. (jan 2024)
The internet I long to visit, build, and inhabit — kening zhu
a dream of a more nourishing internet
love is work is love
a palindrome on loving work and working love, animated. (may, 2021)
love is work is love — kening zhu
this thing they call love is a lot of work — pleasure and pain, effort and ease, day in, day out — all balled up into one. love begins as a seed of the feeling, then you must water the feeling. the feeling is made tangible in the world through work: of showing up, of being present, of nurturing, o
don’t think about art, just do your thing
letting go of the pressure of “artist,” or even “art.” (january 2020)
don't think about art: just do your thing — kening zhu
there are no rules to making art, except this: do your thing, and do it everyday.
how to build your dream castle
these days it’s a hammock, but five years ago, it was a castle. looking back, i feel like i had the right gist, but also knew nothing about anything. these are, of course, instructions to myself. (october 2019)
how to build your dream castle — kening zhu
Turning vision into reality. A very cyclical and loose 5 step process to building a vision / business / legacy / castle of your own.
📝 notes (what's rolling around my head)
speaking ideas outloud: I’m in that phase with podcasting in which I’m taking what once was a very time consuming process (I spent ~7 hours per episode), and shaping it into something that feels more routine and ordinary. the practice is: talking about an idea, outloud. finding clarity in the sentence soup that comes out of my mouth. the whole process feels like kneading clay.
courses as adventure maps of process - I realized that in order for courses to feel like the living ecosystems I desire, they, too, need to be totally integrated with my creative process. I can’t just make a course and forget about it — that’s a guaranteed way to ghost my own offering. I want to build courses that feel like adventure maps — distilled from years of practice, rich in resources, and full of keyholes into wild possibilities even I haven’t thought of.
labyrinth work is a practice - since writing about business as a labyrinth, not a funnel I’m been reflecting on how to make the labyrinth on a day to day basis. I’ve narrowed it down to four practices: (1) carving paths, (2) inhabiting gates, (3) distilling clarity, (4) visioning new adventures. in traditional marketing speak you’d call this… sales & marketing? for me, labyrinth work is imaginative gardening.
🍄 inspiration log
reading: urban watercolor sketching by Felix Scheinberger - I bought a physical copy of this book many lifetimes ago, and recently dusted it off my bookshelf and started reading it again — as a guide for my restarted sketchbook practice. it’s so inspiring, informative, and spirited — and full of German matter-of-fact quirky humor. I’m savoring every page.
🪄 house on the webs course
this month, I’m rebirthing house on the webs, and releasing new lessons every week. I’m at a place where I can see the end — like a great uphill sprint.
you can wander through the introduction and Day 0 lesson on incubation.
I’ll be offering a 15% early discount until September 30th.
🌸 goodbye for now...
next week, I’ll send a September artist digest, then I’ll leave for a short trip to the south of Turkey — where I hope to swim in slightly-cold turquoise waters, and sleep, dream, and paint a lot.
I’ll resume these weekly guidenotes letters to you, in October.
take care until then,
🪼 kening
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🗺️ this is guidenotes 49, a weekly letter on creative alchemy & growing digital worlds.
🍃 find me on my podcast: botanical studies of internet magic.
🏔️ explore my course: house on the webs.
🪷 work with me 1 on 1: advising & creation services.
💧 send me a gift. water my world.