being porous
semi-permeable membranes, and the necessity of an active creative metabolism
dear friends,
I only left my suburban solitude for five days to visit my brother in DC, and it’s taken my body almost double that time to recover from the feeling of too much world.
I have no idea how I lived a decade in NYC, four years in Istanbul, and all the years in between, hopping from city to city. did I have numbing psychic armour? did overstimulation feel like nourishment? was distraction what I needed, in order to live with myself?
I've felt the happiest in my life while living on islands — biking to the sea, waking and sleeping to the rhythms of the sun, moon, and tides, and where I have the feeling that no one can find me.
it feels almost wrong to love this much seclusion, before reaching a certain age. I feel obligated to be in the world, to say something about it. but, in my own quiet way, I suppose this is what I am doing. the internet is my webbed wide world.
what it comes down to is a sense of being porous; of having a semi-permeable membrane between myself and the world around me. in a culture that praises thick-skinned nonchalance, I feel psychically thin-skinned, sometimes no-skinned.
it is impossible to be unaffected, which is very different than being fragile, weak, or unresilient. some days, this has felt like an inconvienence, at best. at worse, it feels like a curse.
good thing that I am obsessed with turning curses into gifts. my life ambition is to become a sorceress-alchemist living in a dark, magical forest, in a cliff-side castle by the sea, who can brew potions that transforms thorns into flowers, dry lands into bountiful, infinite feasts.
on a daily basis, this magic looks mundane. to be so porous means that an active creative metabolism — making work, sharing the work — is not just a nice-to-have. it’s essential for psychic survival.
this is why I’ve made so much work. it doesn’t feel like being prolific. it just feels like needing to breathe.
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🧧 Digital Abundance — registration closes Saturday 3/14
Digital Abundance is the 12 week business course I’ve been preparing my whole life to teach — about alchemizing your creative energy into material abundance, through the deep integration of art + business.
I’ve decided to delay the start date by 1 week.
registration closes — Saturday March 14
class runs — March 16 - June 8, 2026
what we’ll do in 12 weeks:
foundational inner work to create ease & effortlessness in how you inhabit and embody your business
realign & reimagine your business ecosystem to center around your energy and creative desires (like a form of creative business chiropractory)
vision, shape, and share 1 new offering together
work on the muscles of deep self-trust, growth through experimentation, with resistance as your teacher
the elements:
8 teaching weeks + 4 implementation weeks
weekly assignments, prompts, & worksheets
weekly 90 min workshop/discussion sessions
ongoing community support via Whatsapp & Notion
1:1 access to & feedback from me
a preview
I made 3 podcast episodes to give you a peek into my process + philosophies for business, and a taste of what we’ll do this spring, inside Digital Abundance.
the architecture of digital abundance
5 distilled principles that transformed how I inhabit my business -- as a living ecosystem that centers my creative energy, above all else.
architecting your digital abundance — kening zhu
5 principles for reimagining your business
the paradigm shift that changed everything for me -- the belief that my creative energy is not a luxury or liability, but my greatest resource. I'll name 4 forms of abundance (inner, art, web, material), and how they feed each other.
creative wealth is wealth — kening zhu
creativity as the ultimate, generative resource
when thinking (or talking) about my business, there's at least twenty words I don't use -- many of them super basic, like "marketing," "sales," "landing page," "launch," or "productivity" ... even "goals."
I've rewritten my own creative business dictionary -- because language shapes our relationship to our worlds. I'll tell you what words I use instead.
business words I never use — kening zhu
rewriting my business paradigm
🗝 Artifacts from the Labyrinth
a taster of what we’re working on this season~
I made a public version of our Labyrinth Library artifacts, with excerpted previews of what I’m creating this spring. I’ll be updating this regularly.
navigating by moonlight: pisces season
reflections on the creative themes and practices we’ve been working with in this liminal, lunar period of Pisces. I made a calendar.
navigating by moonlight: pisces season — kening zhu
exploring the questions & energies of pisces
semi-permeable membrane: tending to your psychic skin
on working deliberately with the poreous boundaries of the self. I find this absolutely essential, so I’ve made this a public offering.
semi-permeable membrane: tending to your psychic skin — kening zhu
caring for psychic boundaries of self & world, substance & form
crystal orb: being with inner vision
the practice of intuitive seeing — working with inner vision for creative divination
crystal orb: being with inner vision — kening zhu
sensing into the cloudy intuitive realms
infinity lake: immersion in the creative psyche
diving for treasures in your imaginal realms, and seeing what you discover at the bottom
infinity lake: immersion in the creative psyche — kening zhu
diving into the imaginal lunar worlds
🌬️ Atmospheres
exploding other worlds: aquarius III
a story of maternal love, severing & opening new worlds
exploding otherworlds, aquarius III — kening zhu
severing a maternal bond, engendering new worlds
dollhouse as micro-worlds, pisces I
on creating miniature worlds to discover who we are, inside of them
dollhouse as micro-worlds, pisces I — kening zhu
making miniatures for our psyche to play
🔮 Curations from the Archives
this week’s curations is about tending to psychic skin + the necessity of an active creative metabolism.
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8 years ago - how my creative metabolism works (2018)
written lifetimes ago, but still more or less true.
how my creative metabolism works — kening zhu
getting to know my creative metabolism -- how I ingest, digest, and create my art — and how to avoid creative constipation.
5 years ago - flow comes from your place of stillness (2021)
in praise of spaciousness for allowing creative flow
flow comes from your place of stillness — kening zhu
harnessing the energy of creative flow
4 years ago — oceanic traffic jam in my head (2022)
I remember being very overwhelmed, and drawing this map of my mind made me feel better.
oceanic traffic jam in my head — kening zhu
the feeling of psychic constipation
4 years ago — daily rituals for the psychic creative immune system (2022)
I used to need rigorous daily rituals for tending to my psychic barrier. I’m a little less structured now.
daily rituals for the psychic-creative immune system — kening zhu
how to cultivate an embodied sense of the creative self — through a framework of daily body and creative rituals
2 years ago - my mind as the blue screen of death (2024)
what happens to my mind after days of over-saturation
my mind as the blue screen of death — kening zhu
always under virus attack
1 year ago — travel notes of a sensitive system (2025)
thank god for written records. I’ve been here before, and have a map of what to expect when traveling.
travel notes of a sensitive system — kening zhu
meta-notes on what traveling does to my system — before, during, and after
📝 Notes & Misc.
currently reading: piranesi by susanna clarke — it feels very appropriate for my solitude in this big house, navigating the labyrinths of my mind. the style feels a bit detached and dry for my taste, and the structure disorienting, but I will keep reading.
finished reading: good girl by aria aber — I absolutely adore her poetry, and I adored her prose in this book. I related (in a visceral level) to so many of the themes here — but while I wanted to obsessively love this book and think about it for days, I only liked it.
on the verge of abandoning: intermezzo by sally rooney — I need to think more about why her hyper-self-conscious, stream of consciousness style is mildly irritating and feels artifical (?) to me, even though I wanted to keep reading for plot.
listening to: tango by year, 1943. I started tango in college, have danced (in varying waves of intensity) since my 9-5 job days. tango is quite emotionally activating for me, but this audio series (recorded during the pandemic) has been like recieving a microdose of music and history. while normally I don’t prefer listening to 2 white men talking to each other, I’m grateful to be mildly triggered by tango music, interspersed with commentary, like a salve.
a painting I’m still thinking about: the repose by jean-baptiste-camille corot (1860) — I saw this painting at the national gallery of art while in DC. the light of her skin, and look in her eyes — against the near-storm background scene — is imprinted in my mind.
a ballet I’m still thinking about: giselle, permformed by the washington ballet. it’s been years since I watched ballet, but I was so moved by this. the rigorous artifice of ballet and classical music as a canvas / vessel for expressing universal emotions. ballet is full of otherworldly creatures performing human pain. i was deeply inspired and obsessed.
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in recent nights, I’ve been sitting by moonlight to meditate while looking out at the shadows of pine trees behind my parents’ house. I practice surrendering all my unanswered questions, and remind myself that this moment, in darkness and starlight, is more than enough.
until soon,
🪼 kening
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🍃 listen to my podcast: botanical studies of internet magic
🦋 join season 3 of labyrinth library
🏔️ explore my courses: house on the webs | creative systems | sharing space camp | money juice cleanse | digital abundance
🪷 advising with me: liminal leap, and intensive sessions
🌔 otherworldly: a web alchemy studio
💧 send me a gift: water my world
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