dear friends,

I’m living alone, in a big house, for the first time in four years. my parents left last week for a one month trip to south america. I decided to go nowhere.

I’m too busy to feel lonely, bored, or existential. this is not the shadowy, ranch house of my childhood, but a blank slate. I’ve slowly spread myself out, room by room — a different space for meditation, working, meetings, dreaming, reading.

my background soundtrack is the suburban hum — the sounds of birds, lawnmowers, wind rustling through the trees, many clocks ticking, and the distant echo of cars on a freeway. I am responsible for no one, except myself, and my mother’s sprawling collection of succulents and houseplants.

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my mother’s birthday was on lunar new year’s. I researched and bought her two carnivorous plants — a sundew and a nepenthes — and was then pulled along the arc of complicated emotions that they triggered.

while my mother is an avid gardener, these plants were not like her other plants. they required distilled or reverse osmosis water, a special kind of moss, and non-ceramic pots. they required bugs. I was prepared for her reaction — a standard kind of Asian mother reaction, a sense of confusion, a 麻烦 or “bothersome,” her questioning and skepticism, “how much money did you spend? what special abilities do they have? how are they useful to me?” and then, amidst my deflation, a perfunctory “thank you.”

I felt a familiar, hot shame — the realization that perhaps, my gift was a burden. I wanted to give her something special and unique, when she might have appreciated something (I would have considered) boring, and ordinary. I gave her something I wanted, not something she wanted. how basic, my mistake.

do I need to tell you that, a few days later, it dawned on me that I was unconsciously trying to teach my mother how to parent me, to see me, and recognize me — the way I wanted to be loved?

shit, I was the carnivorous plant; the imaginative child with specific needs, who required bugs and special water, and could do magic tricks and digest flying things into nutrition, when my mother — a product of her generation and culture — just wanted me to be unbothersome, and normal, and safe.

were my creative gifts and desires a burden? were they totally irrelevant? did they cause her great anxiety and pain? how could I ask my mother to take care of something she did not understand, which belonged to a totally different paradigm? I might as well have been an alien plant child from outer space. of course, all she could do was feed me. and mend my clothes. and worry.

I have already spent years grappling with this. I have gone through wild pendulum swings — of running as far away as possible, such that I’m on the other side of the world — to missing my family on birthdays and lunar new year’s, making noodles while crying. I’ve spent the last decade risking everything, betting everything I have into the gamble, that, my bug-eating creative powers can nourish me, in all the ways.

for dinner on her birthday, I made her noodles from scratch, and she was happy. just watching her eat them was deeply satiating. the morning before she left for her trip, I showed her the website where I bought the plants, then we watched Youtube videos of sundews catching bugs, and she was impressed, and in disbelief. she peered through her phone camera, and took photos of them.

when spring finally comes, when she comes back from her adventures, I said, I would promise to buy her a venus fly trap.

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🧧 Digital Abundance — is open for registration

Digital Abundance is the business course I’ve been preparing my whole life to teach. it’s a 12 week journey on alchemizing your creative energy into material abundance.

it’s the integration of inner work, creative practice, digital ecosystems and world-building — to create an energy-centric way of growing a business that feeds your creative world.

registration closes — March 7
class runs — March 9 - June 1, 2026

🚪 explore the class here

what we’ll do in 12 weeks:

• foundational inner work to create ease & effortlessness in how you inhabit and embody your business

• reimagine your business ecosystem to center around your energy and creative desires

• vision, shape, and share one 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

this is a class about sovereignty, agency, and autonomy. this is a creativity class where money is an effortless byproduct. it’s an unapologetic declaration that creative energy is the ultimate, highest resource — that artists have immense power in the “real” world. we will use our imagination to remake this real world, together.

it’s also my last course to complete my teaching ecosystem, which started with house on the webs. I’m crossing a threshold into a new place. in other words, this ship is definitely sailing! I’d be delighted for you to join me.

explore the class

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🔮 Curations from the Archives

this week’s curations are about complicated feelings around home, exile, belonging, and finding my way in the dark.

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7 years ago - the art of finding my path (2019)

it’s funny to me that I thought I “found” my path 7 years ago. yes I found the trailhead. but then, it was nonstop dark forest labyrinth.

the art of finding my path — kening zhu

a review of my journey over the last 13 years: how i got here, and where i’m going

6 years ago — i am ready to go home now (2020)

during COVID, when my parents lived in China, and I was nomadic. a difficult period.

i am ready to go home now — kening zhu

I am ready to go home now, to my parents in shanghai.

5 years ago — infinity house on the webs (2021)

the first time ever that I articulated my vision of building a website, as infinity space.

an infinity house on the webs — kening zhu

last week it was stormy, zombie apolocalypse weather inside me — and in berlin, too — occasionally interspersed with five seconds of sunshine — like the worst kind of torture — and I did basically nothing but stare at the ceiling and stew in mild anxiety about life, and love. but this week I’m somet

3 years ago — lonely work is swimming in the ocean alone (2023)

one of my favorite pieces I’ve written — about the experience of lonely work

lonely work is swimming in the ocean alone — kening zhu

the joys & perils of working for yourself

2 years ago — making a home on the internet (2024)

well, of course, it’s because of my home/belonging problems that lead me to inhabit my digital worlds so vigorously. I talk about how, here.

making a home on the internet — kening zhu

inhabiting your infinite creative self

1 year ago — chinese new years noodle therapy (2025)

familiar melancholy, from my istanbul home

chinese new year noodle therapy — kening zhu

making noodles while feeling homesick

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📝 Notes & Misc.

• reading: a year of last things by michael ondaatje. everyday, I walk half an hour to the forest dam, sit on a rock with my journal, and this book of poetry. i’m reminded of how poetry slows you down, and ondaatje in particular has a mythical, sensuous way with language. he wrote one of my favorite poems, the cinnamon peeler, (which i first read when i was a teenager, too young to understand, but was so enchanted by)

• in labyrinth: we’ve submerged ourselves into pisces season, with infinity lakes, crossing thresholds, and walking our first creative treks. as always, labyrinth is filled with deeply thoughtful, magical beings — which makes me happy, inspired, and focused — and generally healthier than when I’m alone in my dark hermit cave. (again, no time for me to be confused/overthinking/depressed!) making work for labyrinth feels like a gift. the work is the medicine I need. and the work is a gift.

• my brain: is back online. thank you! BUT, I do notice that admin or bureaucratic tasks make my brain turn blue-screen-of-death (illustrated here), and it takes like 90-120 minutes, at minimum, to reboot. I don’t need a memory machine, I need a forgetting machine. I need a machine that reminds me “exactly how long until I’ll forget this thing that really, obsessively bothers me, right now?”

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wishing you gentle days, and rich dreams.

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