guide.notes 31 | watery web worlds I want to swim in
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.
~~~
🗺️ guides, maps, & imaginings
I mapped the phases of a creative project. Compost is great, but one resolution for my year is: less things half-born, half stuck.
a creative digestion flow map: how ideas are born — kening zhu
a map of all parts of the creative process
journaling with archetypal energy
I've been craving some way of deepening my tarot practice, and was so surprised at generative it felt to reflect on how these cards applied to the creative process.
tarot work diary: three of pentacles, queen of pentacles, the emperor — kening zhu
reflections on embodying different archetypal selves
imagining a more nourishing internet
I've written down the kind of internet where I actually want to spend my time -- as a mirror to the psychic and material world.
The internet I long to visit, build, and inhabit — kening zhu
a dream of a more nourishing internet
an anti-marketing sort of marketing
I've stopped feeling the urge to do "marketing" a long time ago, and I think that's why my "marketing" doesn't feel like "marketing."
introvert marketing for creative hermits — kening zhu
how to make sharing your work feel like something you actually want to do
this water metaphor just came to me: on how I connect the creative process to the sharing process.
web world as water: digital ecosystems that give life — kening zhu
a system for integrating creation and sharing your work
about keeping your creative energy alive on the internet, and doing it just because it nourishes you.
the internet as a creative practice — kening zhu
a philosophy for how I create and share everyday
📝 notes: what's rolling around my mind
1 | priorities > goals: goals (ambitious to-dos) make me feel stressed, but priorities (what feels important) keep me focused, motivated, and inspired.
2 | writing is like pottery: except you can't buy the clay; you have to make it. then you have to work the clay, center the clay, pull the clay (in one breath), and wait for the pot to dry before you can trim it, then surrender it to the fire.
3 | no work in the evenings: asking myself: is it even possible? working for yourself means the brain never turns off. I'm longing for empty time.
4 | the beginner's mind: is this similar to traveler's mind, where you see a place for the first time? what if I worked like this, or saw my life like I came from outer space, and woke up in it?
5 | stretching the relativity of time: is there a meditation practice I can do to deliberately slow down (or speed up) time? since turning 30, I feel time hurtling me (and everyone I love) toward death. this is not as bad as it sounds.
🎨 colorable work in progress
here's my coloring to-do list for the week. I couldn't find my scissors, so instead of icons (like last week), I made a desert landscape metaphor.
cactus = posting on my website
birds = newsletters
sun + tree = client work (website/branding)
snakes = my own website + microgardens
wind/cloud = units of a course I'm taking (yeah, i'm super behind...)
🌕 inspiration log
watched: true detective (season 1): heavy and sticky and dark, but amazing, gripping, philosophical, and uncomfortable in a good way. these characters feel so real I couldn't stop thinking about them.
just started reading: the mysterious affair at styles by agatha christie: I've been craving some fiction, and am reminded of how reading a book is like watching a movie in your head.
listening to: sapiens: a brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari I was really blown away by the first chapters, and the exercise of thinking about life at such scale felt freeing.
witnessing: the unfurling of a new, large, bright green tender leaf on my monstera plant. I know it's going to be magnificent, and I'm thinking of how new growth is so obvious and blatant in plants, but we don't acknowledge it enough in ourselves.
💌 ask me / tell me anything
send me a note via this minimalist form, or hit reply:
❓ open questions: on reading habits
I've been feeling the impulse to read a lot more this year -- in a more ritualized way, a more pleasurable or purposeful way -- like I want a stack of books I can't put down, like I did when I was a child. but I get distracted by all the threads and possibilities: business books, spirituality books, tarot books, poetry books, fiction books, memoir books, nerdy books... and get a bit overwhelmed.
what rituals or habits do you have around reading? how many books can you read at once, how do you keep momentum on reading, or decide what to read next?
how do you keep the reading hunger alive?
🐝 write me back and let me know.
❤️ until next week,
thank you for reading,
kening
🌱 PS. whispers from idea-seeds:
a handmade tarot deck: I've been pulling 1 card a day. I'm feeling a strange urge to draw my daily card in my own style, and write notes about it.
10 postcards from life: what if, as a creative challenge of being more present, we/I were to make/illustrate/write 10 postcards from my life, to a future self, capturing all the little mundane details?
I got out the microphone today to remind me to start the first episode of botanical studies podcast. also, I've started working on sketches for microgardens, which I'm hoping to launch in just a few weeks.
🪷 this is guide.notes 31, a weekly letter on nourishing an embodied, rich creative life in psychic, digital, and material worlds.