hello kindred spirits,
thank you for signing up for guide.notes, a newsletter about the "how" of growing a creative ecosystem in the digital world.
my artist digest letters share my creations, but guide.notes is all about the process: of wayfinding, nurturing, building: creative things. digital ecosystems. soulful ventures that can sustain our worldly lives.
this is my brain-share where I'll nerd out on the details -- with ongoing notes, guides, questions, and insights, as well as invitations for creating together, creative courses, and more.
I write everything from personal experience, beginning as notes-to-self. I'm sharing it in hopes that it might offer you some light on this pathless journey.
I'll send a "best of" letter every season or so, with bookmarks from my ~7 years of archives.
as always, don't hesitate to write me to say hello, ask a question, or reply.
21 guides | best of the archives
(1)
wellbeing, and nurturing the inner ecosystem
over the years, I've written obsessively about wellbeing - not because I'm a wellness teacher by any means, but because I've found, again and again, that tending to the inner ecosystem is the foundational pre-requisite to building anything in the outside world: creative work, businesses, or otherwise.
I've been lucky/unlucky to have an especially mercurial emotional climate, and thus, I find myself, out of necessity, reaching for rituals and systems to help me weather it more gently.
deep journaling: unpacking difficult emotions
scorpio self-care: an ongoing guide
13 nourishing practices for wellbeing
everything I know about starting a morning routine
how to feel at home anywhere
365 days of moon journaling
daily rituals for the psychic-creative immune system
(2)
the creative practice, and growing a body of work
embodying the creative process is like truly, deeply embodying yourself; discovering very personal rhythm, systems, cycles, needs, desires, impulses, urges to express -- to bring raw, amorphous whispers into form. understanding your psychic metabolism takes time and commitment. it takes effort to find effortlessness. but you can begin in tiny ways -- any day of the week, and you'll find that it's about so much more than what comes out, but being one with the entire process of breathing.
dear kening: how do you stay motivated?
don't think about art; just do your thing
no plans in the creative wild
the secret to creative flow is ongoingness
the artist soul is a tree
art is a gift (I made this for you)
santorini still life & on drawing everyday
(3)
world-building & digital ecosystems
work is different when it's something so intrinsically connected to the self. it's lonely. full of pressures and expectations. you can't quite detach the same way. over the years, I've found that the best way to approach "business" is to think of it as a garden. to build a website which feels like home (rather than a resume) -- an ecosystem that you share with those you seek to serve. thus, making money is just another form of finding energy flow, and embracing your own.
house on the webs school
how to build your dream castle
do what feels good
a theory of rest-play-work
branding & business for astrologers
30 lessons from art / business / life
dear kening, how do you center your "real" work?
4 ongoing notes from recent days
1 | what if you let go of the need to feel "ready"?
so many varieties of (life & creative) procrastination come from the excuse that *"I don't feel ready for X, at least, not until I do Y."* but the Y keeps morphing and enlarging; it's like an unending, unforgiving to-do list, and before you know it, weeks, months, years have passed - you still haven't become any more ready. what if, instead, we delete the pre-requisite of whatever hoops we think we're supposed to jump through in order to feel "ready" - what if, we got ready for X - by doing X? the process will feel messy, hard, chaotic - but this is the steep learning curve you'd expect in the university of life. doing the thing will get you ready for the thing. and more.
which things are you "not ready" for? and could you be "becoming ready," in the process of embracing it?
2 | give space to all of your impulses (write it down)
every morning, I do a practice I call "process journaling," which is sitting with a blank page (on my iPad, and Notion journal), and jotting down all of the urges & impulses I can sense within me - ranging from creative experiments and aspirational new ideas, to the mundane admin things, to time-sensitive projects, to self-care practices that will simply feel nourishing, like a vitamin tonic. part of the practice is keenn discernment: choosing which impulse I will give attention to on a particular day.
impulses include: to express & create. to share & teach. to give. to declog. to draw. to organize. to understand. to experiment. to connect. to grow a skill. to learn something new.
perhaps, tomorrow, pay attention to what your impulses are. write them down. choose one that feels right for the day.
3 | embrace the days when you feel like doing nothing
there will be days when you feel like doing nothing. for me, enjoying nothing-ness days is definitely a (re)acquired skill. it means giving myself permission to take a break - which includes turning off the work-brain which says "you must always be working, or XYZ will happen, or not happen." ultimately, this means taking on a different relationship to time, and progress -- as rarely linear. it means listening to the intuition over the mind; the seasonal, organic being over the expectation that humans produce like machine.
so what do we do with nothing days, if we were to truly embrace them? what would your instructions for enjoyment look like?
4 | using your astrological chart to unblock your work flow
recently, I mapped down a list of reoccurring patterns in my creative & work flow, and mapped it onto the core of my astrological chart. I'm a Scorpio Sun/Rising/Mars/Pluto in the 1st house, Aries moon in the 6th house. my Scorpio qualities include: getting so deeply in the work I'm disoriented, dazed, and paralyzed, and then never finishing the project, and definitely forgetting (not caring) to share it with anyone. my Aries qualities include: having extreme initiation energy and a rapid flow of ideas, but losing interest and energy quickly. getting tired and bored, and abandoning abruptly.
my ongoing process, these days, has been embracing the strengths of my archetypes -- while designing practices to catch my weakness. how can I harness the energy of Scorpio-Aries to dive deeply into many projects, but ensuring that I finish them (quickly) before I get stuck, bored, and tired? in the end, it's about riding the flow of creative energy - but astrology has given me a new lens to think about creative flow -- that I've absolutely found helpful. perhaps it will for you, too.
more writings on this, coming soon!
house on the webs (course & school)
house on the webs is a 10 day sprint challenge for creatives to build and inhabit their digital homes - growing websites like ecosystems in an organic, rigorous, step-by-step process, with my daily guidance & feedback. the house on the webs school is an ongoing resource of guides I'm working on.
dear kening, write me & I'll write back.
send me an ongoing question about the inner-creative life. I'll carry it in my heart, across my days, while walking through Istanbul, and write you a proper reply.
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as always, thank you for reading.
until next time, very soon.
kening