waiting for change
making a world I want to live in, money stories, living inside the wheel of fortune
dear friends,
I’ve been thinking about how each day is just some variation on waiting for change, or noticing it.
these days, I feel how little there is that’s within my control — in my own life, in the world. it takes work to temper and redirect the force of my willpower. it takes work to keep doing the work, regardless of what happens, or doesn’t.
if nothing else, the work is to be a witness — to the changing moments, days, seasons. I see, I create, I share. I repeat, in all weather conditions. I disappear. I come back. I took this video, last Sunday:
when change does happen — it rarely feels clear and momentous, or final, but more like a static flickering, general weather patterns, a slow accumulation of evidence. we look at it — and decide that things have changed.
it is important to celebrate.
and/or, to grieve.
when in doubt, I return to making the work — to believing in the work as something which will carry me, all of us, forwards — to imagining and making a place I want to live in. everyday.
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🧃 Money Juice Cleanse starts in 10 days
I am slowly gathering myself to distill and channel all the deep money work I’ve been doing these last years — into a potent, 7 day course — that makes a hard, tangly topic feel light, refreshing, nourishing — medicinal creative practices you can return to.
each day will be a juice box of modular teachings & practices~
day 1 - clarity to face the numbers juice
day 2 - embodied safety milk/juice
day 3 - detoxing old stories juice
day 4 - thank you life juice
day 5 - worthy of recieving good things juice
day 6 - circulation energy juice
day 7 - abundance juice
dates: Mon Jan 26 - Wed Feb 4
fee: $120 for forever access + guided live session
🌑 Recent Creations
make an offering, weave your web
part 2 of a mini-series on grounding anchors for your creative business. in this episode, I’ll talk about how I think about offerings as sacred containers for your creative energy — and weaving ecosystem webs — as pathways for people to discover your world.
make an offering, weave your web — kening zhu
the practice of tending to your creative business
reflecting on labyrinth, season 1
I unravel all the elements that made up season 1 of my community, Labyrinth — the people, the seasonal rhythm, non-linearity, as well as discussion sessions, artifacts, workshops, treks, show & tells, and more.
Labyrinth will resume Season 2 on Feb 16.
reflecting on labyrinth, season 1 — kening zhu
what we created in a 12 week community
drawing through a life rupture
from my sketchbook ~ drawing through leaving my life in Istanbul, traveling to Paris, and New York. on drawing my life as a practice of witnessing
drawing through a life rupture — kening zhu
on leaving istanbul, traveling to paris & new york
A collection of money stories
as preparation to teach Money Juice Cleanse, I curated my writings on money into this library page, to share with you.
THEMES:
money as creative energy
money is a circle
painful personal stories
reimagining money
understanding scarcity
zines about taxes
🔮 Curations from the Archives
on making a world I want to live in
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the internet I long to visit, build, and inhabit
a place for my soul to feel at home
The internet I long to visit, build, and inhabit — kening zhu
a dream of a more nourishing internet
why world-building is wealth building
creating a flow of abundance in your world
why world building is wealth building — kening zhu
why world-building is the bridge between immaterial and material flow.
feeling safe in creative work & business
safety as a feeling we cultivate in work
feeling safe in creative work & business — kening zhu
safety as a feeling to prioritize & cultivate
🧧 Digital Abundance
Digital Abundance is the business course I’ve been preparing my whole life to teach. I’ll guide you, step by step, through imagining, planning, creating, sharing, and releasing a paid offering — and to build a business ecosystem that feeds your world.
course begins — March 9, 2026
registration will open this month
Labyrinth — Registration Opens 1/20
Labyrinth is my 12 week seasonal community container and ongoing teaching vessel — where I facilitate a group of brave creative wanderers to navigate the pathless path — one question, practice, and process at a time.
season two runs: Feb 16 - May 16, 2026
registration will open next Tuesday, 1/20
🌊 Notes & Misc.
on the privilege of creative work: I’ve been thinking about how, in context of bad things happening in the world, creative work can feel futile, meaningless, a privileged luxury. I’d like to offer this reframe. it’s not just the work itself, but the values that the work is a vehicle for — agency, autonomy, sensitivity, empathy, poetry, deep seeing, possibility, energetic and financial soveriegnty — in systems that attempt to flatten us into conformity and compliance. yes, it is a privilege to do this work. and, it’s also a responsibility.
on looking into the kaleidoscope: sometimes when I’m looking back at previous periods of my life — with something like relief, or wistfulness, or nostalgia, I think about how, one day, I’ll be looking back at this period of my life — from a different colored lens. I wonder how it will feel to me, in that future, and how, if you see it that way, it’s all just a recursive loop of seeing and unseeing. what do we do with this?? I don’t know.
do you ever feel: a sudden, terrifying full-body awareness that this life is NOT a test run? this is the real thing, whatever that means? on a mundane, day to day level, I’m absorbed by the contents of my life, and suddenly, I’m aware of the clear, cold, finitude of the container of my life. I have this sensation maybe 1-2 a year, and it always throws off my day. I had it this morning.
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in other notes, my caterpillar died, and I was in denial for a while, because its period of stasis was confusing, and I was hoping it would become a cocoon, and that we would emerge together, transformed into whatever, by spring or summer. I will bury it in my mother’s compost, and feed the circle of life.
sending you warmth.
take care for now.
🦋 kening
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🍃 podcast: botanical studies of internet magic
❄️ join the winter season 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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