dear kindred friends,

next week I'll probably be writing you from an airport, en route to my hometown / motherland (hangzhou, china) where I'll be for three weeks to visit family. I haven't been back in 6 years.

dear creative friends,

these recent years, my experience of spring has felt like being involuntarily woken up from a delicious nap (aka, winter). I'm groggy, sluggish, and mildly irritated at being interrupted and pressured (by the beautiful weather, no less) to spend time outside.

hello friends,

I'm writing to you from spring in Istanbul - just a few days before local elections, where the streets are filled with flags of politicans' faces fluttering in the wind, and vans playing political songs on loudspeakers. I'm slowly, reluctantly un-hermiting from winter.

these days: I'm listening to Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein on audiobook, and recently watched WandaVision, which touched the abyss in me (I wrote about it here.)

in this letter, I'll share:

dear friends of the void,

in recent days, I've been thinking about nervous system regulation as it relates to working for yourself -- and how the feeling of never-quite-doing-enough is rooted in a survival response.

dear wildfire friends,

I've decided to write and send you this letter on Friday mornings. that way, it feels like a soft exhale, like sharing a leisurely cup of coffee with a familiar friend, or like laying out the fruits of my garden & forest forgaging on the table... rather than something I stress out about on Thursday nights, at 11pm.

dear kindred spirits,

I'm not sure about you, but this week felt like a series of nose dives (hence this late letter). I found myself running towards deadlines, and then crashing afterwards -- with long lists of stuff I still didn't do, haunting me.

dear adventurer friends,

hello there friends,

this month I've been really deep in the work. sometimes this feels a little too much; too brainy-obsessive, like olympic swimming in my own head.

I'm dreaming of: growing gills, taking half days off to wander Istanbul and ride ferries to nowhere, to read more poetry.

I'm asking myself, again and again -- "but what do you really want now?" -- until the answer feels razor sharp, like a blade. Then, I want to let my days be soft.

dear worldly friends,

I woke up at 3:55am today, unexpectedly, (due to a terrorizing mosquito) and decided to start working in the dark. by 10am, I had already been working for 5 hours -- somehow, this changed the entire shape of my day. time morphed into a completely different creature (like, from an anxious rabbit to a giant snake, molting skin).

have you ever experienced this?? I've been amazed, and perplexed.

this week: I launched a podcast, began writing a new series on forming a vision, and reflected on the practice of keeping an inspiration log.

dear kindred friends,

after two weeks of writing everyday about world-building, this week I watched as my mind slowed down into the consistency of mushy vegetables. (hello, luteal phase.)

I woke up some days and felt like an empty lake; totally dry of inspiration, creative spark, or motivation. it was a lot of effort to do one task per day.

past versions of me would've felt super guilty, and berated myself for this. but recently, I've been thinkinga about the vital importance of low tide days / fermentation days / mushy mind days.

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.

dear wayfaring friends,

hello there. how is your new year unfolding?

I took a little long winter break, where I traveled, over-socialized with friends, and spent (an awkward length of) time with my family. now I'm back in my istanbul life, comfortably hermiting.

since sending my last artist digest, I've been thinking about the form of a digital letter. this season, I'll be playing around and experimenting. I'm always open to suggestions, so please don't write me back anytime, and let me know what you think.

hello friends,

it's been a little while since I sent you my last digest. I know I tend to procrastinate/hermit from groups of people, so from now on, I'll just imagine that this letter is only you and me, here.

where's here, for you? what's going on in your world, this winter?

here's postcard from mine:

dear worldly friends,

this week, I've found myself in an sticky, melancholic mood, accompanied by a hum of anxiety. I know that when my mind wants to control and tighten; when it feels isolated and lonely in the world, when it demands reassurance of the future -- that I'm living from a stuck place.

in moments like this, it feels as though I have no fuel for my fire, no water for my garden, no generative powers -- only a dust storm, rattling in my head. I feel like I will never feel inspired again.

of course, I know this is not true.

dear friends of the creative wild,

this sunday I'll turn thirty-two. this week, I've found myself in a trancelike, Scorpionic work flow -- living a rigorous daily rhythm of creative practices and project sprints, such that I feel like I'm deep sea diving everyday, collecting treasures of the creative psychic world.

I intersperse this with half days of rest: I'm calling it land days, where I do light tending work, or lay in a (metaphorical) hammock, napping, reading, walking, or watching mystery crime dramas. a lesson that I come back to, again and again, is: intense rest is what make intense work sustainable.

dear wanderer friends,

today I woke up to an rainy istanbul ten degrees colder than yesterday. after last week's amnesia, this week I stretched out the days like a piece of taffy candy -- staying up till 1am, waking up before 7am, working a little too intensely, too haphazardly, running towards a list of ambitious daily deadlines.

sometimes, I feel like the act of creation is really just being a plumber of my psyche. all I'm doing is unclogging the flow, giving it form, allowing it to be seen. the alternative is -- a suffocating creative constipation, a slow building anxiety, my ideas, imaginations, and dreams dying a painful un-death...

I create -- in order to feel like a lush garden inside; in order to feel alive.

dear starburst friends,

I played tour guide again last week, roaming Istanbul with a dear old friend I've known for 14 years. we adventured and feasted everyday -- eating so much food that we never wanted to eat again.

then, after she left, I woke up on Monday with a terrible grogginess, like I had forgotten...everything:

dear spirit friends,

last night I came home from a few days in Adana, an ancient Mediterranean city on the far eastern side of Turkey, close to Syria -- famous for its kebabs and being a super macho place, where, (it is said) on the hottest days of the summer, the men take out their guns and shoot at the sun...

I spent my days with my 8-months pregnant friend, living with her Turkish family, walking amongst the pomegranate and citrus trees, and towering cactus shrubs, like this:

dear kindred friends,

I'm writing you a day late, savoring a gentle end to a bad week -- that is, I spent Monday-Wednesday walking through a "dark tunnel of the mind-emotional-prison-abyss," (aka, pms week...) and experienced a mini, scorpionic death and rebirth.

from 3 years ago:

the dark tunnel room — kening zhu

the state of the day

dear friends of the web,

I took this week off to spend time with my partner, who just returned from six months of Turkish military service. since stepping away from work, I've been watching movies, napping, cooking, and thinking about what to cook: maybe, a layered chocolate cake, slow-cooked lamb in the oven, and pickled Korean-style side vegetables.

despite how much I'm enjoying the week, the act of NOT working is actually very hard, and feels a little unnatural. when work is such a part of my sense of self and way of relating/connecting to the world, not working feels like... being an leisurely-astronaut floating in space. I'm feeling groggy, not in a bad way.