botanical studies of internet magic (kening zhu)

inhabiting a home on the internet is really about making space to be yourself, in public. you resist the digital flattening of the self and, instead, grow a wild ecosystem. how? first, through committing to your creative practice. in this episode, we’ll explore:

• what it means to inhabit a space
• my three step, cyclical processes for growing a digital home -- create, curate, carve paths.
• why focus on creation first, before structuring
• Q&A: how often do you need to maintain a website?
• Q&A: will things look jarring side by side?
• and more…

I hope this episode gives you a sense of permission and possibility for growing and tending to a creative world of your own.

🌱 additional resources

⁠build a labyrinth, not a funnel⁠

house on the webs: introduction
house on the webs: day 0 incubation work
build a world, not an audience

the internet as a creative practice

~

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this episode is all about deconstructing and letting go of the pressure to “build an audience.” I’ll disentangle the practice of being an artist — from the byproduct of having an audience — and share how finding freedom from that pressure creates a well of personal power (and paradoxically, will magnetize your audience). we'll explore:

• three sources of pressure: (1) artist recognition as legitimacy (2) the digital age of visibility (3) the inner artist child
• a core guiding question to distill your commitment to your art
• the practice of power as seeing yourself — and the other
• reframing the audience as witness & travel companion to your journey

additional resources:

build a world, not an audience

the obscurus as a wounded artist child

~

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this week’s episode is about inhabiting yourself on the internet — by relating to it as a public vessel for your ongoing creative self. I’ll explore:

• the opposite of internet as creative practice -- the internet as performance, as a strategy game, and as obligation
• seeing the internet as a genre-defying infinity canvas for your creative expressions
• how being in public is about allowing yourself to be seen
• internet as a portal for manifesting new visions and worlds
  

this episode is an expansion of a post I wrote a few months ago with the same title.

~

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hello again, after a few months break. during my retreat, I thought a lot about what being "present" online means. I'll propose that digital presence isn't dependent on your labor or content production, but about cultivating a digital container that holds your energy. I'll explore:

• choosing inner rhythms over consistency pressure
• freedom from treating yourself as a means of production
• embodying the permission to be absent
• why content batching doesn't really work for me
• how time works differently on the internet
• accumulating wormholes to past selves
• digital spaces as vessels for presence

~

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🏡 explore house on the webs

🪷 book an advising session

💧 water my world

this is my last chapter of sharing my wayfinding journey (for now) — in which I share how I stopped traveling, decided to make a home in Istanbul, and slowly learned to show up as my artist self — in relationship, and in the world. I’ll untangle:

• why I clung onto hermitude, and resisted being in relationship (with any "other")

• what I had to let go of: emotional storms + binary thinking

• what I was afraid of (regression, and losing myself)

• a “what if” that unlocked everything for me

• choosing to show up as my uncompromising artist self

• a slow emergence of philosophies and processes

this episode is about integration, metamorphosis, and the act of returning to the world — and allowing myself to be seen.

--

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on untangling the fear of being seen -- and understanding where the desire to hide (in your creative work, life, or your digital expressions) comes from, and exploring how to release it. we'll dive into:

the practice of un-hiding yourself

the tension of being different

being present is more important than being public

deliberately curating your safe zones

facing your imaginary shadow gaze

why making art in public -- IS the practicing seeing yourself

becoming the loving, attentive gaze

~

🌱 additional resources

make art for no audience

make art in the void

⁠the internet as a creative practice⁠

house on the webs

~

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on a radically different way to relate to sharing your work on the internet — how to see sharing as a part of the creative process, not separate from it. I’ll explore the shifts in perspective that unlocked the act of showing up as myself, in public. we’ll explore:

• emotional resistance to sharing your work — swimming through feelings of overwhelm, creative stuckness, and guilt.
• sharing as being in energetic flow with the world
• sharing as creative release & death cycle
• sharing as cultivating creative self worth
• sharing as an act of surrender
• my 4 guidelines for more effortless and easeful sharing
  

I’ll explain why I think sharing your work is NOT about the audience, or for “the other” — it’s first and foremost — for ourselves, and our creative flow.

~

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this week, I’ll deconstruct and translate the concept of website as digital world into concrete design elements, and give you a poetic reframing of how to think about each piece of your website under the philosophy of world-building — we’ll explore:

• the website as a body to inhabit
• the atmosphere of a world — vision / brand / world logic
• places & destinations — homepage & subpages
• the garden for creative growing things — blog CMS
• 4 pathways of traveling — navigation & links

this episode is about the big-picture vision of imagining and building a website world, and making your creative home in a digital body.

🌱  additional resources

house on the webs: introduction
house on the webs: day 0 incubation work
how to build a world: a cyclical guide
ways of seeing by john berger

~

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this week's chapter on my wayfinding journey is about my years of the creative hustle, in which I tortured myself with the question: “how do I survive as a creative, and not hate myself?"

I’ll explore:

• my personal distillations of the prescribed / trailmarked paths of success — for writers, visual artists, and business owners
• how I thought something was wrong with me for not climbing those ladders (and what I realized instead)
• the illusion of safety + promise of conditional success… (that is, if you just override the self)
• why “means to an end” thinking doesn’t work for me
• how and why process is my guiding compass instead

this is about my Jump #3: from new creative entrepreneur trying to follow a 10-step plan of "shoulds"… to jumping into the void of my artist-hermit self.

--

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the "Iron Rice Bowl" is a Chinese metaphor for job security and stability (aka, what we, as artists and entrepreneurs, didn’t exactly choose.)

this is a beginning of a series about wayfinding, in which I’ll share the phases of my own decade long journey, from (almost) the very beginning.

I’m unveiling the ghosts of my head, and untangling a few themes:

• inherited cultural blueprints of what “success” means
• immigrant Chinese-American values, and de-programming
• quitting the marathon of accomplishment & prestige
• the SOS alarm bell of panic
• on choosing to be a writer, with a 9-5 day job.

then, I begin to open the question: if not Iron Rice Bowl, then what?

***

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this is my guiding principle 101: my devotion to process. I’ll unpack why I believe that process is the magic key to anything you want to create— in art, business, money, and the self. I explore:

• how our product / outcome / results obsessed culture disempowers and suffocates
• art, business, money, and the self — from the perspective of process vs. product-based thinking
• how embracing your process is the shortcut to anything
• process as the practice of utmost authenticity and power

--

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this episode is about my approach to cultivating a creative and business life outside of all social/content platforms (including Substack and Youtube) -- and feeling excited about it. this is not a critique of platforms so much as a portrait of alternative possibilities: we’ll explore:

• why platforms are like cruise boats - seemingly “easy” and “effortless” by promising all the amenities you’d ever need (while keeping you locked in).
• alternatives frameworks and approaches to (1) building community (2) being discovered (3) “monetization” (4) content creation/distribution
• why embrace making art alone; why being hard to find is not a bad thing
• the power of embodying your individual essence — centering in your creative process outside of the validation loop of platforms

🌱 additional resources

off the grid: leaving social media without losing all your clients

how I share my work as an introverted artist

build a world, not an audience

why world-building is wealth-building

make art for no audience

make art in the void

~

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A very personal account of the extreme feelings that lead me to quit my full time / part time jobs, and commit to working for myself.

This is a continuation of my series on wayfinding (my series of jumps into the void), featuring Jump #2: from aspiring writer with a 9-5 job — to deciding to become an entrepreneur.

I’ll explore these topics:

• the ever-present feeling of wasting my life
• life as a recovering good asian daughter / repressed creative / secret obscurus
• the idea of energetic reciprocity as an embodied feeling
• the notion that in order to feel safe, you must compromise yourself
• an infinite earning potential as a metaphor for expansion
• the desire to give 100% to the work that belonged to me
• escaping the cycle of job samsara

My “one way road” was more like a deeply anxiety-provoking, messy, uncertain, tangled wandering in the dark. but I’ll explain why it was (and still is) worth every second.

--

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an introduction; an opening of themes and unspooling of threads:

🌱 botanical -- plant life as a metaphor for creation

🪁 studies -- a way of curiosity, growth, and discovery

🏕 internet -- a space to inhabit, build, and be

🪼 magic -- the power of energetics and creativity

***

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why your website doesn’t have to be a brochure that compartmentalizes your infinite self — into three glossy pages. I’ll put these two frameworks side by side: “website as brochure” vs. “website as a digital garden-home-world”, and explore:

• why we feel pressured to turn ourselves into brochures
• the ethos and intention to sell / show / prove / substantiate — versus the intention to exist, inhabit, and be
• how brochure-like websites compartmentalize and limit the self into a marketing “niche”
• on building a nourishing garden-world to hold the multi-dimensional, expansive creative self — and invites visitors to linger
• why building a rich digital world to share your creative wealth is the key to inviting in prosperity

~

🌱 additional resources

house on the webs course

infinite possibilities for a digital world

how to build a world: a cyclical guide

why world-building is wealth-building

the internet i long to visit, inhabit, and build

~

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I spent many years needing to feel “productive” everyday — a word that was programmed into me, and which I clung to — but which felt wholly insufficient in trying to measure creative work, especially when self-employed. in this episode, I’ll tell you my journey — from being a productivity addict, to rejecting all imposed structures, to slowly, over time, reimagining what a sustainable, regenerative system actually looks and feels like.

I made this podcast shortly after creating my zine, in preparation for teaching a new course, Creative Systems.

📓 Zine: Deconstructing the Productivity Machine (download)

🪺 Creative Systems Course (live course starts Friday, March 21)

also mentioned:
The Serviceberry: an Economy of Abundance (essay) by Robin Wall Kimmerer
A Moody Creative’s Guide to Work Overwhelm

~
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🏡 explore my courses
🪷 inquire about an ⁠advising session⁠
💧 ⁠water⁠ my world

this episode is about leaping into the void. then, living in the leaps. I share my story of leaving NYC, slow traveling the world during a pandemic, and the treasures I found, deep within my artist-hermit self.

• from being suffocated by pressure — to creating from presence
• embracing a life without plans, goals, or expectations
• a digital detox to silence the noise in my head
• why make art even if no one sees it?!
• devotion to creation as a practice of inhaling + exhaling life.
• house on the webs - website as a garden, house, a world I carry with me, everywhere I go

this is Chapter 4 of my wayfinding journey, in which I gave myself the medicine, deprogramming, and creative/spiritual retreat I so desperately needed, and, in the process, discovered within me an inexhaustible power and desire to make art, no matter what. 🌸

--

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