one of the most significant shifts I've ever had is letting go of linear (ladder-like) models of external success -- in order to put my own journey, process, and energy at the center. but, how do you do that, if you don't know what's at your center, or if your center is always changing?

I'll explore facets of this question through the metaphor of a labyrinth as journey -- how to dance with seasonal cycles, moving between structure and spontaneity, and focus on just taking the next step forwards.

🦋 explore ⁠⁠⁠labyrinth library⁠⁠⁠

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✨ imagine a ⁠⁠liminal leap⁠⁠

🌳 browse my ⁠⁠⁠⁠courses⁠⁠

I've had a very long, tumultuous relationship with self-doubt -- as my number one enemy, a villianous monster, a generous teacher, a loyal friend, and a companion for the twisty, dark paths of the creative life.

today, I'll share my own relationship with doubt, and offer a reframe for what doubt is -- not as contamination, or poison, not as something to fight or run away from, but as a essential friction for your life. I'll suggest a 3 part practice to work with doubt -- by creating spaciousness and containers to hold it, and to keep moving forwards, even (or especially) with doubt by your side.

~

🦋 explore ⁠labyrinth library⁠

✨ imagine a liminal leap

🌳 browse my ⁠⁠courses

🗺️ visit my ⁠web world⁠

💌 receive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my letters⁠⁠⁠⁠

there is a difference between wanting clarity, and wanting permission. or certainty. or safety. clarity isn't something external that I wait to happen to me (like good weather conditions), but a moving, fluid energy that I'm in conversation with -- like a bird. sometimes I see it. sometimes it's gone.

I'll explore why clarity feels so crucial for the pathless path, how people see me as having a lot of "clarity" (when in fact, I experience it as something different). I'll share what questions I ask myself for cultivating a deeper relationship to clarity.

~

🦋 explore labyrinth library, a seasonal community
🌳 explore my ⁠courses & ⁠offerings⁠
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hello there, after a summer.

this episode is on why being with the unknown is at the heart and core of all imaginative, wilderness work -- through your inner life, creative life, digital life, and business.

today, I'll share my syllabus-itinerary for navigating uncertainty through the autumnal astrological archetypes of Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius -- aka, how to hold complex truths, walk through the darkness, and find joy in the quest.

-

this is my itinerary for the first season of Labyrinth Library -- an ongoing seasonal community and teaching vessel for mystery work. we begin September 22. explore more here.

mentioned: truth is a glittering glacier

the visual slides of this episode (youtube)

~

🏡 visit my website

🌳 explore my courses & ⁠offerings⁠

💌 receive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my letters⁠⁠⁠

this is about escaping the noise of platforms and constant connectivity. I reflect on why acclimating to digital silence can feel stark, lonely, and hard, at first. it's like how the body feels on "airplane mode," or when when waking up in a forest after a decade in a cramped city apartment.

in this episode, I explore how and why platforms (by design) turn us into static noise. I share my personal experiments on digital minimalism and solitude -- as a way of practicing more presence and here/now-ness, wherever you are.

this is a meditation on digital silence as a rich landscape, showing you a deeper way into the self.

related

12 experiments in digital freedom (from 2020, in Japan)

a day without screens (2020)

why I don't use email or social media before noon (from 2016, back when I was still on social)

~

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🏡 explore ⁠⁠house on the webs course

🪷 inquire about an ⁠⁠advising session⁠⁠

💧 ⁠⁠water⁠⁠ my world

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

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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💧 water my world

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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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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🗺️ visit me on my ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠website-world⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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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

~

🌸 read ⁠⁠⁠⁠the ⁠⁠⁠⁠text transcript⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ of this episode

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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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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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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’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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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 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 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.

--

read the ⁠text transcript⁠ of this episode

visit me on my ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠website-world⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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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. 🌸

--

read the text transcript of this episode

visit me on my ⁠⁠⁠⁠website-world⁠⁠⁠⁠

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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.

--

⁠read the ⁠text⁠⁠⁠ for this podcast episode

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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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