Episodes
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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
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🌱 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 audiencethe internet as a creative practice
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Missing episodes?
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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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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 sharingI’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 worldsthis 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 processesthis episode is about integration, metamorphosis, and the act of returning to the world — and allowing myself to be seen.
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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 gothis 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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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 insteadthis 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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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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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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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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