For The Worldbuilders

The number of things we have to unlearn is unquantifiable, but I know the one thing we must set fire to is continuing to allocate an ounce of our power and meaning making to systems that are only satiated by our death. When we slow down we understand the new year goal setting frenzy is connected to our longing to control the chaos and to carve out meaning in the spacetime of the abyss. The gift of acknowledging this craving with compassion, grace and the full awareness of our power is we get to direct this species-wide compulsion toward something much more intentional and aligned with our aliveness.

In search of our mother’s gardens we found a path. Keeping that path “well-trodden” so others may find it too is our only assignment. What’s your purpose? That’s impossible to know and that’s okay because we’re following the truth of our desire instead. What does this look like? It looks like releasing control of the project and signing up for the practice, laying perfectionism to rest. “The form will find itself”, is what the abolitionist science fiction writers, mutual aid practitioners also known as aunties and working class folk who carve out enough softness from the abyss to sing on Sunday, told me. The facts will make you lose your mind so on the well-trodden path, paved with black feminist praxis, we pick up feeling instead. Insisting on only what feels good, pleasure becomes an organizing framework for the practice. The truth of our desire becomes a compass, the practice is trusting it’s leading us in the right direction.

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Mentioned in the episode: Zoé Samudzi (https://www.instagram.com/babywasu) & https://www.instagram.com/deathworkwithshiv

All that running, until 2020 when I finally ran out of steam. Unhealthy work habits and a total lack of boundaries kept me distracted for years. In the absence of that distraction was nothing but the stillness, the silence, the darkness, the eyes patiently waiting for me to finally choose myself. On September 2nd, 2020 I submitted my letter of resignation and a 3 month sabbatical turned into two years. The season of surrender.

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What are our tools, frameworks and creative offers for helping each other navigate this wide open expanse? Worldbuilding is my framework, the Seed A World Retreat is my offering and “The Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself” is the tool I want to share today. Download your very own copy of the questionnaire using the link below! Inspired by “The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself” created by Divya Victor, “The Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself” walks you through four key questions whose answers intersect in ways that allow you to discover your income generating and values aligned offer. The offering that allows you to refuse severance inside your interdisciplinary practice by practicing surrender, spiritual alignment and relation instead.

Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire

The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself: https://divyavictor.com/the-audre-lorde-questionnaire-to-oneself/

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Read this week's newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/refusing-colonial-categorization

What if we are making appeals for our “humanity” to empires whose very colonial conception of “human” was given form by excluding certain members of the same species? To put it another way, let’s consider we are asking the same people who invented the word “human”, in order to dominate other members of the species and the planet, to include us in the project. Perhaps the only way to go about complete domination over a land and it’s species (including it’s people) is to invent a word that creates a delination between “man” and “nature”. The word is born out of contridication, an attempt to separate us from all there is when we are all there is.

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See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: ⁠https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/fear-cant-survive-a-radical-love

Learn More About Seeda School: ⁠https://www.seedaschool.com/program

Overlapping catastrophes like to flirt with your apathy, whispering into your ear with empty promises about the safety of solitude. The safety of silence. The safety of avoidance. The empty promises are dark and cavernous, without light and without ground. The darkness wouldn’t be so bad if I could at least smell soil — some possibility of change, emergence, growth. But that’s the thing about this empty promise — the option we have in the West to look away — we cut ourselves off from the generativity of letting grief and rage transform us. Inside collective grief, rage and study the walls are pulsing with life, the green electricity charges our movements and this dewy microclimate allows us to drink from the air; hydrating our hope for one more minute, one more hour, one more day. There is nothing but the smell of soil here. Plenty of ground to root inside of, eager for the seeds of our collective imagination and all the empty promises powered by fear — the whispering status quo — is drowned out by all the life buzzing around us.

See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/our-job-is-to-make-revolution-irresistible

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I want to call in all teachers, writers, artists and business owners to take a close look at what we’re “normalizing” in our practices. What cultural examples are we using to teach that feel apolitical? What references are we pointing to in our art that feel “neutral”? What narratives are we normalizing in our writing? What topics are we avoiding on our business accounts on social media? What are the employers, organizations and institutions we’re connected to authorizing as the “professional stance”? What ideologies are we upholding in an attempt to be apolitical? Whose politics are we re-inscribing when we “leave politics out of it”?

See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/being-apolitical-is-political-beloved

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Ashlee Marie Preston's Post: https://www.threads.net/@ashleemariepreston/post/CywDoHiPYo8

Sonya Renee Taylor's Reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyycxkqA4eC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

It’s Monday morning at my favorite coffee shop and I’m mesmerized by the freedom I’m witnessing. A toddler is freestyle dancing to electronic instrumentals in the middle of the busiest section of the establishment. The line wraps around her, the towering members of her species are careful not to interrupt her flow, everyone collectively ensures she has enough space to be. To dance. Enthralled by this scene, time slows and I take a sip of my black coffee with two pumps of vanilla syrup. The usual. And I try to hold back tears of joy. As usual. I realize we’re collectively making space for her to dance and that’s probably opening up space inside us too.

See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/our-right-to-release

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Like I said, mistakes? I can name plenty. There is no way to be in a generous practice of producing public facing projects without them. Some of these mistakes were essential, they were carrying divine lessons, and honestly some of them weren’t. The attempts to flatten in the face of the “jack of all trades, master of none” myth (who wants to be a fucking master anyway?), the workaholism unsustainably powered by a sense of unworthiness, solely relying on funding resources coming from outside my work instead of implementing strategies for the Creative Ecosystem to fund itself and the moves made out of fear, the fear, the fear, so much fear, are all mistakes that have cost me time, money, energy, opportunities, unnecessary suffering and even some relationships.

See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/3-lessons-from-a-decade-of-creative

Leave a Voice Message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where/message

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