the wandering way of an artist hermit
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this episode is about leaping into the void. 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 ā 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. šø
Today's episode is chapter 4 of my way-finding story in which I'm sharing the phases of my personal journey over a decade of becoming and figuring out how to be an artist in the world -- through and on -- the internet.
The last episode was called "How do I Survive as a Creative and Not Hate Myself?" in which I shared my own experiences dealing with the creative hustle, walking the prescribed trail-marked paths of marketing and self-promotion that I saw for creatives and businesses around me, and I explored the fallacy of MORE; conditional success, of "more effort equaling more results."
I also explored how it was my Jump #3: from feeling pressure to follow the path, follow the shoulds, even if it wasn't compatible with my energetic nature -- into jumping into the void of myself.
So my friends, this episode is about that jump and what happened in the void.
As in, what happens when you strip away all the SHOULDS of how you're supposed to show up as a creative on the internet, or as a business, to its bare essence?
What does it mean to be an artist, if you don't push yourself to show or to market yourself as an artist?
What does it mean to make art, alone?
And how do you reconcile with how is it that you share your work?
The Pendulum Swing
So in some senses, this podcast episode is about the pendulum swing, as in going from being a good Asian daughter who threw away the iron rice bowl, the symbol of stability, into choosing an alternative creative path, and still trying to follow a path, trying to fulfill metrics of worldly success to gain recognition or likes or followers or money, and then riding that pendulum swing to enter so deeply in the creative spiritual plane in the other special world that all the material things in this life feel kind of meaningless.
My pendulum swing into the artist term itself would eventually find equilibrium somewhere in the middle, but that's a story for the next episode.
So today let me share...
Chapter 4: The Wandering Way of an Artist Hermit
Leaving NYC
The short story of how and why I left New York City comes down to feeling so financially suffocated by the high cost of living that I was in constant survival mode without any room to breathe or move or do anything. It was like being in chokehold.
The longer story... has layers and layers of shame and a year of really bad, steeply deteriorating mental health.
When I made the jump into working for myself full time, I was willing to make compromises and to be a "starving artist." I totally embraced instability and a standard of living that is, shall we say, a little more in flux. I trusted that I could figure it out and weather it through.
My parents saw the sacrifices I made and wanted to support and invest financially in my business journey. So even as they insisted that I was on the wrong path, they were offering me some stability. At the beginning of that, I did feel materially taken care of, but emotionally, it was like warming up at the beginning of a marathon... and constantly tripping, falling on my face, because, this combination was combustive, to say the least.
I felt shame every day at having failed them as a good Asian daughter with an Ivy League degree. I felt constant pressure to prove myself to make money. I felt privileged and spoiled to even be in this position of receiving support, which made me feel guilty and just created a cycle of shame, failure, and anxiety.
After a year of that, I decided to leave everything. My apartment, my long-term relationship at the time, and New York City, which had been my home since arriving as a hopeful, dreamy college freshman at 18, I packed all of my stuff into a storage closet deep in Queens, and in January of 2020, I left.
Leaving New York City happened in parallel with abandoning the paths of the creative hustle that I explored in the last episode.
Traveling the World
And in case you're wondering how I traveled for two years as a struggling artist with an unstable income, let me say that it was a combination of extreme frugality, conscientiousness, the pandemic, a bit of creativity, and the generosity of many friends around the world who helped me or hosted me.
Compared to a decade of feeling drained by New York City, the rest of the world felt affordable, resource-wise, and not just financially, but energetically.
Long-term slow travel is also very, very different than short-term travel in terms of expenses.
There were no luxurious Airbnbs, no wining, no dining.
And because of the pandemic, flights were cheap (and very masked and very stressful), so non-consumption in movement, in motion, was kind of easy and hard at the same time.
At the time, I was already a few years into doing web design, branding, and illustration work for private clients.
So without any marketing or promotion, I had a small stream of jobs of referrals.
The money I made through that was not enough to live in New York City comfortably without feeling choked, but with a bit of careful planning, it was enough to move around the world very slowly in an era of collective hermitting.
I started a patrons program for my art and writing.
I started teaching small, creative courses simply as an experiment in process without feeling pressured for it to make me money.
The Absence of Pressure Changed Everything
And in retrospect, that lack of pressure changed everything.
The energy with which I showed up in the world completely transformed because there was no need, no paddling in the water feeling like I'm drowning.
It was just me learning how to be, how to be myself, and learning to discover what being myself looked and felt like without any of that noise surrounding me.
Compared to the relentless hustle culture of New York City, floating in the world, sometimes alone, sometimes with the company and hospitality of friends, it felt good.
Something just felt like life and a deeply rich life.
I spent cherry blossom season a whole spring and early summer in the Japanese countryside with an old friend.
I spent a sticky hot summer in Naples, Italy, and then in autumn and winter in the darkness of Berlin.
In the end of summer, I came to Istanbul where I felt this city telling me to come back and settle here for a while.
I spent an autumn alone in the Greek islands where I spent my 30th birthday walking the volcanic caldera.
And then that winter, I followed my calling back to Istanbul where I still am now two years later.
Over two years, I lived and traveled to nine countries.
Living in the Leaps
I lived without worldly ambitions or expectations for anything.
I, who was a great obsessive type A meticulous planner, I learned to live without plans.
Both the physical sense, as in I bought last minute one way tickets everywhere, and in a more emotional sense, which coming from a programming of such pressure and need to succeed, this sort of no plans in the wild way of being was exactly the medicine that I needed.
And at the time, I will say it didn't feel like anything.
It didn't feel like me making my own way, charting my own path.
It just felt like wandering.
But that first spring of 2020, the pandemic, I woke up in the countryside in Japan with my close friend.
And I felt so rich inside, so abundant, because the practice each day was just to wake up and do what felt nourishing to my soul and to do my best to trust that the universe would provide the next step.
So every day I did minimal simple things.
I tended to my wellbeing practices.
I wrote or drew something.
I posted it on my website.
I sent letters to my patrons and I worked on my courses or did client work.
That was it.
Digital Detox
I also had a digital consumption detox.
I stopped reading anything except books.
And I gave myself a digital, a series of digital minimalist experiments, like digital Ramadan, in which I wouldn't turn on my phone until 5pm or 6pm.
And all of these practices and experiments, it really helped me let go of the voices and the noises in my head and create a sort of cocooning sacred space for myself.
The Practice of Daily Devotion
I let go of all the shoulds of marketing, of social media, of self-promotion, of outreach.
I let myself feel enough.
And it was like taking a great big exhale.
It was like finally I could just exist.
And I created first and foremost for myself.
Travel writings, paintings, drawings, films, animations.
I wrote about dramatic, hard, messy feelings, the process of wellbeing and creativity.
I collected insights and revelations.
I created guides, not really for anyone else, but for myself.
For those inevitable amnesiac days when I'll wake up and forget what country I'm in, who I am, or what I'm doing with my life.
Some days I'd feel so present, so spiritually fulfilled, and I dare say a sort of enlightenment like I was close to the essential source of life.
Like nothing mattered except life and death and beauty and art and truth and everything else felt kind of a lie.
Everything people chased, prestige, money, power, none of that mattered in the context of the universe and the fact of that we will die one day.
That's the mental space that I was in for much of the time.
Then on other days the pendulum would swing and I feel so lost with those loudspeaker alarms blaring in my head, telling me that I wasn't doing enough.
I was lost and wandering in the world during a pandemic without a home, without knowing the language, without a real country, without my family or a close community of friends, without a solid sense of my own profession or career path.
After these next few weeks or months were up, this visa or that housing situation, I had no idea where I would go next.
Those years taught me the trust that even without plans, if you keep listening, if you keep practicing extreme presence and openness, the next door or portal will always open and call your name.
What Being an Artist Means to Me
So on those amnesiac, anxiety-filled, lonely days, I'd write and draw and remind myself, "Dear Kening, you are an artist."
And being an artist has nothing to do with validation, recognition, or worldly success of any sort.
It is only about what you create and the process through which you create it.
That is, your one wild and precious life.
And what matters most is your daily devotion to your art.
As in, if a tree falls on a forest and no one was there to see it or hear it, did it really fall?
If you were the only person on this earth and no one would ever see or hear your art, would you still make it?
Is it still worth making?
I say that question, that question I pose to myself a lot because it was a litmus test.
That question made me indestructible and extremely prolific because I became a completely self-contained ecosystem.
**I made art because I had to, because it was a must, because it was as essential to me as breathing.
Life is the inhale and art is the exhale.
All the things that happened in between, that was the process I obsessed over.
And while my definition of what being an artist means has expanded in vision over the last years, I still stand by this.
That extreme devotion, in a way which is almost rapturous, aesthetic, otherworldly, transcendent, it was the fuel, the undepletable fuel that kept me going, that kept me creating.
When I found that core, it was an inexhaustible energy source that I could always tap into that nourished me rather than depleted me.
And that rule of doing what nourishes rather than depletes, that became my guiding framework for everything else that I did.
My house on the webs
I also want to share a bit about my relationship to my website over those years.
So without having a stable home or a home country, my website became truly my digital home.
In some sense, it helped me become a citizen of the world.
It made the world my home, but it also gave me a sort of lens to look at the world through a kaleidoscope of digestions and imaginations and creations that I've inhaled and exhaled from the world.
And when changing countries kind of felt like changing TV channels, I just felt really disoriented or lonely or I have to start over and figure out how to buy groceries.
Entering my website world made me feel at home.
It made me feel at home in my mind and art was my essence.
It reminded me of who I am and what I'm here to do.
It gave me a purpose to keep breathing, to keep digesting, to keep moving.
And so while I was on the Greek islands, my last destination before moving to Istanbul, I coalesced all of these philosophies and created the first iteration of a course called House on the Webs in which I explored and shared my vision and process of web design, but also bigger than that, what it means to create a home on the internet to share with others.
The idea that a website is not about showcasing or performing or proving to anyone.
A website is for yourself, first and foremost.
It is a mirror of your mind, a vessel, a digital environment to hold your multi-form creations, dreams, thoughts, ideas, visions, all of your exhales and fantastical possibilities.
A website is also a portal to other lives, lived and unlived.
It's a garden world that you tend to every day as an act of tending to yourself.
A world that comes with you all the time everywhere that you can also give as an offering to others.
In that sense, I was able to share my unfiltered, authentic self by imagining that it was just for me and in that way being able to create from a deeper, truer place.
End Notes
My creative friends, I'm closing this chapter 4 in which I shared my journey of leaving New York City, traveling the world during a pandemic and the lonely but beautiful years of making art in the void.
Throughout the feeling of financial pressure, I was able to discover richness in the practice of being extremely present, alive in every single moment, of living without plans, of trusting in the right doors to open and to lead me on the next step, and it always did.
At the same time, I experimented with digital detoxes which helped me eliminate the noise in my head and create a sense of sacred space.
I learned how to make art in the void by distilling down to my deepest core motivation for why I make art, that is, my daily devotion to art as a practice of inhaling and exhaling life.
I also gradually cultivated my internet practice of my website as a garden, a house, a world that moved with me and carried my essence with me.
Whether or not anyone ever saw it, the things that I created really didn't matter.
I couldn't let it matter.
I had to create without a flickering of self-consciousness.
Dear creative friends, in the next episode, I will share my journey of returning from the creative spiritual plane to the more material dimension of the physical world, a parallel journey of finding home and stability in my new Istanbul life, reconciling the dichotomy of art and money -- and of artist and entrepreneur.
I'll also share how I've evolved my processes and philosophies for being an artist in the internet and discovering how to use my internet magic.
š I write a weekly newsletter on creative alchemy & world-building called guide.notes.