6 visions for your digital world

this is part of my series on world-building, which I’ll continue writing until I’m bored. for a weekly digest & guides on the creative life, I send a Thursday newsletter called guide.notes.

in this post, I’ll outline 6 visions, purposes, and reasons for building a digital world — whether you’re an artist/creative, an entrepreneur, or someone way-finding in the world through an internet practice.

what is a digital world, exactly?

you could say it’s as simple as a website, but not only that. if a website is the shape, the vessel, the walls, the picture frame made up of code & pixels, the digital world are the creative flow, the garden of ideas, the painting that goes inside the frame. a digital world is both the container AND the contained, composed of infinite creative possibilities.

here’s six ways of thinking about its purposes & functions.

#1 - as a digital home to hold your creations (& more)

when I first started building my website in 2015, I used it as a standard creative portfolio for posting illustrations, paintings, drawings, and design work from classes I took at SVA. then, I started writing (thinking outloud) about the creative process, daily wellbeing rituals, and noting what inspired me. having a space to put my thoughts meant that I could organize and clarify my thinking — regardless if anyone ever read it. it felt totally different from social media, in which you’re always constantly aware of the “feed” and vanity metrics, the weird shame of being seen or unseen, liked or unliked.

a website felt lonely in a good way.

as in: maybe no one ever visits this place, but I feel so free and good and inhabited in myself, here. I belong to myself, here.

over the next eight years, I slowly stopped filtering what went into my site. I stopped trying to fit myself into any pre-conceived boxes or identities. I let go of the idea that everything had to look “perfect” and “portfolio-worthy,” because I let go of the idea that I had anything to prove.

Instead of thinking of my website as a showroom, I began thinking of it as an overgrown garden, a working studio, a sprawling house, an eclectic museum, or a messy desk with ideas, thoughts, sketches, and scribbled notes everywhere. then, when I started traveling the world, I didn’t have a physical home, but my digital home always gave me an anchoring and grounding in myself, through seeing what I created and collected, over the years. this is my world. my heart, mind, and soul lives here.

#2 - as a way to share your work off social media

sometime in the last 4 years, I stopped using social media. there was no official break-up, just an ongoing, years-long resentment that gradually trailed off into absence, and disinterest. I barely remember how being on social media feels, but I do know that having a digital world made me feel full, nourished, and grounded — in ways that social never did, not in a million years. it gave me a space to express and share all my ideas — even if it didn’t give me the immediate hit of dopamine validation of being seen.

the truth about being seen is: it doesn’t have to happen within 1 second of posting. you don’t have to check, refresh, and feel the crash of disappointment when you don’t get the response you expected. social media sets us up for those expectations, but having a digital world focuses you to focus on creation, and releasing it into the world, no matter what.

to me, this was a crucial part of the journey.

having a website-world teaches you share and create work NO MATTER who sees it, or doesn’t, no matter who likes it, or doesn’t — because only then, can creation & sharing become truly effortless. over time, I created a minimalist recipe for sharing my work as an introverted artist. these days, this is all I do.

#3 - as a magnetic love letter for kindred spirits

so, after you share, does it just dissipate into the void? are we just talking to ourselves, into a black hole where all our thoughts and ideas and creations go? sometimes (many days) this is really how it feels. and at first, especially if you’re off the social media / dopamine rat trap, you pour your heart and soul out… and get crickets.

I like to think of world-building / sharing on your website / sending newsletters — as something akin to whispering in someone’s ear (or the ear of the universe/connected-consciousness). it’s intimate. a love letter. you won’t get a feverish response, immediately. it’s not a make-me-viral machine. but over time, if you keep whispering and sharing, you’ll build slow relationships with people who find solace, pleasure, and sanctuary in the world you’re building.

I’ve learned, over and over again, that the more specific I am, the more radically honest I am about who I am, and how I want to be in the world — the more I attract kindred spirits who are aligned and resonant with my energy. to be hyper-focusedly, uncompromisingly yourself is to create an organic system that magnetizes the right people, and repels the wrong people. it IS to be magnetic.

and personally, I’d rather have a small, dedicated circle (as Kevin Kelly wrote, 1000 true fans) than a half-interested crowd. I’d rather write and receive love letters, than be on someone’s feed.

#4 - as gathering spaces for building community

If nurtured with enough attention, love, and care, a slow-growing web of kindred spirits can flourish into a community.

I struggle with this sometimes, as I wrote about it a hermit growing creative community — building community feels both totally effortless and emotionally daunting to me — but I think that when you have enough people attracted to the same energy, the same ethos, way of seeing and being — then that self-filtering mechanism is infinitely more poweful than a bullet-pointed list of “TARGET AUDIENCE ATTRIBUTES.” your community self-selects, self-organizes around you.

you build community by trusting that the right people will gather around the fire. they will choose themselves, because they will choose you. and not specifically YOU — but what you represent. what you stand for. the energy of your world.

#5 - as a magic portal for growing your business

I started world-building to have a place to share my art, to express my ideas, then to feel inhabited in a digital space that belonged slowly to me, but over time, I realized how world-building is the most powerful magic portal for transforming and growing my business.

why?

because business = the flow of value = services/offerings exchanged for money.

but wait. that’s only the end product.

business is also a relationship-building process, and worlds allow that process to flourish — by creating a space that people want to come back to, again and again.

build a world that people want to spend time in, and they will keep coming back. it’s way more fun than forcing yourself to do content marketing, then burning out.

business as process means that way BEFORE you flow services and offerings for money, you have to establish trust, resonance, understanding, connection with the people you’re serving. this is what a world does. you give to them unconditionally through building a space that speaks to them, your kindred spirits. and I bet that they will, at some point, feel the urge to throw money at you.

#6 - as interactive art (and games)

this is a function and purpose of world building that I’m probably most inspired by, excited about, and actively discovering.

how can a website-world — in structure and form — be a form of interactive art, game, or digital experience?

how can it be a portal? a poem? an interactive story? a choose-your-own adventure? a digital dream?

this year, I redesigned my website so that it feels more like a map of an oceanic world, with object-elements leading as portals to different topics. this is only the beginning.

a vision for the power of digital world

Here’s the last thought I’ll leave you with.

Can a world — a website — do ALL of the above purposes, at once?

Can it be a space to hold your creations, to share your work, to inhabit your digital home, to connect with your kindred spirits, to build community, grow a sustainable business, AND, be a form of interactive, experiential art?

I say, yes. totally. definitely. and this is my vision of the future — a total integration of self, and expansion of what a digital world can do; what our creative impulses unleashed and nurtured on the internet wild, can do.

I send a weekly newsletter called guide.notes — the process of nurturing a creative life, and world-building on the internet.

growing a businessKening ZhuJanuary 18, 2024world-building