web world as water: digital ecosystems that give life
this is part of a series on digital ecosystems, or world-building.
I’ve been thinking of my digital world as a water ecosystem. as a super scorpio, I must have always felt this to be intuitively true, but today the visual diagram came to me in a flash.
here’s the system:
website world = a vessel for holding water (bath, lake, pond, ocean, puddle, cup)
newsletters = moving water (river, streams, creeks, waterfalls)
creative flow = channels, weather-based (rainwater, storms, tsunami, waves)
the psyche = an infinite, consciousness-space that holds everything else
how to use this framework
thinking in terms of an interconnected, integrated ecosystem
why is this framework useful? it’s a way of thinking about creation + sharing as part of one integrated ecosystem, rather than compartmentalized parts on a linear to-do list pipeline. when I feel pressured by the checklist/pipeline/conveyor belt approach to creating, marketing, or sharing my work, that’s when I feel the absolute most resistance and stuckness. while I love process and systems, my creative psyche is not a linear place. systems do not have to be linear.
(also: this visual above is actually only a small snapshot. your creative weather flow comes from a place (a dynamic process of interacting with life, psyche, the outside world), and your newsletter-rivers go to a place — to the outside world, to nourish others.)
a visual to stay focused
previously, I wrote about my minimalist ritual for sharing my work as an artist; and then, introvert marketing as a framework of simply sharing your work in a way what feels good — and trusting that it’s enough.
this water ecosystem framework helps me cut out the noise of “shoulds,” and focus on what truly matters, which is…
keep the flow moving
using this framework, the goal becomes clear: keep the flow moving. in every culture, there is a saying that water needs to flow, or it becomes stagnant.
movement is absolutely essential — digital movement, creative movement, psychic movement, physical movement. all of it.
when I don’t send a newsletter for months, that’s when I feel pressure building up. I can feel that my ecosystem has become too closed.
when I haven’t been engaged or present in my own life, that’s when my creative weather enters a dry spell.
when I haven’t visited my own website-world for a while, that’s when it feels stagnant and old — like a time capsule, rather than a living underwater world.
make your own map, identity your own metaphors
if this water ecosystem metaphor resonates with you, I’d encourage you to draw your own map. make your own specific metaphors for what your vessels and flows feel like. perhaps it helps to think of your website as a well, or a pond, or a bath — and your newsletter as a firehose, a faucet, or a clear stream.
perhaps you don’t know yet, and this is a question you keep bookmarked, in the back of your mind, until the feeling emerges.
water as life source
this metaphor feels so true to me because life, itself, is dependent on water as source. thus, creativity is a form of psychic water — sometimes materialized. these two truths I always knew.
but to extend the water-as-life and water-as-system metaphor to everything in our internet practice — is then to make even the act of sending a newsletter, or hitting “publish” on a post — contain the energy of that which is life-giving, essential, and sacred. in this model, everything is connected. I’ve decided that this is the way I want to be on the internet, and this is the kind of world I want to build.
I send a weekly letter on the creative internet practice, called guide.notes.