The Journey is The Dream, The Destination is The Practice

For the Worldbuilders Ep. 058

Chakaia Booker (b.1953), O, 2001. Materials: Rubber, tires, wood, steel Dimensions: 55 h × 36 w × 47 d in (140 × 91 × 119 cm). I was prompted to return to Booker’s work when I made contact with one of her sculptures, Egress, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Dear Worldbuilder,

Maybe you’ve been talking yourself out of taking a creative risk for months, maybe years just like I have. A life is something we create, too. Maybe your creative risk is leaving a job with an abusive company culture, moving to a new city or removing yourself from relationships where your power is perceived as a threat to neutralize instead of divine intelligence to collaborate with. Whatever transition is tugging you toward its trail, whatever creative calling won’t leave you alone, I need you to know the journey is the “pay off” we’re seeking.

Perhaps who you become inside the risk of choosing yourself, is the entire point.

Inside this Episode We…

🧶 Explore how we might learn to prioritize the process over the outcome

🕳️ Compost “all or nothing” thinking by settling into the transformative potential of uncertainty

🤝🏾 Imagine how we might approach our life and creative practice with the same gentle trust we approach educational spaces where a syllabus with unknown resources becomes citations and a classroom full of strangers becomes friends

I open up by using the avoidant relationship dynamic I had with my book and talk through some of the re-frames that allowed me to begin to close the gap between some of my desires and fears, using the energetic force of both to simply begin.

Tune into the 58th episode “The Journey is The Dream, The Destination is The Practice” on the podcast For the Worldbuilders via Spotify or Apple Podcast.

Then come back and let us know what you think!

Until next time…

So be it, see to it, breathe through it,

Ayana

---

🗞️ Seeda School News

🌐 Registration is now open for the fall season’s 2-PART Worldbuilding Workshop where you'll learn more about resourcing your interdisciplinary practice through a creative offer! More accessible 6 and 12 month payment plans are now available for the Seed A World Retreat. If you’ve been wanting to experiment with releasing a creative offer inside your practice and want to do so with a cohort of worldbuilders who are also — as Mariame Kaba would say — reducing the gap between their values and actions, then join us on October 8th at 12PM EST.

🌱 Seed A World Retreat Alumni

Olivia Vagelos

just released her brilliant experience design offer she dreamed up and incubated inside Seeda School and another Alumni

Kay Brown

just released a beautiful reflection on writing milestones, the intentionality behind pressing “subscribe” and the bodily catharsis of release in “Never Too Much: On form, publishing frequency, & subscriptions”.

🌳 Seeda School Treehouse members are also experimenting with the catharsis of release! Check out recent dispatches from

Toni Denise

on “The Art of Alchemizing Grief”,

Kai Moriah Winstead

in a self interview asking “Why Aren't You Talking About Food?”,

shivani mehta bhatia

on care labor as sacred work,

raya

on “holding/releasing/surfacing”,

MENG

on grief as a testament to love and a podcast launch from Bo of Words to Ruin and her practice, Cxlture Vxlture.

This collection of seed data isn’t meant to overwhelm you but it is meant to illustrate an emergent ecosystem of desire, hopefully giving you permission to tend to the forest of your longing too. You can find even more permission slips in our Summer Are.na Channel.