Don’t Focus on Making the Offer Accessible to Everyone Else it Becomes Inaccessible to You
For the Worldbuilders Ep. 62
“As deployed in different forms by different artists, the concept proposes that we both recognize the realities of the racialized everyday and also reach beyond its strictures, conjuring new paradigms, new visions, new possibilities with which to express the wonder and strangeness of being Black in the world.”
— Ekow Eshun, In the Black Fantastic (2022), “Introduction: The Art of the Black Fantastic”, pg. 28
Dear Worldbuilder,
Just know when I say “it’s a pleasure”, I truly mean it. I scripted most of this episode from the tub — in awe of the every day work we’re doing to keep each other whole amidst unbearable violence. In last week’s Worldbuilding Workshop I reminded us, now is the time to take refuge inside the offerings of the “woo woo crew”. The witches, the speculative practitioners, the astrologers, the freedom fighters, the teachers, the gardeners, the transformative justice facilitators, the beat makers, the healers.
This much is clear: Racial capitalism must collapse by any means necessary.
What if we are collectively and cooperatively building what must come after racial capitalism? This generation might call our desires “woo woo”, but what if it is those same desires that will usher in new economic paradigms for the generations we’ll never meet? Workplaces that don’t silence our rage while witnessing genocide, schools that aren’t funded by empire, hospitals we don’t have to worry about killing us.
Last week I let the tears flow while witnessing these new paradigms, new visions, new possibilities inside a day dream. Humbled by depth of our desire. Humbled by the inevitability of the love of the people prevailing every. single. time.
You may have seen the quote going around “if it’s not free, it’s neither radical nor revolutionary”. Can I disagree? Equitable, anti-capitalist, values-aligned resource exchange that is accountable to the communities we serve and the planet we inhabit can be some of the most radical and revolutionary work we do. In this current economic system, “free to you” just means the money is coming from somewhere else and a lot times that chain of funding is obfuscated, which can make accountability tricky if not intentionally impossible. In this episode I want to invite us to consider the ways in which pricing our offers for sustainability doesn’t have to compromise the integrity of our work. In fact, I want to propose it can actually empower and actualize the worlds we dream of building.
Inside This Episode We…
Breathe through the following reminders:
The work wants me well.
My ancestors want me well inside answering their call.
The community I dream of serving wants me well.
No one wants to be inside an offer I’m struggling to offer.
There are a multitude of resources, therefore a multitude of ways to resource our needs.
But in today’s episode we focus on our shared resource, money. Give the episode a listen and let me know your thoughts! Again, it was recorded with the utmost humility. I’d love to hear from you and learn from you inside these podcast reflections. Do you have any stories around under-charging like the one I shared in the episode? What happened on the other side of that lesson? Drop a note in the comments or send me an email. 💌
🌳 Enrollment Into the Treehouse Is Now Open
How might we honor the needs of our nervous system and our bodies while also taking care of our material needs and desires?
This is a question I find, as black feminists, we’re circling again, and again, and again, across time.
This is a question I found myself circling around in this episode.
This is a question we explore inside the last free Worldbuilding Workshop of the year, titled “Resource A World Rooted in the Truth of Your Needs” happening this Thursday, October 17th at 12pm EST.
Registration is free and you’ll also get a link, in your confirmation email, to the replay of Part 1 of the workshop series where we located our “Zone of Desire” using the Element X Quadrant worksheet.
Enrollment into the Treehouse is currently open and if you already know you’re ready to join us, enroll by midnight and get an invitation to tomorrow’s Creative Dispatch Open Studio where you’ll be able to ask questions related to which newsletter platform to pick for your dispatches, share your unfolding research or receive feedback on a work in progress (newsletter, essay, poem, painting, podcast, video, multi-media project etc.). You can enroll here, payment plans are available.
Share this flyer with a friend or study buddy you’d love to release your newsletters and creative offer with inside the Treehouse! 👇🏾
P.S. If you found last week’s podcast episode on designing your creative ecosystem helpful, I want to invite you to check out Kening Zhu’s blog posts titled “your art, ecosystem, and alchemy” and “the way of the artist-entrepreneur”. I was introduced to Kening’s work by way of the Off The Grid podcast (
) and recently discovered how similarly we’ve organized our worldbuilding practices. Gratitude for this affirmation, divine alignment is everywhere.