Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast For The Worldbuilders
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| 057. 7 Ways to Establish and Protect a Pleasurable Creative Practice Amidst Life’s Possibilities and Responsibilities | 09 Sep 2024 | 00:50:00 | |
This isn’t an ableist episode full of executive function shame but it is an episode in honor of Virgo Season asking what are our systems, processes and practices for getting shit done and feeling good while doing it? I’ve been there, the over-extended teacher inspiring a classrooms worth of epiphanies but too tired to go home and fill the cup from which the curriculum flows. Maybe you’ve been there too, the over-extended teacher with a depleted capacity for your own curiosity. The healer with an over-committed calendar leaving no time to tend to your own spirit. The community organizer growing exhausted from the demands of parasocial relationships while your closest, most nourishing relationships suffer. How might checking in with our longings, our boundaries, our needs and nurturing a relationship within ourselves where we’re allowed to want, to desire, to create, to rest, cultivate more secure attachments and relationships beyond ourselves? Invitations
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| 056. Are “Enough Numbers”, Enough? Balancing Our Nervous System, Values and Business Growth | 29 Aug 2024 | 00:36:07 | |
Let’s talk numbers. The “enough number” concept is looking at the expenses in your life and business and determining a revenue goal or baseline for living comfortably instead of living in the cycle of incessant growth for growths sake. I’ve seen and heard this concept discussed in multiple workshops, YouTube videos, panels and podcasts over the years. Probably because establishing an "enough number" in the beginning is a good idea and fetishizing infinite, up and to the right, hockey stick growth is not only a bad idea but goes against many of our core values. But what I can’t stop thinking about is: Maybe there are other ways to stay in integrity with our values and business growth without putting literal and subconscious caps on our potential revenue and impact? Links and Resources:
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| 047. To Crave Certainty is to Crave a Lie | 08 May 2024 | 00:39:20 | |
The invitation of “safety as relation” (Mariame Kaba) is a huge one in a world that has taught us safety is the opposite of relation. A world that tries to convince us, with all it’s tools, that safety is domination, exploitation, segregation, etc. We are being called to be creative in a context where control and certainty are not introduced as triggering, but surrendering to each other’s gaze and no longer being strangers is taught to be the most triggering act we can imagine. Can we see how the core trauma of these systems of oppression is making us terrified of each other? THAT'S its animating, organizing framework. Being so terrified of the other that we can’t see the paralyzing fear of ourselves. What happens when we turn this creative bind into a creative prompt?
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| 046. Standing On the Abundance Already Inside Your Creative Practice | 24 Apr 2024 | 00:55:05 | |
Only YOU can create the offer calling on your spirit. Some creatives will say, “if you don’t create your idea someone else will”. That’s bullshit. There’s only one YOU, with YOUR unique lived experience and YOUR journey of transformation. So, no. No one else can create the offer calling on your spirit. Join us this spring, take your offer from spirit to material and witness the magic that’s been begging to be actualized all along. Resources:
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| 045. Will You Let Us Perceive You? | 19 Apr 2024 | 00:47:34 | |
"May our visibility be an offering of gratitude to those we dedicate our practice to. The ancestors, past selves, younger cousins, teachers and non-human creatures we owe our breath and possibility to. We didn’t come from nowhere. We come from the freedom fighters who took their imagination to the streets, we come from the parents whose direct action was reading us Tar Beach at night, we come from the hands that prepared the meals for the meeting. Praying hands. We come from all the black feminist theory we now get the privilege to rehearse in theater of the street, the home, the classroom. I show up if only to say thank you, thank you, thank you. It wasn’t in vain, it wasn’t in vain because of you I am possible. It wasn’t in vain. Because of you WE are possible." — Ayana Zaire Cotton Resources:
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| 044. Your Journey of Transformation | 11 Apr 2024 | 00:48:19 | |
The fire of our surrender brought down the walls and created a clearing. We all have our own field guides to teach from inside the clearing we will turn into a classroom. How will you shape your journey of transformation into lesson plans all about love? How has love transformed you? Resources:
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| 043. Teach What You Want to Learn | 04 Apr 2024 | 00:40:19 | |
Our breath is the new syllabus. Our survival is the new curriculum. But where is our classroom? This critical geography we must carve out to practice the dis-order that our new world calls for. Black feminist pedagogies have always been critical to my practice. It wasn’t enough to inhale black feminist research — I had to lick it — I had to play with it — I had to stir it — I had to serve it — I had to perform it — I had to breathe it. This was the desire that seeded Seeda School. Inspired by a character that could breathe when I couldn’t seem to catch mine. Resources:
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| 042. Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should | 18 Mar 2024 | 00:53:52 | |
There’s a consistent theme I’m noticing on the other side of my season of surrender. When I’m not being particularly nice to myself I’ll notice myself get frustrated with my capacity. Trying to figure out why I’m not able to lock in like I use to, put in the same amount of hours as I used to, produce as much or as quickly as I used to — both inside my job (stewarding Seeda School) and my art practice (writing science fiction in the bathtub). When inside this frustration, I have to remind myself, before my season of surrender, I was operating in complete misalignment with my desire and the pace of my body. The fuel that was charging me was external validation so I was operating in self-sacrificing ways. Exerting domination over my creative spirit and body — it’s no wonder I was more productive. I was constantly dissociating and ignoring my needs, working through meals and feasting on praise instead. Resources:
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| 041. Why Worldbuilding?: Permission to Actualize Audacious Desire | 11 Mar 2024 | 00:37:35 | |
This week I want to return to the Seeda School newsletter originally published on December 4th, 2023 titled, “What is Your Creative Offer?”, subtitle: “A Questionnaire to Oneself”. In it I share why worldbuilding has been such an essential method for me. But “Why Worldbuilding?” is a question I’ve been getting again lately so I wanted to revisit the question inside this podcast in order to invite you to join me in building worlds as containers for actualizing our audacious desire. How? Stay tuned for the strategy, tip and affirmations to remember towards the end of the episode. Resources:
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| 040. How to Breathe Fire, Watching Discipline Melt into Devotion | 04 Mar 2024 | 00:37:15 | |
I’m watching the sharp edges of the second hand turn into a feather here. Here in the space between the real and the infinite, feeling real infinite these days. Working alongside you, body doubling — I am elsewhere, I am here, WE ARE HERE. Emphatically here and the air is heavier. Our breathing is heavier. Our breathing is like fire now. Weightless and heavy with life. Tune into this episode for a strategy, a tip and invitation to remember how to breathe fire. Resources:
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| 039. Reclaiming The Power of Our Belief, Faith, and Trust | 26 Feb 2024 | 00:45:33 | |
Okay so I’m making twice as much as I was making with much more control over my income but I still don't feel as secure as I felt with my salaried position, when I was working for a company I had no control over. Why is that? Because I am so used to, have been taught to, have been socialized and expected to relinquish the power of my belief, attention and faith to sources outside myself.
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| 038. Choose the Role You Can Sustain Not the Role You Think We Need | 15 Feb 2024 | 00:29:35 | |
Instead of the “What should I do?” question, here are 3 questions I want to leave you with:
These are questions we ask in the Seed A World Retreat and I want to pose them to you here. Let me know by responding at info@seedaschool.com. Resources: | |||
| 055. The Psychology of Creative Practice and Belonging | 29 Jul 2024 | 00:53:13 | |
As a heads up, if you’re listening to this on Monday, July 29th enrollment into the Treehouse closes tonight and it’s $67 bucks to join! The Treehouse is a monthly membership holding you accountable to weekly returns to your Zone of Desire through live workshops, open studios, guided meditations and black feminist worldbuilding tools. I hope you’ll join us inside The Treehouse! Our first workshop inside is on August 6th and it’s all about collaborating with our ancestors, desires and intentions inside our Weekly Dispatches.
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| 037. The Grief Work of Composting Past Selves | 08 Feb 2024 | 00:42:52 | |
Suddenly, my job no longer worked. I put in my resignation letter September 2020. Suddenly, my romantic relationship no longer worked. I ended it the spring of 2021. Suddenly, the non-existent boundaries in all of my relationships, family, friends, community members had to be reflected on and invented. This is because my job, my romantic relationship, my lack of boundaries were all oriented around me trying to get my unmet needs from childhood, met externally.
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| 036. But…"I’m Scared": Being Unafraid Isn’t a Prerequisite for Transformation | 27 Jan 2024 | 00:46:16 | |
Enrollment closes on January 29th at midnight! Enroll in the Seed A World Retreat Here: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Your creative desire makes space for our collective imagination. Join us inside this creative retreat and attend 9 weekly workshops and 9 weekly office hours based on Seeda School's worldbuilding framework. You'll be developing your creative offer alongside a committed community of fellow worldbuilders who will offer feedback and accountability. Seeda School's Worldbuilding Framework consists of nine critical action steps with three major milestones: Deciding on your creative offer, developing the framework for your offer and releasing your offer. Leveraging the worldbuilding power of storytelling the framework takes the form of a story circle, invoking a circular practice you can return to for years to come. | |||
| 035. But…"I Don’t Want to Monetize": Public Practice Beyond Capitalism | 18 Jan 2024 | 00:42:47 | |
What irresistible portals are the people you dream of serving waiting on? Offers as containers that might bring the two worlds spinning away from each other a little closer, if only for a moment, but just long enough for us to experiment with inventing new models of belonging, cooperative economics and mutual aid that build on the old ones. Generating money that will go to mutual aid request flyers and loved one’s Venmo accounts instead of the stock market and the distance between the two worlds spinning away from each other decreases little by little. Using our time, art, ideas, sweat, tears, spit trying to pay back a social debt that can never be repaid we dream up creative offers with the full hearted belief that this is just one strategy of millions to help us collectively divest and make more space for our liberatory quilting.
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| 034. But…“I Don’t Have the Capacity”: Recovering from People Pleasing | 11 Jan 2024 | 00:44:45 | |
The number of things we have to unlearn is unquantifiable, but I know the one thing we must set fire to is continuing to allocate an ounce of our power and meaning making to systems that are only satiated by our death. When we slow down we understand the new year goal setting frenzy is connected to our longing to control the chaos and to carve out meaning in the spacetime of the abyss. The gift of acknowledging this craving with compassion, grace and the full awareness of our power is we get to direct this species-wide compulsion toward something much more intentional and aligned with our aliveness.
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| 033. But…"I Don’t Know My Purpose": The Year of Childhood Curiosity | 05 Jan 2024 | 00:51:37 | |
In search of our mother’s gardens we found a path. Keeping that path “well-trodden” so others may find it too is our only assignment. What’s your purpose? That’s impossible to know and that’s okay because we’re following the truth of our desire instead. What does this look like? It looks like releasing control of the project and signing up for the practice, laying perfectionism to rest. “The form will find itself”, is what the abolitionist science fiction writers, mutual aid practitioners also known as aunties and working class folk who carve out enough softness from the abyss to sing on Sunday, told me. The facts will make you lose your mind so on the well-trodden path, paved with black feminist praxis, we pick up feeling instead. Insisting on only what feels good, pleasure becomes an organizing framework for the practice. The truth of our desire becomes a compass, the practice is trusting it’s leading us in the right direction. Register for free Worldbuilding Workshop to learn more about the Seed A World Retreat: https://www.seedaschool.com/workshop Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to Seeda School Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com Seeda School Website: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Seeda School Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seedaschool/ Mentioned in the episode: Zoé Samudzi (https://www.instagram.com/babywasu) & https://www.instagram.com/deathworkwithshiv | |||
| 032. Season of Surrender: Writing a Love Letter to Our Fear | 15 Dec 2023 | 00:50:03 | |
All that running, until 2020 when I finally ran out of steam. Unhealthy work habits and a total lack of boundaries kept me distracted for years. In the absence of that distraction was nothing but the stillness, the silence, the darkness, the eyes patiently waiting for me to finally choose myself. On September 2nd, 2020 I submitted my letter of resignation and a 3 month sabbatical turned into two years. The season of surrender. Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire Subscribe to Seeda School Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Seeda School Website: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Seeda School Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seedaschool/ | |||
| 031. Discover Your Creative Offer: A Workshop Podcast | 07 Dec 2023 | 00:39:44 | |
What are our tools, frameworks and creative offers for helping each other navigate this wide open expanse? Worldbuilding is my framework, the Seed A World Retreat is my offering and “The Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself” is the tool I want to share today. Download your very own copy of the questionnaire using the link below! Inspired by “The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself” created by Divya Victor, “The Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself” walks you through four key questions whose answers intersect in ways that allow you to discover your income generating and values aligned offer. The offering that allows you to refuse severance inside your interdisciplinary practice by practicing surrender, spiritual alignment and relation instead. Download the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself: https://www.seedaschool.com/questionnaire The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself: https://divyavictor.com/the-audre-lorde-questionnaire-to-oneself/ Subscribe to Seeda School Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Seeda School Website: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Seeda School Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seedaschool/ | |||
| 030. Toni Morrison was in my dream yesterday... | 15 Nov 2023 | 00:45:22 | |
Learn more about the Retreat: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Read this week's newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/refusing-colonial-categorization What if we are making appeals for our “humanity” to empires whose very colonial conception of “human” was given form by excluding certain members of the same species? To put it another way, let’s consider we are asking the same people who invented the word “human”, in order to dominate other members of the species and the planet, to include us in the project. Perhaps the only way to go about complete domination over a land and it’s species (including it’s people) is to invent a word that creates a delination between “man” and “nature”. The word is born out of contridication, an attempt to separate us from all there is when we are all there is. | |||
| 029. Our Mission, Vision and Values Keep Us Possible | 09 Nov 2023 | 00:50:02 | |
Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/fear-cant-survive-a-radical-love Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/program | |||
| 028. Overlapping Catastrophe Calls for Overlapping Creative Action | 01 Nov 2023 | 00:27:14 | |
Overlapping catastrophes like to flirt with your apathy, whispering into your ear with empty promises about the safety of solitude. The safety of silence. The safety of avoidance. The empty promises are dark and cavernous, without light and without ground. The darkness wouldn’t be so bad if I could at least smell soil — some possibility of change, emergence, growth. But that’s the thing about this empty promise — the option we have in the West to look away — we cut ourselves off from the generativity of letting grief and rage transform us. Inside collective grief, rage and study the walls are pulsing with life, the green electricity charges our movements and this dewy microclimate allows us to drink from the air; hydrating our hope for one more minute, one more hour, one more day. There is nothing but the smell of soil here. Plenty of ground to root inside of, eager for the seeds of our collective imagination and all the empty promises powered by fear — the whispering status quo — is drowned out by all the life buzzing around us. See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/our-job-is-to-make-revolution-irresistible Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ | |||
| 054. 9 Reasons We Need Your Weekly Dispatch Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow | 18 Jul 2024 | 00:55:46 | |
I hope you’ll Discover your Weekly Dispatch with us this Thursday, July 25th at 12pm EST in the last live Worldbuilding Workshop I’ll be giving on the Treehouse for the year. The Treehouse is a monthly membership holding you accountable to weekly returns to your Zone of Desire through live workshops, open studios, guided meditations and black feminist worldbuilding tools. And enrollment is now open! It’s $67 bucks a month, enrollment closes on Monday, July 29th. Join us inside the free workshop on the 25th to learn more.
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| 027. Invitations From Inside Collective Grief and Study | 25 Oct 2023 | 00:42:17 | |
I want to call in all teachers, writers, artists and business owners to take a close look at what we’re “normalizing” in our practices. What cultural examples are we using to teach that feel apolitical? What references are we pointing to in our art that feel “neutral”? What narratives are we normalizing in our writing? What topics are we avoiding on our business accounts on social media? What are the employers, organizations and institutions we’re connected to authorizing as the “professional stance”? What ideologies are we upholding in an attempt to be apolitical? Whose politics are we re-inscribing when we “leave politics out of it”? See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/being-apolitical-is-political-beloved Join The Seed A World Retreat Waitlist: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Ashlee Marie Preston's Post: https://www.threads.net/@ashleemariepreston/post/CywDoHiPYo8 Sonya Renee Taylor's Reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyycxkqA4eC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link | |||
| 026. Our Right to Release and Generate Income | 11 Oct 2023 | 00:37:46 | |
It’s Monday morning at my favorite coffee shop and I’m mesmerized by the freedom I’m witnessing. A toddler is freestyle dancing to electronic instrumentals in the middle of the busiest section of the establishment. The line wraps around her, the towering members of her species are careful not to interrupt her flow, everyone collectively ensures she has enough space to be. To dance. Enthralled by this scene, time slows and I take a sip of my black coffee with two pumps of vanilla syrup. The usual. And I try to hold back tears of joy. As usual. I realize we’re collectively making space for her to dance and that’s probably opening up space inside us too. See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/our-right-to-release Leave a Voice Message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where/message Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Register for Workshop: https://www.seedaschool.com/workshop Enroll in The Seed A World Retreat: https://www.seedaschool.com/program Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Subscribe to the Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SeedaSchool/ | |||
| 025. 3 Lessons from A Decade of Creative Practice | 29 Sep 2023 | 00:38:43 | |
Like I said, mistakes? I can name plenty. There is no way to be in a generous practice of producing public facing projects without them. Some of these mistakes were essential, they were carrying divine lessons, and honestly some of them weren’t. The attempts to flatten in the face of the “jack of all trades, master of none” myth (who wants to be a fucking master anyway?), the workaholism unsustainably powered by a sense of unworthiness, solely relying on funding resources coming from outside my work instead of implementing strategies for the Creative Ecosystem to fund itself and the moves made out of fear, the fear, the fear, so much fear, are all mistakes that have cost me time, money, energy, opportunities, unnecessary suffering and even some relationships. See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/3-lessons-from-a-decade-of-creative Leave a Voice Message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where/message Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ | |||
| 024. Your Desire Is More Powerful Than Your Fear | 28 Aug 2023 | 00:36:35 | |
Healing from years of childhood trauma, where pleasure meant threat of punishment and desire meant danger. My Element X beckoned, “What if your desire became more powerful than your fear?” See last week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/you-will-not-be-punished-for-your Leave a Voice Message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where/message Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Book a Seeda School Consultation Call: https://www.seedaschool.com/offers/Vq4DxgZf Enroll in The Classroom: https://www.seedaschool.com/classroom Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Subscribe to the Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SeedaSchool/ | |||
| 023. When Life Hands You Bugs: An Invitation to Release | 09 Aug 2023 | 00:31:01 | |
This letter is dedicated with gratitude to the bug in my code last week. It appeared as I was building a project using React in order to introduce the learners in Seeda School’s Module 4 how to build their own Community Directory using the popular library. I reflected on the library’s name, React. An invitation to be mindful of how we respond to the bugs and blocks which are inevitable in our code, as they are in our life. An invitation to tune into the buzzing with curiosity and react with compassion. If we release, the incomplete metamorphosis is a gift. Oh, you’re trying to teach me how to fly? I’m listening. See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/when-life-hands-you-bugs-learn-from Leave a Voice Message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where/message Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Book a Seeda School Consultation Call: https://www.seedaschool.com/offers/Vq4DxgZf Enroll in The Classroom: https://www.seedaschool.com/classroom Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Subscribe to the Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SeedaSchool/ | |||
| 022. Lavender Software Centers Our Body and Belonging | 02 Aug 2023 | 00:24:34 | |
What happened? I was so focused on building the tools for belonging that I forgot to actually practice belonging. Call my family, show up for my friends, support the art shows of the brilliant folks in my circle, volunteer at the community garden, attend the programming at my local library, walk down to the bar that was literally underneath my feet. This is the slippery trap of building software for deepening connection without actually being connected. Existing on a social media platform doesn’t mean we’re engaged in a social practice, showing up on Zoom does not mean we’re present and increased awareness of all the potential events you could attend this weekend might actually increase your felt sense of loneliness. The church of techno-optimism would have us believe that software can solve suffering but there’s no solution for that, only a salve. The salve is the practice of returning to each other, ourselves and our local ecosystems again and again. Most of the time it requires a knock on the door, a phone call, handpicked herbs from your garden in outstretched hands smelling of rosemary asking for permission to hold you. See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/lavender-software-and-the-smell-of Leave a Voice Message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where/message Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Book a Seeda School Consultation Call: https://www.seedaschool.com/offers/Vq4DxgZf Enroll in The Classroom: https://www.seedaschool.com/classroom Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Subscribe to the Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SeedaSchool/ | |||
| 021. Frameworks for Care-full Software? | 26 Jul 2023 | 00:28:25 | |
What new values and commitments do we want to seed the next generation of software inside of? How do we want to collectively tend to this soil? No, software will not solve racism, sexism, ableism and classism — only plain ol’ revolution will do that — but given the fact that software has made all these -isms exponentially worse, I do wonder how building technologies of care might be a salve in the meantime. A fractal expanding toward belonging, not fear. See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/what-are-technologies-of-care Leave a Voice Message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where/message Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Book a Seeda School Consultation Call: https://www.seedaschool.com/offers/Vq4DxgZf Enroll in The Classroom: https://www.seedaschool.com/classroom Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Subscribe to the Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SeedaSchool/ | |||
| 020. Interdisciplinary Permission: Dancing > Fear | 19 Jul 2023 | 00:30:57 | |
Being an artist is a commitment to indeterminacy. It asks, “are you prepared for a life long practice of improvisation?” In many ways, the word asks you to consent not to be a single being. Upon surrender, you join the beyond human swarm in an emergent choreography, a commitment to interdisciplinary practice and collective study. When you release control, another energetic current has room to flow in. See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/interdisciplinary-permission Leave a Voice Message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where/message Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Book a Seeda School Consultation Call: https://www.seedaschool.com/offers/Vq4DxgZf Enroll in The Classroom: https://www.seedaschool.com/classroom Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Subscribe to the Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SeedaSchool/ | |||
| 019. College Saved My Life: What's Up w/The Shit Talk? | 12 Jul 2023 | 00:31:07 | |
While under a tree older than my great grandparents providing the quiet grace of shade, a spider the size of the bread crumb from my morning pastry is my only companion as I read the words of Magdalena Zurawski’s essay, “Being Human Is an Occult Practice”. Inside she reminds us, “Neoliberalism requires us to limit or suppress much of what is human in us because much of what is human in us serves no economic purpose”. As I read this essay I think about how much Neoliberal policy has paved the way for so much of the software we use on a daily basis, software created by white men celebrated for dropping out of college, never having to question their position in a world they create and dominate. College didn’t teach me how to code, this much is true. But college gave me the politic of black feminism and the practice of interdisciplinary study with others. And it is the politic of black feminism and interdisciplinary study with others that has saved my life. See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/college-saved-my-life Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/ Book a Seeda School Discovery Call: https://www.seedaschool.com/offers/Vq4DxgZf Enroll in The Classroom: https://www.seedaschool.com/classroom Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SeedaSchool/ | |||
| 018. Writing With the World: We're Writing More. Why? | 26 Jun 2023 | 00:20:29 | |
Over the summer I’ll continue gathering seed data, collaborating with computer kin, and thinking about why we’re all turning to writing at the same time. Meditating on what affordances, shelter, breath, code allows inside this practice. In September, I plan to invite you into a creative coding for writers offering and that’s when live virtual programming inside of Seeda School will resume. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on creative writing alongside code or would like to collaborate around this topic — please get in touch. I would love to hear from you and continue thinking through this together. Consenting not to be a single being, the carrier bag theory of fiction explodes when non-humans are also the authors.
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| 053. Who Are You Outside of White Supremacy Culture? | 11 Jul 2024 | 00:42:40 | |
Who are we outside of white supremacy culture? Perhaps the simple answer is healers, holders, stewards. Perhaps the simple answer is the people that refuse, repair and restore. And perhaps we don’t have to go anywhere to learn these skills, perhaps the best teachers and stories are already embedded in our intuition and ancestry. Perhaps the stories they’re whispering invite us into a culture with more bearable and breathe-able characteristics where perfectionism becomes improvisation, individualism becomes collectivism and “right to comfort” becomes “right to transformation”.
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| 017. It Comes in Waves: The Ceremony of Feeding the Black Interior | 12 Jun 2023 | 00:08:59 | |
What are our collective ceremonies? I decided I didn’t want to disrespect the question by providing an answer. When searching for the “official language” to address the question, the only thing that came out was a poem. A poem about how poetry has saved my life. How it preserves life and provides oxygen when suffering is the ground and time is a trickster. Maybe the poem is the collective ceremony? The reading, the gathering, the singing, the sound, the performance of the poem. Maybe the poem is the only ceremony we need? - See this week's newsletter for more links and footnotes: https://seedaschool.substack.com/p/it-comes-in-waves - Leave a Voice Message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soft-where/message - Learn More About Seeda School: https://www.seedaschool.com/ - Book a Seeda School Consultation Call: https://www.seedaschool.com/offers/Vq4DxgZf - Enroll in The Classroom: https://www.seedaschool.com/classroom - Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://seedaschool.substack.com/ - Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SeedaSchool/ | |||
| 016. On Public Practice: What Are Our Collective Ceremonies? | 05 Jun 2023 | 00:28:58 | |
This week's episode is about the practices that help us remember the world we need is the world we have. What came up is the realization that I am more skilled than last year at tending to the garden of my internal and eternal possibility — no longer a captive to external validation — I have cultivated practices that return me to myself, my body, and my values again and again. What also came up in this letter is the realization that I am craving more practice inside collective ceremonies that require somatic engagement both online and off (if there is a such thing as “offline”). In the next few newsletters I am looking forward to swimming underneath the question, How might software (in)form somatic practices of collective ceremony that deepen belonging? What are our collective ceremonies?
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| 015. The Ecosystem of Creative Practice: What's Your Mother Tree? | 02 Jun 2023 | 00:30:05 | |
This week's episode is about the ecosystem of creative practice, mycelial media stewardship, and it’s containers. When I think about the next decade of my creative practice and how I imagine making room for my breath — I want to continue to move away from content creation and launches and move toward mycelial media and stewardship where my writing practice is the mother tree. What's the mother tree in your ecosystem of creative practice and study?
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| 014. Every Body’s a Teacher Now: Education as New Media | 29 May 2023 | 00:39:21 | |
I’ve been thinking a lot about how our body is an interface for learning and creating alongside our ecosystems. In the Future Organisms workshop that I attended in Colorado last week, while in conversation with a cheese maker, ceramicist and computational biologist, I reflected on how “craft” is another word for using our body as an interface for engaging with the material of our ecosystem and how “technology” is often the trace of that transformative engagement.
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| 013. Suprise! They're Late: Black Feminism and The Whitewashing of AI Ethics | 19 May 2023 | 00:29:16 | |
Timnit Gebru is fired and Geoffrey Hinton left. Read Timnit's story here and read Geoffrey's story here then reflect on the contrast. I also invite you to read the Seeda School newsletter referenced in this podcast, Surprise! They're Late: No surprise, black feminism is right on time. Due to the commitment to care rooted in the research of Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Dr. Safiya Noble, Timnit Gebru, and many, many others, powerful white men like Eric get to perform “thought leadership” in a cultural and media landscape where concern around AI and algorithmic bias is normalized thanks to the work black feminists cared enough to share while simultaneously being attacked. I'd love to hear your thoughts! Email me at info@seedaschool.com. | |||
| 012. All That You Touch: JavaScript x Octavia Butler | 11 May 2023 | 00:15:22 | |
Reflecting on the possibilities of JavaScript and how one might teach it, I returned to Octavia Butler, and in returning to Butler, I returned to consent and in returning to consent I returned to my body savoring all the ways I have finally given myself permission to change and be changed. Read the entire newsletter and footnotes here. Register here for this free JavaScript workshop on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023 at 6pm EST where you will bring your favorite website, get introduced to JavaScript concepts like the DOM and learn how to change your favorite website using HTML and JavaScript. | |||
| 011. Aspiring Software Engineer, Freelancer or Entrepreneur? | 20 Apr 2023 | 00:15:15 | |
Are You an Aspiring Software Engineer, Freelancer or Entrepreneur? I want to invite you to join us for the upcoming Discovery Workshop where we will get clarity on your coding curiosity, story, and goals, in order to learn how Seeda School can help with all 3. Register here: https://www.seedaschool.com/discovery-workshop | |||
| 010. Learn How to Build a Black Feminist Coding Project in One Month | 24 Mar 2023 | 00:13:15 | |
Plant the seed of your curiosity in nutrient rich soil. I hope you’ll join me in this upcoming discovery workshop, Learn How to Build a Black Feminist Coding Project in One Month, taking place over Zoom on Tuesday, March 28th, 2023 at 6-7PM EST. Register here and together we will explore your curiosity in code, uncover the stories that have stopped you from learning how to code, and learn how Seeda School can help you build a black feminist coding project in one month. You can read this invitation for yourself inside this latest Seeda School newsletter. | |||
| 009. How Much Does A Dollar Cost?: The Gift of Worthiness, Boundaries for Burnout, and Permission to Play | 03 Feb 2023 | 00:23:51 | |
My biggest fear isn’t failure or Seeda School “not working” or “not meeting my needs” — the success of Seeda School is inevitable. I know I’m called to this work and there is no “failure” inside calling, only lessons. My biggest fear is actually being the creator of a job I hate, being the facilitator of work that is unsatisfying or exhausting. Which is truly only a failure in boundaries and the courage to maintain them. Back to acting out belief, it’s about the courage to believe in the worthiness of your work enough to create boundaries to protect the sustainability of it. Here are your Soft, Where? prompts to workshop throughout the week:
Soft, Where? is a podcast where host, Ayana Zaire Cotton, talks about their journey toward finding and creating softness inside technology. This podcast is presented by Seeda School, a skill building platform for learning how to code through a black feminist lens. I invite you to take a screenshot and share it on social media or with other black feminists who are also on a journey of finding and creating softness inside our relationships to technology. Soft, Where? Episode 009 Podcast Transcript: How Much Does A Dollar Cost? | |||
| 008. How Does Seeda School Code Coaching Work? | 19 Jan 2023 | 00:18:16 | |
I only have the capacity for 12 more learners who are curious about learning to code through a black feminist lens so please book a free consultation call to see if this offering is aligned with your needs and ask any questions I didn’t answer in this episode. Soft, Where? Is a podcast where I talk about my journey toward finding softness inside technology. This podcast is presented by Seeda School, a skill building platform for learning how to code through a black feminist lens. I am currently offering 1:1 coaching for black feminist looking to develop a coding portfolio of 5 projects in 15 weeks. Visit the Seeda School coaching page to book a free consultation call where we’ll hop on Zoom to discuss your web development goals and how Seeda School might be able to help. Soft, Where? Episode 008 Podcast Transcript: How Does Seeda School Code Coaching Work? | |||
| 052. Releasing the Burden of Being Complicit In Our Own Suffering | 04 Jul 2024 | 00:39:21 | |
I too, have put more value in the things that hurt because suffering is familiar. I know her. I know suffering. And I have plenty of evidence that the shelter of suffering has kept me safe, kept me “out the way”. But at what cost? There is rent for living underneath the shelter of suffering. As with everything, there is a sacrifice. The cost was often my inner child who needed me to tend to her wounds but I couldn’t bear her pain so I just kept looking away. The cost was often my body which needed my attention, my care, my tenderness, my grace but was often treated as a liability instead. The cost was often my dreams that needed my power, my protection, my faith but seemed too wild to be safe, too pleasurable to count on, too gooooood to be true. I just want us to consider, if only for this moment, how exhausting it is to be in perpetual disbelief of our power.
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| 007. 3 Affirmations for Self Compassion: Money Mindset, Recieving Love, and Perfectionism | 12 Jan 2023 | 00:29:07 | |
(Loose) Transcript: 007. 3 Affirmations for Self Compassion Welcome to the Soft, Where? podcast where I talk about my journey toward finding softness inside technology. This podcast is presented by Seeda School, a skill building platform for learning how to code through a black feminist lens. I am currently offering 1:1 coaching for black feminists looking to develop a coding portfolio of 5 projects in 15 weeks. Visit http://seedaschool.com to book a free consultation call where we’ll hop on Zoom to discuss your web development goals and how Seeda School might be able to help. When I reflect on my 3 “biggest” and most recent struggles, the core struggle beneath them all is grappling with a sense of worthiness. For most of us, struggles with worthiness are seeded during childhood and while I won’t spend a whole lot of time talking childhood trauma I will get into the 3 growth areas I’m currently working through: Money Mindset, Receiving Love and Care, and Perfectionism. I will also share the new stories I’m telling myself rooted in worthiness, creating fertile soil for surrender and a harvest as wild and emergent as the love we’re cultivating for ourselves and each other. You can find this podcast in all major podcast apps. I invite you to take a screenshot and share it on social media or with other black feminists who are also on a journey of finding softness inside technology. | |||
| 006. 5 Year Reflection and Projection (2017-2027): Multiple New York Moves, Job Transitions, and $350 Rent | 06 Jan 2023 | 00:48:01 | |
Soft, Where? is a weekly podcast and oral journal where I reflect on finding softness inside of software engineering. I invite you to reflect on the questions at the end of each episode in the comments or via email. Below you can find a loose outline and essay version of the episode to read while you listen or share screenshots of on social media. I also invite you to open this episode in apple podcasts or your preferred podcast streaming service. This makes it easy to take a screenshot and share it with friends, it also creates a private feed that is automatically updated when a new episode is released. ALSO LOL at me saying all you need is to record a Zoom room meeting to make a podcast then me having spotty internet and glitchy audio at the end. The hubris! The arrogance! The comedy! Please extend grace y’all and I hope you enjoy. <3 Introduction Hopefully this podcast episode will serve as a personal reminder to trust the timing in all things. I’m currently in this business coaching program and one of the things they had us do is a check-in on our personal story and the stories we’re telling ourselves. This exercise is meant to emphasize we can CHOOSE the story we tell. Because this is a business coaching program and not a life or spiritual coaching program they had us reflect on what was going on in our career or business at a series of checkpoints in the past, present, and the milestones we hope to hit in the future. Based on when I’m completing the assignment, here are the checkpoints and milestones I’m working with: * 5 years ago (2017) * 3 years ago (2019) * 1 year ago (2021) * This year (2022) * 1 year from now (end of 2023) * 3 years from now (end of 2025) * 5 years from now (end of 2027) 5 Years Ago (2017) * In January 2017 I attempted to relocate to New York for the 2nd time. I moved to New York. YAY! But not with enough money or a job to comfortably rent an apartment to support my mental health. Instead I was living in Bedstuy above a dive bar, inside a cluttered smelly apartment, living with a cat and a annoying roommate who didn't clean up after her cat. * In retrospect I’m ultimately thankful for this time because I learned I could move to a new city by myself and figure it out while learning the city lifestyle I did and did not desire. * From January to March 2017 I found a job as a restaurant manager, I was unknowingly incredibly depressed and was fired a few months later * After being fired from my job and having to move back home with my parents, in the spring instead of spending the rest of the year feeling sorry and embarrassed for myself, I doubled down on my dream at the time of becoming a fashion designer and got orders from a couple of my favorite boutiques. One of them being Sincerely, Tommy. * I took a chance and pitched the Brooklyn boutique on May 30th, 2017, on a wholesale partnership with Zaire Studio. I received an email back within minutes from the owner Kai, who wanted a lookbook, linesheet, and terms. My terms were accepted and I proceeded to cut, sew, and produce full size runs for their order from my parents living room and kitchen. I fulfilled the order by June 21st. * I spent the rest of the year working retail part-time at another one of the stores, Redeem to support myself outside of the income from Zaire Studio. (Shout out to Lori who supported and encouraged me during this time) 3 Years Ago (BIG YEAR — 2019) * In 2019, I was inside another dream of mine: Living and working in Brooklyn teaching software engineering full-time. I took the lessons from 2017 and made sure I had a job and stable income before moving this time. * Toughest Moment: Once again living in New York and finding myself in the throws of overwhelming depression and anxiety, which came to a head when I had a sobbing mental breakdown in | |||
| 051. Recovering from the Tyranny of Ambition and Detaching from Outcomes | 27 Jun 2024 | 00:27:35 | |
I almost titled this podcast “On Aligning Your Practice with Your Capacity and Surrendering to the Air”. Both work. A question for you: What would it feel like to pause and breathe into a deep, longgggg stretch instead of a sprint? I need to continue challenging myself. Rigor, change and curiosity are the electricity of my life, I’m clear on that. Capricorn rising, Gemini Sun over here. But what might it look like to prioritize the steady over the surge, the flow over the wave? What might it look like to prioritize the practice over the launch?
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| 050. Manifesting Beyond Survival and Toward Safety | 20 Jun 2024 | 00:24:00 | |
I’m sure you’ve seen it and maybe even felt it, experienced it. Manifestation is everywhere. Folks are talking about it on TikTok, Instagram and I wouldn’t even be surprised if it’s reached LinkedIn. Point being, the gospel of the woo-woo crew is spreading. We out here y’all! And thank goodness. I think this is a good thing, that we are learning how to see without images as Toni Morrison puts in her Nobel Lecture in 1993 when invoking the power of language. But how might we take this practice even further…how might we listen to the images while practicing a grammar of black feminist futurity? Seeda School Links
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