👁️‍🗨️ Creative Business as a World-Building Practice — with Ayana Zaire Cotton

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Amelia Hruby [00:00:25]:
Hello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio, the co-founder of the Lifestyle Business League. And here on this show, I am your fellow traveler and guide on our journey of doing business with no or minimal social media presence and hopefully with a lot of radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Amelia Hruby [00:00:57]:
If you're new to the show, welcome. You picked a fantastic episode to dive in with. And before I introduce today's guest, I do wanna make sure that you know about the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit. This includes the three tools that I use to leave social media. They pair with the first few episodes of the podcast, and you can grab it, again, for free in the show notes. So if you're new, go get The Leaving Social Media Toolkit.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:25]:
And if you're a long time listener, welcome back. I truly appreciate your time, your attention, your care, and I think you're gonna feel really nourished and expanded by today's conversation. So today on the podcast, I am honored to be joined by Ayana Zaire Cotton. Let me tell you a little bit about their work. Ayana is an anti-disciplinary artist, writer, and facilitator for the World Builders. As the creator of Seeda School, they help you create an interdisciplinary practice, release a creative offer, and develop a cohesive narrative through the framework of world building.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:06]:
Welcome, Ayana. Thanks so much for being on Off the Grid.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:02:09]:
Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for having me, Amelia. I've been such a fan of the podcast. Definitely was listening to the podcast as I was trying to give Seeda School its wings. So just literally being on the show, it feels really, really special. So thank you.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:27]:
It feels special to me as well. I wanna open by spiraling back together into your journey because you now teach or guide people through a framework and process of world building, but part of what I love about your story is it really started with your own world building of radical futures and presence. And so could you tell us a little bit about Cykofa, the Seeda origin story, and how Seeda school came to be?

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:02:57]:
Whenever I tell this story, it has to be a timeline and my work is so deeply embedded and, is obsessed with nonlinearity. Right? There's nothing linear about this journey, but I think it helps to tell a story in years. So for me, I like to start at 2018 because that is when there was a lot happening in my creative practice. I wanted to add coding to my interdisciplinary creative toolbox for a variety of reason. Number one, I was like, "Okay. This art stuff is cool. It's cute, but where the money at? When am I gonna get paid?"

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:03:39]:
Everyone was talking about coding just as a way to still be a creative person, but inject this skill into into your life and into your career as a way to get some financial stability and security. But then at the same time, I was also thinking about the election that happened in 2016 and everything that happened with Facebook and data. And I was like, "Okay. We need community software engineers. We need folks who are thinking about software with a radical imagination.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:04:10]:
So I decided to go and take this coding boot camp. That kind of reminded me that I love learning, which reminded me that I love teaching. So I took a software engineering job, which meant that I ended up overworking, and I really kind of got deep into this spiral of ultimate burnout, overextending myself as a teacher in a variety of ways, abandoned my practice for two whole years, and then the pandemic hit. Grief after grief and then coupled with the stillness really encouraged me, like, my body. I was like, I need a break. I need a break.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:04:52]:
So I took a sabbatical. I left my job in 2020 in September. Terrifying decision, but I knew something had to change. And I was gonna take a three month sabbatical. And I tried to get a software engineering job. I tried to do all of the things that you have to do to prepare to get a software engineering job and go down that route.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:05:16]:
And eventually, I was like, "Oh, Wait. No. I actually have to completely become undone." There was just depression and anxiety and just layers of trauma that was starting to surface through this moment of, stillness that was really inspired by the pandemic and finally getting the chance to catch my breath after being away from my creative practice for so long. So this is where we kinda start to enter the Cykofa, the story of Cykofa. I ended up in 2021 actually moving back to land that's been in my family for four generations. My enslaved ancestors, like, worked this land for centuries. And we're still there.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:06:00]:
And my 80 year old aunt generously and graciously rented, this small house to me. I shared it with my cousin and that is when, for probably the first time in my adult life, I actually let myself cry all day, write all day. Like, pray all day, wonder all day, really try to sit still with what my desires were. And I felt through that move, secure enough to stop that software engineering job search and say, "Okay. No, no, no, no. What is it that I really need? What is it that I really desire?" Like, what is it that is going to not re-enroll me into the loop of fear and self abandonment that I had been in?

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:06:49]:
So I started doing ceramics. I started braiding my hair in a certain way. I started writing again. I started making these objects. I started making software just for my creative practice. And I was like, "What am I doing? What are all of these different material manifestations of this creative time in my life? What do they mean?"

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:07:13]:
And then in 2021, I also got the Ginkgo Bioworks creative residency where I actually wrote the story. And then that's when I realized, "Oh, these ceramic artifacts are Cykofian artifacts. Oh, the way I've been braiding my hair is actually the way Cykofians braid their hair." And then I came up with this character, Seeda, this non-binary, biotechnologist. Now I realized, Seeda has truly given form to some of my deepest desires and inside the story there's a 26,100 year-old bald cypress tree who is our narrator.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:07:51]:
So all that to say, the story really starts with surrender. Deep, deep, terrifying surrender and ultimately trusting my creative voice, my creative vision, my creative desire to manifest into a world that I could actually bear. Right? So I would say, like, that's how it all that's how it all starts. And Seeda School started as a newsletter in 2022 and then later as a school.

Amelia Hruby [00:08:19]:
Thank you for sharing the story. I'm really struck by the ways that stepping off the path of software, you thought it was like a temporary pause and you step back on it, but then actually you're like, "Oh no, this is like a deep remembrance, that we're going somewhere else entirely." I think often when we take on these career paths, we think, "Oh, this is the one. This is it for me now. And then when they don't work for us, we end up returning not to exactly what we were doing before, but it's like you were making art. You were an artist. You were deep in creative practice before this. Like, the software path was the detour, not the one path you were meant to be on even though it in those moments where we do need funds, we need some money, we need some assurance, we need some security, it's so tempting to take up those step-by-step, really well paved pathways other people have been traveling.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:20]:
But I think for those of us with these deeply aligned, creative, generative spirits, which I think all of us are that, just covered up with more layers of social conditioning for some of us, We just feel called back into the wilderness, and we have to go there. And I really appreciate how your story took you both to new places and to old places in your life. Again, it's not linear time. We're in the spiral of the generations with this story and with all of our lives.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:55]:
Another thing I really admire about your work is how it is so beautifully and deeply embedded in black feminist principles and practices. And listening to your podcast, it's like these thinkers and dreamers and artists are your interlocutors. Like, they're your dialogue partners. You're always bringing in Tony and Audrey and Angela, like, all of these people and it's really powerful to hear. I'm wondering, could you talk a little bit about what worldbuilding means to you in this lineage and how are you drawing some of these black feminist principles and practices into the work that you're doing to build worlds for yourself and with now your students?

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:10:39]:
Oh, my goodness. Where do I start with black feminism? I'm always invoking both of the Tonis. Right? Toni Cade Bambara and Toni Morrison. And I love that you highlighted, underlined, circled, that the piece around dropping into and rooting into ancestral lineage in deep time because I really do believe interdisciplinarity is an ancestral remembering the ways in which our ancestors practice and, rooted in belonging inside communities.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:11:13]:
And, like, speaking of ancestry, I'm also invoking my great grandmother, Big Mom, my great grandmother, Honey, both of the Tonis. Toni Cade Bambara specifically, reminding us that our job as cultural workers is to make revolution irresistible. Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, Katherine McKittrick, Alexis Pauline Gumbs. I can't, like, not nod to their work as well. Akwaeke Emezi. And I think a lot of this comes from a practice that I developed and software that I developed in my art practice called Cykofa Narration where I basically wrote this software to take all of my references and literally seed a database with all of my references and then like algorithmically generate new poems, new stories using this software.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:12:07]:
So at first, when I was writing the Cykofa origin story, I was using that software to write that story. And now I find myself embodying that software when I talk. I'm literally just weaving whenever I talk. I'm like, these aren't my words. These are just a compilation of the references that have literally the wisdom that has literally pulled me through. And I like to even think about that in abstract terms because some of our references are people with whose names we don't know. But somehow their memory is showing up in the ways in which we talk and show up in interacting community. And some of those people may be like future ancestors that we're working for and whose memory we're holding even though maybe they haven't been born yet.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:12:57]:
So there's this operating in future time and past time that I think I'm always weaving in my work. I really do believe there is nothing new under the sun. And black feminism is a political framework that allows me to kind of give form to the worlds that we actually wanna see. To the worlds that we actually wanna wanna build. When we talk about worldbuilding, in a lot of ways, the colonial project is a worldbuilding project. So we have to be very specific about the world that we are building. So I always like to anchor it in black feminism. And, I got this reference from the Quirc App on Instagram. They posted this graphic, and they were like, "Black feminism is not a demographic. It's a politic." Right? I love it as a political framework for imagining the worlds we need and the future we desire, really.

Amelia Hruby [00:13:58]:
Yeah. I really appreciate you highlighting that worldbuilding in and of itself is not necessarily neutral. It's not neutral. That's the perfect word. I think that's really important to remember, and we have to bring to it these politics, these frameworks, these values so that we're building specific worlds. And so stepping a little deeper into your work at Seeda School, why a creative offer? Like, what is supportive about that vessel for worldbuilding?

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:14:35]:
That's an excellent question. And I always start with the fact that in order to build, we need resources. That is just what it is. We need resources in order to build. So that's the first one. The second one is that it's a pathway for divestment. Right? So it's a pathway for us figuring out ways in which we can weave the stories of our skills. Weave the stories of our detours that you mentioned earlier. Which were actually just deepening our interdisciplinary vision. And adding to the layers and layers of magic that we already are.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:15:15]:
How do we weave all of those stories up until this point into a container that truly, truly serves the people we love and care about and how might generating income from our creative practice rooted in desire actually create pathways for divestment, create possibilities where we can say black lives matter and our income not be threatened. Right? Say free Palestine till it's backwards in our income not be threatened. Say COVID is still happening and our income not be threatened. There's ways in which it's both a way that actually allows gives us the resources to worldbuild. It creates pathways for divestment.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:16:02]:
And lastly, and I think this is what maybe I'm most excited about, is it starts to allow us to experiment with different cooperative economic models. I'm very clear that, the goal isn't for us to create a whole bunch of mini businesses and just replicate the choreographies of neoliberalism, but just on a fractal scale. Like, that's not our heart's desire. Our heart's desire is to figure out what's my contribution? What's my contribution? What's my contribution? And how do they interlock in ways that are so powerful that they actually start to actualize the futures that we say we want now. Like that, for me, it's about let's practice it now. Let's get creative with it now. And a creative offer is just a really beautiful prompt for imagining and practicing what's possibly beyond capitalism.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:06]:
Popular marketing advice or business advice is to niche down and only do the one thing for the one type of person. And I really feel your work kind of refusing that or taking us in a different direction or just, not functioning in those terms. But I think that so much of that leaves us as small business owners or people who want to sell our creative work, feeling like we are limited to being one thing. And what I love about the worldbuilding approach and about how you talk about creative offerings is, no, no, no. If we are one thing, it's only the one thing that is absolutely everything thing that we have done and are and are bringing to our work. And I think that that's really powerful in a business, in a creative practice. And I also think sometimes when we hear that, listeners listening might be like, "Well, that's great, Amelia. And that's, like, a lot of pressure to figure out everything I've done and integrate it and make it into an offering. And, like, I have to birth a whole world right now just to have a business or just to sell something."

Amelia Hruby [00:18:14]:
And I think that, yes, you might get to a point in your practice where a whole new world comes through, and that's beautiful, but also it can just be sharing differently. It can be the newsletter. We can create these vessels in which we're just taking the steps, we're trying the things, we're carving out space in our lives to occupy that world, even if perhaps we still have to go to our day job, or we still have to work for that client that we don't love necessarily, but we have this space.

Amelia Hruby [00:18:47]:
I mean, that's honestly how I feel about this podcast. It's like Softer Sounds at large, I love. I do feel like I've kind of built a world there, but with Off the Grid, it's like I show up here for my creative fulfillment and to talk to people like you and to make these connections, and it becomes this space even within my broader space. And so I think I just wanted to highlight that sort of, I think, generative tension, and I'm curious if you feel it too between, gotta integrate it all, that feels really big, and also you need to just take the next small step into this world.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:19:24]:
Yeah. I am so happy that you brought that up. I'm literally taking notes as that you're talking because, I think this is such an important conversation, and there's a couple of things. So we are so obsessed. I'll speak for myself and and then the folks in Seeda School. Like, so obsessed with interdisciplinarity because I really do believe that the folks that have encouraged us to flatten, whether it's jobs, whether it's academia, whether it's maybe even our own family and friends. That is a colonial inheritance. That is a colonial technology to say focus on this one thing.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:20:06]:
The issue is that you're too scattered. That's always the the kind of refrain. And I really wanna give us tools for figuring out how we resist that. So inside of the retreat, we do something called a creative ecosystem audit that helps you figure out, "Okay, what is your element X?" This is something N. K. Jemisin talks about, this brilliant, science fiction writer. She talks about the element X as something that frames an entire narrative of a speculative story. So in Black Panther, it's vibranium with X-Men, it's mutation. This thing, this oddity that starts to inform the whole entire story is, like, keyword or key theme. And I'm always inviting people to to figure out, "Okay, what's that keyword, that key theme that can start to bind your entire practice together?"

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:20:57]:
When we talk about a world, we're really just talking about your practice. And an offer is one node of your entire practice. So there are things where I'm like, "No. No. Your morning pages, that walk in the forest, your dinner party series that you do with your friends, that's yours. That is a part of your practice that's yours." We don't have to figure out how to monetize every single node in our world, every single node in our practice. But what is one node that we can offer up to fund the entire practice, to resource the entire world? But there is something that I'm always saying is even improvisational jazz needs a framework. Even, right, a playground, there has to be a ground to play on.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:21:51]:
I think there is something to be said about creative constraints, and that specificity is something that we talk a lot about in Seeda School. Like, how do we actually get super clear on all of the divergent nodes? How do we create some sort of messaging and storytelling around the scale of it all. Because that's the thing that intimidates us. And that's the thing that may give us a loop of inaction.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:22:15]:
For me, it definitely was. I'm like there's too many skills to choose one or try to figure out how to flatten it, which is what I ended up doing. I'm like, "Oh my goodness. There I have so many skills." The issue is that I need to flatten it and choose one, when it turns out it's the exact opposite. How do I choose them all, but create a story through which I'm able to communicate all of that emergence clearly?

Amelia Hruby [00:22:47]:
Are you feeling fed up, burned out, or totally sick of social media? Are you wondering if your business might be able to be successful without it, or if your creative work would still find its way out in the world without you posting it on Instagram or TikTok every 10 minutes? If you can relate to any of these musings of mine, I wanna invite you to join me in the Interweb. The Interweb is an annual membership for creatives, artists, small business owners, freelancers, influencers, entrepreneurs and creators who want support sharing their work and making money without social media.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:25]:
When you join, you get access to on demand courses taught by biz friends across the Internet and quarterly live events with me, Amelia. If you love this podcast, I hope that you'll head to the show notes to learn more and sign up so that I really can see you off the grid and on the Interweb. Now let's get back into today's episode.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:52]:
I think this has kind of come up around the the edges of this conversation, but I've noticed that on your website or in the materials about Seeda School, you don't use the word business. You talk about creative offer. You talk about income generating. And so as a person who's, like, very steeped in a sort of small business owner framework, I'm really curious how do you relate to business as a concept or a practice?

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:24:17]:
So the word business comes up in the Seeda School syllabus, and I don't do that on purpose. You pointed this out, it's like, "Oh, okay. That's something that I'm doing." But I think it's disingenuous to say what we're doing is not entrepreneurship. Like, your creative offer is a small business. If it's generating income and there's an exchange of goods and services it's a business and that it's okay to say that, and it's not a word that I ever shy from on purpose. I think what I more so lean into is the idea of this being a practice. And the business is just one small part of the larger practice, of the larger world, of the larger rehearsal of living into and embodying the worlds that we're dreaming up.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:25:07]:
Again, those worlds need resources. Whether it's we're paying for studio space, whether it's we're paying for materials, whether it's we're paying collaborators. We're paying each other. Right? All of that needs some sort of resources. You know? So maybe you have this creative business that provides those resources, but we're actually resourcing is the whole entire practice.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:25:28]:
That's what I try to get get folks to remember or invite folks to remember is that we don't have to give up the wild, maybe even illegible and quote unquote, like non marketable parts of our practice in order to sustain them. And we don't even have to think of them different as separate entities. And I do not, in any ways, think of my marketing practice and my newsletter or my podcast as separate than my creative practice. Because it's all those things that make the creative practice possible and keeps the lights on inside of the world. So thank you for that question. I think it's like a both/and. We're doing all of the above.

Amelia Hruby [00:26:11]:
Oh, I really appreciate your response. And something it's bringing up for me is as creators and artists and business owners, we're drawing from the same well of our energy. We're pulling from source, we're pulling from self. That's doing all of it. And so in my head, I'm like, all these pipes coming out of my system. And there's a way that I'm tempted to really make it very mechanical and think of it as, like, well, there's a pump that goes there, and one that goes there, and one that goes there. But it's not. I'm just this, like, sprinkler shooting out all of this energy and it's landing in these fields of this creative ecosystem. I can maybe point myself in a direction, but I very much feel the way that it's all part of the same ecosystem. When it rains, it's landing on all of it.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:04]:
And while there are specific vessels, like there are gardens where we plant different things in different places, they're not as separate as I even myself, like, speaking for myself, will often think of them. And I'm always struck by the way that each vessel needs all the others. When I exclusively pour myself into the business, I get very drained. It's like I've overwatered it, and everything just starts to kinda get muddy and messy, and it and I feel depleted. And it feels counterintuitive, but like, if I'm not making my Tiny Tarot Podcast that I just make for myself, the business isn't doing as well because I'm not serving all of these different pieces.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:48]:
And it takes time to figure out, like, "Oh, well, maybe I don't need this piece or maybe this is done and I can put that garden bed to rest." But, there has to be this sort of diversity in the ecosystem, things that are serving different aspects of my creative practice. And I think about this a lot even within my business. When I launched it I would pull tarot cards and light candles and do all these things, and then during busy periods, all that would go away, and I'm only working. And that's how I get burned out. I think that's how many of us get burned out. We neglect the other aspects of the practice. We think of it just as the work, and there's so much more to it, which is what your work reminds me of all the time. There's so much more than just that work in exchange for money. Like, that's it's not enough. Frankly, that's just not enough.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:28:34]:
Exactly. And not only is it not enough, the playtime is what makes our ecosystem so juicy. It is what makes the business so powerful. Right? Like, it is what keeps the ideas really fresh. First of all, just beautiful analogy with the sprinkler and the garden. That is so so so so good. And you're absolutely right. Like if I'm not frolicking in the forest for two hours a day, if I'm not writing poetry in the bath, like, I feel it in my facilitation.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:29:05]:
I feel it when I'm showing up on the podcast. And maybe the folks that we're serving feel it too. But this is why for me, like, the emphasis on practice is key. Right? Because there are times where I go weeks without really, really soaking in the bath when I know that's my thing. There are times when I skip days visiting the forest when I know that is what truly, truly charges me.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:29:33]:
But the practice is returning. Right? The practice is forgetting and remembering. And each time, like, returning anew with new data and new conversations that you're bringing to the practice and then the practice then speaks to you in different ways. And different connections get made. So when I'm away from the forest for a while, new things have happened and I think that's part of it too. Just giving ourselves the grace that we are going to leave it every now and then. But the beauty is the consistency of the return, I think. Often new ideas emerge from that as well. But you're absolutely right. We have to make room for all of it. And when we can't, we know it's always there to pick back up again.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:18]:
Yeah. This is reminding me of something you wrote that I read recently, I think around discipline melting into devotion. The places where we're perhaps taught or trained to have, like, you have to do it every day. But what I just heard in what you're saying is, like, yes, that can be helpful to build the practice, but when you're really integrated in it, you're just devoted to it, and then you can return again and again, and the space away or the time when you don't go to the forest, you feel it, and you don't go back out of a sense of discipline and being punished if you don't. You go back out of a sense of "I desire this, I want this, I need this, I have to go back, I have to return."

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:31:03]:
Yeah, "I missed you, boo!"

Amelia Hruby [00:31:04]:
Yes. To all the trees. And if I'm remembering the syllabus correctly, at Seeda School, everything starts with desire, Doesn't it?

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:31:16]:
Yes.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:18]:
Can you talk a little bit about the beginnings? Like, how do you guide people into connecting with their desires?

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:31:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. In the very first week, we use something called the element X quadrant, and it's loosely inspired by the Gay Hendricks quadrant. But there's, like, the zone of domination, the things that we absolutely should stay away from. And for me, I always joke this is the stove and the state. Like, anything to do with cooking, I am just going to pay the professionals. I'm going to ask for help.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:31:54]:
And then there's the zone of competence where it's like, we can do these things. We're good at these things. They get done, but it's hard to find our creative voice because it's someone else's creative spirit really flourishes here. So for me, this is like graphic design. It's something I can do, video editing. It's something I can do, but I know there are just like other magicians, other people whose heart really sings during this work.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:32:20]:
And then there's, like, our zone of validation. This is where I was for years. And this is the place where, we are getting paid well for this work. Right? We are getting praise for this work, whether it's from coworkers, colleagues, collaborators, family, friends. This work just feels too externally validating to give up. And for me, this was software engineering. Folks love a black woman in STEM. They are obsessed. Right? I joke in this essay I wrote, We Will Not Innovate Our Way Out of White Supremacy. I joke how I would get called a unicorn and do a twirl. Right? Like, I would eat it up.

Amelia Hruby [00:33:10]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:33:12]:
But ultimately,I knew and I could have stayed in that career for much longer, honestly, and probably had to take a couple of sabbaticals, but was able to get back on the horse again and again. And ultimately, I realized, like, software engineering, you kinda have to sit in front of the computer for six, eight hours a day if you really want to establish a career there until you become something like a senior software engineer where you may spend less time in front of the computer.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:33:39]:
So I was like, okay. That's actually in my zone of validation. But then we get to the zone of desire. And I invite people to say, what is the thing you secretly dream of orienting your entire life around? What are the creative practices you have told yourself possibly for years that, like, that's actually gonna stay the sideshow, or that's actually gonna stay the hobby. What are the things we're not giving ourselves permission to even imagine what it looks like to create life's work or, like, deeply oriented in that zone? For me, this was writing. I had no concept for a writer. None of my family or my immediate friends of writers who were making a living writing poetry or or making a living steeped in black feminist research that weren't academics or weren't working inside the university.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:34:35]:
So once I gave myself permission to actually start imagining from inside the zone of of my desire, I started coming up with all sorts of experience that I could try. Right? I started coming up with all sorts of different possibilities I could test drive. And sometimes it's just that little switch, that little bit of permission that can make all the difference.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:35:03]:
And I think this is what speculative fiction and worldbuilding does for us. It loosens up the stories that we have been navigating with our entire lives and says, but what if if we could literally, literally, literally make it up from scratch, what will we choose? I feel like it just loosens up the stories, gives us the courage to imagine beyond. Right? What our what our current life look might look like or the current framework of what we believe to be possible. And from that, you know, you hear all types of stuff, healing work, tarot reading, writing. All of these different things. I'm like, okay. That's our element X. That's where we start. That's now the thing, that's the North Star of this entire world and every single thing in our ecosystem is, like, branching from our desire, from the core of our desire. So this means our weekly dispatches, our offer, all of that is bridging from this deep, deep, deep place of pleasurable permission.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:09]:
It's amazing how much can change when we just, when we simply, as if it's easy, give ourselves permission.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:36:18]:
Just to, like, sweep away the childhood trauma.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:21]:
Just, you know, like, a couple centuries or more of oppression, all of that. Brush it off.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:36:25]:
Brush it off. Yeah. No. This is lifetime practice.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:29]:
Yeah. But it is so powerful. If we can get there, it's reminding me of something I said, I think, on the episode about escaping the attention economy, where I don't actually really like the framework of the attention economy because it treats my attention as scarce. I feel like this is related to frameworks that treat our creative energy as scarce. And what I've discovered is if I'm really acting in my zone of desire, to use your words, like my creative energy is not scarce. My attention is not scarce. It is abundant. It is infinite.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:02]:
And it may have constrictions from the fact that I live in the material world with its systems and structures, but I have an endless well that I can draw from when I'm operating in that zone of desire. And I don't think that an economic framework for limited material resources is the one I wanna use in relationship to my creativity or my attention. And everything that we've been talking about, new worlds, worldbuilding as a black feminist practice, changing the frameworks, giving ourselves permission just feels really deeply about unlocking that abundance for ourselves and for our communities.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:37:48]:
Exactly. Right? When you when we're operating in our zone of validation, our curiosity, there's a there's a ceiling on it. Our capacity, there's a ceiling on it. If I was honest, I'm not gonna lie. If I was a software engineer right now and I was in that pathway because it's misaligned with my zone of desire, I probably wouldn't be maybe lunching on software engineering books on the weekend or, like, listening to software engineering podcasts, right, and just kind of immersing myself in this world even when I'm, quote unquote, technically not getting paid for it.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:38:25]:
The beauty of operating in our zone of desire is that our curiosity is in this. It is like you said, oh, well, that keeps getting watered. Every single day, there's never we're never out of ideas. Our curiosity is never running dry. Like, the questions and the answers just begetting questions. It's something that we can stay tuned into for the stretch of a life time and, and feel and feel watered every time we do instead of depleted.

Amelia Hruby [00:39:00]:
Feeling watered. I love that.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:39:02]:
And from there, the possibilities are endless. Right? From there, we can really then actually practice at the worldbuilding scale of our desire. So, like, you as you mentioned, there's this material reality. We have a body that we have to tend to. Right? So we do have a limited capacity in that perspective. But when our we're operating from the zone of our design, our imagination is truly infinite and endless, then the writing begets more writing. Right? The paintings, we get more paintings, and we're constantly returning to it even in fear.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:39:36]:
Even when as we get to different scales of the vision, whether it starts as a newsletter, then emerges into a book, then it emerges into whatever your dream, a Netflix special, whatever the scale of your dream is, at each stage, it's like the curiosity and the desire becomes something that is powerful enough to rival the fear. Finally, that's the place that I in week one, I'm like, we're dreaming from this place because there's wanna be a whole bunch of fear and a whole bunch of nervous system stuff that we have to work through. But the only thing that can rival the fear is, like, the love and the desire that we have for our creative practice and creative vision.

Amelia Hruby [00:40:25]:
I feel so nourished and complete from everything we just talked about. This will be releasing the week before you open registration for the spring session of your retreat. So could you tell folks how they can step into this work with you and join you in the Seeda School Retreat this season?

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:40:46]:
First of all, y'all may be listening to this and it's like, I don't know what my creative offer is. Right? I don't even know if I have a creative practice. I mean, most folks I think your listeners are pretty creative bunch, but they may be like, well, I don't know if I have an offer per se. So I created something called the Creative Offer Questionnaire to Oneself. It's inspired by the Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself. Folks can find it at seedaschool.com/questionnaire. And in it, there are a series of questions I asked to help you kind of locate what that creative offer might be. And then there's also some really, really beautiful Audre Lorde quotes on visibility and fear and transforming language into action.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:41:32]:
Because I think that's also something we come up against is discomfort in the disease around being seen or perceived. And that has a lot to do with maybe the trauma of existing inside capitalism and being consumed. But I'm also wondering how do we show up for the people that we dream of serving? How do we show up for the ancestors who got us here? And how do we show up for the people who aren't even born yet? How do we show up for the next generation? And some of that requires a little bit of visibility and showing up. So, that is an offering that folks can engage with to start to figure out what that creative offer may be and what their value aligns commitments might be inside of it.

Amelia Hruby [00:42:16]:
Beautiful. So we'll link the questionnaire in the show notes, of course, for everyone listening. Check that out. You can also head there to learn more about the retreat and to subscribe to Ayana's newsletter and podcast.

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:42:32]:
Yeah. By downloading the questionnaire, you'll be on our email list, and so I'll be sure to email folks as soon as enrollment opens for the spring retreat.

Amelia Hruby [00:42:41]:
Ayana, is there anything else you'd like to share with Off the Grid listeners today?

Ayana Zaire Cotton [00:42:48]:
This is something that I shared in the most recent newsletter. This one line that goes, "It doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen." There's this Tina Camp quote that says, "We are realizing futures that haven't happened yet, but must." They're inevitable. So take your time, go slow, but whatever it is you're dreaming of, it must happen. So thank you for facilitating this conversation. And I feel so full too. And thank you for everything that you bring to your practice, Amelia. Your words definitely were watering my imagination. You were being a sprinkler for me in the early days, so thank you.

Amelia Hruby [00:43:31]:
Well, thank you for those kind words. I feel very filled up and watery. Listeners, I hope you feel the same. We're gonna sign off this episode, but until next time, we will see you off the grid and on the Interweb.

Amelia Hruby [00:43:51]:
Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by n'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the Interweb.