Cody Cook-Parrott's Blog

Living Offline

Beginning of the roll by Anna Friss

Dear Reader,

Welcome to December. The wood stove has been roaring for over a month now and the snow is blanketing the meadow.

What does it mean to really live offline when you have a job that requires you to be, well, very online? Perpetually with lap top open, logged in, bending toward the glow of the screen.

These are the questions I’ve been asking myself this year as I experiment with having deleted my Instagram accounts, no longer using any platforms or social media, and am currently using a phone without a web browser or email.

These are the inquiries I’ve been sitting with as I return to a document I wrote in 2018 called Offline Practice. I wrote it on my typewriter and used it in a small workshop I taught at Otherwild in LA.

I offer it to you today as this research remains true over seven years later.

This weekend starts a three week class of the same name, because I wanted to return to this exploration. Part of living offline is also going through the archives, not always trying to invent something new, and seeing what has been left unexplored. I ask - what have I already written that wants to be tended to again? Not out of laziness or lack of new ideas, but to build the trellis of what is becoming of this ecosystem.

In its simplest form living offline requires turning off the phone and shutting down the computer. Then you are offline. When you open those things, you are online. In keeping with this simplicity I don’t have to outdo myself, always trying to outrun the next great meandering of how to unhook from the digital space. If I want to be online less, I have to go to the internet less.

This year I invented PROMPTS, which you’ll get a more proper introduction to in the coming weeks. It’s a monthly analog newsletter that starts at the top of the year. While I dearly loved hosting Landscapes, my digital writing group, I felt the sense of being too online. Because the reality is I can turn the wifi off and write on my computer. I don’t have to be online to write on this machine. Closing the writing group is what lead me to finally laying the groundwork for an offline newsletter, something I’d been dreaming of for years.

Whether it goes out to three people or three hundred, I knew I wanted a dedicated space to work in the non digital sphere with other writers. To provide them with generative material for their own writing that doesn't require them to look at a screen.

In sharpening this I thought of the herbalist Rosemary Gladstar’s herbalism class that she offers both online AND as an offering in a binder. She’s been doing this for decades, and I’d love to create a writing class that doesn’t require the internet at all.

I have so many ideas I am looking forward to sharing more about in class over the next few weeks. My own projects I want to spit through the cycles of the prompts and exercises we’re doing. I never teach a class I don’t want to take myself.

As this calendar year begins its closing ceremonies I want to really root into my own contemplative practices. Asking myself questions about what I want to bring into the world next year, through the World Wide Web and the web we spin together.

I am finding that attention acts as my compass. Attention as an act of remembering. Remembering what I like, who I am, and where my interests lie. Living offline is not an act of disappearance, but an act of solitude. An act of finding togetherness without rigidity.

There has to be trust in the practices. In quilting, writing, dancing, Pilates. That without an algorithm they hold just as much validity.

What is enough?
What wants to be tended to more slowly?
What rises on the trellis without my meddling?

Offline Practice is my attempt to answer these questions in community — to see what happens when a group of us experiments with shifting our attention back toward our actual lives.
Not rejecting the internet, but re-positioning it.

I call in these practices to relate deeper to the living world, not to be farther from it. In being offline, the world becomes textured again. In living offline, I stay awake to my own life — so that I may be attuned to the lives of others.

Sifting through what appears scattered to know what is essential, and trusting that in less searching, with ease it may find me.

→ If you missed out on Cody’s Big Week of Sales there is good news for this cosmic Cyber Monday - ALL DEALS ARE BACK ON FOR 24 HRS!

Plus when you buy something today you get a bonus Notion template to track your own writing practice for the month of December with a database for entering in the data and prompts for getting started (This gets emailed manually by end of day, and will also be sent to everyone who bought something last week!)

→ NYC friends : Tamara Santibañez has two spots left for their sliding scale care day (this Thu) offering private sessions of reiki energy work and optional NADA ear acupuncture, a perfect way to reset after a physically and energetically demanding week

→ A new season of Flexible Office starts this morning (no worries if you missed today-jump in anytime) Every Monday and Wednesday 9-10 EST through January 28

→ Tomorrow on giving Tuesday I’ll be redistributing a portion of profits from my big sale week to

→ As you know I love all episodes of Off The Grid - but this episode especially where Amelia names her own politics and the political values of the show with such precision and clarity inspired me deeply. I love my creative community so much. Amelia will also a special guest at my class Offline Practice.

→ Just started reading Radical Healership by laura mae northrup and it is so good (Thank you to my amazing Fieldwork group for recommending)

→ Reading An Eros Encyclopedia by Rachel James

→ Astrologer Emily Hall interviewed me about my Saturn Return

→ Cried to this today

Do you yearn for the days clients traipsed through the woods to knock on the elder witches' door? Do you feel repulsed by reels? Unmask your marketing20-week healing group exploring Women Who Run With the Wolves through myth, reflection, embodiment & community. Women & gender-expansive folks welcome. How's your 2025 landing? Revisit the year's themes w/a FREE 90-minute Hermit Year writing workshop facilitated by creativity badass Catherine LaSotaWinter Book Cocoon: A 90-day book coaching program for (queer) speculative fiction authors & cultural anthropologists. Scholarship available

Want to book a classified ad for Dec 22 or January? They’re 30% off for the next 24 hrs Click here

Subscribe now

→ info@codycookparrott.com
→ Pre-Order The Practice of Attention and get The Attention Audit Workbook
→ www.codycookparrott.com
→ Follow Along on Are.na

On What We Keep Private

Photo by Anna Friss

Dear Reader,

First I just want to tell you that Flexible Office is returning and starts on Monday. My original co-working group for artists, writers, and creative business owners. Every Monday and Wednesday 9-10am EST for two months. A quick admin hour. A time to tether in.

Second I want to tell you - I hope you’re managing ok in this big week. A week of grief, sales, deals, meals, family, friends, loneliness, isolation, togetherness, and mystery. A week where everything feels loud but strangely hollow.

A week where we navigate what is ours to carry and someone else’s to manage.

And maybe that’s why I’ve been thinking so much about privacy.

For years, I’ve made my income transparent. My debt a line item in a podcast episode with thousands of listeners.
I’ve shared the numbers, the breakdowns, the categories, the launch totals, the “behind-the-scenes” that supposedly makes a creative life feel legible and real.

But something shifted recently—quietly, then catastrophically. Something in my inner knowing said: no more.

Not no more sharing.
But no more everything.

No more being consumed.
No more being readable from the outside like an open ledger.
No more flattening myself into numbers just to be trusted.

What I’m choosing now is…
a threshold.

A new boundary around my attention, my earnings, my practice, my relationships, and my inner world.

Inside this newsletter I’m sharing three things:

Why I’m done with public income transparency (and the exact moment I realized it).

What I will and won’t share online anymore—a living list, written as a kind of personal manifesto.

The real cost of visibility when you run a creative life and a business at the same time.

If you want to go deeper into this shift with me—
into the questions of privacy, self-protection, porousness, and becoming unreadable in a world that demands clarity—
the rest of this essay is waiting for you.

⬇️ Continue reading with a paid subscription for $5/mo

If Selling Were an Art Practice

Photo by Anna Friss

Dear Reader,

This week you’ll be inundated with sales. Some will feel like scams; others will feel like generous tethers into a new world. As someone running a creative business on my own terms, I keep circling one question:
What if selling could be an art practice?

If you’re already searching for the unsubscribe button I assure you, it’s at the bottom. I understand this might be a spicy take in a week when many folks are striking from shopping, boycotting Black Friday, or wrestling with how to participate (or not) in the capitalist currents we’re all swimming in.

When I work 1:1 with artists, one of the most common sentences I hear is: I hate marketing.
What they usually mean is: I hate selling.

Marketing, at its best, is a creative practice — writing good copy, making images, inviting people into our worlds. Selling, though… selling is vulnerable. It includes saying out loud: This is for sale. I made this. I’d love for you to buy it.
It feels embarrassing, even when we’re honest and transparent. It can feel like a stark exposure.

But what if selling deserved the same thought, care, and imagination as our paintings, quilts, essays, or classes?

You are a lone reed, standing tall, waving boldly in the corrupt sands of commerce - You’ve Got Mail

What if selling was simply another moment in the ecosystem where we say:
I’m inviting you in.
If you come closer, I will give you something I’ve worked hard to make.
Exchange as care. Exchange as reciprocity.

When I created Cody’s Big Week of Sales, I genuinely had fun. I made a little website in Canva. I chose offerings I believed would actually support people. I asked folks to opt into a separate list so the sales emails didn’t ambush anyone. Every email includes a one-click opt-out.
Choice is part of the art.

Selling isn’t bad. Manipulation and coercion are bad.
But transparency? Consent? Clear invitations? That’s all part of an ethical, creative ecosystem.

I have also found classifieds or ads in other people’s newsletters or podcasts is an excellent way to market myself, which can lead to more sales. Usually selling directly to a new audience doesn’t work as well as inviting them into something free where you can then cultivate a relationship and eventually sell them something.

I put so much care, improvisation, and trust into my art practice. I want to extend that same care to selling — not as performance, not as pressure, but as part of being in community with the people who find meaning in my work.

And even though I’m not buying much during Object Study, I do want to see what you’re selling. Because what you sell — your art, your guidance, your research, your gifts — is often a threshold into the great mystery.

What if selling were a kind of composition?
Not a pitch, not a funnel, but a shape we make in time.
When we sell, we’re arranging elements the same way we would in a poem or a quilt:
intention, pacing, texture, pause.
A sales page is a form of storytelling.
A checkout button as a doorway.
An invitation is still an invitation, even when money is involved.
Selling becomes an art practice when we treat these moments with the same devotion we bring to our studio table — asking, What feeling am I trying to create? What is the arc? Where do I want the reader to breathe?

There’s the attention of my inner world, and then there’s the attention we owe outward — the responsibility of witnessing harm and refusing to look away. Even when I’m writing about creative practice, I’m inside a world where people are fighting for their lives.

Selling is also attention work.
We’re asking someone to pause in the flow of their day and look at something we made with our whole life behind it.
That’s not extraction — that’s attention exchange.
It’s a chance to say:
Here is a small piece of my world. If it lights something up in you, you may have it.
When we approach selling this way, we’re not chasing people.

My attention is never just personal. It stretches outward — toward ongoing genocides, toward trans safety and liberation, toward the collective storms shaping our shared future. Part of my practice is learning how to hold the world with care without collapsing under it.

We’re co-regulating with the audience who already feels resonance.
Selling becomes less about convincing and more about attunement — listening for who is meant to be in the room and letting the rest drift away without resentment.

Everything I choose to put on sale this week had one hope behind it : that it would uplift and empower the buyer to be MORE abundant, find ways to make more money, more art, and more connection. So that they may be more generous in a world of scarcity.

May this big week of commerce be one of opting in and opting out. May your values as an artist and business owner stay in alignment with your values as an individual. May money flow toward you and away from you in the swirl of not knowing.

P.S. A part of my selling practice always includes redistribution. A portion of this month’s paid newsletter subscriptions goes to The Northwest Food Coalition and a portion of profits from Cody’s Big Week of Sales goes to

These are all imperfect acts in imperfect times, I’d love to know what your relationship with selling or consuming is like this week.

MY NEXT BOOK IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!

→ The Practice of Attention : Cultivating Presence in a Distracted World (March 2026, St. Martin’s Essentials)

Pre Order Bonuses include : The Attention Audit Workbook and No Signal : A digital detox email course and workshop Jan 1-7 2026

THE PRACTICE OF ATTENTION

→ Offline Practice registration is open. Not sure you’re ready to jump in? Add yourself to the email reminders here. Dec 7, 14, and 21 with special guests, office hours, and more!

→ Cody’s Big Week of Sales starts today with 30% off classifieds : Click here to opt into the list to hear all about discounted classes, or click here for the website

→ December Online Pilates Mat Class Mondays in December • 3pm PT / 6pm ET • 60 minutes with Jessie Young : sliding scale $60-120 for all 5 classes • email jessiealexandra@gmail.com to sign up. Jessie is who opened the door of Pilates for me and totally changed my life! Cannot recommend enough.

→ Butch Is Not A Dirty Word’ Is at Risk — Help Us Protect It! This archive only becomes possible if they hit Milestone 3: $15K — help them preserve 10 years of butch history !!!

Want a calmer relationship to your menstrual cycle? A Guide to Reframing and Releasing PMDD is a neuro-affirming zine made just for you 📖OUTERLANDS - a film about addiction, chosen family & coming home to ourselves - comes to Prime Video/Apple TV on Wed 11/26. Watch the trailer for this award-winning indie & please help support LGBTQIA+ film!Clients can't hire you if they can't see you. Let's change that. Join Safe To Be Seen and bring your business out of hiding. Early Bird Enrollment ends November 30th.

Want to book a classified ad for next week? They’re 30% for the next 24 hrs Click here

Subscribe now

→ info@codycookparrott.com
→ Subscribe to my YouTube Channel
→ www.codycookparrott.com
→ Follow Along on Are.na

Cody's Big Week of Sales

Dear Reader,

Next week I am hosting Cody’s Big Week of Sales

My little big week of sales website

It’s important to me to be thoughtful in selling, especially during a week where everyone is bombarded with sales. At first I figured I wouldn’t participate in the noise. But then I got excited about discounting some of my favorite things and giving them to you at a more affordable price.

Each day next week one thing goes on sale starting at 7am EST and is only for sale for that day. Five days, five special deals.

Classifieds Sale!

I made this experiment it’s own little website which is now live. Check out all the sales and make your plan of action.

I’ll remind you one more time in Monday’s newsletter - but after that only people who opt in will receive the sale email each day. This is my best guess at ethical selling to an email list, something I am always experimenting with. And it’s also easy to opt out mid week.

Lots of bonuses will be appearing along the way. Marketing as creative practice. Selling as service. A portion of sales from Cody’s Big Week of Sales will be redistributed to .

Next week will be interesting to me as I continue to participate in Object Study - my spending experiment for paid subscribers of this newsletter. I know many of my own readers are taking breaks from spending, and I’ll be interested to see what tempts me to break my own rules.

Subscribe now

Spending and sales can bring up a lot for people, which is why I’ll only be selling to a small opted in list. I trust you to make financial decisions that support your learning, your small business, and your growth. And I have truly watched these tools do that for people.

Thanks for tuning in to this note today.

Live footage of Flexible Office

Oh and before I forget : THE RETURN OF FLEXIBLE OFFICE IS HERE : Dec 1-Jan 28 : M/W 9-10am EST $55-$125 sliding scale with 3 more PWYC spots left

I hope you have a beautiful weekend

Yours in the experiment of creative business,
Cody

Cover Reveal : The Practice of Attention

Dear Reader,

Today I am thrilled, delighted, and honored to finally share with you my next book, The Practice of Attention : Cultivating Presence in a Distracted World

Drum roll please for the cover reveal

PRE ORDER HERE

This book is the backbone of everything I’ve taught — from leaving social media to creative mapping to movement. It’s the clearest articulation of the life I’m building and the life I want for all of us.

Samantha Irby calls it “The only book we need right now”

The book comes out with St. Martin’s Essentials on March 17 2026. Now I know that is four months away so I have PRE-ORDER BONUSES for you! Head to www.thepracticeofattention.com and pick where you want to pre-order the book from. After you pre-order, come back to the website and upload your receipt so the bonuses can automatically fly to you.

BONUSES :

The Attention Audit Workbook : An inventory system to help you see where your focus is going so you can reclaim your time, energy, and creative capacity. With Notion databases, prompts, and exercises to get back on track when your attention is fractured beyond repair.

No Signal : January 1-7 : A digital detox email course + live workshop for logging off at the beginning of the year

PRE ORDER OPTIONS :

→ Choose Bookshop and order it from your favorite indie bookstore or my little shop. This would be the pathway most supportive of small bookstores.

→ Choose Amazon and you’ll be able to leave a review there and with enough pre-orders and reviews on that website it could be added to some lists. Lists are helpful. Amazon is complicated.

→ Choose Barnes and Noble if you’re really into them or are looking for international shipping options.

→ Other ways : Ask your local bookstore or library to order a copy - hell ask them to order many copies!

PRE ORDER HERENon monetary ways to support

→ Share the link or forward this newsletter to a friend

→ Share the The Practice of Attention website on the internet

→ Leave a comment on this post celebrating this book’s emergence into the world (comments open to all readers)

→ Respond to this email with your excitement

→ Make a Goodreads account so you can get ready to write a review after you read it ;)

→ If you’re my friend text me and say yay Cody you did it

The girlies all together

The Practice of Attention is a guide for stepping out of the loops that keep us hooked—so we can return to presence, play, and service. This isn’t an anti-technology book; it’s about reclaiming your time and focus so life feels like it belongs to you again. Moving from digital detox and an attention audit into five grounding practices—creative work, hobbies, movement, research, and spiritual life—you’ll learn how to weave your own retreat or residency into everyday living.

This book is : 

→ For anyone who feels stuck in the loop—scrolling, refreshing, searching—and wondering if freedom exists.

→ For the ones who’ve set every limit, rule, and break, only to fall right back in.

→ For those afraid of stepping away and losing connection, relevance, or belonging.

→ For people craving presence, slowness, and a life that feels like their own again

I’ve been working on outlining, visioning, dreaming, writing, editing, writing, more editing, tiny edits, big edits, and saying YES over and over again to this book since 2021.

Reading this book out loud to myself during the editing process is what actually got me to finally delete Instagram instead of just deactivate it or take a break. My own work worked me.

New Author Photo Alert by Anna Friss

I’ll be celebrating on March 18 at Boulder Bookstore and would love to see you there. More tour dates forthcoming, I’m also open to you inviting me places!

Pre-orders matter more than most people realize. They tell my publisher — and bookstores — that this book has a life waiting for it. When you pre-order, you’re helping determine the first print run, the marketing budget, and whether booksellers decide to stock it on shelves. Pre-orders are the quiet math behind a book’s future.

PRE ORDER HERE

If my work has supported you in any way, this is the moment that supports me the most. I wrote this book for you dear reader, the ones who open this newsletter. Who read every week or when they can get to it. I wrote it for us!

Thank you for letting me write to you for over a decade.
I hope this book becomes a companion for whatever season you’re in next.

→ info@codycookparrott.com
→ Subscribe to my YouTube Channel
→ www.codycookparrott.com
→ Follow Along on Are.na

The Interior Threshold

Non Newsletter Update : All of my email replies / general emails I send from my inbox are going to spam. Waiting on a response from me? Check there and mark not spam

Dear Reader,

I have had my pulse on privacy, weathering the small storms of what is for the people and what is for list making. What is for the closest circle and what is for the outer circle.

There is no manual. No oracle. I cannot learn these lessons by guesswork, but by doing. By getting my hands in the garden beds, dirt under my fingernails, replanting the cosmos that already promised they’d come back next year.

Some days anxiety is too bright, I shape shift into something I cannot stand behind. I get porous in the wrong direction. I lose the thread of who I am and slip into who I think I’m supposed to be.

So I find myself daring to give myself permission to be whole, not a version of what other people hope I could be.

This is a tender edge. I forget that privacy isn’t just about withholding. It’s about returning. It’s about finding the part of myself that doesn’t need to be witnessed to be real.

I am becoming especially resistant to a version of myself I need to show the world to prove my goodness, to prove my worthiness of space, another breath, a seat at the table of creative expansion and enoughness.

I want a version of me that is whole and doesn't require performance or investigation. That doesn’t require defense, over explaining, or claiming my rightness. I open the door to change, I am naturally on the offense.

The less I contort myself to be understood, the more I am in connection — with self, Earth, Spirit, and others.

The interior threshold remains my connection to my higher power, which somedays feels like nothingness and other days feels like everything. Rarely an in between, but I continue to search with great faith.

I begin to trust my inner weather above the forecast. Storm as compass, not as failure.

A small note as I close: beginning this week Thursday, my longer, more interior writing will arrive for $5/mo, a new cadence for the deeper layers—longer essays, private process notes, early ideas, studio pages,
and the creative maps that shape my work behind the scenes.

If you were a paid subscriber in the past, you’ll need to sign up again, as the system doesn’t transfer previous subscriptions. I’ll share more on Thursday, but for now, consider this a gentle heads-up and an invitation to keep walking with me into this next season of the work.

As a thank you for riding the wave and returning to being a paid subscriber : everyone who signs up this week gets access to one of my most popular on-demand classes The Cartography of Time : Planning your creative and professional week while building systems that support your art and work

A portion of all paid subscriptions has been redistributed monthly since 2021 - This month they will go to supporting The Northwest Food Coalition

Upgrade nowSome Announcements :

→ Offline Practice registration is open. Not sure you’re ready to jump in? Add yourself to the email reminders here.

→ Cody’s Big Week of Sales starts Nov 24 : Click here to opt into the list to hear all about discounted classes, Creative Advising, Classifieds, and brand new things!

From Force to Flow: Join us for a free 60-min workshop to unlearn what’s in the way of your creativity. Book your spot for Nov 27!Mo(u)rning Altars An online workshop for you to create an altar that brings supreme joy and offers space to commune with the ecstatic energy of the universe.

Want to book a classified ad for next week? Click here

Subscribe now

→ info@codycookparrott.com
→ Subscribe to my YouTube Channel
→ www.codycookparrott.com
→ Follow Along on Are.na

P.S. A final note on no annual pricing for Monday Monday. After talking to a few peers I decided I wanted to keep the pricing the same for everyone, not reward people with more cash in hand to get a deal. I also like that it lets me pause or stop when I need to without promising too much ahead of time.

One Million Platforms, Nothing Solved

Dear Reader,

I write to you from my couch, a place I have written to you one hundred times before. I write to you from humility, a place I find myself stretching in to inhabit with more ease and less shame.

Today I write you the story of changing tech platforms in creative business — nothing short of three times in the past month. Something I would never recommend to any business owner or artist. A story that I hope prevents you from chasing the thing that was right in front of you the whole time.

Cross-Pollinating Projects: 5 Ways to Weave Writing into Your Work

Cross-Pollinating Projects: 5 Ways to Weave Writing into Your Work

What if the page was a mirror for the process, rather than the product?

In this episode, I share how I weave my projects together through writing.

I open the pages of my cross-pollination log, trace the path of how “untitled field project” became my business coaching group Fieldwork, and offer you a journalling prompt for translating from one medium to another.

Tune in for a portal into your own metaphors, obsessions, and vortexes of creative imagination.

Mentioned in the episode:

Creative Ideation Portal

Reclaim the Archive: A Fundraising Work for Cody’s Book

A Quilt in a Weekend

Pollinating Through Projects

Subscribe to MONDAY MONDAY to join Object Study

If you loved this episode I think you’ll love class this weekend, would love to have you

POLLINATING THROUGH PROJECTS

Want to include a classified ad for next week? Click here to read more

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→ Website
→ Are.na
→ info@codycookparrott.com

Liking and sharing this post is a great way to support my writing. Thanks for reading.

The Body's Work of Remembering

Dear Reader,

My hair is long enough to fit in a braid now, a sign of patience. Two pigtails as our first grand gesture, the braid in the back as the final form. I have grown my hair long once and it felt so triumphant. To celebrate I cut it all off.

I stand before you in a deep not knowing, in a wanting to rush but staying still. I’ve been returning to the Pilates method after almost two months out of practice. As soon as I said it wasn't my job I couldn’t figure out how to integrate it into my life. I find that when something is my job I know how to weave it together, and when it isn’t income earning I have a harder time.

https://codycookparrott.substack.com/p/pilates-is-not-my-job

So I do my little project - Public Access Pilates. A small expression of my dedication to documenting the body’s work of remembering. Without judgement I film myself, without knowing what it’s for, where it will go, or who will see it. I know I do it for myself. I like how it makes me feel, doing the movement, recording it, and archiving it.

I screen record the video, screenshot my favorite moment, and upload both to the website and to my Public Access Pilates Are.na channel where the videos live.

I reinstated my little YouTube channel, again with no clear plan. I just wanted to remember how nice it felt to make the videos without needing to know how they would lead to monetization.

It feels like a time of collecting, of gathering, preparing for Winter with each passing moment of creative indulgence. I am reminded again that the body of work is allowed to grow without a clear outcome in mind. It is the writing that creates the through line, that weaves the tapestry of work together to become one entity.

My website world, both my personal website and creating mini websites for projects, is another hub that reflects how it all sits on the same shoreline. And yet I am no stranger to the question of : Does this all make sense together? Does this all go together in a way that the people will understand?

That isn’t the right question though. The question I want to ask is : Am I being creatively fulfilled? Am I finding joy and delight in my work and the scope of my practice? And if something is missing can I unhook from capitalism long enough to know that not every part of my process needs to be income generating.

I am drawn in to what is contemplative and cyclical, not what makes me the most money. This as a starting point takes more trust.

The work of being an artist is to practice devotion in all directions — to let the projects pollinate each other without forcing a single flower to carry all the meaning. The Pilates videos teach me how to write with a new steadiness. The writing teaches me how to move. Each practice feeds the next.

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If you’re also sitting inside a field of unfinished or half-formed work with no clear direction — poems, essays, recordings, scraps of fabric or sound — I made something for you.

→ Pollinating Through Projects is a two-day workshop this weekend (Nov 1 + 2) about learning to see your creative ecosystem as a whole. We’ll map your current projects, trace the invisible threads between your mediums, and find clarity in what already exists through writing prompts and mapping out what wants to come forward.

It’s not about starting something new — it’s about seeing what’s already alive.

Each gesture — the writing, the filming, the small acts of care — belongs to the same cadence of creative practice.
It’s less about knowing where it’s headed and more about noticing that it’s still moving.
That’s the through line: the motion itself.

READ MORE + SIGN UP

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Cody’s World is my digital garden Notion universe of writing and dance experiments, research and book notes, and more. Become a Paid Subscriber to access for $5/mo or $35/year

Subscribe now

→ I added the Library of Research - an experiment in using my private Notion as an inbox and then filtering things I am actively ready to share into Cody’s World. I added this after taking Podge Thomas’ AMAZING digital gardening class.

→ Documented Katy putting up the drywall in the small shed

→ Two new short experimental essays : Getting Back To It and The Great Returning

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→ The fundraiser workshop to buy back books with my deadname on them is going well! We’re at $1935.70 out of $8820! We meet for Reclaiming the Archive on November 9 and you can contribute as much as you want to this humble effort - thank you to everyone who has participated so far, it means the world to me to not take this on alone

→ Just announced OBJECT STUDY which starts Nov 1 and will have a very cool free Notion template and Google Sheets template

https://codycookparrott.substack.com/p/object-study-a-30-day-experiment [image error] The newest episode of Common Shapes is an interview with the amazing Kening Zhuhttps://codycookparrott.substack.com/p/weaving-worlds-on-the-web-with-kening [image error]

→ Tired of forcing discipline in your creative practice? Join Make it Delicious — a free live session to design a creative practice you (actually) love.

→ Stop working alone. Focused Space is an online co-working app & community for writers, artists, entrepreneurs & anyone who is sick of procrastinating.

→ Cosmic Playground 🪁 a creative community exploring Art, Astrology, Zines & more. Join our Monthly Reset this Friday for ease, grounding, & inspiration. Use MONDAY30 to get 6 weeks free

→ Diaries, journals & daybooks : Write in warm, low-key community and start (or continue) a journal practice. Read diary excerpts from writers like Moyra Davey and Helen Garner & write together. $75 for 6 weeks.

→ Midwestern Daughter A 6 month container for anyone who has ever identified as a girl or woman affected by the ethos of the Midwest, to rewrite their own stories of identity and reclaim themselves with joy. MWD25 for $25 off of registrations in October

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→ Website
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→ info@codycookparrott.com

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Weaving Worlds on the Web with Kening Zhu

Weaving Worlds on the Web with Kening Zhu

Kening Zhu is an artist, writer, teacher, and creator building worlds on the internet.

Her approach to business is a stunning integration of creative practice, intuition, and artistic clarity.

I’m thrilled to bring you this conversation where we talk about:

Minimalist business ecosystems

Websites as archives outside of time

Allowing ourselves to be multifaceted

How Kening runs her business without platforms

The pros & cons of paid newsletters

Seasonal memberships that support inner rhythms

The labyrinth as an artist’s path

How to quit compartmentalizing business and art

Letting your artist child grow up

Mentioned in the episode:

Creative Ideation Portal

Kening’s website

Kening’s newsletter