Grokkist Newsletter #67

Hey friends,

There’s a lot of talk these days about writing — what counts, who gets to do it, whether it’s still human, whether it even matters.

And while the discourse rages on, something quieter and more beautiful is happening beneath the noise.

People are writing.

Writing helps us meet ourselves. It gives shape to things that don’t yet have names. It lets us say what needs to be said — not just to others, but to ourselves.

And when witnessed in the right way, it becomes something that shifts not just you, but the collective space around you.

I’ve come to think of writing not as a skill, but as a state. A state of attention. A way of noticing what we already know but haven’t yet heard ourselves say. Beautiful or messy, it still gets something unstuck.

We’ve already been making space for that at Grokkist — especially in our freewriting circles offered by Jeanne like Stilling the Tempest, where we write for no one and nothing, just to see what spills out when the pressure is off. They’re about presence. And every time, people are surprised by what shows up.

So it feels timely to draw the thread together.

This month, Grokkist Press is releasing our first ever physical book — Salt & Seeds, a novel by Alan Raw.

Set in a flood-altered North Sea future, it’s a story about community, adaptation, and the quiet, persistent work of cultivating hope. You could call it climate fiction with a cuddle, or the kind of speculative realism that helps us feel the future — and rehearse for it.

We’ll be launching the book next month with a community gathering called Writing the Future — an evening of celebration, reflection, and the start of something more.

Because Salt & Seeds isn’t just a book — it’s the seed of our new Grokkist Writing Salon.

Grokkist's philosopher-poet-in-residence Nathan will be hosting, and we’ll use it as an opportunity to connect the dots between everything that’s already happening in the Grokkist ecosystem — the freewriting circles, the essays and creative works in the Press, and the deepening conversations about what it means to make something in public.

In an age of imaginative failure, speculative fiction matters. Not because it predicts the future — but because it makes space for the possibility of different ones.

And that matters whether you’re writing stories, viral video scripts, websites, or newsletters — writing is still the skill behind the skills in the creator economy. It’s how we build identity, coherence, and connection.

And yes, we know AI can write too. Sometimes beautifully. Sometimes better. It’s even my co-author, in moments like this — the quiet ones, when I’m circling an idea and need help hearing myself think.

So if we’ve staked humanity's worth on being the only ones who can string a sentence together, we’re setting ourselves up for heartache. And missing the point.

We don’t need to defend writing’s humanity — we need to inhabit it.

That’s the spirit of the Grokkist Press: not just producing content, but creating cultural infrastructure. Books you can hold. Workshops that hold you. Writing that restores. Witness that ripples.

So if you’re writing quietly, clumsily, messily — know that you’re not alone. And if you’re ready to be witnessed, we’re here. Come to the launch. Join the Salon. Submit your piece to the Press. Or just start writing. Something will shift.

Thanks for being part of the story.

With curiosity and care,
Danu

Fresh from the Press

Salt & Seeds

A speculative fiction novel by Alan Raw

Change to survive, connect to thrive. A solarpunk odyssey of resilience, connection, and quiet rebellion.

The first book to be published under the Grokkist Press imprint. Available in eBook and paperback. Free copy for Grokkist members.

Find out more ↗

Re-Risking Society

By Peter Gilderdale (4 min read)

The most unforgettable lessons are often the ones that would never survive a curriculum review.

Read the article ↗

More from the Press

• Objects of Worship (Peter Gilderdale, 4 min read) – Even ordinary habits can become objects of worship — and battlegrounds for meaning.

Upcoming Events

🟢 Creative Expression through Focusing

🗓️ Wed 21 May | 5–7pm Pacific time (view in your timezone)
Facilitated by Huntress

A gentle invitation to reconnect with yourself and others through inner listening and creative play.

Creative Expression through Focusing is a nourishing space where we go inward to express outward — through drawing, movement, writing, painting, or whatever wants to emerge in the moment. There’s no pressure to perform or produce — this is a space for being with yourself as you are.

Each session invites you to slow down and notice what’s stirring inside — sensations, inklings, emotional textures — and explore what might be asking for your attention. With warmth and care, we create a shared container for self-reflection, creative expression, and community resonance.

You don’t need to think of yourself as ‘artistic’ to join. Just bring your curiosity, something to create with, and the willingness to pause and listen.

Event Details and RSVP ↗

🟢 PhilosophyGyms @ Grokkist

🗓️ Thur 22 May | 7pm–9pm Central European time (view in your timezone)
Facilitated by Jessica Böhme

What if you’re already living a philosophy—whether you realise it or not? And what if you could train for that philosophy, the way you train for fitness?

PhilosophyGyms are communal workouts for your ethical imagination. They’re not about mastering theories or reaching agreement. They’re about strengthening your capacity to sit with complexity, speak from curiosity, and make space for wisdom to emerge in good company.

This 7-week series is hosted by Jessica Böhme is for anyone seeking to live with more coherence, more aliveness, and more conscious participation in the systems we’re part of.

Just like a real gym, it’s great if you come every week—but no pressure. Drop in when you can. You’ll still feel the stretch. 

Event Details and RSVP ↗

Other Upcoming Events

• 11 Jun | 🟢 Grok Cafe [#4 in 2025]
• 24 Jun | 🟢 Writing the Future: celebrating Salt & Seeds, speculative fiction, and the launch of the Grokkist Writing Salon

Groksmithing is our in-house approach to project work. It blends coaching, collaboration, creative delivery, and strategic sense-making — all held in a container of curiosity, care, and practical momentum.

We don’t do it to you. We don’t do it for you. We do it with you. It’s the kind of help grokkists need — and the kind grokkists love to give. Find out more.

Featured Menu Offering

AI Rocket Boots

You know AI can help — but maybe it hasn’t clicked yet. It felt clunky, unnatural, or like more work than it’s worth.

This is your AI fitting session. We’ll ground you in a way of working with AI that feels like you — playful, powerful, and actually useful. Then we’ll pick one area where it can make a real difference and co-create an AI-assisted practice around it.

That might mean building a custom GPT trained on your stuff, creating a smart prompt kit, or supercharging a task you already do.

You leave with your rocket boots on, a repertoire of prompts and techniques that feel natural, and a new sense of momentum. Let’s lift off.

🍽️ 2–3 calls + async shaping & feedback
🔖 $280 (members) / $1,400 (non-members)

Enlist a Groksmith ↗

Featured Course

Unlock Your Grok

What if your best story is the one you haven’t told yet? It’s time to bring out the part of you that’s been waiting.

Unlock Your Grok is a hands-on, guided journey designed to help you transform your untapped potential into purposeful action. Starting with a series of self-paced activities to spark your creativity and reconnect you with what truly lights you up, you’ll be supported by a personal 1:1 guide as you shape your unique wisdom into a meaningful project.

🔖 Included with Grokkist Membership (USD$75)*

(*Can't afford it? Don't worry. Our Forget About the Price Tag policy ensures this course is open to everyone, regardless of budget.)

Explore 'Unlock Your Grok' ↗

#1 - How meaningful is the search for meaning?

Yalom on Approaching Meaning - 3 Quarks Daily

by Marie Snyder

3 Quarks DailyMarie Snyder

Psychiatrist Irvin Yalom once suggested that up to half of all depression might really be a crisis of meaning—an existential sickness. If nothing matters, it should not matter that nothing matters… and yet, somehow, it does. Meaning haunts us. “The question of meaning in life,” he writes, “is, as the Buddha taught, not edifying. One must immerse oneself in the river of life and let the question drift away.”

This piece weaves through philosophers, psychotherapists, and poets in search of a way to live with the ache. To be with it—by engaging outward, creating, serving, caring. As a helpful counterpoint, Cory Muscara’s viral Insta carousel names 20 ways therapy culture can become a self-soothing loop—keeping us comfortably stuck.  It’s a helpful gut-check for anyone orbiting therapy culture, wellness rituals, or self-work without deeper transformation, and a sharp reminder that not everything labelled “growth” is actually movement. A wise friend of mine once remarked to me that life really only turns on two things: love and meaning. Everything else is set dressing. Even self-care.

#2 - The cost of saying no when a viral folk hero meets the state

The Thief Who Became a Celebrity | China Books Review

When Zhou Liqi went viral for stealing scooters to protest lack of opportunity, he sparked a debate between the popular movement of “lying flat” and the state’s desire for “positive energy.” The state won.

China Books ReviewTaili Ni

Zhou Liqi was a poor rural kid who became an internet folk hero after stealing scooters and declaring, mid-arrest, “It is impossible to work in this life!” It struck a chord with overworked, underslept young people who were quietly 'lying flat'. He became a kind of slacker icon—equal parts tragic and comic—then tried to turn his accidental fame into a way of getting by. The state didn’t like it. His accounts disappeared. He was scrubbed from the internet. The story could’ve ended there, but it doesn’t.

This piece tracks Zhou’s whole strange arc—from viral myth to reluctant entrepreneur to ghosted-out cautionary tale. It traces the fine line between visibility and vulnerability, and how easily cultural friction gets absorbed, repackaged, and tidied away. Worth reading for what it reveals about dissent under Chinese state media—but also for what it quietly says about us, too. Who gets listened to. What kind of rebellion gets allowed. What happens when you mean something you didn’t ask to.

#3 - A second brain with a soul

Sublime — A second brain with a soul

Sublime is a personal knowledge management tool designed to help you save, organize, and create with everything that inspires you. Trusted by leading thinkers a…

Sublime

Most Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tools feel like digital filing cabinets—efficient, but uninspiring. I’ve never really found one of these tools that suits me. I like the idea—have even tried to believe in it a few times—but the workflows always end up feeling like a second job. So when Larissa Weinstein (of Hobbyist Academia) described Sublime to me as “truly everything technology and the internet could be at its best,” I perked up.

Created by Sari Azout, Sublime is less a filing cabinet and more a playground-library-cosmos for your curiosities. Think of it as a blend between a personal library and a neighborhood café. It’s built to feel good to use, with an emphasis on meaning-making rather than optimisation. You gather what moves you, follow where it leads, and maybe even leave trails for others. I’m giving it a go—if you’re already using it (or about to), let me know! Maybe we’ll meet there.

#4 - Created, Then Carried Away

Land Art English | Creations in Nature

Land Art by Dietmar Voorwold

Creations in Nature

Dietmar Voorworld creates temporary outdoor mandalas and sculptural patterns using only what the land offers—stones, sticks, leaves, shells. Nothing added, nothing taken away. Just what’s already there, rearranged with care. Made along the Scottish coastline and elsewhere, his land art is less a claim on nature and more a conversation with it. Voorwold trained in art therapy before dedicating himself to these temporary works. Each piece is a fleeting invitation to notice. The waves will come. The wind will lift. And then it’s gone. There’s also short video introduction that’s worth watching.

#5 - A woodworker makes ice cream out of trees

Justin Davies is a woodworker and YouTuber who is "here to talk about trees and make stuff out of trees." Here he steeps shagbark hickory in cream to make ice cream—"I know cinnamon gets all the attention but that's the inner bark"—and serves it in a bowl carved from the same tree. The result is a dessert with flavours “akin to smoky maple syrup”. If that's not to your taste, you may prefer to make a slushie out of wild-foraged tree needles.

Membership Benefits

As a Grokkist Member, you’re part of a circle of active grokkists walking the grokkist path. Here’s what membership includes:

• 🟣 Member-Only Gatherings
• 🛠 Groksmithing Project Support at Member Rates
• 🚪 Unlock Your Grok - Self-Paced Course
• ❤️‍🔥 30% Discount on Courses and Ticketed Events
• 🎭 Featured Member Profile
• 📣 Post Calls & Invitations
• ✨ Early Access & Prototypes
• ▶️ Events Recording Library
• ⭐️ Digital Member Badge

Become a Grokkist Member - $75/yr

A pair of parting thoughts...

“All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.” ― Ellen Glasgow

“It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” ― George Eliot