Each edition contains the latest from the Grokkist Press, a roundup of events and highlights from our community, and a care package of snackable outside links selected to nurture your curiosity.
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Hey friends,
Last year on my trip to NYC, I was having dinner in Brooklyn with Grace, a Grokkist member and one of my favourite people, when she shared an idea she'd been mulling over.
"I want to do a cross-pollination project where I get together a bunch of community builders and write a book where each chapter is a reflection on community building that starts with the letter 'c'. Would you be interested?"
"Sounds great!" I said. "Can my chapter be about curiosity?"
Grace hadn't written a book before and wasn't sure where to start. What she did have was lots of enthusiasm and organiser energy, a bunch of interesting people in her network, and the firm knowledge that she wanted to experiment with something different and playful.
So she just went ahead and grokked how to do it.
After interviewing Grace on my Still Curious podcast a while back, I had absolutely no doubt that she would smash this project (even if I strongly suspected it would take a tad longer than the 6 weeks she originally set aside for it) — Grace has never seen a 'Keep Out' sign she didn't want to rush headlong past.
I just wanted to make sure I had a front-row seat so I could watch all the action unfold.
So I'm delighted to report that, this week, Grace has just published her book of reflections – Community Starts with C – on Amazon. It contains contributions from 10 different community builders across a variety of industries, perspectives and continents.
And my curiosity piece is the opening chapter. 😉
I love this project and the sheer let's-just-do-it-iveness of it.
We live in an age when it's never been easier to put something wonderful into the world for anyone to appreciate.
Sometimes we just need to summon 20 seconds of courage to close our eyes and run past the signs we've put up everywhere around us that scream out all the reasons we can't.
Grok on!
- Danu
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The art of cultivating curiosity in community building
by Danu Poyner (5 min read)
Embracing curiosity means celebrating the space between certainty and the unknown. Deep and genuine connections become possible when we invite a dance with inefficiency and adopt a commitment to Not Knowing.
Living life out of sequence, with engagement and experience leader Grace Liaw | S2E11
by Danu Poyner (5 min read / 71 min listen)
A conversation all about doing things in a different way and order than you’re supposed to. Not doing what you’re told, leaning into life’s sudden twists and turns, feeling behind, and taking flight, all while figuring out adulting and navigating the complexity and expectations of cultural identity.
From the Grokkist Network
Events and updates from our community
Learn more about the Grokkist Network ↗Featured events and meetups
🟢 Free and open to all
🟠 Open to all with suggested cover charge. Free for Full Members.
🟣 Exclusive to Full Members only (Grokling, Indie Grokker, Groksmith)
Stilling the Tempest: Free Writing Workshop
🗓️ Wed 31 Jul | 5–6.30pm PDT (UTC-7) (view in your timezone)
Hosted by Jeanne
🟢 Free and open to all.
Sometimes, writing and drawing can be the only refuge. Speak in whatever language you’d like. Let it be a liberatory and laboratory process.
I will guide our practice by giving us lines from a selected poem or novel that is unrelated to what we might be working through – to free ourselves and find surprise in our writing. An example might be – This entire story starts with a single line, “I’ve been waiting years to be funny again.”
Let the mind wonder and wander and meander and write what it wants. Unlock something that illuminates You from the dark matter of your mind.
Authentic Relating
🗓️ Thur 8 Aug | 1–2pm PT (UTC-7) (view in your timezone)
Hosted by Chris Fuller
🟠 Free for Full Members. (USD$10 suggested tuition for free/non-members)
Authentic Relating is aimed at healing one's relationship with oneself, first and foremost. It is a journey of feeling into the wisdom of our bodies to uncover traumas or triggers; of unpacking generational behavior patterns; of practicing deep listening, self-love, and compassion for others.
Healing ourselves and each other from unhealthy lifestyles, belief systems, addictions and cycles of abuse is not easy and not necessarily fun, but with liberation from oppression for all beings at heart, it is deeply satisfying work with resonating effects.
If you are interested in exercising your vulnerability muscle and engaging with curiosity even when answers (or the questions, themselves) might cause discomfort, then this practice series is for you! All you need to bring is willingness.
You can expect to spend an hour or so pushing hard against the limitations of our virtual meeting space as we dig in with closeness and candor.
Other Upcoming Events
- 6 Aug | 🟢 Work Burnout and Moral Injury | Themed Café
- 14 Aug | 🟢 Demystifying Creativity (so you can reliably make great stuff)
- 21 Aug | 🟠 Plant Communication and the Language of the Heart
- 22 Aug | 🟢 Grokkist Network Office Hours
- 27 Aug | 🟠 Making Friends with AI
🍬 Snackables
Assorted awesome links to nurture your curiosity
#1 - Fear as a game
Ginger Greene
A personal and philosophical meditation on why we seek out the pleasures and fear, whether headlong through bodily experiences or simply by watching near-misses and close calls from a safe distance (4,400 words):
"Fear is an oddly attractive force. Horror movies, haunted houses, bungee jumping—these are fear experiences we actually pay for. (My favorite tweet: “If I pay $40 for a haunted house I better die.”) Why do we do that—why do we crave small doses of terror? Why do we like “safe” fear? [...]
That skin-tingling feeling, a flutter in the chest ... Is there anything useful about that feeling, I wonder? That artificial fear, or fear at a distance? Might practicing fear be a good idea? [...]
What I’d like to think—what I hope is true—is that I seek out fear because I seek activation. But at some point, in order to believe that story, I’d need to overcome real fear. That would be something outside the magic circle—fear of something I’m not sure I can overcome.
#2 - Nanoscapes: butterfly wings at 50,000x magnification
A 4-min short film "shot with light and electron microscopes at magnifications up to 50,000x, Nanoscapes reveals the elaborate topography of butterfly wings, which have produced a wealth of data on the surprisingly little known story of structural coloration." Visually stunning, scientifically fascinating and aesthetically mesmerising. An art/science collaboration with an associated research paper on UV iridescence in male sulphur butterflies.
#3 - The economics of book publishing
Elle Griffin
When companies have to give testimony about their business in open court, the public gets rare insights into how things actually work. Here's a good rundown of how the book industry works in practice, gleaned from the 2022 Penguin vs DOJ antitrust case.
"The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies)."
#4 - Iwagumi Air Scape
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An interactive art experience in Singapore where you can wander through giant inflatable rock formations, contrasting features of the wilderness with the urban environment. "Iwagumi Air Scape celebrates the beauty of nature, paying homage to the Japanese artform of Iwagumi, which translates as ‘rock formation”. Iwagumi is a methodology of stone placement in aquascaping (underwater gardening), pioneered by legendary aquarist,Takashi Amano. Iwagumi strives for harmony and unity through simplicity."
#5 - Visible Mending
A charming and uplifting stop motion animation (9 mins) about the healing power of knitting and other fibre arts, and about mending objects rather than disposing of them. "People need something that's for them just to concentrate on. When your life is sort of falling apart, you need to create a purpose in it for yourself, and if that purpose is quite small, it doesn't matter. It's important, it's something tangible."
A pair of parting thoughts...
"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." — Maya Angelou
"Every life is a work of art put together with all means available." — Pierre Janet
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