What Inconsistent Weirdos Need at a Time Like This
Let's Talk Financial Sustainability.
Welcome Back, Good Listeners. Each Friday I’ll be sharing a little nugget of research on my vision for a Village Artist Grant Ecosystem, which is part of our 2026 Artist Residency.
Today I was inspired to create the rough draft of a new 1:1 service I’ll be offering, that I’m calling “ALIVELIHOOD COACHING” - it’s a blend of heavy duty spiritual advisement, money magic work and life coaching 🤩🤑
Working on this today made me reflect on some very common business coaching advice that I’ve received consistently over the last 20 years that I’ve worked as an entrepreneur and/or working artist. (I’ve worked with many coaches/teachers and spent a LOT of time in community with other entrepreneurs!)
The advice is something like - “give yourself time to create a sustainable offer.”
Give yourself time to create a sustainable business. Some people are very special unicorns and can launch a new offer and reach an enormous amount of financial success within one year. Most others need at least 3 years to create something that can last, and sustain you for the long term. For some people, it might take longer, like 5 years or 10 years, to really get to the heart of what you have to offer a wider community. Just keep going. Keep investing in the process. Find the right mentors. Don’t give up. Your big break is right around the corner. Keep your day job until you find the magic spot and hit your personal pot of gold.
Just give yourself time.
This is my face right now.
In other words, I don’t like this advice, and I’ll tell you why.
But first, this is what I do agree with:
It does take time to find the teachers who really get you, who make your heart sing, who make you feel seen and supported to your core, who understand your unique way of co-creating with the Universe and can give you appropriate council - business or otherwise.
The reality is, many of us will fall in and out of love with many teachers, time and again. We’ll grow in and grow out. Hopefully the exit is beautiful and respectful, but it isn’t always. It does take time to break-up with a teacher or a community. It is a workload, in and of itself, and a major shift in teachers certainly means your core spiritual/artistic/business offerings also shift and change. That does take time.
It does take time to find yourself, lose yourself, find yourself, lose yourself again (and find yourself again only to lose yourself again next year), and whatever spiralling you need to do in order to launch an offer into the world that pops off, that sizzles, that is an instant magnet toward an abundance of good, loving, supportive relationships and the associate cash.
It does take time and a lot of support to work on yourself, heal your heart, and understand your relationship issues on the intimate, communal and ancestral level - which inevitably determines the kind of audiences and paying customers that frequent your work, who will either drain and exploit you or uplift you and resource you.
It does take time and a lot of support to get out of abusive situations, or walk away from dynamics that only exasperate trauma. It does take time to learn how to open your heart to the kind of relationships that will free you, and make you feel in love with life every day, which does bring you an inevitable ease and bounty of ongoing reciprocity (material and otherwise).
But this business advice? “It takes 3-5 years to build a sustainable business.” I don’t like it. I don’t agree with it.
We are in times of monumental, planetary, systemic, ecological and cosmic change.
Right now, the times require us to show up for our planet as a priority. That means, we are asked to be available for whatever shifts we need to make, as the planet herself shifts.
We are asked to be available for the shifts that our soul, our lineage, our spirit wants to make, and respond with a wholehearted aliveliness to whatever the day may bring.
We are asked to be available for the unpredictable. For the miraculous. For the most grounded and sincere response in the face of enormous violence.
We are asked to find joy in the unpredictability, and even the inconsistency of massive personal and collective transformation.
There is no one, singular sustainable business offer anyone can create in 3-5 years. Or ever.
But in 3-5 years, we can ask ourselves to be available and well-resourced for WHATEVER TF LIFE LOOKS LIKE THAT WE CAN’T POSSIBLY IMAGINE TODAY.
In 3-5 years, some of us will be asked to build and collapse entire worlds multiple times over.
In my opinion, at this time on earth’s clock, it is wrong and it is dangerous to allow each other to go into debt, or suffer financial loss every time we have to close a big thing down, or muster the courage to start over.
When I feel into this advice: “It takes 3-5 years to build a sustainable business,” I feel grief.
I feel the grief of Ancestors who have been lied to over and over and over and over and over again. By Hollywood. By the American Dream. By Capitalism. Just keep going. Don’t give up. They did it, you can do it too.
(BTW: if you scroll up and read the italicized “advice” again, what they tell you about entrepreneurship is the exact same thing they tell you about Hollywood. Your big break is just around the corner! Just stick around for another 70 years! I’ll happen for you, it’s never too late!)
When I say there is no one, singular sustainable business offer anyone can create in 3-5 years or ever, I’m not being a downer. Quite the opposite.
Because what this lie has done is suck the joy out of entrepreneurship, by making it responsible for something that it should not be responsible for: personal and collective sustainability.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying don’t create your offers! I’m saying we need a collective financial organizing system that takes the pressure off of any one singular business or entrepreneurial world as “the answer” to financial sustainability. THAT’S what this research is about.
So that we are more free to have fun with entrepreneurship. More supported to develop and workshop our offerings. More resourced to move as slow and spaciously as we need.
Some people in the village have a Saturnian constitution, meaning they can find one or a few things they love doing consistently for years on end, and it’s relatively easy for them to make a living from that business.
Even if you are such a person, it is more than likely that many people that you serve in your community are currently called to be available for the messy, the unpredictable, the ongoing transition, the inconsistent.
If you are “the consistent” - it is an act of necessary solidarity to understand that those who are embodied stewards of transformation perform ongoing, essential labour to the planet through their availability with the unpredictable.
And it is essential that we support each other, and not gas light each other into believing that “a consistent income generating offer” is in the cards for everyone.
In fact, advising someone away from their availability with the unpredictable for the sake of “business sustainability”, may be advising them to neglect a workload that their Ancestors are guiding them toward, and the planet herself is crying for.
My biggest problem with that advice is that it’s always promising monetary support for tomorrow - always sending it to the future - instead of recognizing that it is our birth right to receive root chakra support here and now for our greatest dedications, no matter what phase of development we are in. It essential that we learn how to live for today.
I believe the only way we get to real financial sustainability, and to real collective financial transformation, is through labour organizing.
Not just any kind of labour organizing. Not the kind that advocates for worker’s rights within capitalist institutions and industries (while that is still very important!) Not the kind that moves money for and during a crisis (while that is still very important!)
When we talk about Labour Organizing in this space, we are talking about the way we organize Altars. The way we organize Ceremony. Where everyone and everything has a sacred place to sit. Somewhere they shine for a period of time. Somewhere their presence is required, until it’s not.
That’s the simplicity of what a Planetary Altar asks of us: just be here and be available. Learn from life and all its unpredictability.
Financial Sustainability comes from the spiritual, artistic, inventive, social, interpersonal and collective work it takes to inspire waves of people to start moving money differently.
Sustainability comes from a collective labour organizing strategy explicitly purposed to inspire people to share, exchange and raise money for the fact that we are inconsistent weirdos, and will continue to be for the rest of time.
Because guess what? It takes a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of support to be an inconsistent weirdo, and a good community member at the same time.
It takes a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of support, not to bleed your chaotic, internalized colonial-capitalist conditioning whatever-the-fuck all over everyone when you are asked to show up wholeheartedly for the unpredictable movements in your lineage, your spirit, your devoted relationships, and our planet as a whole.
If it requires labour, then it must be funded.
What “living for today” means to me: we pause whenever we say, “Just give yourself time” — because THAT’S exactly where we need funding.
Living for today means that whatever is taking you time to figure out over the long haul, requires monetary support today.
Whatever is taking you time to figure out, means it requires your effort now. Your heart. Your patience. Your depth. Your presence. Your availability.
Your Labour.
One of the pillars of my Village Artist Grant Ecosystem: it is a collective financial organizing strategy designed to inspire us to resource chronically unfunded labour, and chronically unfunded seasons of life.
That’s the piece of research today: the fact that we are a species of inconsistent weirdos and we need a sovereign collective funding system that honours that.
what’s going on with my money??
haha! I think that’ll be the title of my new “alivelihood coaching” service.
If you want to be/stay involved with the unfolding of my Village Artist Grant Ecosystem, stay tuned to this newsletter, as I’ll be sharing another piece of research every Friday.
Later in the year, we will host a 6-month hands-on research practicum, where a small group will workshop the fundamental principles in this system, practise moving money accordingly, and benefit from the money we raise. This is part of our 2026 village-wide artist residency on unlocking ancestor dreaming & abolitionist ancestor theatre.
While in my introductory post to this residency, I said we would start the research practicum in June…I am making myself available to move or shift that start date. (UNPREDICTABILITY!!!) Because I want to make sure everything is really well in place by the time we start.
In the meantime, I have my 1:1 calendar open for personalized services and private residency VIP packages. You can check out this page for a list of current services.
But I want to give you a little sneak peak of my alivelihood coaching package before I add it to my list of services next week.
SESSION ONE: lay of the land
I do a full divination of your world, and we look at what is going on with your money. We look at where you have doors open, and where you have doors closed in terms of income generating opportunities.
SESSION TWO: interview
I do a channelled interview with your business, art project, or practise. We speak to its spirit of joy and aliveness, and get advice directly from the part of you that already is an aligned and alive income generator. You can ask questions, troubleshoot problems, and we do a back and forth Q&A.
SESSION THREE: advertising kit
We work together to send you home with a sample “advocacy and advertising” kit. We get a detailed, channelled description of the kinds of relationships & audience that is ‘holding your money’ ie waiting to spend it on you, along with a sample script of your greatest pitch that you can transfer across advertising platforms, talk about at the dinner table, or keep growing and evolving with.
BONUS: village advocacy
Throughout each session, we will illuminate your unique, ancestor-guided role in co-birthing village-centered economies. What unrecognized labour are you carrying? What is the planet asking you to be available for? What kind of labour must a village recognize, in order to ensure that someone like you is well taken care of?
By doing this work together, I’ll be able to weave your needs into the advocacy work and ceremonial labour organizing of my village artist grant ecosystem. I’ll be able to weave the type of advocacy you need into the best practices and protocols of the collective financial system we are birthing.
This not only ensures that you - and everything/one your advocacy is connected to - receives recognition, protection and reciprocity…but also this practise clarifies our most vibrant gifts and inspires us to create ‘new economy’ paid positions for how we really want to be spending our time now.
Next week I’ll add this service to my calendar. I will likely add a single-session option, along with a 3-part series. For now you can check out the other services I have available on this page.
a conversation with a wood snake
Don’t forget to check out our TIME KEEPER’S CALENDAR for a recap of all offerings coming out of our 2026 village-wide artist residency, “a friendship that can withstand the revolution.” What’s new on the calendar:
how I decode my dream journal: this was an email I sent out, breaking down my practise of how I study and unlock the ancestor messages in my dreams. I talk about a dream I had this past week where I was stuck in a weird basement. It’s pretty juicy! You can read the full email here.
Note that while I sent this out to my old email list, I’ll be shutting that list down soon and using this substack forum from now on for my weekly newsletter. In the future a post like this will be shared on my website, so that I can link back to it on this newsletter.
a conversation with a wood snake: how to say hello and goodbye in your ancestral tongue. This is a letter I wrote on my website, where I share the conversation I had with the Wood Snake before she passed us over to the Fire Horse.
This piece really touched me deeply. It meant a lot to me to put this down. I hope it speaks to a part of you that yearns to be heard. You can read the letter here.
That’s it for today. Until next time.