21 Days of Devotion - Stretching Creativity Through Emptiness & Presence

last updated: 30/09/25

July and August were two work-intensive months. I started to code this blog and finished moving/saving all my posts from my old blog.

Incomplete list of completed tasks:
- created 6 pages (start, blog, visual art, about, say hi, archive, changelog, markdown style guide)
- moved 27 posts from the old blog, created 11 new ones
- saved 50 drafts and 28 published posts from the old blog to obsidian
- set up better systems to manage my content and workflow
- taught myself the fundamentals of astro, tailwind, css (still a long way to go)
- decided on a simple design with room for experimentation

Time to complete the first phase of this project.

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21 Days of Devotion (01.09.25 - 21.09.25)

Devoting myself to honing my craft as spiritual practice.

Rules

• No social media (only exceptions: youtube/x related to work, max 2x/30 mins per week)
• No messaging or consumption of any content (besides my own) before noon.
• Clean boundaries: multitask with presence, clean workspace daily, no mixing with personal life

Helpers

(Tools that help me maintain balancing high-intensive work and radical rest throughout the day. God doesn’t want me to burn out.)

• Morning: Dream Journaling + 1h of devotional practice (changing each week)
• White Tea, Matcha, Gene Keys Contemplations & Prayers
• Noon: Quick Check-In (How do I feel? Am I staying on track?)
• Evening: Day Reflections (10mins)
• Daily stretching and cali practice 3-4/week
• Using Toggl Timer to track my working time
• “Devotion & Art” - Playlist

Intention

• Cultivate a deeper connection to my creative process.
• Be a vessel for the temple’s vision.
• Trust that I’m completely guided.
• Trust whatever flows through me.
• Identify when to rest.

Remove my self from the equation. God is working through me.

Backlog

• Create categories (Reinventing Digital Spaces, Spiritual Awakening, Madeira Diaries, China/Taiwan Diaries)
• Description text for all categories
• Finish about/vision pages
• Set up systems for moving Madeira/China/Taiwan diaries posts
• Creating momentum in moving them
• Design & Branding: publish 1st guidelines
• Technical: figure out global styling prose/not prose, add pagination, related posts, image optimization for both /src and /public folder, rearrange blog page
• Send out first newsletter

Week 1 - Simplicity • Emptiness • Slowness

(01.09. - 07.09.)

The mind is buzzing. Todo lists never ending. Time, energy, capacity not enough. Always the same old story.

This week I accomplish more by working slower.
Define the essential anchors that will catalyse the process.
Eliminate all distractions.

The website is already done and my intuition is guiding me towards it.

Devotional Morning Practice (1h)

• ‘The Holy Incantation of Solace’ meditation by the Gene Keys (10 mins)
• Morning Pages + 3 Goals for the Day (30 mins)
• Finish 1 black’n’white drawing (20 mins)

Weekly Goals

( ) Create all category pages
( ) Add pagination
( ) Finish post ‘What I learned in 2 Years of Blogging’
( ) Finish post about Venus Sequence / Start creating a page

Day 1 (01.09.) - Clarity & Guidance

Day 2 (02.09.) - Taking Up Space

Day 3 (03.09.) - Finding Joy in Surrender

Day 4 (04.09.) -

Reflections on Week 1

• The arrival of the muse on day 2 turned everything around. I can’t tick off a todo list and work goal-focused, I have to respond to the present moment every single day.
  Creative work is a surrender to unseen forces.
  Everything else leads to a forced existence.
  A suffocation of the soul led by mind-born illusions disconnected to the body.

• I feel closer to the field that connects us all. There’s no other way to put it. Through emptiness of the mind, I tap into so many subtle energies, it feels like pure magic.

• This video about the muse (and the whole channel) is heaven-sent. I’m speechless about how beautifully someone can put words on what I’m experiencing.

• I spent too much time on Youtube and Reddit this week, and will take care of it by integrating more time for interactions with friends and real life people.

• I enjoy drawing. It feels intimately good. I noticed that I stopped judging my process. I simply enjoy. I want to protect this innocence for as long as I can.

Week 2 - Beauty & Gratitude

(08.09. - 14.09.)

How do I blog without forcing todo lists to be checked?
How do I let go of tight control and high expectations?
Can I trust that the muse will guide me and that I can be proud of myself when I look back at the process in a year?

Devotional Morning Practice (1h)

• ‘The Holy Incantation of Solace’ meditation by the Gene Keys (10 mins)
• Morning Pages + 3 Goals for the Day (20 mins)
• Create 1 sacred geometry - drawing (30 mins)

Weekly Goals

I have no idea what to write here. Guess, I’ll sit down every morning and see what comes up.

(x) Finally created category pages and links

Day 10 (10.09.) - Gratitude

Took me 7 hours in total to get it done - from dynamically creating pages, to adding links to the post templates and blog page, to realising the category page layout which has minor customization for specific categories.

Pagination and navigation are the next steps regarding the technical part.

I want to get back to writing posts soon. Instead of falling into frustrated victimhood, I remind myself to be utterly grateful for the ability to create. As well as for the time & space that I’m given now.

Reflections on Week 2

• Happy about deep dives into design (glassmorphism), coding (category pages + pagination) and art (sacred geometry drawings)
• Broke youtube rule on the weekend. Felt good, and at the same time became more aware of how I don’t need it at all.
• Started too many posts, that I didn’t finish. Writing, editing, finishing, uploading. Struggle to do these in one go. Uploading feels like a big task apart from writing itself.

Week 3 - Let It Be

(15.09. - 21.09.)

It’s eclipse week again. The Solar Eclipse in Virgo on Saturday will be the second eclipse in September and the last one of 2025. In addition to PMS and the after effects of the energy healing I received last week, I feel extra vulnerable and sensitive. I continue showing up, especially when I don’t feel like it.

Weekly Goals

Week of self care, even slower pace, nature and lots of non-digital time.

( ) Define vision
( ) New ‘About Me’ - page
( ) Upload new posts
( x ) Create some component with glassmorphism

Day 15 (15.09.) - Fck It

Rested for the rest of the day. Noticed that I needed more distance from the blog. Went for a walk and baked butter cookies in the evening.

Day 16 (16.09.) - Slow Rise

Day 17 (17.09.) - Day 21 (21.09.) - I Suck at Process Documenting

Reflections on Week 3

• I’m not a routine person. Doing the same thing every day is like eating the same food every day. I’m happy that I stuck to my morning ritual and surprisingly finished the Sri Yantra painting by the end of the week.
• It has been a challenging week with PMS and eclipse energy. I took good care of myself and let resistances be instead of working through them.
• Went hiking twice!! Mother Nature is the best healer.
• I took some days off from the blog and did research on another dream of mine: binding notebooks and setting up an online shop. Will share more soon.

Wrap Up - What Has Happened in These 21 Days and What’s Next?

As you can see, there’s a clear dissonance between what I actually do and what I’d like to do . I made great progress in setting up the technical foundation of this blog, and I hope to finish the polishing touches by the end of the year, so that in the future I’ll mainly do technical maintenance work.

Let’s have a look at what I achieved in those 21 days

Many to-dos didn’t get ticked off, but many things happened.

Technical

• Created category pages and links
• Added pagination to category pages and deliberately left it out of the main blog page for now
• Brainstormed more about routing options and how I want to sculpt the website
• Created a glassmorphic header component
• Created a card component
• Tons of code cleaning and styling changes

Content

• Reuploaded 3 posts from the old blog
• Experimented a lot with sacred geometry - focusing on details had a great meditative effects
• Created 6 new posts
• Started a few drafts that will be published in the next weeks
• Organised my notes on Obsidian and from physical notebooks about my China travels. More soon.

Design

• New start page. Going online soon.

Soul

• The daily 1h morning rituals have been amazing to tune into my body and soul no matter how I felt.
• Reminding myself that I’m creating as an act of devotion and service to a higher purpose helped me to move through blockages.
• I’m more comfortable wearing the identity of a storyteller and artist.
• Fulfilling myself a dream by setting up an online shop. Was afraid that it will interfere with the blog, but I need to do analog creative work to ground myself.

How Digital Detox Went

I scrolled through Youtube and Reddit on some days, but those platforms don’t have an addictive effect on me or my mental health in comparison to IG and Tiktok. Will continue this loose restriction.

However, I noticed that I need more social interactions in my life. I went to more workout classes and replied to friends again.

What I Learned

I think the main thing I learned is to keep showing up no matter what. To keep the momentum, one step at a time. On some days, I can work for hours without breaks, on some days I’m exhausted more easily. I learned to talk to myself more gently and include playtime in my week.

Work without play is like life without pleasure. What’s the point?

What’s Next?

I’ve enjoyed being in hermit mode, but now it’s definitely time to reconnect with the world.

Soon, an online creative container with fellow creative souls will start, which I’m super excited about.

Through more SEO work, I hope to see more traffic on the blog.

Through the first digital offerings in the shop, I hope to reach some people who resonate with my art.

My first newsletter is still in the making and will be sent out soon.

And all the content from my China/Taiwan travels are waiting to be published…

So, there are many things waiting in the pipeline and I’ll keep realising them in a way that feels good and exciting :)