the slow economy

Haters would say I had a meltdown last week. It was the 4th of July, and everything about the day was exhausting. I flopped down on my sofa after lunch and fell fast asleep.

On the other side of the slumber, I felt much better. Life was better. Right-sized. But what was it, exactly? Why that day? I’ll tell you. I was feeling

1. cumulatively worn down / fed up

2. listless

3. anxious/annoyed.

4. A bit hopeless.

It felt as though there was too much to do in the day, or not enough. Was a nap the only thing that was needed?

The week before last, I paid a few bills with a poem. I said it out loud on Threads, on here, and on Instagram, because the story we are told is that the things we love do not pay, or that if we want them to pay, we have to grind them down into something smaller, quicker and consisant and, lets be honest, stripped a bit of the reason we loved them

&

we are told there are two options. Starve for the work, or corrupt all the types of work we make, making them bite-sized and ordinary so that the artist can, at last, eat! I’m telling you that lately, neither has been true for me, and I have started to almost think the whole framing of this is a lie we inherited from people who needed us to believe it.

I work on my stuff, and this space. I work a lot. But there is a slower economy running under the large one, and sometimes I forget. It is the reason you are here reading the utter (thank you!!!)

and the reason we still connect most with what is human, what is imperfect.

This path-less-travelled is bloody frustrating sometimes, but it is real, jagged, and extremely rewarding. I have been living in it for a while without having the words, and I reckon a lot of us are building in this key and, because of the lack of response sometimes or anything tangible, assuming we are doing it wrong. It is because it can feel like talking into the void,

or diminishing returns,

but we remain because we must.

Now, shall we talk about the loud economy, or, as I like to call it, THE OTHER INTERNET?? The loud economy is the one everybody can see. It

1. moves fast

2. rewards scale, speed, volume, virality.

3. tells you to post daily, to grow the list, optimise, to turn the thing you make into a machine that makes more of the thing, whether or not the thing is any good. As a poet, I will tell you I have always needed this machine, in part, to sell, be seen (and as a Black poet…well, you already know!!!!)

4. is extractive by its very design and NEVER wants you to stop.

5. wants you to spend yourself down to nothing in exchange for perhaps a spike of engagement, views or money

6. insists that this is the only way it’ll all work out.

I know there's a chance to dream differently, and I know that some of us are trying, ever so hard, to move closer to it, to convene, to get honest, and STILL pay our bills. This slow economy, though, the work of dreams, works differently, running on the work that cannot be rushed into being. It runs on readers/viewers, in your community trusting you. It runs on a kind of depth that you can’t rush,

on readers who invest in yer art because they believe you, not because you caught them at a weak go on then, sell-to-me moment. This is the compounding rendered invisible, because it is boring to watch and impossible to package as a course!!!!!

Oh God, the slow economy is real, and I believe in it, I do, but we all have bills, and I am also not going to sit here and even try to sell you patience as though patience is free/easy. Nah, it’s the most expensive thing there is, and building in this way requires the one resource most people cannot spare, which is time,

and time is money. To let something compound for years, you have to survive those years, which basically means making rent while the value is still invisible, which, lawd, has caused me and some of the people I know more stress than one can imagine. You have to eat during the long stretch before the work is understood.

So many right now trying to build something do not have that runway because the world has its hand around their throats,

and the rent is due on the first, regardless of how deep, rare, or slow-burning the thing they are making is. No wonder we feel pressed!!!! In the slow economy, value and greatness is busy building itself underneath the surface for a loooong time, and then one day it is simply there, and, from there, it holds.

But today, in 2026,

are we even in a holding phase???

Well gurl, I ask myself that all the time when I release a book into the world; I really do. It’s all over in a matter of days. Then you hope you can sell another one.

I am writing from the belly of the friction. I paid bills with a poem the other week, and I also worry about being an artist and little else. I believe in the deep, slow, compounding thing, and I feel the fast world’s pressure on my life this week, this month, in real numbers…both are true! Whatever it looks like from the outside.

So I don't think this is like, “oh, hey, choose the beautiful slow path over the ugly, evil fast one or YOU ARE NOT AN ARTIST!!!!” It is, “how do you protect the slow thing while the fast world is squeezing you??? How do you keep faith with the work that takes years when the years cost money you do not have? How do you build something that compounds without starving before it does?”

I do not have a good clean answer, because I am busy living it out, and anyway, there is no good clean answer, and anyone offering you one is selling the safety net they forget they are standing on. You have to experiment. Treat this thing like a lab!! You need the community that will show up for you. You need to show up for them. Nurture! Nurture! Without all those elements, you will burn out.

Also, your slow thing is worth protecting even when you cannot afford it. Ask, instead, how you protect as much of it as you can, how you take the fast(er) money when you need it without mistaking it for the entire point (I could write a lot about that!!!)

and keep that good deep work alive in whatever container you can defend, however small. Refuse to hollow those parts out, even when doing so would pay off faster. Whatever you build slowly is the thing that will still be yours.

And, oh yeah. Survive.

I have some further listening on this that I will voice note (hiii paid subscribers. Thank you.)

on getting the dream