hey frendz and fam!

here we continue the adventures of teresa and agballa creatives. and this season, I want to share the process of creating the world that is agballa, the 2025-2026 version, the one that shows up for the collective, for my self and my family, for you.

this is in an effort to show up more authentically, more vulnerably. to show you that I don't feel like I have it all together, and I'm coming to a place where I don't feel like I need to feel like I have it all together. that, in this season where the veil is thin and the days are short, I want to come back to a place within me that is real, to the lean into these corners of my creative practice that are mysterious and uncertain.
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cuz within the mystery is infinite wisdom that I can soak in and be held in and unravel and not have it all together.

I'm writing a book!

part of agballa creatives here at the end of 2025 is writing a book! for now, it's an e-book, which eventually may grow up to be an actual, physical book, one we can feel and smell and flip the pages of. years ago, elitist, high makamaka teresa would have scoffed at the idea of an e-book before an actual book. but here we are again, at the end of 2025, and I am giving way less fukks about a lot of things, but especially the form my work takes.

I've always told my students to experiment with form, and so I'm going to do just that.

this e-book idea was inspired by a guy called Shaun who was running an ad for an e-book called Micro Book to Clients. It was three dollars. I bought it and read it within the hour and learned the strategy he used, which was really just me paying for the ad I just saw lol. however, a micro book also offers an introduction, a brochure, if you will, for folks to enter your world.
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my inner child that loved the phantom tollbooth saw that as the tollbooth: a portal into the magical, whimsical world of agballa creatives where you remove your shoes, get cozy, and make things.
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also, this queen, Shalah Turner, shared a post on threads all about how to finish an e-book in a weekend, price it, and sell it (for context, the post was in context of the food stamps being pulled in the US, and this was her offer to guide folks who need cash). her work also is all about the e-book as a vehicle to create sustainable income for your self and your biz based on your intellectual property.
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k, I didn't mean for this to be an email about e-books lol. and also, for me and my ADHD brain, I feel like it's a quick enough and DEEP ENOUGH project (iykyk) for me to finish by the end of the year and start running ads with lower risk (writer CEO vibes).

and you get a glimpse into the process!

the glimpse part was inspired by Irene Adlaw, a pin@y writer currently writing a pre-colonial Filipino epic fantasy novel, which also makes my inner child DANCE with absolute delight. Irene is sharing the process of writing this novel and reaching the goal of 1,000 downloads of the Prologue by the end of the year —so much clarity and goodness!! If you'd like to be one of those people, you can check out the Prologue here. And you can follow the journey here.
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(just p.s. too besides e-books, I am also really loving threads lol. fukk meta, and also threads is genuinely what social media is supposed to be, to connect you to people and I've made more connections than I have on IG and made a IRL friend from threads so there's that!)
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so, this month and beyond, I'll be sharing drafts from the e-book I am writing.

you'll be getting the raw, fresh into the digital realms version (I usually handwrite everything first). and, of course, cuz ilysm, you'll be the first to know when I've come to a point of nourishing completion with this phase/version of the book. the intention here, too, is just to continue "shipping" it, as someone in one of my co-working spaces says. as in, just get it out there, messy and all. and then refine and massage from there.
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I am one to get lost in overthinking every detail of every sentence and design, and I want to find the kind of separation from this project that I coach others to find: that the projects that come through us are at once us, as in an aspect of our identity, and also, an entirely separate entity themselves. we are the vessel. the body through which the ideas want to take form. ((a post about creative enmeshment might be incoming!))
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so for me, just sending it out, however imperfectly, however half-finished, is part of that. allowing the action to inform the next step.
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the e-book is based off the framework I talked about in agballa notes issue #10, let's talk about flow. around the three points in a creative process I've found we all go through: imagining, grounding, and devoting.
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with all that said, here's the first installment of the e-book...the outline! sometimes, I work from an outline, sometimes I don't. this time I did, and I handwrote it first.
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also, like I said, this is the raw, fresh from the penned page version. a baby work-in-progress that needs gentle, loving witnessing.

and thank you so, so much for being here and witnessing me.

blessed taurus full moon, beloveds!

feel free to reply to lmk what you're working on too!

oh, oh!! before we go...I've got a gift for you that I'm so excited about!!!

creating in kapwa, our co-creation/co-werking gathering is back!

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this time, it will be twice per month, on the first and third wednesdays for now. our first one will be wednesday, november 19 from 2pm Hawaii / 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern (I think I did the time math correctly on this, pero please check the link below for the time in your timezone cuz time math is not a strength for me lol).
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if you're new here, welcome! and please note that group gatherings are BIWFOC only for now. agyamanak for understanding!
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to learn more, check the time, and sign up, you can do that here:

k, that's plenty for this week :)
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loving you, kapwa-tao,
teresa

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I live, work, and mother as a settler on kānaka maoli land, the island of O'ahu. In support of landback initiatives and the community here, I want to amplify the work of Oʻahu Water Protectors, The Hawai'i People's Fund, and The Hawai'i Community Bail Fund. Our support of these organizations is to support the kānaka community in defending their land and waters.

If you ever feel the need to unsubscribe, I respect that. The button is below. Thank you for reading this far.

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