Being a Creator Isn't a Lifestyle Choice. It's a Survival Decision.
On who holds the tired, neighbourhood infrastructure, and why Fela Kuti's New Afrika Shrine employs 150 people
So Reader,
In his Happy Citizen Friday newsletter, Gavin highlighted Priya, a Re-Action community member who didn't build her network by collecting business cards.
She built it by hosting. By sharing. By creating a space where people could just be.
As Gavin framed it, networking asks: "What can this person do for me?" The community asks, " What can we build together?
He added quote from author Michell C Clarke, who also had this reflection about how people connect "their rolodex is full, but their life is empty."
Extraction has an expiration date.
When the project falls through, and you need to figure out where to put the tired, the strategic networker's room clears out.
The people who stay are the ones from communities like Priya's—the ones who showed up when it was inconvenient, just to be present.
The survival decision
Gary Stevenson walked away from the most profitable trading desk at Citibank because he could see where the money was going.
He went to YouTube instead.
His reasoning: "I thought political power was going to shift to YouTube."
Not to think tanks. Not to newspapers. To ordinary people making things and talking to each other.
That's not a journey. That's a survival decision.
The same one you made when you decided to build a space or run a podcast or write a newsletter instead of waiting for a corporation to hand you a job that doesn't exist anymore.
Legendary comedy duo Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were grinding it out for years with no map, no framework, no online course telling them how. Just two people brave enough to keep experimenting until they landed a regular spot on The Ed Sullivan Show. They were married for over 60 years.
Steve Martin did thousands of gigs in bars, colleges and clubs until he was "so good they couldn't ignore him."
If he quit at gig 36, he'd be nowhere.
Years ago, Seth Godin came on the first podcast I ever made, and we talked about David Bowie.
The lesson: once you've been creating on a regular basis long enough, whatever you put out is recognisably yours—whether it's prolific or flat.
But before you even get to this stage, you need to start. In that podcast, Godin said to me, "I'd blog every day, even if no one read it." Ever since then, I have advocated for people to write and send newsletters, whether or not they own a business.
That's what consistency builds.
I was already sold on this idea. That conversation is part of what led us to start Write Club, which we ran in various coworking spaces in London for years.
By the end, we'd posted over 500 Creator Write Club sessions Meetup.com and Luma.
From August 2008, when I discovered MeetUp, to sometime in COVID, when I moved to Luma, I'd run over 1,000 Meet Ups across different projects; 80% of those events had fewer than 50 people.
I made that first podcast in 2012.
I still feel like I'm starting out.
The 'Instagrammer creator' is chasing attention, clicks, and followers. Extracting validation from an algorithm.
The person building something real is doing it because they have to eat. Because job security is dead. Because the system isn't built for them.
Ann Handley says the audience won't care unless the maker cares first.
When you're making something because you have to, people feel it.
When you're chasing clicks, they feel that too.
The work
This weekend, I was listening to the Chef movie soundtrack—Hot 8 Brass Band covering Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing (filmed in North Lanes, Brighton)—and it led me to Fela Kuti.
I put on "Let's Start" which was recorded with Ginger Baker.
Fela calmly introduces the song, 'Tonight there are going to be about four tunes, this first tune..." Then Fela counts in a 25-piece band (Africa 70) to hit the downbeat all at once.
When you hear Fela count in a 25-piece band and they all hit the downbeat together, it's so precise and powerful that it stops you mid-movement. That moment only exists because Fela was completely present in his own work—he wasn't phoning it in, he wasn't delegating the soul of it.
That's the thing you can't fake. Full presence in the work.
Last week, the Boy and I recreated the Cuban sandwich from Chef. We sourced the meat. We talked to the butcher. At 11pm, I was alone in the kitchen marinating the pork, listening to Liquid Liquid by Cavern.
I was stacking cast-iron pans to make a makeshift panini press.
Hours and hours of work for 15 minutes of eating.
Nobody's watching. It doesn't matter. You can't stop.
That's what full presence feels like. Not because it's efficient. Not because it scales. Because you're moved by the work itself.
Your community feels it when they walk through the door. They can't always name it. But they know when it's gone.
That's the colour.
Read: Service is black and white. Hospitality is colour.
Where to put the tired
In Seth Godin's The Practice, he talks about marathon runners having to figure out where to put the tired.
I used to just put the tired at the end of the race.
Since my ADHD diagnosis at the end of 2025, things have been revealing, challenging, and confronting.
I found it incredibly boring doing the same thing every day. But I'm unlearning a lifetime of impulsiveness. I'm slowly training myself to do the same thing all the time.
Consistency brings a deeper understanding of what you're doing.
And you need a small group—even just 1 to 5 people—who tell each other the absolute truth.
I've known people in The Drive Network for more than fifteen years.
Turning up every Thursday isn't "networking." It's years of people helping each other hold the difficulty.
We've evolved together.
Last Thursday, we talked about how easy it is to accept the work that shows up instead of pursuing the work you actually want. About the danger of too few clients and what that does to your decision-making. About rejection sensitive dysphoria—and how naming it makes selling feel less like humiliation and more like a skill you can actually learn.
And as always, the thing that brings me back: the reminder that we chose this. The work. The people. The values we refuse to compromise. Nobody handed us a job description.
I felt very calm and at home.
That's where you put the tired.
Neighbourhood infrastructure
Fela Kuti's New Afrika Shrine in Lagos isn't just a music venue.
It's what town planners would call neighbourhood infrastructure.
Fela opened the original Afrika Shrine in 1972. He built it for the people the economy had already written off. He called them the sufferheads.
When the original Shrine fell into disrepair in 1997, a few weeks before Fela's passing, it couldn't be reopened. The land had been leased for the duration of Fela's life only.
His family—led by his eldest daughter Yeni and eldest son Femi—built a new one. They opened it in 2000. Same mission. Different location. Still local.
Fela's sound—Afrobeat—wasn't just music. It was political. It was the collision of African and African American Black experience, shaped in part by Sandra Iszadore, the Detroit activist who brought Black Power politics to Lagos.
Fela wasn't building toward something. He was the thing.
As Femi says: "The whole community depends on the Shrine. Before it opened, the area around it was all bush. Now there are buildings everywhere. There are clubs, hotels, event centres. There are people selling food and drink. We have created a prosperous little city."
Every year, they hold Felabration—a week-long festival celebrating Fela's music and legacy.
This is exactly what a coworking space should be.
Not a global mega-corp landing in a postcode just to extract rent.
Neighbourhood infrastructure. Employs people. Keeps wealth local.
The coworking space is the kitchen. The community manager is the chef.
When things get bigger, they become inhumane. The more you scale, the less human contact you have.
You don't need global reach. You need neighbourhood power.
What's next
I'd love to be running something as cool as the New Afrika Shrine.
But I'm delighted with my little corner of the universe.
We need less global extraction and more neighbourhood presence.
European Coworking Day is May 6th, 2026.
Independent spaces opening their doors across Europe.
Pop-up coworking. Pop-up Write Clubs. Talk Clubs. ACTionism screening.
No one in your neighbourhood is going to get excited about "European Coworking Day."
But when you run a pop-up coworking event, host an ACTionism screening, or do something around food—because food and kitchens always work in coworking spaces—you can host people.
Host something real. Make it good. See who shows up.
European Coworking Day: Find your nearest event or register your own.
And if you're in London on May 19th: Unreasonable Connection at Space4, Finsbury Park.
50 people. Limited tickets. The room where operators who genuinely love this work come to compare notes.
⚡️ Bernie’s Picks
Podcasts
Fela Kuti - Fear No Man - Jad Abumrad - Higher Ground Media
Music
Let's Start - Fela Kuti with Ginger Baker Live!
Hot 8 Brass Band covering Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing (filmed in North Lanes, Brighton)
Books
The Practice: Shipping Creative Work - Seth Godin
A Movable Feast Ernest Hemingway
Tools
750Words - Daily writing practice with a reflection feature that spots your patterns before you do.
Eden - Helps my brain see connections between my ideas and projects.
Voicenotes - state-of-the-art dictaphone with AI ;-)
Things - Simple to-do list. Doesn’t do a lot. That’s the point.
Support Re-Action Collective
Events
Pimp My Garms - by Urban MBA - An in-person upcycling workshop in London combining talks and hands-on sessions where participants transform garments and learn about sustainable fashion. Open to ages 13 and over.
European Coworking Day 6th May
Unreasonable Connection Live! SPACE4 19th May - Finsbury Park
You Are The Media Creator Day is an annual event dedicated to creative businesspeople. 14th May - Poole
Monday Domino
Find one person near you who is building something—a space, a project, a practice.
Could be the café next door. Could be someone in your building you've never properly spoken to.
Tell them what you're building.
Not to pitch them. Not to network. Just to be adjacent.
Peter Block says we don't need more leaders. We need more connectors. People who bring two worlds together that would otherwise stay separate.
You don't need a title or a strategy to do that.
You just need to knock on one door on Monday morning.
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