Cascades
Tending towards being glass half-empty, we have a good expression for cascading failure: like a snowball down a mountain. But I'm struggling to think of a phrase that's as powerful which describes cascading success. And successes or improvements can cascade in exactly the same way, but towards a positive outcome, irrespective of how it started.
Cascading water at The Rock at Versailles by Craig Stevens, Fuji XF10 F4.4 ISO 400
For me, the iniating moment wasn't getting a new job, it was a traumatic experience after I got here. I've long thought that the word trauma was overused, as hero is, but I experienced trauma, spanning many of the symptoms.
Like many autistic people, I suspect, I have a tendency towards overthinking, to running through 'what ifs' that'll never happened. I was making an effort to live in the moment more when the traumatic event happened. My mind got stuck in that moment. So as I was trying to escape reworking things in my head, I experienced something that made me do it more.
What broke me out of it was just one session with a psychologist who specialises in cognitive behavioural therapy. Their perspective is that almost everything that's bad in our lives comes from thinking. I don't know exactly what it was that happened, but it clearly flipped some kind of switch in my mind.
Almost straight away I found it easier to simply live through a day. My mind wasn't torturing itself over small decisions. There was only now. It lifted anxiety and even when I am anxious it's easier to make decisions or return to a more normal state of mind. The relief of not having to live like that any more is extraordinary.
Then I went to Paris and had a number of life changing experiences. I started keeping a diary for the first time in my life, a few elements of which I shared on another platform with friends and family. I discovered that I wasn't scared of sharing my drawing with them. It was a complete non-issue. I rediscovered drawing. I finally delved deep enough into my own nature to discover just how important art is to me. It was finding my capability to live in the moment that released me to discover these things, accept the life-changing experiencez for what they were as they happened and not second-guess them.
Years ago, a music journalist was publicising his book on the band Wings. He talked about how creative Paul McCartney was. In the Q&A session I asked what the difference was between Paul McCartney and someone like Lindsey Buckingham who's at least as creative, but had to go back in the band to find success. He said it was spontaneity, that Paul McCartney would have an idea, act on it immediately and release it whereas Lindsey Buckingham would take the idea and grind it out, endlessly reworking it.
This is how I can create something every day. I used to post something once every few months on average. I'd have an idea, go off on a long connected thought, take a week to write it, source everything, draft it over the course of weeks. Prior to letting my last site expire, I deleted one or two posts that had been sitting in drafts for months. Grinding the ideas out optimises for quality, but it deoprimises for spontaneity, freedom and speed. Putting my art out with such speed can mean deoptimising for quality, but it keeps moving and keeps me focused on new ideas all the time.
And I almost always contained myself to topics related to technology. I almost never released anything creative, a diary or anything spanning religion or philosophy. I compartmentalised the professional, the creative and the personal. Now, the barriers have come down and I feel free to tackle whatever I want to create without embarrassment or shame. The artistic and creative merit of what I create can be open for debate, of course, but the most important thing is learning that I really can live like this and be creatively spontaneous.
I came away from Versailles with a singular message in mind: 'bring all your art into the world'. That's the purpose of Ma Reine. And it's that ethic which ensures I post at least one thing, however small, every day.
I can't explain what a relief it is to not be so persistently anxious, scared, incomplete, and grinding interesting thoughts into dust. To live with any degree of freedom is a completely new experience.
And it all cascades from one therapy session to respond to a traumatic event.