I have been doing the same thing the same way, long enough that it feels like mastery that may actually be the beginning of quietly disappearing,
I have been doing the same thing the same way, until I noticed the flatness in what I have been making, technically fine but missing the charge that once required all of me,
I have been doing the same thing the same way, calling the sameness consistence and discipline, while something alive has slowly been replaced by something reliable,
I have been doing the same thing the same way, when did showing up stop becoming a routine I simply follow, when did I begin producing something different from choosing,
I have been doing the same thing the same way, the sameness has protected me from something I was unwilling to face, that protection has cost the work its aliveness…
I have hit a dead end, staying on the near side and repeating the same motions more carefully, only to meet the same wall in a more polished form,
I have hit a dead end, calling it a problem of effort and applying the same approach harder, then wondering why more effort produced the same limit all over again,
I have hit a dead end, learned that sometimes the smallest possible task is enough, accepting that as enough may be one of the hardest forms of creative honesty,
I have hit a dead end, what’s the smallest, honest task I can commit to today that might revive the channel without pretending I have access to the entire content,
I have hit a dead end, sometimes moving forward has had nothing to do with increasing effort but everything to do with changing the variable I kept insisting what cannot be fixed…
I have come to realize that I used to have less, the version of my life with fewer things actually contained more things that I hadn’t noticed losing as more things arrived,
I have come to realize what I now take for granted once felt like abundance, felt the strange realization that abundance can quietly become baseline,
I have come to realize what I once called “enough”, I’m grateful for how far I’ve come, but I’m also uneasy about how much I now carry as weight rather than ground,
I have remembered what I used to need, what would I discover about what is truly necessary if I returned for a season to conditions closer to where I began,
I have remembered what I used to survive on, found that the memory was not only deprivation but focus, and a necessity-driven aliveness that comfort can slowly dilute…
I modified one condition, while keeping everything else unchanged and observed the work shift in a manner that greater effort within the previous condition could never achieve,
I modified one condition, feeling disoriented at first, then noticing the kind of attention that arrives when familiarity can no longer carry me,
I modified one condition, and discovered that the shift altered my relationship with the material in ways that deliberate effort could not still repeating what I had already tried,
I modified one condition, what in my work has become so fixed that I no longer experience it as a condition but as the only way the work can exist,
I modified one condition and found the work alive again, the smallest change had disturbed something that repetition had buried, reminding me that sometimes what feels impossible only needs the pattern to change…
Watchwords:
The reliable replaced the alive and I kept going,
The wall polished by harder effort but still the wall,
The baseline crept until I forgot it had moved,
Disorientation that required all of me not just part,
Any change was the thing the sameness made impossible
Here is Tikatarot, who dares you to answer the question, “Who am I?”..
As and will always be reminding you to dream: