I have let a suggestion from somewhere I can no longer trace become the limit of what I allow myself to try,
I have let a suggestion become a sentence, and a sentence become a law, and a law become the invisible architecture that I live entirely inside of without ever seeing the actual walls,
I have let a suggestion tell me the right form, and the right way to begin, and the right place to stop but I never once asked who had the authority to decide those form factors,
How long have I been living an answer to a question that was never actually mine to begin with, and will never quite fit the shape of what I am actually trying to say out loud,
I have let a suggestion become a structure I trust more than I trust the strange, uncertain and entirely unverifiable thing that happens when I stop consulting those thoughts and opinions,
Breaking the pattern isn’t the same as breaking what I love about my work, I keep confusing these two things and paying the price in hesitation beneath the real work,
Breaking the pattern does not mean throwing out the years it took to get here, it means picking those years up and walking with them even into unfamiliar territories,
Breaking the pattern is the experiment I keep scheduling for later when the conditions are more stable, and the later keeps arriving and looking exactly like the ones before that,
What exactly am I trying to keep when I remain loyal to the pattern, and does it still belong to the work or only to the comfort that no longer asks me to grow,
Breaking the pattern might be the most honest thing I have not yet been willing to do, because faithfulness to the work sometimes asks me to outgrow the methods that first taught me how to begin making…
The most interesting version of this scenario might be the one that deviates from the convention I had previously agreed upon, I fully comprehended the implications of my own personal decision,
The most interesting version of this concept often lives inside the attempt I instinctively leave out during my initial process, simply because it falls beyond the limits of what I already know and the framework I have learned to trust,
The most interesting version of this has been trying to surface in the work for longer than I want to admit but I keep smoothing it back down into the acceptable shape and form,
Am I amplifying what makes this genuinely mine or am I spending most of the effort making sure it sounds like it belongs alongside everything that already exists,
The most interesting version of this is not the one that receives the quickest praise but the one I would make if the only thing asking something of me was the real work...
What I know how to make well is not the same as what I have not yet figured out how to make, and the distance between those two things is where the growth actually lives,
What I know how to make well will still be mine when I come back from the experiment and I need to remember that instead of holding it like something that can be permanently lost and taken away from me,
What I know how to make well has earned me a sense of stability, and I am grateful for it, yet I also recognize that what protects me from failure may be protecting me from discovery,
If I discarded the familiar playbook for this specific task, what would the version of myself who accomplished it without adhering to the rules actually have to say to the other version that it lacked the courage to do so,
What I know how to make well is the proof that I learned, and the thing I do not yet know how to make is the proof that the learning is not finished and was never meant to be, because the purpose of the work was never to prove what I know, but to reveal what I have yet to become...
Watchwords:
A ceiling I cannot find the origin of,
The invisible architecture I live inside,
The experiment I keep scheduling for later,
Smoothing it back down into acceptable form,
The distance between what I know and don't...
Here is Tikatarot, who dares you to answer the question, “Who am I?”..
As and will always be reminding you to dream: