8 Clicks from Nowhere ䷀

Dispatches ⌂

Tag: self confidence

Chapter List

  • Rule Breaking

    I started this writing project with a lot of rules, and I’ve broken pretty much all of them.

    Yes, there are good rules. There are the laws of the country you live in, and provided they are fair and just then following them makes your home a better place for all. There are ethical rules, standards we’ve decided make us better humans for following them. And there is the social contract, a set of largely unwritten rules and social norms of which following ensure you are less of an asshole when you interact with other people. Good rules all round.

    There are also a lot of dumb rules. These are rules I think of that often can be summarized by the idea of one person or group of people trying to control another person or group of people. These rules should be wriggled out of whenever possible.

    The third set of rules is the personal kinds of rules we make for ourselves, often little more than mental traps and barriers, and I think it happens to all of us but I find to be especially distinctive personally around creative practice.

    For example, I made a bunch of rules for this writing project: these include topics that I write on, posting frequency, length of posts, how many words I use in the titles of my posts, the colours of imagery I use, the placement of imagery, the time of day I share new writing on both the site and on social media… the list goes on, and frankly, they are all pretty dumb rules when it comes right down to it.

    Now look, admittedly those rules have kept me focused. I am over two hundred posts into this project as I write this. I have not missed a single weekday post. And while I’m not flooded with traffic I can definitely tell that a few of you have discovered this site and are reading along… thanks.

    But those rules have also left me privately agonizing over little tweaks and fine tuning efforts I’ve had to make as I go along. At the outset I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do with all these words I was writing and—bluntly—that has evolved. Some of the new ideas about how I want to shape a project like this have run up against the original project plan.

    …and that’s okay.

    You’re allowed to break rules. In fact, I would almost encourage you to pause whatever creative activity you are doing (or even just thinking about doing) and visualize that list of rules you’ve made about it. Don’t pretend now: you’ve made rules. You’ve set up tripwires all over that idea you had and you’re following them. They may have come from your head, or they may have come from social expectations or they may just be something you figured would be a smart idea, but you have rules that you are following. I would bet on it.

    We’re all allowed to strike stuff from that list that no longer moves things forward. 

    I’m allowed to toss plans out the window if they don’t suit the project anymore—and I’m not just thinking of the little formatting and posting rules, either but the big things, too. All of it. Heck, months ago I was writing navel-gazing posts about how this project was about fitting inside a two-hundred word box, and I’m already well over six hundred words on this piece… and the message is better for it, I think.

    Rule breaking is not just allowed, it’s vital.

    It’s adaptation from learning. I’m not tossing rules for the fun of it, I’m binning plans that after ten months of writing are no longer good plans to help the project. It’s not quitting or failing, it’s learning and adapting. That’s what rule breaking really is after all, understanding that we can change and get better and move past the walls, step out of the box, and navigate a maze of barriers that were originally there to guide us but which are now tripping us up.

  • Social Disfunction

    You know my type. 

    When I go to a social function, I’m the weird guy with the camera.

    Oh, I represent. I dance at weddings. I play games at parties. I help with the dishes at the holiday dinners. I’m not just the guy with the camera, but—yeah. I’m usually the one taking photos.

    I call it a type because like every artistic pursuit there is always a cliché. There is always a tell. There is always a secret handshake that isn’t a handshake but maybe just a really nice camera that never leaves the hand and—shake: you recognize the other weird guys from a mile away.

    Weird camera guys find other weird camera guys at social functions. We talk. We compare equipment, stories, and frustrations. 

    Because… that’s community.

    That’s the thing you want but you never recognize it until you’re driving home later that evening thinking you should have connected with that other weird camera guy on instagram or something so you could maybe turn an awkward social function conversation into something creatively productive—a collaboration, or maybe just someone to talk to about that thing you love to do.

    I know my type. I’m the weird camera guy, and these hobbies are often lonely enough without pretending that we don’t see each other.

  • Show Tell

    The Kid is a natural performer. She comes to life when attention turns her way and she is at her creative best when she is in the spotlight.

    Me, not so much.

    I prefer the quiet toil of fingers on a keyboard in a dimly lit cafe or sketching a scene from a vantage where no one can peek over my shoulder and ask pesky questions.

    But for either of us, and all of us, there is vulnerability interlocked with the act of creative expression. We all need to turn on, activate, be our best selves and show up to tell the story we are trying to communicate through whatever form we choose.

    I would love to tell you that creativity is an easy or a comfortable thing, but I really do believe that the best of what we makes comes from opening our hearts, souls and selves to the universe.

    I type away in peace and quiet rarely seeing the people who read the words I write, but despite my shyness I still post them and send them out into the universe for anonymous adjudication. Just by reading these words you have transformed into the second half of a mysterious equation that I know exists when I write but I’ll never know much about. That is my personal vulnerability.

    Creativity comes from everything we are clashed against everything we are not.

    Under the category of Show & Tell I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Young Restless

    I made the mistake of asking an AI chatbot for motivation the other day.

    When one leans into these sorts of modern tools for creative inspiration it is helpful to remember that they are the strangest sorts of things often juxtaposing unearned flattery with inhumanly blunt criticism. Grain of salt on standby.

    My curiosity was with a very human problem for which I knew the answer but I figured an all-knowing resource-consuming generative search tool might come up with something unique to say: why do I so often run out of steam on new projects?

    The joys of starting a new hobby, tackling a new challenge, or learning a new skill are often gloriously rewarding.

    And when we were young, damn, everything was new and interesting.

    I’m wheeling in on fifty this year and I find that the joy of newness is not only something I crave, but an energy and vibe that tanks likes a bad metaphor with the lifespan of an ice cream treat in the sunshine.

    The AI knew why just as well as I did: some mix of psychology and endorphins and reward stimuli in the primal parts of my woefully organic brain. 

    Fixing the issue is a bigger challenge than just asking a bot, though, and I think it might help to spend some time getting my own very human brain around the problem.

    Under the category of Young & Restless I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Professional Games 

    In early 2025 I founded a game studio.

    Sounds impressive, no? In a way it is like any other clever idea: you give an idea a name and send it off in a direction and it becomes important and meaningful. It becomes work.

    Why did I found a game studio?

    Because I write code.  My profession for two decades has involved technology and systems and building things on computers. The gaming industry may seem lighthearted and playful, but at the end of the day games are just more code (and art and music and databases and stories) built inside of a computer.

    I spent the next five months working on the soul and systems of a simulation-meets-cozy style game and pushing it through various iterations of functionality until I was actually able to load it onto one of those handheld gaming PCs and sit on the couch playing my buggy (but functional) game.

    It’s now mid-2026 as I write this and the game development has been stalled for about a year. I’ve poked at it. Prodded it. Added tiny nudges to the system. But stalled, really.

    I bring it up here because it comes to mind when I think of the idea I’m trying to get across in this chapter of the project: creativity isn’t just a whim. It can be work and a product and an invention that may someday wind up in a store being sold to people who would pay for it.

    And on days that I’m being particularly honest I think I would tell you that the game development didn’t stall for lack of time or motivation or direction. It probably stalled because the profession that morphed in a newfound passion quietly transformed back into a profession when I wasn’t looking. And it took me a few months to get my head around that idea.