Why this newsletter. Why now?

I think the simplest answer is that I've spent most of my life collecting patterns.

Collecting stories. Conversations. Experiences. Ideas. Watching people. Watching systems. Trying to understand why things work the way they do.

For a long time I thought I was collecting information.

Now I realise I was collecting meaning.

I'm not writing from a place of knowing. I'm not trying to position myself as an expert. If anything, this newsletter exists because I'm still trying to understand myself.

I recently heard the musician Jeff Tweedy share something along the lines of... 'being an artist is really about learning to become more your self'.

That landed. It reminded me of the tattoo on my arm that reads I'll meet you there because it comes from the same intention.

I was drawn to this RUMI poem after my dad died in November 2023. Watching him face the end of his life with such loving presence changed me. At the time, I thought those words were about meeting him again somewhere beyond this life. Over time it's taken on a different meaning. I no longer think it's about arriving somewhere else. I think it's about arriving at your self. Not the self you've built to navigate the world, but the one that's been quietly waiting underneath it all. The self you spend a lifetime returning to. If you are lucky.

That's who my dad showed me in those weeks. Him. And so much of him is me too.

That's the journey I'm on.

And this little corner of the internet is simply where I explore it.

I've been a bowerbird for as long as I can remember.

As an artist in my twenties, those collections became fuel for making things. Later they became strategy, leadership and businesses. Different mediums. Same instinct.

I notice patterns.

Not just what people do, but why they do it. Where energy flows. Where it gets blocked. The assumptions nobody has spoken out loud.

For years I thought this was just my anxious, hypervigilant brain scanning for danger.

Then I came across Human Design.

For those familiar with it, I'm a Projector. Which is to say: I'm someone who sees. Sees systems. Notices how things fit together. Recognises the patterns hiding in plain sight.

I'd spent my whole life calling it hypervigilance. My anxious brain constantly reading the room.

Not hypervigilant. Pattern seeking. Meaning making. A gentler way of understanding myself.

Here's what I eventually discovered.

That way of seeing is only welcome in certain spaces.

I could often sense where a team was stuck before anyone said it out loud. I could see the tension underneath the strategy. The assumptions shaping decisions. The conversations nobody wanted to have. The blocker getting in the way of growth.

Sometimes that was valuable.

Sometimes it made people uncomfortable.

So I learnt to soften what I saw. To explain it carefully. To become whoever I thought the room needed me to be.

I wasn't changing what I noticed.

I was changing what I said.

It made me a better strategist.

It also made me very tired.

Because when belonging starts depending on editing yourself, eventually you forget what your own voice sounds like.

That same pattern found its way into my writing.

Art always felt safer because people bring their own meaning to it.

Words felt different.

So I hid behind complexity. Too many metaphors. Too many explanations. I thought if I could just explain something well enough, everyone would understand.

Looking back, I don't think I was trying to be understood.

I was trying not to be misunderstood.

There's a difference.

A couple of years after Dad died, I was sitting with a close friend who was sketching while I talked. She was working on distilling who I am.

I was using far too many words.

She stopped drawing and looked up.

"There's a man standing beside you," she said.

"He's smiling."

"And he wants you to know..."

"Janie... it doesn't need to be that complicated."

I knew immediately who she meant.

I've carried those words ever since.

Not because I think my dad was talking about my writing.

Because I think he was giving me permission.

Permission to stop explaining everything.

Permission to stop performing.

Permission to simply say what I see.

So that's what this newsletter is.

A field journal of the things I'm noticing.

In business.

In leadership.

In AI.

In creativity.

And in myself.

Some of what I write will be wrong. I hope it is. Because I'm not trying to arrive at certainty. I'm trying to stay curious.

I don't think this stage of life is about becoming someone new.

I think it's about remembering.

Remembering the artist.

The fashion designer.

The strategist.

The CEO.

Not choosing between them.

Allowing them all to exist together.

This newsletter is simply my practice of doing that.

Of noticing.

Of connecting dots.

Of learning out loud.

As honestly as I know how.

If something I write helps you notice something in yourself, or sparks a perspective I hadn't considered, I'd genuinely love to hear from you.

Reply to the email and tell me what you're noticing. Or if something resonates, share it on social media and tag me. I'd love to continue the conversation.

Perhaps we're both just trying to find our way back to ourselves.

I'll meet you there.