The first and most important thing I need to stress about this piece, is that it comes from a good place.

This feels like a spiritual successor to Smoke, upping the ante to a ridiculous degree, but in a way that's fit for purpose as I've been striving to do better and, frankly, live up to my potential.

I started work on this at the end of a very intense day full of feelings; most of them positive. I had a moment of clarity of what it is that I do for a living - pursuing a life that I wish for myself and then relaying, as best I can, the experiences, thoughts, and emotions that come about from it through my art, all so that others may learn from, or at the very least, feel seen by it.

This is a rather exhausting cycle of intense, consistent vulnerability that I'm proud to have maintained and made good on in the ways that I do, at least to some degree, but the reality of it hit me like a truck. For years now, I've been desperately seeking out any way for this to be a sustainable endeavor, on several counts, despite the strongest, most visceral desire deep within me being:

To cut myself open and show everyone as much as I can of what's inside.
It may come at a very heavy price, but to me, it's worth it,
because it feels so damn good for me to be seen, understood, and appreciated that way.

This one happened to land in my lap after reading more of the book "The Creative Act" by Rick Rubin, and a concept mentioned in one of the chapters on self-doubt resonated perfectly with another that had crossed my mind when I saw these two, while browsing the tweegeemee bot's backlog.

In Buddhism, the concept of "Papancha," or "conceptual proliferation," can be summed up - rather inadequately, I should note - as a "preponderance of thoughts and feelings." I would urge you to read up about it if this art resonates at all; but considering how being full of such things almost at all times, to where regulating is so very hard for me, is pretty much my baseline, this felt worth expressing in this strange, collaborative medium I've found for myself.

The spark hit during one particularly, positively overwhelming moment while streaming, and I had to follow through on it.

I saw a post recently about how we outgrow our emotional coping mechanisms, likening it to a thick sweater we put on to keep ourselves warm (safe) when we were otherwise cold (less so) - but later, if and when things are hopefully warmer and safer, the sweater becomes a burden.

That gave me pause and encouraged me to reflect on how I've been trying really hard to shed mine for many years now, but it's so interwoven with many various aspects and insecurities of mine that it often feels unproductive; often cyclical in nature.

Drawing this in stream got some rather intense responses from chat, so I decided that everyone deserved to see a happier ending to such an emotional piece.

I couldn't resist being a bit more of a menace, but it's okay; I still got my treat in the end.

Consistency is hard, and Potential rather meaningless, when you don't even know what to expect from yourself.