48th Note to Self

​I’ve been publishing my birthday Notes to Self on various platforms for over twenty years. If you’re new to the Note to Self, this is my internal year review and my year forward plan. It’s nothing more than an annual catchup. Sometimes funny. Sometimes heartbreaking. Sometimes reflective. Always enlightening. 

48th Note to Self

Dear Athena,

Happy 48th birthday! You had to use a calculator to figure out how old you are this year. Seriously? You forgot? Well, the bad news is—that probably won’t get better from here. The forgetting thing, I mean. Good luck with that. Also, gravity, menopause, and rando white hairs stronger than titanium in awkward places are starting to be the new normal. Good times.

Anywho, it’s been a hell of a year, girl. Let’s recap. So, you decided not to renew the Hollywood production contract for obvious reasons we’ve discussed before—however, since you’re forgetting things I’ll just remind you quickly: Hollywood is not your jam. It’s a real nice idea. It sounded like it would be lots of fun, but it only took a few years of discussions at some really high-level tables for you to realize, that’s not how you work. It’s not how you create. It’s not how you want to live. So, when the option came to renew, and you’d already given up so much of your life, finances, creative control, safety, and comfort, you opted not to continue.

Then you flopped down next to the creek and wept. What if you fucked up? What if you were supposed to take that contract? What if that was your only option to bring your books to life and grow your worlds?

OR… what if it would have been the last step in a steep decline toward losing yourself and your creativity altogether?

Life is funny. You nearly sold the house you adore, twenty years of writing, and everything about yourself that you have made peace with and even learned to love. And what it looked like to people who weren’t in the room was, yet another fuck up by Athena. Like, when is she going to stop bungling shit, ya know?

But you were in the room. You know what happened. You made a choice. You walked away from damaging talks and a dangerous precipice that would go against who and what you are. All you got to show for it was a lousy T-shirt and a sore liver. Oh, and a few more white hairs in a place that can’t be easily shaved. Awesome.

For a few months you thought, “That’s all she wrote.” The end, sister. But as winter rains began and you decided to go ahead and start unpacking the house again after having packed up to move to LA, a shift returned to the creative space.

At the same time, it became evident that the developer team you were working with to build a streaming franchise platform was not going to come through. The third one to fail the contract. The last in a string of developers who liked the idea but could not complete. The first one took the idea and ran with it on their own without you—or tried to, anyway. The second team charged you a small fortune to show zero results in six months. The third told you it just could not be done. The specs were too advanced and the process too challenging. But not before you’d spent money on legal, contracts, and deposits. All for nothing.

Hollywood was a no-go. Moving to LA was cancelled. And the Storyverse Stream platform was a washout.

You caved.

You unboxed your kitchen, putting China back on the shelves. You unpacked your studio, putting art supplies back on the racks. Slowly, you started to realize that the furniture you’d sold or given away to prepare for your move wasn’t really missed—but that you’d probably need to re-buy that stuff eventually once you figured out what’s next.

What’s next? A weird question that felt like a pebble under your eyelids at night. What’s next?

The question burned a hole in your mind because the alternative was giving up completely—and that's just not your thing. I’m going to be honest and remind you, so you don’t forget…you were sad. You got into a rut.

Until a massive 250 foot Douglas Fir came down in a winter storm and shook your life up. Literally. That Doug Fir crashed next to your house so hard it rattled the windows, knocked a wine glass off the table, and clipped your watershed JUST ENOUGH to blow out your water supply to the house. Six inches west and the tree would have smashed the house while you were in it. Six inches east, and the tree would have crushed your well house and the compression tank and filtration systems. It missed the house, the wheelbarrow, the well head, the hazelnut tree, the car, and the trash can. It smashed the garden fence, and crushed a rose bush, and buried the strawberry patch. No one and nothing critical had been irreparably destroyed.

It also felt like your spirit left your body for about ten minutes as you raced outside in the dark and rain to see if anything or anyone had been hurt. Then all you could do was wait out the storm hoping nothing else would come down, and wait for daylight to see how bad it all was. The power was back on by morning, but the storm continued raging. The insurance company was fast to act and got you moved into a hotel within a few hours because there was no water to the house.

As you drove down the mountain, the landslide happened behind you, cutting off the house and the community for three days while you were safely in a hotel with running water and power.

Yes, everyone was fine and the whole community made it. Just another storm in the forests of Oregon. The people up in the woods are resilient if nothing else. Strong, capable and resilient.

However, it seriously made you rethink a few things about that giant question: What’s next?

Six inches west or east and the story would have been different. If the tree had fallen south, it would have dammed the creek and you would have likely lost the whole house, and several others down the road. But it came down to precision luck that you had absolutely nothing to do with. You got lucky. Four tons of lumber missed you by inches.

Thus, you found yourself living in a hotel for a month while working with contractors to get the tree chopped up and removed, and the temporary water line repaired enough to get partial water to the house, enough to at least shower and flush toilets. (Seven months later you’re still waiting on a full repair, and cannot drink anything from the taps. Baby steps. Repairs and rebuilds can take time.)

Over that month it was Christmas, New Year's, and the feeling of stepping into a new version of what your creative life would look like now that you were for sure unpacking and rebuilding your place in the woods. Plans to venture out were scrapped, and you locked in for a long haul… not really having a new plan yet.

Then the news came about your dad. He was being moved to hospice. It was like a second tree falling, this time in your emotional world, a pillar holding up your realm was coming down, and again it shook your abode.

You were able to travel to Utah to see him, and despite his condition and health he was able to get up, move around and was cogent enough to know you were someone he loved, though he could not remember your name or who you were to him.

Yet when he looked at you, he was happy. He was content. He was glad to see you. He was ready for the next journey, whatever that might look like for him. He knew his situation and he was clearly determined to get through it. He was optimistic, gentle, and warm all the way up to the moment you held his face and kissed his cheek goodbye and hugged him. He hugged you back… fiercely with frail, shaking arms.

You wept the whole drive home. (Months later he still lingers in long-term hospice, surprising doctors almost daily.)

The change took hold when you got back home from Utah. The house was a mess, it being difficult to keep clean and refreshed when water interruptions make the laundry pile up, and the dishes smell. You hit a point when you just stared out the window, eyes swollen from crying, a stack of old photos of your dad on the end table. Photos of your photography trips together, rock hunting, road trips and so on.

Your dad was one of the only people in your life that never asked you to BE anyone for him. Your experience with him as a father figure was completely different from your siblings’ relationships. Something about who you are informed him at some point in your relationship that you were just going to be whatever you are going to be, and he was going to have to love you regardless. And he did just that.

He remarked on many occasions, “You’re going to do what you’re going to do—I need to support that in a way that makes the most sense for me.”

What that looked like is when you told him you were headed out on a year-long road trip across the country at age 27 in your Jeep, alone… he said, “I don’t like that idea. I don’t like you going out there alone as a young woman.” But the next morning he had changed the oil in the Jeep, checked the tire pressure, and packed a cooler of snacks for your adventure.

What that looks like is when you were trapped in a storm on Highway 66 four weeks later and you were tucked into a hotel in Albuquerque and an old man was chewing you out for being a woman traveling alone and demanded to speak to your father. (Seriously? Almost 30 and needing a father’s permission?) You obliged and called your dad, handing the phone off to the old fart who was blocking your room at the hotel. And after the old man chastised your dad you very clearly heard your father’s voice say, “Son, I don’t know who you think you are to hold my daughter up on her quest, but if you are smart you’ll just get out of her way. It’s not going to end well for you if you try to stop her from getting somewhere she’s determined to go.”

At home in the woods, staring down the barrel of 48, and in need of a full home unpacking and reorg, a watershed rebuild, a creative life overhaul, and a review and revision of family relationships—you hit a wall and just sat.

Is this it, then? Is the end of this timeline a string of losses and closures, collapses, and giving up?
An ad had popped up on your feed while you were sitting at the hotel that winter, waiting for the water repairs. You were eating yet another frozen burrito and wondering what the fuck was next. It was an ad for an AI platform building software. Another AI tool.

Exhausted and bored, curious-ish, and at the end of a rope… you typed the Storyverse specs into the AI builder. You took a bite of burrito and before you could swallow it had framed the first part of the build in less than 32 seconds.

You blinked. Swallowed hard. That can’t be right. Right?

So, you clicked on a few of the functions and they worked. You burst into tears—equal parts relief and shock. The AI had done in 32 seconds what you’d been trying to accomplish with teams for the last three years at tremendous expense and massive pushback then failure or idea theft. Idea theft from other humans, by the way, not idea theft from AI.

You sat back. Stunned. Lost. Disbelieving. “But they said it couldn’t be done?”

But it was a fragile hope. A silly possibility. You picked at it for a while using free credits. You tweaked specs, put in vibe code and tweaked some more. Once out of credits for the month you would set it aside and think no more about it until you got back from your trip to Utah to visit your dad, your once vibrant creative, curious dad who always knew you were just going to do what you were going to do and he loved you for it anyway.

One day after you’d been home for a week going through all his old photos you found the stack of pictures where you’d gone on that trip to the petroglyph canyon together. It must have been 2006 or 2007. You’d both wandered through that canyon in Southern Utah taking photos of ancient images in stone and chatting about what you thought each image might mean. You thought all the petroglyphs of the sun meant “year”, because why spend a day carving a symbol for “day” when that day would be over by the time the carving was done. Your dad laughed and said something like, “A lot can happen in a day that makes it worth remembering, but I see your point. What if sun means “love” or “life” because we can’t have life without the sun. Or “future”, or “daylight”. You both waxed on about the many symbols before hiking back to the Jeep. And as you were pulling out of the canyon he said, “I wish we knew what they were trying to tell us. Whatever it was it was important enough to work it into stone. What we leave behind is really the only proof that we were here—and why bother leaving that proof if it hasn’t had some kind of emotional or mental impact on the quality of life for those who come behind us.”

It wasn’t the first time you’d chatted about the seven generation laws, or the rule of purpose in what constitutes legacy. But that day on the couch as the photos were packed back into the box and you got up from your weeping to tackle the smelly dishes, and piles of laundry you began making your plans for what’s next. You drove to town and hauled 20 gallons of water back to the house and set about getting things cleaned up. When the dishes were put away and the laundry was folded, you sat down at the desk and started building. You didn’t look up again for days.

Dear Athena,

This year you took some heavy losses. Some were voluntary when you walked away to protect yourself and your work. Others came when your ideas and work were taken. Others were to the whims of a benevolent but firm Mother Nature. Then finally your greatest loss was the inevitability of time and the human condition of mortality impacting someone you love. In all, despite the churn and the overwhelming slog of the world affairs and political hog-slopping, etc. you realized there is work to be done. There was rebuilding and reorienting to do in your own life, relationships to heal, and the next thing to build—not just for yourself, but for the next seven generations to follow. And you knew you needed to get on it while your dad might still be lingering around to see it.

Happy 48th Note to Self, Athena. This year you were reminded of how small you are, how fragile we humans are in our walking blood suits and tender mortalities. This year you realized that doing what’s right for your creative and personal health means taking the long cut through the dark forest with a machete and a pocket full of breadcrumbs.

You’re no longer interested in playing by rules of institutions that designed the game to default in their favor. You’re not going to play the house anymore—you’re just going to rebuild the house the way you like it. In fact, you’re not really interested in industry rules or collective expectations built and trained on those industry rules either, so might as well just remap all that to your own liking anyway. What is there to lose? Nothing, really. Time and a little effort.

You took the training montage of chop wood, carry water at its most literal and began building, training, and reforming a plan to create an alternate route to where you are determined to go—as your dad always knew you somehow would—and make the path wide enough for others to follow, and sturdy enough to last long after you are gone. No small feat. That’s a lot of chopping wood and carrying water.

In the end you built a platform, far more robust than you’d originally imagined. It didn’t take you a developer team and a bottomless pocketbook. It took you six months and roughly a car payment. It’s more open, inclusive, and supportive than you originally hoped. It became more than you had dreamed, and it’s set up to support artists and creators long after you are gone. For seven generations if… it’s done well.

Ultimately, if you had carved a sun on the petroglyph canyon, it would mean life, art, love, community and future generations all in one symbol. Instead, you carved a StoryverseStream into the internet and sent out invites.

So in the end, as 47 wraps and 48 kicks off you are feeling like a new creative Renaissance has begun. The old rules don’t apply anymore. Embrace the weird white hairs, they are a marker of your progress. Accept the menopause pooch and anti-gravity bras, they are a record that you have passed that goal line. Make peace with the daily life inconveniences, water issues and political strife—it is part of being a human on this planet. Fix what you can, and be patient with the rest. Some days you will be up, and others you’ll be flat on your back, recalculating.

May this year be a beautiful hooray for your father to witness as he clocks out and takes the next adventure. May you be well situated from here forward to bring in change to creative industries that need the oxygen and hydration, the nutrients and the creative sparks. May this year bring you boatloads of creators looking for a new platform to grow upon, stand with and exalt themselves.

And may you find joy and peace in witnessing their evolutions and success.
​
Many happy returns.
With love,
Athena