I’m sinking into a new rhythm and not rushing, just letting it take shape—slowly, gently—while the world spins faster than ever around me. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But I’ve found something steady in the quiet, in the slowing down, in the stillness between breaths.

Lately, the conversations have circled endlessly around AI—its power and reach, how it’s reshaping everything. And yes, how it’s even swallowing up the creative world I once led in. My work, and really everyone’s, feels like it’s under siege. But how do we keep living, keep creating, keep surviving in a landscape we no longer recognise?

The explosion—that collapse of the church cult and everything I’d built my life around- sent me into a freefall—two years of pulling apart the pieces, grieving, healing, unlearning. And I know that process isn’t over. It’s not linear. It never is.

Business halted. And I tuned in to truth, louder than the noise, more critical than hustling through a minefield of confusion and crushing grief. Everything else could wait.

But in those two years, the world didn’t stop with me. While I was silent, things shifted. Radically. The digital photographic art I once poured myself into —the work that took countless hours, layered with detail, emotion, and intention —can now be imitated in seconds. A text prompt. A click. And yet, something’s missing. Heart, perhaps. Soul.

Even here, on Substack, many of the images I’ve shared to go with my writing have been AI-generated. It’s a tool, I suppose, a shortcut to illustration when I don’t have the hours or the emotional bandwidth to create from scratch.

But it’s not the same. Not even close. The story, the process, the deep connection—that’s what gives art its pulse. And you can’t manufacture that in a second.

I’ve felt ambivalent, maybe even distant, from that digital world I once governed. Maybe that’s why I’ve found myself with my hands in the earth, shaping something slower, more grounded. Pottery. Wild clay. Real, messy, imperfect creation. It’s raw. I’m raw. I’m still learning. But it’s real.

Digital photographic art—I was a master. But even masters can lose their footing when the very thing they’ve mastered gets replaced by machines.

Still, I know this: I’ll find my way forward. I always have. This next chapter, this pivot I never saw coming, was born from a massive rupture. And yet, I sense it’ll carry me into something I never imagined. I’ve got that fight in me, even if it’s been quiet lately. I’ve been investing in healing, in advocacy, in justice. But that fire? It’s still there. Banked, not burnt out.

And I keep coming back to this: God knows. He sees what I can’t. He’s already got the next steps mapped out, even when I can’t see the road.

And, hey—I have a tram.

It hit me the other day, like a bolt of clarity. I have a tram—a vintage W-class beauty parked on old railway sleepers. I have a gallery. A living, breathing space to showcase the stories I’ve already told—and the ones I haven’t even begun.

I have a future.

A hope and a future. (As loaded as that verse might feel, coming from where I’ve come from.)

But it’s true. From the ruins, from the embers, from the dust—I see it now.

We all have a future.