I made The Field - the audiovisual poem at the bottom - over a year ago.
Working in the open source AI space finally felt like I had found something profoundly meaningful to dedicate my life to.
But I was fucking it up. Trying to do the right thing, but not having the resources to make real progress, working relentlessly in spite of this but never getting to where I needed to, pushing AI to its limits but being hampered by its shortcomings.
Most critically, I frequently found myself overwhelmed by anxiety - spending days pacing the apartment or clicking around aimlessly on my computer.
Compounding this anxiety was the fact that I could see its potential consequences - that I could live a life where every facet of my existence would come to be defined by it.
When anxiety took hold, my mind would spiral into vivid scenarios of failure. The clearest and most painful vision was deeply personal: I imagined a field where my wife and I plan to build a house left empty - and my mother-in-law who we hope will live with us in a retirement home surrounded by strangers.
The sum total of my failures was hard to visualize in the abstract but I could see and feel this part clearly.
And I could see the version of myself I would become in this world - bitter and twisted, with my heart hardened to the dreams I once had and the things that I once saw as full of potential.
One afternoon, while pacing up and down, a song came on that matched my feeling perfectly. I started to make images to go along with it, and put words to those images.
As I began to make it into a video with Dough (my AI art tool), tears were streaming down my face. It felt like I had transported myself to this grim future and was living a whole life in it. Eventually, the tears cleared up and I was done.
I watched it again and again in the weeks after. Each time, I was transported back into this world and became this person I feared becoming.
But, having captured the very essence of this future, I could face it directly, head on.
I could examine the core of that fear clearly. It felt like exposure therapy - the closest thing I've experienced while sober to a psychedelic experience.
Slowly it started to get better - I could identify the feeling early and say "Not today". I could see the very root of it.
Lately, I noticed that I never really have such days anymore
I still fuck up a lot, often overwork myself to the point of exhaustion, and try to do too many things, but Iām rarely incapacitated in this particular way.
I may still fail - but failing while energetically pursuing something that has the potential to be profoundly meaningful is about as good a failure as there is.