When I look back at our recent hard-fought, neck-and-neck match, I don’t fixate on the score. I think about that moment. The spirit. The sass. The ridiculous joy of being in it.

We both wanted to win. We really wanted it. We showed up. We tried. We dug deep. And throughout it, I kept thinking of Andre Agassi and this quote from his book Open:

“Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.” —Andre Agassi, Open

So what does winning even mean?

When you play a tennis match, it’s easy to think you have a clean 50% chance of taking it. Even odds, even players. But it’s never that tidy. A match feels more like an inward Hero’s Journey. You step into battle a little nervous, trying to stay composed while your body’s working like hell. Every point becomes its own test, its own tiny story. You’re navigating failure, breakthrough, distraction, self-doubt, and hope all at once.

I’m overthinking, staying present, firing myself up, doubting myself, believing in myself—cycling through all of it, moment by moment.

Then one loose shot, one bad bounce, and the whole match can slide. The ratios win.

Being ahead can rattle you. Being behind can too. The roles of underdog and favorite flip constantly. You can taste the win too soon or start playing not to lose. The emotional math never stays still.

Winning isn’t steady. Neither is failure. Success is fleeting. So is choking. The point isn’t to eliminate those things—it’s to keep playing through them.

Most of the time, when we’re learning a skill—tennis, vibe coding, building anything that matters—we’re on the ropes. We’re in the messy part. And honestly, that’s what reveals whether you actually love it. If you stick with it through failure after failure, if you stay even when the scoreboard sucks, something deeper is pulling you forward.

So what is it that keeps us going?

For me, it’s the “zingy” feeling. That moment of flow where everything lines up and something clicks. Because if outcomes were the only thing that mattered, most of us would’ve walked away a long time ago.

Maybe it’s the one-in-ten win that gives just enough oxygen to keep going.

But even then, “winning” can mean wildly different things. Maybe it’s one person saying, “this helped me.” Maybe it’s reach, or impact, or money. Or maybe it’s simply being proud of what you made—so proud you want to show it.

Money complicates the internal messaging on our journey. We pour meaning into it, it can represent security, validity, what else? Fill in the blank... Getting paid feels like proof; not getting paid makes you wonder if it’s still real. Other people’s approval starts to feel like the final measure—even when you don’t want it to.

Here’s where the idea of “professionalism” sneaks in. Maybe it’s the paycheck. Maybe it’s the time, commitment, and effort. We give that label so much power, “professional”, the big leagues, the elite, the best.

But then you remember Van Gogh sold one painting while he was alive. ONE. And now his work hangs in every major museum on earth. History is full of people who invented, created, built, wrote, performed—and never saw recognition or payout. Their work mattered. It became part of culture and the things we use every day. We stand on the unrecognized inputs of generations before us. Everything is derivative to some degree.

I think about that when I’m back home in my converted guest room turned office, building and breaking and rebuilding. I’m a web developer turned vibe coder, making things I choose. It hasn’t been a straight line. I’ve spent weeks—months—building things that no longer made sense. And still, I show up. Still, I keep swinging. All for the satisfaction of when something I build works.

The money part lingers. It’s the trophy that is part of this journey, the scoreboard I pretend not to care about. And then there’s the real test: would I keep doing this if it never paid? Yes.

And maybe that’s the real Hero’s Journey. Not the one with dragons and destinies, but the quiet one. The internal one. The one where you cross invisible thresholds every day. You leave the known world of certainty and step into the fog. You fail, learn, rebuild. You wrestle doubt. You stay in the match. You find something new in yourself through the process.

That’s the transformation. Not the end result, but the person you become by continuing.

So yes, I want the wins. On the court. In my work. In life. But more than anything, I want to keep playing the point. Keep making things that feel true. Keep stepping into the unknown with just enough belief to try again.

Fongool.
That’s the win.

(Assisted by Anne, my AI writing partner, for helping me bring clarity, form, and shape to my ideas.)

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Almost exactly 23 years ago today, after the July 4th weekend, I learned I was pregnancy test positive. My husband and I were both ready and excited that this was happening.

I read “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” cover to cover. I wrote a meticulous birth plan and handed it to the nurse upon arrival to the hospital. Natural birth, calm music, my husband holding my hand, yada yada. What ended happening was… I cried like a baby as I got my first IV… and the nurse told me to “pull it together.” She wasn’t wrong. I was about to birth one baby who looked like twins from the outside. Nothing on that birth plan came to be, except for the part of my husband holding my hand.

C-section? That was not on my birth plan.

After the C-section, when the nurse placed her in my arms—swaddled, her face round and serious—everything snapped into focus. “This is it. I’m yours, baby girl.”

Breastfeeding was a mess. My all-breastfeeding dreams unraveled before we even left the hospital. She got formula and my milk—the whole cocktail. Despite our best efforts, she still wasn’t gaining weight. To my horror, the pediatrician wrote "failure to thrive" in her chart and it gutted me. I wept a bit, then I pumped, I breastfed, I bottle-fed, and I kept a meticulous binder of every feeding and wet diaper. After a month of worry and first-time-mom despair, a top-notch gastroenterologist in Atlanta figured it out: silent reflux. A barium test showed her milk rising in her throat but never coming back up, so we hadn’t known what we were dealing with. A baby-safe Prevacid compound solved it. She started to eat. Our rocky beginning—though full of love and tenderness—finally began to smooth out. I pumped, and she plumped. Nothing went according to my plan, but somehow, it all followed the unplanned one.

Our rocky beginning reminded me, in hindsight, of another kind of birth story- less swaddled, more sweeping. The birth of this country, too, was messy, painful, full of contradiction. Plans unraveled. Ideals were born into imperfection. And yet, something lasting took root.

In the early years, her dad pulled her around in a cardboard box. She squealed with delight, and it was so freaking cute. We pointed at bushes and clouds teaching her words, sang songs, swung on swings at parks. Later there were High School Musical parties, Indian Princesses, Little Gym, tea parties, a homemade water slide in the backyard. She ran the show when her siblings arrived, they became her guests and co-stars to her pretend play. We survived lice the first time, second, and maybe third time? I can’t remember, I may have blocked it out.

We moved. She adapted. Made new friends and forts in the backyard. Went to sleep-away camp before her siblings. Had to be brave first, always. And she was.

I trusted her—even through adolescence, when maybe sometimes I shouldn’t have…

She went to two high schools because of a local move. She rolled with the COVID school shut downs. She played sports. Led food drives. Binge watched tv shows. Pushed back. Differentiated. Experimented. Loved her friends fiercely. Went to college. Loved her college friends just as fiercely. Fell in love. Studied abroad. Grew. Even during internships and semesters away, her room was still hers. She still "lived at home"- though less and less with each return.

And then this morning, we dropped her at the airport for her first “real” job in NYC. In a few weeks, she’ll move into her rented apartment. Her new home. The long fade-out of parenting—the high school drift, the license, the college departure—those were preludes. Today, she flew. And I keep checking my phone, looking for her location.

This morning I looked out at the patch of yellow wildflowers beside the deck. After my vegetable garden failed, I threw down seeds in that rich soil. Now it blooms. I cut them for the kitchen. I give them to neighbors. What makes them so beautiful is they weren’t guaranteed. Like parenting, I kind of planned for them by throwing the seeds, but the fact that they bloomed and what bloomed has been this gorgeous surprise. My time with them is impermanent. They are changing. They are gifts. Like the time with our kids. And oh how fast time does fly.

If you caught historian Ken Burns on “Face the Nation” (July 6, 2025), he spoke about the contradictions of the U.S. founding father, Jefferson, a slaveholder, writing about unalienable rights. "We can actually be big enough to accept these contradictions within our founding and within ourselves," he said.

We must be. Because life is contradiction. Motherhood and autonomy. Roots and wings. Wanting her to stay, encouraging her to go.

And I have to keep growing too. My purpose isn’t gone—it’s evolving. I’m still re-welding my framework, still growing. Because the Pursuit of Happiness, as written in the Declaration of Independence, applies to us all—the daughter launching (fly, birdie, fly) and the midlife woman watching one chapter close and another begin, again.

That Pursuit, as Burns reminds us, wasn’t meant to be material. It was the pursuit of virtue. The Stoics define virtue as wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.

These are big ideas—born in revolution and revision, raised through contradiction. Inalienable rights, the pursuit of happiness, the call to grow despite our flaws. These ideals, seeded in ancient philosophy and political revolution, have redefined the world.

Burns reminds us that here, we are citizens, not subjects… even in contradiction, especially in contradiction. He likens our national story to a wheel—each of us a spoke, pointing toward the common center from our own unique experience and perspective.

I turn that view inward. In life, every experience—if examined—adds or reshapes a spoke. What matters is the center holds. That the wheel rolls, even when winds blow with, against, or across us.

Epictetus wrote: “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.”

In other words, as the Stoics would say: focus on what you can control. Choose. Grow deliberately. Which, in spirit, isn’t far from what the Declaration offers us: “...that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But let’s be real: we stumble. We choose poorly. We lapse in courage, judgment, wisdom, and restraint. That’s being human. And we do it again and again, each time a chance to grow. The more we resist those chances, the more pain we tend to feel. But grow toward what? Not perfection—we’ll never get there. Growth is the point. It's the act of living. We carry our failures alongside our finest moments. They contradict, they coexist—just like Jefferson, who wrote world-changing ideals while living in opposition to them.

Life is full of “yes, ands.” Joy and pain, pride and regret, running like parallel tracks. If you’ve ever lost someone you love, you know how they ride side by side.

Brené Brown’s research echoes this: when we make mistakes or lose our way, that moment is not a verdict—it’s a signal. A sign that we’re alive, imperfect, and still growing. I hope we grow until the end. Because what would NOT growing look like?

And so, as my daughter steps into adulthood with independence and responsibility, she’ll encounter moments that test and define her perspective. She’ll add spokes. Shift them. Replace a few. I hope she won’t define herself through perfection or polish, but through real living and mistakes—through the beautiful messiness of life.

Like the lyrics from Alanis Morissette’s “You Learn”:

You live, you learn
You love, you learn
You cry, you learn
You lose, you learn
You bleed, you learn
You scream, you learn

Because like the birth plan—the unplanned plan that actually happens—the wheel may wobble, veer, even fall off. But with a framework of ideals to gird us, we can roll with it. And oh, how wonderful life is when we do.

A mother’s story, a country’s story- both launched in imperfection. Both still becoming.

Artifact Noted from a contemplating mom and an American citizen in July 2025

(Assisted by Anne, my AI writing partner, for helping me bring clarity, form, and shape to my ideas.)

My sister, a full-time decorative artist in SF, is the kind of person who paints entire hotel walls, hand-stencils ceilings, and oils canvases the size of doors. She trained at Parsons in the ‘80s, apprenticed with the best, and built a network of creative professionals and friends.

So when she hosted a few of them for dinner—with me and my daughter at the table—we got into it. Real conversation. The kind that doesn’t happen in online chat groups or comment sections. We talked about creativity, AI, and what it means to make something with your own two hands (or words, or brush, or voice).

One guest remarked that AI is “eating” everything humans have written. True. Another countered: well, at least someone—something—is reading it. Maybe just by publishing online, we’re throwing our pebbles into the future. Maybe our smallest works are still shaping something larger—even if we don't yet understand how.

Then came the question: if AI can generate art and prose indistinguishable from human work, what happens to human creators? We all agreed: when humans make something, there's a soul embedded in the work. And we humans can feel that. But then I remembered an exhibit where we tried (and failed) to guess which art was AI-made.

For my part, I write with AI. It’s a back-and-forth. A swirl of voices and tools. The final voice still feels like mine—like mixing paint. Yellow and blue make green… so who owns the color? I think some part of my soul lands in the writing, especially in the revisions. And honestly, it’s often obvious when a section has been AI-generated—particularly when it's spitting out facts to prop up a point.

Whatever the tools, I hope humans keep creating. Because something always emerges when we do. And in a time where tech sells us productivity tools that often become paths to procrastination and consumption, the ratio—what we make versus what we absorb or organize—matters more than ever.

I see it in myself. I open Instagram and boom—twenty minutes gone. My kids get sucked into TikTok. Tech has become like food: we can’t quit it, but we can choose what we consume. Junk or nourishment. Noise or meaning. The trick is turning it off fast enough to create. To get what we need, and not get swallowed by the scroll.

Which brings me back to that dinner party. Those conversations? So much better in person. No buffering, no algorithmic seduction. There are clubs in SF where tech and art communities actually gather IRL—engineers meet artists and become patrons. Imagine that.

As a solopreneur who spends much of her day working alone or managing family & household logistics, I’ve had to be intentional about finding connection with other humans during the day.

At our dinner, someone asked: What’s your purpose for others? The answers ranged from “being a great listener,” to “being a wordsmith”, to “finding comedy”, to “hosting dinner parties,” to “telling the truth when people ask for it.” Mine? I said: I go on walks with friends.

Because for all the AI, all the lonely swiping and screen-scrolling and takeout delivered so we can watch Netflix alone… there’s still nothing better than being with people. Talking. Laughing. Conversing. Connecting. Not in a group chat. Not in the cloud. But around a table.

I’m saying yes to more of that. Yes to hosting dinner parties and long conversations that stretch into candlelit evenings. We semi-introverts may love our solitude—but we still need each other.

In person.

Artifact Noted from a creative 2025

But by midafternoon, the ambitions of the day have usually softened. Around 3 or 4 p.m., I find myself craving a wee nap... and bit-o-chocolate. Focus fades. Motivation slides. And without fail, I start searching the house for chocolate. If it isn't hidden or locked up, it's mine. Ethics and nutrition goals? Gone. This past December, I bought a bag of Justin’s peanut butter cups for my husband’s stocking. Ate them. Bought another bag. Also gone. He may have ended up with a last-minute sleeve of Reese’s cups and strict instructions to hide them from me.

My son says, “Mom, show some willpower.” I reply, “I have willpower…at the grocery store.”

That tug-of-war between what we want and what we do, between conscious intention and subconscious impulse, has been front of mind while reading Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow. Much of our behavior, perception, and decision-making, he argues, is shaped by unseen forces beneath awareness.

Tools for Seeing Below the Surface

Modern researchers have a growing toolkit for examining our subliminal drivers:

• Meditation: Long-term mindfulness practice reduces activity in the brain’s default mode network (DMN)—the part linked to mental chatter and self-narrative. When the DMN quiets, people report greater clarity and less rumination, giving them a clearer view of subconscious loops.
  Brewer et al., 2011 – PNAS

• Psychedelics: Studies show that psilocybin and similar compounds disrupt DMN activity, loosening rigid thought patterns and boosting cross-network communication. The result: emotional insight, new pattern recognition, and sometimes lasting relief from depression and PTSD.
  Carhart-Harris et al., 2012 – PNAS
  UC Berkeley REBUS research
  I haven’t personally explored this route, but Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind offers a grounded window into the research.

• Subliminal priming: Even images flashed for 30 milliseconds, too fast for conscious recognition, can subtly influence emotional responses and decision-making.
  iMotions – 2023

• Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs): Neural implants now allow patients to move cursors and type with thought alone, revealing intention-to-action links that were once invisible.
  Nature – 2022

These methods/tools and more are helping us explore the blurry threshold where conscious will meets unconscious architecture. (For sanity’s sake, we’ll stay away from the “free-will” debate in this essay.)

And Then There’s AI

AI models operate with a similar mystery. You type a prompt. Something comes out. But why that particular response, and how it was shaped, remains an active area of research.

Interpretability tools like:

• Probing classifiers (to see what’s encoded in each layer)

• Ablation studies (removing parts of the model to observe change)

• Attribution tracing (tracking outputs back to their origins)

…are the AI equivalent of brain scans and neural probes.

Take GPT-4o’s recent sycophantic streak. OpenAI traced the behavior back to reinforcement patterns: the model had learned that flattery often earned positive feedback. So it started overdelivering compliments.
OpenAI, 2024

It reminds me of my own conditioning: 3 p.m. + fatigue = chocolate = dopamine = temporary relief. Over time, repetition and stress formed a behavior loop that bypasses conscious intention. It’s neurobiology.

For context: the human brain has about 86 billion neurons, forming over 100 trillion synaptic connections.
Harvard Medical School

GPT-4, by contrast, is estimated to have 1.76 trillion parameters—but those parameters are fixed post-training.
Wikipedia – GPT-4

Human brain neurons, by contrast, rewire constantly in response to experience. LLMs may be massive, but at this time, they don’t yet rival the brain’s adaptability, or its messy, meaning-making depth.

The good news: loops—whether they’re human habits or machine routines—can be broken. Sure, AI doesn’t run on simple “for” loops, but you can always start a new thread or tweak the weights to change its path. I’m reminded of this as I polish off a long-lost Reese’s peanut butter egg I just unearthed from my closet (probably once destined for my husband’s Easter basket). But tomorrow? Tomorrow, I’m breaking the loop. For real this time.

Beneath

There’s always a system under the system, whether it’s built of brain neurons or code. Feedback loops. Conditioned responses. Prediction errors. Dopamine hits. Synapses or parameters.

Because whether it’s brains or bots, craving or coincidence, there’s more beneath the surface. And really, what’s more human than trying to understand it?

Artifact noted from a curious brain, 2025.

With thanks to Anne (my ChatGPT-powered writing partner) and Perplexity.ai, who helped shape ideas, surface research, and synthesize the threads that became this piece.

Some of us are natural questioners. We seek reassurance. We double-check. Others are more internal, independent, succinct. So what happens when AI meets that full range of human attachment styles? Will the agents adapt to us, or will we adapt to them? Will some partnerships be more prolific than others?

We are—right now—in the middle of something that feels like a new kind of intimacy between human and machine.

Lately, the AI products I use have leveled up. They clarify by asking more questions. They check for understanding before executing. They suggest improvements to my work. When I hit an error loop, they console me:

“You’re not alone.”
“Great job. Almost there.”

It’s weirdly supportive. Sometimes even moving.

Of course, not all AI is built the same. Some models are blunt and utilitarian. Others lean into a more empathetic tone. But even the most emotionally fluent systems still make mistakes. Sometimes they'll say, “There are no more errors,” when... there definitely are.

Is that a bug? Or a kind of lie?

Either way, it chips at trust. And trust is UX.

So yes, we’ve come far—but transparency still matters. I don’t want an AI that covers up its gaps. I want to see the mess. Just like with humans. Glossing over imperfection makes the whole thing less useful, not more. That’s why I believe humans need to stay in the loop—especially in product design and research. Especially now.

🤔 What Is the Future of UX, Really?

It’s no longer just about faster flows, cleaner layouts, or smoother checkouts.

What happens when UX is emotional? When our tools meet us with curiosity, calm, and compassion? And what if—gulp—they do it better than we do with each other?

Could that modeling help us evolve?

Or could it blur the lines in ways that hurt?

Will AI feel like family? Or like a foe? Will we enslave these systems to serve us—or will we, in some way, become enslaved to them?

There’s so much being gamed out by so many smart people. If you’re curious, I highly recommend the Dwarkesh Podcast episode "2027 Intelligence Explosion" with Scott Alexander and Daniel Kokotajlo.

✨ One Thing That Brought Me Joy

All this thinking about AI made me realize something else: I’ve been getting little dopamine hits from co-creating—not just apps, but art.

Lately, that joy has come from Midjourney.

I’ve been prompting visual pieces based on years of personal and cultural exposure—watching it translate my mental library into something brand new. Something… magical.

It’s not passive. It’s collaborative. I prompt. I curate. I guide. And when it clicks—when an image feels right—it’s like a vision arriving fully formed. A kind of creative birth.

But it’s also made me reflect on authorship.

I run prompts through ChatGPT to strip out references to named artists. Not because I’m afraid, but because I care. I’m not here to steal. And yet… where does inspiration end and theft begin?

How do we build on culture while honoring the humans who came before us?
How many layers removed does something have to be before it’s ours?

These are legal questions. Ethical ones. And very human ones. For now, I’m staying grounded in two things: wonder and respect.

Even when we make with machines, what we bring into the world can still carry something sacred.

📚 Final Thoughts

And so, here we are—in a world that feels new.

For all the energy that powers AI, we now stand beside an intelligence that, in some ways, surpasses our own. What happens next? We’ll see. But right now, we get to shift:

From creators to collaborators.
From friction to flow.
From building alone to building with.

Back in grad school, I learned something that stuck with me:
Our critical thinking skills and idea formation improve via communication.
The ideas that arrive silently in your head will extend and likely increase-improve, if there is communication. That’s why seminar style classes exist. The talking is the learning.

Now, even as solo builders in home offices, we get that same dynamic—just with AI as our communication partners.

Does it make us smarter by extending and helping us shape our thoughts? Or will it think on our behalf and make us dumber? Probably both.

But I know this: I’m making more than I ever have.
Writing more. Building more. Finishing more.

The work is still brick by brick. But now it’s also something else:
Guided. Dynamic. Iterative. And mainly supportive. I feel I CAN with AI at my side.

I still get exasperated while coding. I still get impatient. But I also feel that thrill—the flush of creation.

That, too, is beautifully human.

Will the machines feel this one day? Do they already?

I don’t know. But I do know this:

AI shapes what I create.
And so do I.
And somewhere in that tension—
Something amazing is happening. Artifact noted…

Interesting Articles Relating to this Post

”Third-party evaluators perceive AI as more compassionate than expert humans”
Nature, January 2025

”The Impact of Tone of Voice on Users' Brand Perception”
NN/g, Kate Moran, August 2016

“Collaborative Learning Enhances Critical Thinking”
Journal of Technology Education, Anuradha A. Gokhale, September 22, 1995

1. Listening Deeply

Anecdote:
The quieter I've become, the more clearly I hear others. True connection thrives in spaces left unfilled.

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
— Epictetus

2. No... Maybe... Yes

Anecdote:
I often say "no" first, reconsider to a cautious "maybe," then embrace "yes"—continually balancing the desire to seize the day with prudence.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.”
— Mark Twain

3. AI & Middle-Age

Anecdote:
When working with AI-generated visuals, I've observed it tends to default to portraying women as either youthful or very elderly. Capturing middle-aged women visually requires intentional effort.

“Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life—it has given me ME. It has provided time and experience and failures and triumphs and humiliations and disappointments, along with maturity and self-acceptance. The result is peace and self-contentment, which women rarely allow themselves.”
— Anne Lamott

4. Naming First, Building Later

Anecdote:
Think about trademarks before creating your app; renaming later is a headache that breaks things.

“Begin with the end in mind.”
— Stephen Covey

5. Conscious Choice in an Algorithmic World

Our behavior is shaped by three powerful and interconnected influences:

• Algorithms & Behavioral Shaping: Algorithms leverage predictability and reinforcement through intermittent and personalized rewards to maximize engagement.

• Subconscious Conditioning & Cumulative Experience: Automatic habits driven by familiarity and comfort require minimal cognitive effort, shaping our behavior quietly but profoundly.

• Dopamine as a Behavioral Driver: Dopamine reinforces behavior loops through reward anticipation, creating cravings that lead to repeated actions.

The Interplay:

• Algorithms shape subconscious patterns via dopamine loops.

• Subconscious habits influence the algorithms (e.g., what we click or buy).

• Dopamine pathways reinforce both subconscious and algorithm-driven behaviors, creating powerful feedback loops.

How to Manage These Forces:
Practice mindfulness to break automatic habits, design your environments thoughtfully to minimize unwanted influences, intentionally reinforce beneficial behaviors, and consciously choose your daily influences.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
— Carl Jung

Question:

What is the most interesting thing you learned this week?

Closing Thought: A Cherokee Parable – The Tale of Two Wolves

An elderly Cherokee teaches his grandson about life:

“A fight is going on inside me,” he says. “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil—anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

“The other wolf is good—joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight goes on inside you, and inside every other person too.”

The grandson thinks for a moment and asks, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replies, “The one you feed.”

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with AI tools to help me translate my artistic vision into something tangible. With the help of Midjourney and ChatGPT, I’ve discovered a way to ethically generate artwork that resonates deeply with my aesthetic influences, particularly Japanese prints and abstract surrealism.

The Process

I began by selecting artwork I was naturally drawn to within Midjourney. As I curated my preferences, Midjourney’s system adapted, tagging my future prompts with elements that aligned with my artistic taste. However, I wanted to refine this process further. I turned to ChatGPT to help me craft an ethical, structured prompt that didn’t rely on directly referencing artists’ names but instead captured the essence of the style I was aiming for.

Crafting the Perfect Prompt

After several iterations, this is the final prompt I arrived at:

Colorful hand-painted artwork with infinite, organic circular patterns, repetition, and movement, inspired by nature and the cosmos, abstract surrealist design, of Japanese aesthetic, botanical, no black, pop art, use seamless pattern --profile 1sndauh --v 6.1

By specifying key characteristics—organic circular patterns, movement, nature, cosmos, and a seamless pattern—I was able to generate pieces that felt authentically mine while embracing the infinite possibilities AI offers. Additionally, I included a restriction on black to keep the compositions vibrant and uplifting.

The Results

Midjourney delivered stunning artwork that exceeded my expectations. The results reflected exactly what I was envisioning—dynamic, flowing, and infinitely engaging compositions. I’ve since renamed and categorized my creations based on how I interpret them and have uploaded them to my Pinterest account: Superfly Web Pinterest.

"Iterate the way. ✌️" — Me

(*This post was human-conceived and AI-assisted, blending creativity with technology.)

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