Why Start Posting? 1/2 Wall-E was instructive.  It allowed us to see ourselves as what we might become, if we fail to participate in creation itself and allow ourselves to be purely consumers.  The result is that we become slothful immobilized receptacles who’ve lost touch with how the things we depend on ever came to be. I decided to sunscribe to the X platform and have determined to become a producer in as much as I consume.  This is one of the dictates I teach my son (“for as much time as you spend consuming I expect you to also be creative”) so that we don’t become like the incapacitated humans depicted in Wall-E. I’ve just turned 48 years of age.   In my 20s I played clubs and coffee shops strapped with a guitar and cobbled together lyrical eruptions depicting my bewilderments in life.   In my 30s I tried to set myself apart as a photographer and developed a style of “turducken” photography:  putting an idea into another idea into yet another idea for a potentially cryptic but rewarding result. In my 40s, Carl Jung’s proclaimed phase of ‘individuation’, I’ve wondered if all the youthful energy sown towards becoming creatively set apart in my 20s and 30s was mis-appropriated.  I do not think it was.  It was necessary to work through each phase to arrive here.   In 2018, at age 40, I entertained the idea of escaping from what I considered a failed life by imagining myself jumping from a high bridge.  I imagined floating around as a disembodied spirit observing my wife and son grieve and move on with their lives.  I imagined new men visiting my wife and son, and my son in his teens surviving the loss of a selfish father whose shadow would follow him always.  That path was unacceptable.  An old friend shared a Joe Rogan episode with guest Jordan Peterson.  I had plenty of transit time and devoured his interviews and lectures that were available at the time.  It felt like a masters class on the process of what I’ve termed “reduction/amplification”.  Using myths and biblical stories, Peterson caused me to see myself, and the world around me, in a more grandiose and meaningful frame.  I’d felt this way in my late teens, as a faith-inspired youth, before entering an era of disillusionment and fornication. In my 20s, I worked so hard at getting people to attend the performances of my band.  In my 30s, I worked hard at getting my photographs in front of people’s eyes.  For my 40s, however, I determined to retreat to my inner-world and to analyze and develop what I'd spent so much energy trying to broadcast in the decades beforehand.  Perhaps the cart was before the horse.  Before understanding, I’d exercised declaration.  This is the way of things, however, for many of us as we develop through life. Later in 2018, a freelance journalist friend of mine took me out for lunch.  I shared that I’d been consuming copious amounts of lectures from a “now suddenly popularized psychologist”-avoiding the stated name of “Jordan Peterson” as I knew that it may not facilitate my credibility with my company, whose work sometimes appeared in The Atlantic (indicating a likely contrary political persuasion to Peterson's perceived political stance at the time).  I shared how the effect of the lectures is they helped extinguish my suicidal ideations.  He also avoided stating Jordan Peterson’s name, but referred to him as a “Jungian-influenced popular psychologist”.  That was my introduction to Carl Jung.  I dug around and found some books by Jung-and determined that his latter stage of life would be most indicative of the fruit of his life’s work. …continued…