July_2026_Liminality_JPG_MP4.zip

`PS C:\> tar -xf July_2026_Liminality_JPG_MP4.zip`

`Application_Install.exe`

July taught me that the trail you have already memorized will never show you anything new. I almost walked past a footpath I had never noticed before, one I had blown past a hundred times without ever wondering where it went. A week ago, I finally took it, and it cracked open into a place I had never seen. One decision, three weeks in, ended up reshaping how I want to move through the rest of everything. Doubt is not a warning sign telling you to turn around. It is information. It is the door creaking open before the new thing walks through.

I do not know what is waiting down the unmarked path. Nobody does. That is the entire point of it. But I know what is waiting at the end of the same trail I have already walked a hundred times, and it is the same thing that’s always been there. Certainty is comfortable and it is also a dead end. Take the footpath you haven’t been down.

That is the application. The rest is the source code.

`Source_Code.txt`

The open-source code below is free, for you to analyze, modify, and build your own application with.

`> doubt is not the enemy, it's a message: doubt_is_data.log`

Back in April I went to church, still the most agnostic guy in the room, still going anyway. The topic in many sermons that followed was doubt and uncertainty, and I sat there taking notes like it was a briefing on my own life. Months later, those notes turned out to be the most accurate description of what July had in store.

To doubt is to be human. Our cracks make our lives more valuable, not less. We spend so much energy comparing ourselves to an image of who we are supposed to be instead of just being who we actually are, and the gap between what we say and what we do is where our shadow lives. Doubt is information. It is not negative. It is just us wanting to know more. When things get uncomfortable, that is the invitation to go deeper into the work, not a sign to run from it.

Doubt shows up when we are stepping into a growth stage of our life. It can show us what has been hiding underneath, a story someone else handed us that was never actually ours. What is trying to emerge from me that requires this much honesty. There is a crack in everything, and that is how the light gets in. The belief in goodness has to be bigger than any appearance of the opposite.

Certainty locks us into limiting beliefs. Doubt disrupts those neural pathways and opens the door to another possibility. We can follow doubt into fear, or we can follow it with curiosity instead. What if there is another truth. Another possibility. Another reality waiting. When the crack happens, things get ground down and taken away, and the new things finally have room to fill it. You have to speak the liminal out loud to let the new thing emerge.

Uncertainty is the sacred place where the light comes in. It is an indicator that the pathway to transformation is open and already happening. We keep looking for the answer where the light is, where it is comfortable and familiar and we can see clearly, but the answer usually lives in the dark, in the empty liminal space we do not want to look at and cannot fully see. Carl Jung said wholeness is not perfection. Wholeness includes the shadow, the parts of us we think are not good enough, our doubts included. What is unfolding is part of the whole, and we get to be part of the process. I say yes to whatever is unfolding.

`> the trail I have walked a hundred times: same_input_same_output.sh`

Same input, same output. That is the whole equation, and most of us live inside it without ever questioning the math. Think of it like a trail you have hiked a million times. Same trail. Same trailhead, same dirt, same tree roots, same water crossings, and same ending. It can be the most beautiful hike, but it is the exact same every time. Wake up at the same time, do the same thing to get ready, go to the same job, take the same lunch, drive the same commute home, eat dinner at the same time, wind down the same way, go to bed at the same time. Predictable. Comfortably familiar, even when it is not actually good.

Humans like routine and we naturally resist all forms of change. Change requires adaptation, learning, challenges, and more. Ultimately change can feel like loss, because you are losing the routine and structure that kept you comfortable with its predictive nature. We want a different job, but that requires a different schedule. That different schedule requires changing our home routines. That different job has a different commute. One small change often amounts to completely changing everything around you, and who wants to do all that when you can just stay where you are, where it is easy and effortless. But we want a different job, and we also want everything to be the same. That is unfortunately not how things work. That is how patterns keep winning, and it causes people immense amounts of frustration and anxiety, because they want their cake and want to eat it too.

`> the footpath I never noticed: unmarked_trail.gpx`

Last Saturday I drove down to La Conner to do a little shopping, and on the way home up Chuckanut Drive I was thinking about a fine art nude photoshoot I had booked for Monday. My client and I wanted something in the forest, something on the water, all during golden hour, and there was one problem. High tide hits right at sunset, which means most of the waterfront disappears underwater exactly when we needed it. I wanted to shoot at Clayton Beach anyway, so I decided to swing by on the drive home and scope it out.

I have gone down that trail to Clayton Beach probably a hundred times. Park the car, down the stairs, across two bridges, and you are on the beach. Rinse and repeat. I went there constantly with a former partner, and that beach has the fingerprints of that love all over it. It is not exactly my favorite place to go right now with grief still trailing behind me, but I went anyway.

Grief always seems to be hiding underneath everything.

I parked, walked down the stairs with a couple and their dog behind me, and at the bottom I noticed a small footpath I had never seen before. It did not look well traveled, so I assumed it probably led to nothing. But some part of me said, go down the path you have never gone down and see what you find. If you keep taking the same trail you have always taken, you will keep finding the same nothing you have always found.

So I took the footpath.

`> gold at the dead end: cliff_edge_discovery.jpg`

Not even a thousand feet down, the trail dropped into a lush ravine full of ferns, rock walls, and mossy logs. A magical little place, and exactly perfect for the forest shoot I wanted for Monday. I was kind of blown away. I had walked past this footpath for years and never once knew it existed. I kept going.

Another thousand feet down, the trail ended abruptly on a cliff face at the edge of the sea. Twenty plus feet above the water, breathtaking, and I was the only human there. I had just found a place that had no other relationship’s fingerprints on it. I had the whole thing to myself. Grief has a way of attaching itself to places, and this one had none of that residue yet. I kept going anyway.

I spent ninety minutes climbing boulders, walking narrow cliff edges, scrambling up and down the rugged coastline, until I hit a point with no route forward. I found a trail back up to the railroad tracks, followed them down to the main trail, and eventually made it to the beach I usually go to. Flooded by high tide, exactly like always. Boring as shit.

Me, though. I was on cloud nine. I had just spent two hours on a trail I did not know existed, climbing on things I probably should not have been climbing without telling anyone where I was. I felt like a kid. Full of curiosity, no fear of anything, completely present, without a care in the world. And I found the exact spot for the photoshoot, which turned out beautifully a few days later.

`> what changed by monday: new_gym_membership.log`

When I got home that night, all I could think about was climbing rocks again. And again. And again. I had zero experience, it was genuinely dangerous, and I knew I should probably learn something before I kept tearing through boulders and cliff edges alone. Two days later I was enrolled in a bouldering class. Three days after that, a second one. Now I have a membership at a climbing gym and I am buying shoes and chalk this weekend.

Six or seven years ago, my daughter was big into rock climbing, and I watched her do it over and over at different facilities. I saw people doing it and said “Fuck that shit” and closed my mind completely to ever grabbing a hold myself. Somehow, on a random Saturday, my mind was open. Six hours earlier I had no idea it was ever going to be a thing. Three days later I was in a gym climbing walls for the first time, and now I want more of it.

You can take the same trail and get the same experience over and over. Or you can take a footpath that might lead to nowhere and waste an afternoon. Or it could be one of the biggest discoveries of your life. If you never take the footpath, you will never find out which one it was. If you never ask the question, the answer is always no.

`> thirteen months down the footpath: exit_ramp_anniversary.log`

Thirteen months ago an HR person tried to shame me for something I did not do. I could have taken it, gone back to work the next week, and let them tear me apart piece by piece. That was the familiar path. The path with certainty, even though the certainty was that it would end badly. No doubt about it. Instead, for the first time in my adult life, I said, “Fuck that” and bounced. I stepped off the known trail into the liminal unknown, the same way I did off the side of that Clayton Beach trail thirteen months later. I told my therapist I almost want to write that HR woman a thank you letter, because that strange phone call ended up changing the entire direction of my life.

If I had stayed in that job, I would not be sober. I would still be living inside my patterns, still the life of the party and the death of every relationship, probably a few more intoxicated psych ward visits deep. If I had not chosen a different path, one that cost me a six figure income, nothing in my life would be different. And as chaotic as everything has been since that moment, I would not change a damned thing about the exit I took. It unraveled exactly the way it needed to, so I could make the changes I made and end up standing on top of the best peak I have ever climbed. When we keep choosing the same thing, we get the same results, and doing that while expecting something different is the actual definition of insanity. I am batshit crazy with a doctor’s note to prove it, but I am not insane. The only way to live differently, suffer less, and find a happier, healthier path is to choose to do things differently. In my case, I blew the whole thing up starting with my career, and every part of my life has been burning down and rebuilding since. Relationships, job, family, friends, patterns, substances. Everything.

This month kept adding to that unraveling. A deeper unmasking of my autism. Discovering PDA. Losing more of my former neurotypical identity, piece by piece, the way old skin comes off. Fifteen thousand six hundred magnetic pulses into my brain through TMS for PTSD, and walking straight past a huge trigger with almost no nervous system activation afterward, which after months of the opposite tells me something is genuinely shifting in there.

`> july by the numbers: july_2026_stats.csv`

Stood on the pier the 4th of July and restored my independence, blowing up a relationship like the fireworks I watched moments later

On my way to the pier for an Independence Day declaration I didn’t expect hours before

200 Days of Sobriety, celebrated with a fully unhinged Janet Jackson Escalade dance in the wetlands

Danced a tribute to my Old Enemy
207 days completely chemically sober by month’s end
A Bassnectar dance on an empty pier where I channeled a mothership and confirmed I am, in fact, the captain of the vibe
292 miles walked, averaging 9.4 miles a day

A new fine art nude photography client who booked a second session

Assisted a professional photographer on two engagement shoots and one elopement

Two trips to Artist Point, two bouldering classes, nine problems attempted and half of them sent
Two skirts bought and proudly worn

22 sunsets watched at the pier, another 5 on the waterfront elsewhere, because I get cranky without watching the sun go down

My first ever festival.

A six hour class on understanding conflict.

A three hour Thai massage.
The kindness project I am involved in has reached over 5000 known acts of kindness, rippling into at least 30,000 acts of kindness paid forward
Light painted again after almost three years away from it

Downtown Sounds, Barkley Village, Boulevard Park, and three Elizabeth Park concerts

23 meals eaten in 31 days, and finished the month 3.9 pounds heavier anyway

Four close calls with drivers ignoring crosswalks, including the president of a local trash company who nearly hit me, blamed me for it, and told me he didn’t see me because I blended in with the flowers on the corner

These are the flowers I “blended in with”

I wear a wide angle body camera for exactly these occasions now. The next person who pulls something like that is going on Reddit. Mr. Trash Company President gets a pass this time, because I held him accountable in other ways that felt sufficient, and I actually believe he will drive more carefully next time.

`> the fuck you's of july: fuck_yous.txt`

Nervous system discomfort
Hard relationship decisions
People who take my decisions about my own needs as some kind of personal attack
People who pathologize me prioritizing myself
Naps that refuse to happen
Clouds fucking up my astrophotography

PDA and the nervous system activation that comes with it
Living in the same town as people I would rather not run into
Medical mysteries, an upset gut, body aches

`> gratitude, still here: gratitude_log.txt`

Fun laughter with a bestie. The clarity and courage to end a connection that never had mutual feelings behind it. Beautiful weather. Solitude, and the gentle presence of a bestie who let me have both. My health and my ability to walk long distances. A lovely visit with another bestie. A cooler rainy day that finally let me rest. Getting to camp again after eleven months without.

A breathwork ceremony that led me straight into insight about grief. The chance to work alongside a photography mentor of mine. A visit with a new bestie. Pier sunsets. The ability to hike and climb at all. The chance to explore more fine art nude photography. The TMS treatment I get to pursue. The unexpected discovery of bouldering, and access to an incredible facility for it.

`> nothing about this month was predicted: unplanned_output.log`

None of what I just listed is what I predicted when I imagined July a month ago. It was nothing I could anticipate or spin myself into anxiety about in advance. It simply happened, whether I wanted it to or not. Life unfolding exactly as it saw fit, and I have not resisted a single second of it.

Therapists, mentors, and healers have been telling me for months to trust the process. To be open to what is waiting in the unfolding. That the right things will come to me instead of me hunting them down like I am on some kind of safari. Surrendering the control I have carried my whole life feels absurd when I write it out plainly, like the print hanging on my wall that just says Universe, I am trusting you. I am thirteen months unemployed, with a finite amount of savings left, no retirement, and no idea what I am going to do for money next. And I am not concerned. Not the slightest bit. Because I am learning, day by day, that what is waiting for me is going to find me in ways I cannot predict or orchestrate, and I just have to stay open to the endless possibilities, including the ones I never would have considered before, or ones that do not appeal to me in the moment. Whatever happens, I am going to actually be okay.

I am not saying I have no wants, needs, or vision. I keep them in the back of my head so when an opportunity shows up, I am ready to grab it. I am simultaneously wide open to anything I cannot yet imagine, have not yet experienced, or have not yet done.

Reality is that I was fucking stuck in a big mess of the same thing I had been in for my entire life. Sure, it wasn’t an exactly identical experience all along, but it still had the same putrid pungent odor of years past. Suffering emotionally. Poor mental health. Harmful patterns and losing myself inside codependency. No real identity of my own. No self love. Deep self hatred and shame that I hid from everyone. Intense fear. Performing. Rescuing. Abandoning myself constantly. Nonstop anxiety and nervous system activation. Masking I was not even conscious of. Substance use. Relationships that looked fine from the outside with a rotting foundation underneath.

I didn’t know how deeply buried in shit I was. I did not even realize I was starting to dig myself out when I walked away from my career. I had no idea the biggest liminal space of my life was already heading toward me.

And when I got there, for the first time in my life, I walked directly into the dark. No flashlight, no map, no owner’s manual. Just trust in the process and the surrender of an illusion of control I had lived inside for forty two years. I accepted that I was powerless over most things except my own inner peace, and that real peace comes from letting go of what is outside my influence and focusing only on what I can actually change. The only thing I can change is how I respond to what I cannot control, which turns out to be nearly everything in life. Including this entire month of July. Almost none of it was in my direct control. None of it was predicted a month ago. My response has been learning, gratitude for the lessons, gratitude for the joy, gratitude for the memories, and gratitude just for being alive at all.

`> what's waiting in the unknown directory: august_unknown/`

You know me and metaphors by now. It is how my brain understands and processes anything. Maybe it’s the autism, I don’t know. But last Saturday, a metaphor I think about constantly became reality. I lived it, in a series of events I never saw coming.

Definitely didn’t anticipate this moment

Take the footpath you have not taken. Take the risk. Walk away from what is not serving you, even when you are certain the alternative will be terrible. If I had not taken the footpath off my career thirteen months ago, I would not be writing this post tonight. I would not be sober. I would not have the new connections I have now. I would not be living free of my patterns. I would not be getting TMS treatment. On and on. I had to face what it would mean to lose $110,000 a year in income and lose the person standing next to me. And somehow everything is actually working out fine. I am perfectly okay. I am okay regardless. And no matter what life throws at me next, I will still be okay then too.

I can’t wait to see what’s waiting for me in August.