Tiny celebrations

The Edge of Belonging

But first, a tiny celebration. My latest essay published outside the world of Substack is called “The Edge of Belonging” and it traces the moment an unexpected “instruction” at Blackgang Cliff led me to a new life and a deeper creative practice on the Isle of Wight, England. It’s a story that explores how we weave ourselves into a new landscape through paying attention and “embodied trust”. This essay was recently published by Jean G-Owen (Naked Figleaf Press’s Figmentum Folio). I’d love you to have a read and leave me a comment.

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On Substack

Its been a while since I shared anything about the people and posts that are catching my attention right here on Substack, so here’s a round up of that!

• I recently discovered Angeline () - a fellow mapper, who offers step-by-step world building. It’s always wonderful to find a kindred, mapping spirit!

• Ongoing direct chats and Notes conversations with other wonderful creatives: , and . I’m hoping these will lead to some collaborative cross-overs, and I’m looking forward to seeing them unfold, in a moodling kinda way

• Tammy Garcia () because I’m doing her 61-day Index-Card-A-Day challenge for the sixth time. You might have seen my pieces in Notes (here’s one)

• Zines have come back into my awareness in a big way and I’ve been making collections of double exposure zines to sell, using them as workshop booklets and more. I explored small web app to make foldable zines and may contribute to the Free Zine library in the future.

• I participated in Cedric’s Photography Zine Exchange Launch sending a zine off to Germany. I’m still waiting for mine to arrive - I can’t wait to explore it. ()

• A series of Notes conversations with Alexander () about the ups and downs of the Substack algorithm and (re)-finding our way on Pinterest with some help from

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In my offline world

A stunning old Glasshouse at The Green Barn on the West Wight caught my attention as a workshop venue (The Practice of Moodling). We spent 30 minutes inside it, moodling and noticing everything it had to offer. During an early morning walk on a local beach, I began to notice shards of scallop shells - their colours and shapes. Why have I never noticed these before?

A new attention catcher for me is immersing myself in a Writing Salon. I’ve attended two hosted by from where we discuss progressive themes related to writing. It feels so luxurious to sit and talk exclusively about a specific aspect of writing with other writers for two hours, in a stunning art studio space (Art-House-Life in East Cowes).

Finding ways to generate income is taking up more of my head space and attention than I want it to, and it prompted me to share how I’m really feeling in a recent Note. Of course that means my attention has been on participating in events around the Island that help me generate income. It is certainly keeping me busy!

Your turn

Where has your attention been drawn to recently?
What is catching your attention, and why?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Sunday Pocket Notes, in this form. Let me know your thoughts - if you want more like this or not.

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You can support me by signing up for a paid subscription, restacking and sharing my stories and posts. For the price of a coffee, you can also support me through my Buy Me a Coffee page ⬇️

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Sunday Pocket Notes are small reflective postcards - moments of curiosity, insight, and exploration from inside Mappery.

I’ve got a cracking story to share about getting ready for my upcoming workshop, The Practice of Moodling this weekend.

The week’s been jam-packed with all sorts of seemingly random tasks: sorting wool, gathering buttons, painting stones, folding little paper baskets, making hand-written zines, running social media ads ... It sounds a bit daft when I jot it all down, doesn’t it?

Funny thing is, none of these activities originated in a pre-conceived plan.

A symbolic container for gathering attention

I didn’t really intend to whip up a “symbolic container for gathering attention”. I simply sat down to make cute paper origami baskets because I knew people would need somewhere to pop their odds and ends gathered during the workshop. It was a purely practical task, nothing more.

It was only later that I twigged what I’d actually created. A basket is a container, isn’t it? And moodling’s a bit like a container too. It’s a way to gather up observations, questions, random bits, connections and those little things that catch our eye on a daily basis. People might turn up to the workshop feeling a bit scattered, and I hope that by the end, they start picking up threads that mean something to them.

Turns out, the basket might do the same thing. Participants will spend the afternoon moodling: collecting little details, curiosities and observations. Then they’ll head home with that small basket holding some of their discoveries.

I didn’t mean to create a metaphor. I just followed a practical need and stumbled upon the meaning afterwards. Which, now I think about it, is exactly what Moodling’s all about.

The same thing happened with the workshop materials. I’d collected together a random set of wool, buttons, stones, collage bits, beads and ribbons. But when I saw them spread out together on my studio desk, they were no longer random. They became delightful, delicious possibilities and invitations to moodle. They were things waiting to be noticed, each with their own little vibe.

“What experience do I want people to have?”

The workshop itself has come together much the same way.

I’ve prepped for and given loads of workshops over the years, and most of the creative ones started with me asking, “What shall I teach, or what do I want people to learn?” Lately, though, I’ve been kicking things off with a different question: “What experience do I want people to have?”

For this workshop, the answer was refreshingly straightforward. I want people to experience moodling and noticing. I want them to respond to what catches their attention. I want them to trust themselves and their own curiosity a bit more than they usually would.

The activities seemed to organise themselves around those intentions, once they became clear.

• The stones will prompt exploration of the Glasshouse

• The wool might work as threads of connection

• The collage bits are tiny unsolved, visual mysteries

• The buttons will invite people to take a closer look at something old and discarded

Even the venue’s become a key player in the workshop. At some point in the unfolding of the activities, the Glasshouse became one of the workshop ‘facilitators’. It isn’t just a musty old room because its geometry, shadows, reflections, textures and unexpected details will all weave into the experience for the participants. The workshop will happen in conversation with The Glasshouse, not just take place inside it.

Remembering why moodling is my philosophy of attention

Reflecting and writing about this slightly off-the-wall process has brough me back full circle to why moodling is my philosophy of attention.

Moodling isn’t really about creating things or even making things happen. It’s about being mindful of what currently exists around us in the mundanity of everyday. It’s about letting meaning emerge throughout the process of being curious and following a unplanned thread.

Who’d of thought that folding a paper basket because people need a spot for their treasures, would lead to the realisation that the thing I made was actually teaching me what the workshop was all about?

So, if you’ve ever wondered what workshop prep looks like in my world, it’s apparently about sorting wool, folding paper baskets, redefining what a co-facilitator is and following threads to places I never thought they’d lead.

Come to think of it, this is pretty much how I create anything!

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Until next time.

Related pieces

This piece is part of the “in conversation with my image” series. My hope is that this series will encourage others to see creativity as a dynamic force fuelled by curiosity and disruption. By sharing my insights, I aim to inspire others to embrace their creative chaos for discovery and innovation.

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Subscribe now

A few weeks ago, I took part in my very first Isle of Wight Open Studios, an annual arts festival where over 200 artists opened their studios and creative spaces to the public. Over eleven days, visitors moved between studios, galleries, home workspaces and pop-up venues, meeting artists and seeing their work up close.

I expected people to engage with the technicalities and ask how the double exposure images were made. And they did. There were conversations about cameras, apps, overlays and processes. Those discussions were enjoyable, but they’re not what’s stayed with me in the last few weeks.

I’m still thinking about the conversations that came after the technical talk

Once people stopped trying to work out how an image had been made, they began responding to it.

Visitors noticed different details. They saw stories I hadn’t seen. They made connections I hadn’t anticipated. Some told me the images disrupted their thinking because it wasn’t photography in the “traditional sense” or they couldn’t settle on a single interpretation. Many told me the images felt magical, whimsical or they wanted to step into them. Others found themselves paying attention to parts of the image they would normally have overlooked.

But this is my favourite story. One visitor lingered in my space for quite some time, looking at the images on display before turning to me and saying:

“You’ve disrupted my thinking.”

We chatted for a while, and he left. To be honest, I did an little secret dance because I was overjoyed about the comment, because that is exactly what I am trying to do through my creative practice - whether it’s through double exposures or personal mapping.

That conversation is cemented into my brain because there was something about my images had followed that person home - lodged itself somewhere in his thinking and continued working on him long after he had left the building. Woohoo!

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When I got home and thought about those conversations later, I realised that what interested me the most wasn't how people understood the process of making double exposures. It was how differently they experienced the finished image.

This reminded me of something I wrote recently in The Delight Detective’s guide to breaking the rules. In that piece, I explored how deliberately interrupting my usual habits helps me avoid creative stagnation. Not by constantly seeking novelty, but by creating enough distance from familiar patterns that I can notice what I have stopped seeing.

Open Studios felt like another version of that same idea

The images I had on display remained exactly the same throughout the 11 days of the event. What changed on a daily basis was the relationship each person had with those images. Their memories, assumptions, experiences and curiosities all shaped what they noticed, how they responded, what they said to me, and what they took away with them.

The experience has given me some additional insights in that many of my daily creative practices work in a similar way. Moodling interrupts efficiency. Mapping interrupts linear thinking. Double exposures actively interrupt traditional technical rules and “good practice”, as well as the expectation of literal representation or interpretation.

Each practice creates an intentional pause in the flow of everyday attention, giving me many and varied brief opportunities to look at what caught my attention.

I got to thinking that:

Perhaps disruption is simply the moment we realise there is more than one way of seeing
Perhaps those disruptive moments are worth paying attention to because they are often where a new story can take root and blossom.

Your turn

What most reliably disrupts your usual way of seeing?

• A conversation

• An image or artwork

• A place

• A song, film or book

• Something else

I’d love to know.

Leave a comment

Until next time.

Related pieces

This piece is part of the “in conversation with my image” series. My hope is that this series will encourage others to see creativity as a dynamic force fuelled by curiosity and disruption. By sharing my insights, I aim to inspire others to embrace their creative chaos for discovery and innovation.

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Subscribe now

For the past twelve years, I’ve sought out the subtle magic found in the overlooked details we often walk past or ignore, because they seem commonplace. I’ve worked hard to let go of pursuing “perfect” shots and instead I’ve embraced the beauty that lies within the small, gritty details that are around us: the whispers of the everyday.

In a recent post I wrote about being a Delight Detective and how this helps me “break the rules”. Discovering delight starts with tuning into mundane: the world’s hidden layers and details rather than just looking for a polished outcome.

Let’s get into the details of what this looks like. This is really a two part post, so in this part I will talk about expressing myself through detail and how this helps me tune into the mundane. In the next post I’ll talk about recognising that creative attention intuitively begins in my body.

It’s all in the details

Philippa Stanton1 writes that: “really paying attention to everything around you sounds simple, but it actually demands a level of curiosity and observation that most people are not used to exercising. And it takes time”. [Conscious Creativity]

She is right. It is not easy for us to pay attention to what is around us. We are used to burying ourselves in screens of some sort - phones, tablets, laptops or computers, TVs... I know that I used to walk around with my eyes metaphorically closed.

So I pay attention, notice something.
How does that come out in my images through creative practice?

Over time, it has become second nature for me to look for the details in the world around me and create images of these details using a juxtaposition of elements, expressed through the contrast of light and shadow, through contrasting textures and shapes, through filling the frame.

Most of the time, I am looking at the minute details in the environment and landscape around me. I’m seldom looking at the conventional view of a place. I am the person who is on her knees, looking in the opposite direction to everyone else, peering closely at seemingly empty spaces and mundane, perhaps even ugly objects - all in pursuit of detail.

For me as a holistic photographer, the common thread expressed visually in my images is the detail. My photographs and images will generally include some or all of these aspects:

• Light / shadow / reflection / contrast

• Texture / pattern / decay

• Shape / line / form (geometry)

• Space / perspective / juxtaposition

Shapes, lines, shadow, texture, pattern, reflection - that’s what I’m all about!

But if my ‘visual voice is detail’, what does that really mean for me? For you?

The details that I capture in my immediate surroundings are both contextual and abstract at the same time. It goes without saying that the details always exist in a bigger context. That means that the image will have a different meaning for you than it does for me. Let me explain.

Take a look at this very mundane image composed around circular shapes and parallel lines. I know that the circles are on a coffee table in a favourite coffee shop in the town where I live on the Isle of Wight, in England, and that I was there with my son having iced coffee and bubble waffles.

You don’t. So for you they are an abstraction - its a collection of shapes and lines. You may resonate with it, you may not. If I hadn’t told you about the context, you wouldn’t know they’re part of a table - you’d see wood, shapes, textures and composition.

I see the context and can recall the related memory. I have a recognisable anchor and a different response to the image than you do.

Small details have no recognisable anchor

This is the beauty of details; there is not always a recognisable anchor. This leaves you free to interpret what you see in your own way. Bigger views, cityscapes, landscapes and the like have the tendency to force our brains to “work out where it is” and put a label on it: “Oh, that’s the Eiffel Tower” or “That’s Table Mountain”. With the label comes judgement - all the beliefs, values, experiences that we carry and might attach to that label.

All of this before we have a chance to actually engage with the image itself.

More and more, I’m feeling that true creative practice requires us to disrupt the relentless quest for perfection. Our days are made up of the small things - joys, details, routines, interactions… We need to tune into becoming part of the process, no matter how mundane, and ignite a passionate curiosity about the process itself.

A parting reflection

What small, mundane, weathered detail in your surroundings is asking you to pause, pay attention and recognise it as a piece of magic today?

True discovery happens when you become excited about the simple process of being curious. As you go about your day, take a closer look at the “grunge” beneath your feet. Tune in. Listen to what it whispers to you.

Leave a comment

Related pieces

This piece is part of the “in conversation with my image” series. My hope is that this series will encourage others to see creativity as a dynamic force fuelled by curiosity and disruption. By sharing my insights, I aim to inspire others to embrace their creative chaos for discovery and innovation.

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Subscribe now

I hope that got your attention - it was meant to!
You may or may not agree, but hear me out.

Starting out

Regardless of the artistic mode we work in, we are taught that “art” means we must adhere strictly to rules, master certain techniques and focus relentlessly on a flawless, finished product that is perfect enough to put out into the world. Of course, when we start out, we need to learn the basics of our craft from those who have come before. We need to become comfortable with our tools and build our skills. This is the phase where we replicate because we love how someone else does things, how someone else’s work looks, how that work makes us feel. That’s why there is a thriving industry of artists teaching their methods and techniques. I’m not saying this is wrong - it has its place - this is where we get started, where we learn our craft and skills.

Starting to experiment

Hopefully, there comes a point in the replication process where we start to experiment. If we want to develop as an artist, this is the important phase and where we need to pay the most attention to what’s happening in our practice and how this makes us feel in our bodies. This is when I started feeling the tingles and excitement.

This is where we start to be an artist.

We need to break away from how others do it, and do it our own way. It’s time to mould all that learning and those principles into our own practice, one that suits our individual context, style and physiological make up. If we stay on the path of “doing it by the book” or doing it “so and so’s way” forever, it can lead to “stuckness” and stagnation - a reluctance to produce our own art, or develop our own creative practice, that reflects who we are at our core. There is something in the idea that sometimes, to find the “new,” we must break the old.

The practice of being a Delight Detective

To dismantle the trap of perfectionism, and break away from the rigid path of “shoulds” and rules, I stopped being a technical photographer long ago and started practicing being a “Delight Detective”. Yes, I know how to use my camera, to compose images - but those things are now intuitive, rather than technical. They have become part of me.

I rely heavily on playful, delightful disruption as an antidote to creative stagnation. As a Delight Detective, I take my mission seriously to not replicate an existing aesthetic or to blindly copy someone else’s methods, style or practice but to celebrate serendipity and embrace the pull of curiosity and the chaos of my own process! Shifting my focus from the “finished” to the “fluid” allows me to literally become obsessed with the process of being curious.

My Disruption Matrix

I’ve created a Disruption Matrix to help you see how being a Delight Detective differs from a more traditional approach specifically with regards to photography - but this could apply to other artistic spheres. I’ve simplified it for this post.

The Traditional Trap

1. The primary goal: Flawlessly finished products and uniform aesthetics, possibly in an accepted style or form, or using a certain technique.

2. The core methodology: Strict adherence to established techniques and “best practices”.

3. The ultimate state: Leads to creative stagnation. Images that look the same as everyone else’s, because, lets face it, we all have a camera at hand these days, don’t we?

The Delight Detective

• The primary goal: Curiosity and intentional disruption.

• The core methodology: Being open to what comes in the moment through intuitive exploration, somatic triggers, paying attention to the minutiae of daily life and serendipity. Embracing the mess!

• The ultimate state: Creative liberation in my own practice.

Because I intuitively know the practicalities of taking a photograph and am comfortable with my tools, by working in this way for well over 10 years, I have found that I actively disrupt:

• Traditional technical rules and “good practice” by paying attention in my own way

• The expectation of literal representation: a pretty image, a sweeping vista or a conventional portrait

• The hollow concept of a “flawless product” because let’s face it, we can chase this forever. “Good enough and done” is the goal, guided by the question: will the final image encourage viewers to have a response to it?

A call to curiosity

I opt for movement over perfection. For me, in my everyday practices of photography, mapping and mixed media art, the final outcome is secondary; the journey of curiosity is what I am chasing and never knowing how an image (or piece) will actually turn out.

Over to you

How does your creative practice feel at the moment: stagnant or alive? Would you be prepared to abandon the pursuit of the “right” way and instead revel in the joy and delight of discovery, Delight Detective?

Stop trying to replicate. Start disrupting your own practice.

Leave a comment

Related pieces

This piece is part of the “in conversation with my image” series. My hope is that this series will encourage others to see creativity as a dynamic force fuelled by curiosity and disruption. By sharing my insights, I aim to inspire others to embrace their creative chaos for discovery and innovation.

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Subscribe now

Wait, what?

Ok, not intentionally, as in a real conversation with the man. But a serendipitous, unknown one. There is something strangely satisfying about discovering that a word you chose by instinct has a history that reaches back several centuries. ‘Mappery’ as it happens, was coined by Shakespeare in “Troilus and Cressida”. This is what Gavin Hollis said of the connection he saw between mappery from Shakespeare’s context and my name:

I love that you found the word “mappery” with no help from Shakespeare. As used in Troilus and Cressida (a play that is hardly well known), the reference is to “bed work, mappery, closet war” - it suggests that map reading is a leisurely and unserious pursuit as opposed to the fighting of a war. Map-use in this line is playful, but for its speaker, Ulysses, this is not a good thing (whereas for you of course the playfulness is integral to the process). The line also echoes what you say about space: Ulysses is thinking about map reading as a practice that takes place in specific places in the home. While Shakespeare wasn’t on your mind when you came to the word, there is something of its original usage in your own practice. [Gavin Hollis, Associate Professor, Department of English, Hunter College CUNY]

Now, do you see what I mean about the unknown conversation?

Choosing the name

I didn’t know that when I named my Substack back in 2023. I simply knew that the word felt right for what I was trying to do back then. I was looking for something that would be a container for what I wanted to do: for a way of paying attention, recording, visual journaling, making mixed media art but also for making sense of things in my life without coming to conclusions and explanations too quickly.

• ‘Mapping’ felt a little too technical because I’m not working in the GIS sphere.

• ‘Maps’ would perhaps put me into a niche that I didn’t want to be in.

• But ‘Mappery’ had a looseness to it, a sense of something in motion. It also felt a little playful and experimental, giving space for that partial understanding I was needing.

This name felt spacious, yes. A place I could work and grow in. Which I have done since.

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Mapping as a living process, not maps as objects

Looking back, I can see now that I was less interested in maps as objects and more interested in mapping as a process and living practice: a way of orienting myself in a lived sense, not a geographical one.

• How do we make sense of what we are experiencing when it’s not even clear yet?

• How do we connect things to one another without forcing them into a packaged story or narrative too soon?

Even though I’ve thought many times about changing the name of my publication, I have stayed with ‘Mappery’ - it still reflects what I am trying to do here.

More recently, I found myself naming another part of my work ‘Kumapelo’. This word wasn’t drawn from a specific language, although it does carry a Southern African resonance that reflects part of my own lived history. It was important that the name contained and held the word “map” as an action rather than an object, because the work is iterative, so the name needed to allow for repetition, growth and change.

If I were to describe Mappery and Kumapelo now, I would say they are more about how I practice paying attention. My way of paying attention to and working with what I encounter and engage with every day, allowing connections to emerge - creating the conditions in which to see something about my life, in hard copy, on paper, in front of me.

The unexpected loop I moodled through

Which brings me back to this unexpected loop: I chose a word by instinct. A scholar reached out because he is tracing its history and found my publication. The question he asked got me to articulate something that was more instinctive than rational. And from that loop, an awareness emerged, and lots of questions too!

Your turn

• Where does the name for your publication come from? What is the story behind it?

• Was it a logical or instinctive choice?

Leave a comment

Related posts

You can support me by signing up for a paid subscription, restacking and sharing my stories and posts. For the price of a coffee, you can also support me through my Buy Me a Coffee page ⬇️

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Sunday Pocket Notes are small reflective postcards - moments of curiosity, insight, and exploration from inside Kumapelo.

I was putting together the Moodling in the Margins booklet from my weekly field notes. I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself for having maintained my “field notes” over time and the pages I was rearranging felt alive: full of notes and images, arrows racing across the page alongside questions that remain unanswered. The excited tingle that shot down my right leg was a message that there was something here to explore, nudging me to take another step. I wasn’t sure what that step was, but I listened to what that tingle was telling me anyway.

Plot twist!

On a whim, I asked AI to interview me about my double exposure photography: What do you notice? How do you decide what to photograph? How do your double exposure images come together? That kind of thing. (Side note: I do this regularly, and it’s like striking gold with all the hidden treasures buried in my brain!)

When I answered, instead of listening to the “shoulds” and “ought tos” of conventional photographic techniques and wisdom, and my loud, overbearing inner critic, I ended up describing the tangible experience of creating; the magic moments of my process: the sparks of interest, how one image suggests another, how choosing to fuse images together emerged from instinct, listening, not planning.

Two insights came out of this. One was the experience of my work - curiosity, disruption, paying attention to the everyday. The other was the structure beneath it - the sequence of decisions, the way double exposure images come together, the stages an idea moves through and more.

I took my interview responses in their raw form and translated them into visuals as AI-generated slide decks. Another full body response flowed. Seeing my own words laid out like a map offered a fresh perspective. Then it hit me.

I do not need to create new content, systems or methods to show my process (echoing and reinforcing what I’d realised a few weeks ago). I have been doing it all along.

“Hello?? I am the method”

My method had been sneakily evolving over years through a hidden dance of curiosity and paying attention, all wrapped around tiny micro decisions that have shaped each double exposure image I’ve ever created.

I went back to the Moodling pages with a completely different understanding of what they were. The scribbles, arrows and half-baked ideas were all part of this dance. They were the process in its most immediate form.

Unfiltered moments of attention

I must admit to having a bit of a creative epiphany. Attention weaves in and out, much like a curious cat, shifting its path in delightful, unexpected way. Meaning seems to emerge by engaging with what captures my interest and remaining attentive to that.

When these pages are shared at the upcoming Open Studios, I’m hoping that people will see my process as a living thing. I want a doorway to swing open for people.

The doorway to permission and freedom to trust what we notice, even when it’s still a muddled mess. I invite them to step over that threshold, through that doorway for themselves. By sharing the unfiltered moments of my attention, the dance remains alive between me and my images, and between my images and other people, always evolving as an ongoing conversation.

The moral of this story? My Moodling in the Margins pages are where I have a conversation with my image - they’re a creative process journal for my double exposure photography. When I applied my practice of attention to my own process, the structure revealed itself.

What next?

Over the next month or so, I am going to pick out the gems from this process and go deeper into what I found, structured over 2 parts. My aim is to explore my creative practice as a way to offer inspiration to others.

In Part 1, I’ll dive into my perceptual world, driven by curiosity and a desire to disrupt the ordinary, showing how noticing the mundane fuels my creativity. My field notes connect moodling and paying attention to the image, establishing the “in conversation with my image” concept. In Part 2, I’ll break down my process into actionable and reflective steps, showing how it highlights intuition and differs from conventional methods. We’ll explore how to work with this intuitive approach, keeping its spontaneity. I’ll also look at how intentional constraints boost creativity.

I’ll also bring this right down to the art of pairing images, revealing the decision-making process in making double exposures and the silent dialogues that arise from this pairing.

My hope is that this series will encourage others to see creativity as a dynamic force fuelled by curiosity and disruption. By sharing my insights, I aim to inspire others to embrace their creative chaos for discovery and innovation.

Will you join me?

Leave a comment

Related pieces

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Subscribe now

These are some of the books and references that have shaped my mapping practice and how I think about maps, symbols and story. They have helped me see mapping as something creative, artistic and living rather than technical.

These books sit on the shelves of my Map Room. They are part of the wider conversation around personal cartography and visual storytelling. They provide a welcoming backdrop to my personal cartography work without influencing its form too much.

I just want to say that you do not need to read any of these to begin your own personal mapping journey. But if you are curious about where some of the threads of my work began, these are a few of the sources. Let me know if you have any favourites of your own!

Books that changed how I see maps

The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey
This book reads like a mystery novel, showing how maps carry obsession, power and personality. It reminds me that maps are human objects before they are tools.

You Are Here by Katharine Harmon
A collection of personal and experimental maps. This one validated what I’d been doing for a while with my own personal maps. It showed that maps can record my lived experiences, not just geography.

Pictorial Maps: History, Design, Ideas and Sources by Nigel Holmes
A rich look at illustrated mapping. It sharpened my eye for the way that clarity and play work together.

Strange Maps by Frank Jacobs
Unexpected, political, humorous. This book stretches the idea of what a map can hold.

Books that deepen my practice

Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking by Jill K. Berry
Practical and reflective. This book aligns closely with what we are doing in Kumapelo. It explores mapping as process and personal record, using mixed media art approaches.

The Complete Encyclopedia of Signs and Symbols by Mark O’Connell & Raje Airey
This book has been with me literally for decades - since the days when I made hand-made mandalas. It is now a reference I return to when building visual vocabulary for my maps. It helps me consider how symbols carry meaning across time and culture, and what they mean to me on a personal level.

Research that shaped the thinking

Cartographic Design as Visual Storytelling by Robert E. Roth (2021)
I made a map based on this scholarly article because it was such an insightful piece exploring how maps tell stories through design choices. You can see my map here. It affirms something many of us sense when we begin mapping our lives… that structure influences meaning.

Books that keep curiosity alive

The Ordnance Survey Great British Treasure Hunt by Ordnance Survey
I found this book during one of the COVID lockdowns and what a treasure it was to moodle through! Now, it reminds me that mapping also involves delight. This book brings back the pleasure of searching, noticing and following clues.

A future reading list

Here are some I have in my future reading list:

• Vargic’s Miscellany of Curious Maps: The Atlas of Everything You Never Knew You Needed to Know by Martin Vargic

• Maps That Changed the World by John O. E. Clark

• The Royal Geographical Society Puzzle Book: Pit your wits against the world’s greatest explorers by The Royal Geographical Society Enterprises Ltd and Nathan Joyce

If you have a book that has changed how you see maps or visual storytelling, I’d love to know - leave me a comment! I am always adding to this shelf.

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It seems that I have a lot going on, and that I have a lot to say about what’s going on.

I suppose that is what life transitions offer us.

The format in this letter today is a little different. I have two related posts for you. They share a deep resonance, revealing my lifelong commitment to organising complexity and the evolution of a creative practice grounded in "paying attention” and curiosity.

After two and a half years as Head of Education at a South African non-profit, I paused part way through my lengthy documentation processes to follow my own advice to pause and step back (which is a rare occurrence I can tell you). To my slight amazement, I’d built a coherent system of recruitment, training and data tracking that I’m hoping will function quite happily without me.

My “mapper’s mind” is an incurable trait. I cannot help but:

• Notice fragmentation and polish it into visibility. My instinct to organise and map complexity always kicks in

• Build navigable structures so I can eventually disappear from them.

• Link complex messes into a usable, seamless whole, normally through organic and unintentional system building

I’ve now pivoting from external programmes to internal experiences in my creative practices and via the Kumapelo personal mapping space, but with slightly less rigid systems and a “slightly wobbly map” to use going forward.

At 61, the realisation is profound.

I. Am. Not. Starting. Something. New.
I am simply carrying on a lifelong tradition of making complex ideas accessible - to myself and others.

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The architecture of leaving: what remains when you step away from your work

This one is a reflection on the instinct to organise complexity and how the patterns we build move with us, even when they start in the workplace.

When I paused to look at the work as a whole, my handover task took on a whole different meaning.

Read more …

I didn’t set out to build an “ecosystem”

I didn’t set out to create an ecosystem for my creative practice / business. I was just moodling, noticing things, chatting with myself and my images. Then, surprise! I realised: Oh. This isn’t just a bunch of random habits. It’s actually a map of how I wander through the world.

I’m a bit hesitant to call it a system. That word makes it sound like there are rules and a “right way” to do things, like something I’d tackle at work. Instead I’ve tuned into my mapping instincts, mapped it and digitised it so that it can grow alongside my creative journey.

Read more …

Over to you …

Come back here after you’ve dipped into both pieces. If endings are simply better vantage points for the whole map, where are you on your map?

Leave a comment

Just as I’ve built professional structures that could function without my constant input, my current creative work aims to help others organise their own internal experiences and navigate the complexity of their own lives through personal mapping and immersive workshops. Why not give The First Map a go. This 20-minute guided mapping practice lowers the stakes and invites you to externalise just one life experience into a simple, unpolished visual form.

Give your First Map a go...

The Kumapelo Map Room is a shared space for orientation, exploration, and getting a feel for what exists here. These pieces are designed to be curiosity-led, fun to read and revisited when you want to jump back in. There’s no expectation to act, decide, or go deeper unless you want to. You’re welcome to look around, follow what catches your attention, and move at your own pace.

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I didn’t set out to build an “ecosystem”

I didn’t set out to build an ecosystem for my creative practice. I was just noticing things, as I do. Having conversations with myself, my work, and my images.

Recently, if I’m honest, I realised: Oh. This isn’t just a collection of random creative habits. This is actually a whole thing - a slightly wobbly map of how I move through the world. It’s a landscape of my work, a way of framing that work, as well as a way of paying attention.

I’m reluctant to call it a system. That word makes it sound like there are rules, steps and a “right way” to do it. And it makes it sound like something I would do at work, which by the way I wrote about recently.

Of course, I’m a mapper so it’s only natural that I’ve turned to those skills to represent whatever it is as a map of sorts. And I’ve digitised it so that I can adapt and amend it as I grow into this creative chapter.

At the centre of it all: Moodling

if you’ve been in my “ecosystem” for any length of time, you’ll already know that at the heart of everything I do is Moodling. This is my philosophy of attention, which sounds a bit grand. But really it’s just playful noticing, wandering curiosity and slow awareness. Moodling is what happens when I stop trying to be productive for five minutes and accidentally notice something interesting. Then there’s The Alchemy of Listening which is how attention unfolds when you give it time - how things move from noticing to insight.

What you actually do in the “system”

If Moodling is how you are, and Alchemy of Listening is how things unfold… then the methods are how you enter my work. These are ways into a conversation with what’s in front of you - whether that’s a map, a photo or something from your everyday life. There’s 3 ways main ways to do this:

• Responsive Gaze: practicing the pause → then looking → listening → responding

• Personal Mapping: using visual journaling to map what’s happening internally, even if it makes no sense yet

  Visual Moodling: through photography and double exposure images

Inside the photographic side of my work, two practices have emerged. Again, I didn’t design them intentionally - they just appeared once I gave them some attention. These are the Practices of Noticing and Fusion and I have a series dedicated to these starting soon. Watch this space.

Where does the work become real?

My work shows up both online in the digital world in the “real world” via this Substack and especially the Kumapelo Personal Mapping space, through in-person workshops, exhibitions and other immersive experiences.

And how do you experience it?

If you experience any of my work, you will more than likely move through this process in one way or another:

Noticing → Mapping → Reflection → Insight → Integration

In loops and spirals, backward and forward returning to each stage as your attention deepens. You think you’ve had an insight… and realise you’re just noticing again. That’s not a mistake. That is the process.

Over to you …

If you’re here reading this or already a subscriber, you’re more than likely already somewhere on the map. Where might you be?

Leave a comment

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Related posts & some of the research behind this

The Kumapelo Map Room is a shared space for orientation, exploration, and getting a feel for what exists here. These pieces are designed to be curiosity-led, fun to read and revisited when you want to jump back in. There’s no expectation to act, decide, or go deeper unless you want to. You’re welcome to look around, follow what catches your attention, and move at your own pace.

The focus is not on organising a programme, but on helping someone organise their own experience.

In the last few months I have been documenting my last 2 and a half years of work as Head of Education at a South African non-profit in preparation for leaving. Today, I took a moment to stop the frenetic work and step back (essentially following my own advice for once). When I paused to look at the work as a whole, my handover task took on a whole different meaning.

It quickly became clear that I hadn’t just created a set of resources or programmes during my time in this role. I’ve built something much more integrated than I realised. Piece by piece, I’ve designed many of the working structures behind the programme: new coach recruitment, coach training, maths club session delivery, assessment of children in the clubs, data tracking and reporting.

Recognising the instinct to organise

What surprised me most was that these elements held together as a coherent system. Without ever setting out to “build a system,” I had instinctively applied a consistent pattern in how I work: I notice where things feel fragmented or unclear and I begin to organise them. I create structures that allow other people to move through a process without needing constant input. I make things visible, navigable and usable. I seamlessly link those structures together, allowing them to support one another almost instinctively.

Building structures that function without me

There’s a sense of satisfaction in knowing what I’ve built can now hopefully be used by someone else without me being there. Subconsciously I suppose that was always the intention - to leave something behind that continues to function without me.

What I found even more interesting though, is recognising that this way of working is not limited to my “work life” - it is the same strategies and methods that form the foundation of my current creative work; the same instinct to take what is complex or difficult to grasp and give it a shape that can be seen, interacted with and understood.

In this role, my work was creating external systems, as structures that supported learning, delivery and progression in children, coaches and communities. In Kumapelo the focus is on helping someone organise their own internal experiences, not on organising an external programme. That means that the direction moves inward, but the underlying pattern remains the same.

This was quite a profound realisation for me: I am not really starting anything new. I am continuing with underlying practices that have been there all my working life, except that now they take a different form. What I built in my working role was a way of allowing others to work within complexity. My current work serves a similar purpose, but instead focuses on attention, how we perceive things and how we interpret our own lives.

Stepping into the possibility of intentional clarity

Leaving this role does not feel like closing a chapter in the usual sense. At 61, I realise that endings always have much more to teach us than we think. I feel that I’m stepping into a space where I can see more clearly what I have been doing all along. And from here, I can begin to shape it with more intention based on where I am in my life, where I want to go, and with whom.

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Over the past six weeks, I’ve shared plenty of the rich resources available in the Kumapelo space through these Sunday Pocket Notes. This week, I want to extend a different kind of invitation: a move from reading about the work to doing the work together.

Kumapelo Space: Join my new subscriber chat

I’m introducing a subscriber chat for the Kumapelo space. While it functions like a group chat, I have designed this environment to be very intentional: it is a place to practise attention, together.

Let’s transform our attention muscles

In her most recent newsletter Maria Popover, 26-Apr-2026, discussed how the habits by which we govern our attention are the most powerful instruments we have for being active agents in our own lives. She suggests that what we habitually let in shapes what we become. She particularly highlights how we focus our attention and suggests ways to achieve “a better balance between passive and active attention.”

“What we habitually let in …. shape what we become … the choices that become habits are the most powerful instrument we have for being active agents in our destiny — none more transformative than the habits by which we govern our attention.”
[Maria Popover, 26-Apr-2026]

The primary objective of this chat space is to strengthen our attention muscles.

My intention is for this chat to be a place where we recognise those habits and intentionally align them. This is not a space for noise, productivity pressures, or 24/7 engagement. It is a space to slow down and discover what is actually there when we pay attention.

What’s in it for you as a Subscriber?

The Chat enhances my moodling practice by transforming it into a collaborative, real-time environment where you, as subscribers, take an active role in observing and focusing your attention, rather than merely consuming content passively.

It adds a dynamic layer to my creative ecosystem, allowing you to directly experience my method while developing your ability to cultivate active attention, sharpen your perception, and strengthen your self-trust.

What to expect in the Chat Space: live noticing and micro-mapping

My intention is that The Chat Space will be a collaborative space for practicing attention together. I may kickstart and encourage discussions around the following prompts:

• Live Noticing Threads: Engage in shared, real-time observations of a specific image, object or moment, where we articulate what captures our attention in unique ways.

• Micro Mapping Moments: Focus on small, individual actions that reflect my suggested mapping process, without requiring anyone to create a full-blown map.

• In-the-Margins Sharing: I will occasionally share unedited fragments from my process, showing where my attention took hold without refining or explaining it.

• We will have the opportunity to connect through text, images and video.

• Paid subscribers are welcome to start discussions.

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You’re very welcome to join in with conversations in the Chat or simply to watch from the side-lines to follow along. Both are part of the practice.

Over time, this will become a space where we actively hone our attention and we’ll see what emerges from there. Join me there, we start on Sunday evening, 26th April 2026.

How to get started with Chat

1. Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.

Get app

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

Looking for updates from my studio?

Moodling Letter sign up here

You can support me by signing up for a paid subscription, restacking and sharing my stories and posts. For the price of a coffee, you can also support me through my Buy Me a Coffee page ⬇️

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Sunday Pocket Notes are small reflective postcards - moments of curiosity, insight, and exploration from inside Kumapelo.

We are often sold a lie about how we grow: that learning is a predictable, linear progression from point A to point B. We imagine a clean trajectory of checkboxes and steady gains.

This map has been coming into my awareness - again. It’s one of the truest representations I’ve made of how I learn. One that actually happens, complete with the loops, the fog, the moments where something either clicks into place or doesn’t. I have a sneaking feeling that this happens to a lot of us - even if we are unaware of it.

The science of attention and embodied cognition

What has been striking lately is how this map, which comes out of my personal mapping practice, is how it align with some of the science of attention and embodied cognition. When I look at this map - traced from a lifetime of lived experience - I recognise that isn’t just about personal habits. It is a visible representation of how the body and brain work together to make sense of the world. If you’re curious about the science, the links are at the bottom.

The friction of what we carry

If you start at the top left of the map, everything begins with energy. A new idea, a nudge towards something, a sense that there is something here for me. Without any effort on my part, I recognise that feeling immediately. My attention has already moved and I’m aware.

In research terms, this is often described as attention orienting. The brain is constantly scanning and selecting what matters, what stands out, what is worth moving towards. That initial spark is not random. It’s my body and attention already beginning to organise itself around something meaningful or potentially interesting.

Very quickly though, that openness meets resistance. Almost immediately, the learning runs into everything I already carry. Old memories, psychological wounds, prejudices, and established beliefs assumptions about what I can or can’t do. New information does not enter a vacuum - it enters a crowded and busy space. That entering into a space already full of s**t, creates friction; we might even shut down. This "friction" is a biological safety check, not a sign of failure or a lack of intellect.

This is where the nervous system becomes very visible. Work by Stephen Porges tells us how the body continuously assesses whether something feels safe, unfamiliar, or threatening. That assessment happens before conscious thought has fully formed, and it directly shapes what we are able to take in and be aware of. So the resistance I feel isn’t simply a lack of understanding. It is the body filtering the experience through what it already knows.

Staying with the fog of disequilibrium

From there, I drop into what I’ve called the fog of disequilibrium. This is the part I used to avoid, or interpret as failure. Things feel unclear, slightly distorted. I can’t see how everything fits together.

Jean Piaget described this as a necessary condition for learning. It is the point where existing ways of understanding no longer fit what we are encountering. From a cognitive perspective, the system is destabilised. From a bodily perspective, it often feels like tension, uncertainty, or low-level overwhelm. Attention doesn’t have a stable place to rest, which is why it feels so uncomfortable. But this is also the point where reorganisation becomes possible.

If I stay with that discomfort, I notice that things begin to move, gradually. Curiosity starts to appear in the place that felt blocked. I begin to ask questions, to turn things over, to look again.

Thinking through the pen

Research into interoception (how your body lets you know what’s going on or how you pick up signals from inside yourself), including work by Bud Craig and others, shows that our ability to sense internal signals plays a central role in stabilising attention. When I stay with the feeling of not knowing, rather than moving away from it, I am effectively giving attention something to hold onto. That allows curiosity to grow where discomfort used to dominate.

From there, I move into action. I write, I say things out loud and talk to others, I make marks on paper, I test ideas. In the past, I used to teach. This is the part of the process that looks like practice, but is more than that.

Work on embodied cognition, often associated with researchers like Lawrence Barsalou, suggests that thinking is not separate from action. Thinking is shaped through action. The act of moving a pen, arranging ideas visually, or articulating something out loud is not just expressing understanding. It is part of how understanding is formed.

I can see that clearly in my own process and from my own experience when I was doing both my Masters and PhD. The learning deepens because I am interacting with it, not because I have already “figured it out”.

The moment the light comes on

Then there is the moment that everything seems to hinge on.
The point where something takes hold.
A connection forms and the light comes on.

What I’ve come to understand is that this moment is more physiological than cognitive. There is a sense of coherence, where things align and become part of me. Research into insight and creativity often describes this as a moment where different neural systems come into sync and a pattern becomes clear. But what matters to me is that it is felt. There is a shift in the body as much as in the mind. That is how I know something has taken hold.

After that, the learning changes quality, as it moves out of effort and into integration.
I can use it. I can draw on it. I can talk about it clearly.

Over time, it integrates further and becomes part of how I move through the world. In research terms, this might be described as consolidation or integration. In lived terms, it simply becomes part of me. It is there without needing to be called up.

So when I look at this map now, with this new layer of understanding, what stands out is this:

What I once thought of as “my way of learning” feels less personal now and more like a universal pattern that may well apply to others. This pattern becomes visible because I paid close attention to my own experience of learning, and it revealed so much more about myself and humanity as a whole.

Over to you …

Do you recognise any of this in yourself?

• Where does your learning feel open?

• Where does it become unclear?

• Where do you feel that moment where something finally sticks, stays with you?

• What happens in your body when it does? Can you play detective and notice it?

Leave a comment

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Related posts & some of the research behind this

• Neurocognitive Framework of Attention and Creativity
  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/job.2787

• How the Arts Heal: Neural Mechanisms Behind Creative Engagement
  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11480958/

• Mindfulness, Interoception, and the Body
  https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02012/full

• Mindful Movement and Skilled Attention
  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4484342/

• Embodied Cognition and Creativity in Art and Science
  https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01196/full

• The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108032/

The Kumapelo Map Room is a shared space for orientation, exploration, and getting a feel for what exists here. These pieces are designed to be curiosity-led, fun to read and revisited when you want to jump back in. There’s no expectation to act, decide, or go deeper unless you want to. You’re welcome to look around, follow what catches your attention, and move at your own pace.

There’s a moment that happens after a map is finished, when you stop… step back… and look at what’s in front of you, as if you’re seeing the entire piece for the first time.
And suddenly all the scattered pieces begin to feel whole.

This week, you might notice how things start to seem whole.

While you’re inside the process of mapping, it can be hard to see what’s forming.

Attention moves from one detail to the next →
a memory here, a date there, a doodle somewhere else.

Once the map is complete, the connections becomes visible because you decided to give your experiences somewhere to run up next to each other. This is when mapping starts to show you how it works.

The Moment a Map is Finished

Stepping back and surveying the whole.

Collecting Moments, Memories and Experiences

A guide to gathering the pieces of your life that form the foundation of your personal maps.

“Ugly Mapping”

Why your desire for a beautiful page is blocking your self-awareness

Make Your Map

Bring everything together and create your first map, allowing it to be simple, unfinished, and entirely your own.

Return to the Map Room

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Moodling Letter sign up here

You can support me by signing up for a paid subscription, restacking and sharing my stories and posts. For the price of a coffee, you can also support me through my Buy Me a Coffee page ⬇️

Subscribe now

Sunday Pocket Notes are small reflective postcards - moments of curiosity, insight, and exploration from inside Kumapelo.

You are likely using your desire for a beautiful page to avoid actually looking at your life. By allowing a map to be ‘ugly,’ you disable the filter that blocks the most important signals from your body.

When you wait for the perfect ink, the right weight of paper, or a moment of “creative flow” before making a mark, you are treating your map as a trophy rather than a tool for orientation. This pursuit of aesthetics shifts your attention away from the raw, unpolished landscape of your current experience and toward the safer task of arranging bits and pieces into something decorative.

In this creative practice, something vital is lost when you prioritise the “look” of the map over the honesty of the observation. You stop being a cartographer and start being an editor before you have even stepped into the terrain.

Disabling the "nice" filter

Honesty in visual journaling is found in the willingness to record something on the page exactly as it is sensed in the body; it has nothing to do with neatness or artistic skill. By allowing a map to be “ugly,” you disable the “nice” filter which blocks the most important signals from your body. When you return to the practice of paying attention - noticing your posture, your breath, and giving your thoughts space - the marks on the page begin to function as a listening device rather than a judgmental inner critic.

A way to return to yourself

Personal meaning emerges from the courage to see what is actually there, not from a beautiful, balanced layout.

If you’d like to try some “ugly mapping” as a way to align with your current experience, why not give The First Map a go. This 20-minute guided mapping practice lowers the stakes and invites you to externalise just one life experience into a simple, unpolished visual form.

Give your First Map a go...

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Moodling Letter sign up here

Related posts

You can support me by signing up for a paid subscription, restacking and sharing my stories and posts. For the price of a coffee, you can also support me through my Buy Me a Coffee page ⬇️

Subscribe now

A friend once showed me a piece of crochet she had been working on for weeks.

At first glance it looked like a field of small loops. Rows of stitches forming a piece of fabric.

She told me that while she was working on it, the pattern of the piece was hard to see. From close up it was simply stitches building on stitches. Her hands forming the same motion evening after evening: hook … loop … pull through. Repeat. The mechanics and details of making stitches.

Then one afternoon she laid the entire work on the dining room table and took a step back. Running her hand lightly across the surface of the piece, she smiled, inhaled sharply and said: “I couldn’t see the pattern while I was inside it.”

Her realisation stayed with me for another reason.

Finishing a map often feels the same. While the map is being made, attention helps us get deep into the nitty, gritty details, moving from one to another - just a random collection of details or notes.

Attention works in the details. It allows patterns to emerge.

At some point the map tells us its finished. This is where I like to pause and look on it as a complete piece. What, if anything can I see emerging from the threads of the experience I’ve mapped out?

Give your First Map a go...

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Moodling Letter sign up here

You can support me by signing up for a paid subscription, restacking and sharing my stories and posts. For the price of a coffee, you can also support me through my Buy Me a Coffee page ⬇️

Subscribe now

Have you ever found yourself wondering whether any of it is actually working?

It’s that persistent sense that agitates just beneath the surface - in your gut, or your shoulders. You’re showing up, sharing your work, and trying to find the right rhythm to keep yourself visible. And yet, it can still feel as though you’re just not being seen; you are slightly out of view, out of focus.

There is a particular kind of tension that comes with building something of your own, especially when that something is thoughtful and layered. You are told that visibility is the answer - to show up more, be clearer, and make yourself seen. But in the midst of all that effort, something niggles: Is this what visibility is supposed to feel like?

This week, my attention has settled on a new series of double exposure images, “Paying Attention at the Windows.” As I trace these layers, I’m recognising that perhaps visibility isn’t always about being seen by others. Often, it's just about the way we pay attention: creating a moment where we can finally see our own reflection clearly against the backdrop of the world.

Visibility is not always about being seen by others - but seeing yourself

The last time I was here I was talking about visibility. It seems the whole of 2026 is shaping up to centre around that idea, with a lot more to come. I'll come back to this in a moment.

The blurred merging of inside and outside

Windows are delightful, yet strange things, especially for photographers. Their purpose is to protect, to let in light and to let us look out into the world. But when we look at them from the outside, they also reflect ourselves back to us. Depending on the light, the time of day, the angle you stand at, you might see clearly through to what lies beyond. Or you might catch your own reflection layered across the glass. Often, it is something in between - a blurred merging of inside and outside. It is never just one thing.

I’ve been noticing this in the double exposures I’ve been making recently. A friend and I went out yesterday on a photo walk around a local harbour and the businesses that grow up in these environments. Windows in all states of repair featured highly.

I became aware that windows seem to juggle multiple moments, where bits of the outside world are placed cheek by jowl with the more internal, more difficult to name bits. For me, these images don’t offer a clear picture (and of course, that is why I am attracted to them!) but their layers do offer something else.

Why visual journaling reveals our own reflections

Sometimes what we call “wanting to be visible”
is actually a desire to see ourselves more clearly.

Perhaps visibility in my work sits somewhere in this space of attention, awareness and recognition. In creating the conditions where something can be noticed. Where attention lingers long enough for us to notice, become aware and for something to unfold. Not in being always “on", stepping forward or speaking louder …

This is exactly what exploring my experiences with personal mapping does for me. It gives shape to all those things that we hold inside, allowing them to be acknowledged, placed and seen in relation to one another. Something in my awareness shifts when I do this because those things that are already there are now seen, as a whole in front of me.

There is a version of this you can try, on your own. A way of taking that “internal stuff” and giving it just enough form to see it. I’ve built a simple starting point - a First Map, if you like - not as a thing to get right, but as a way to pay attention what is already accessible within us.

When I return to the window, I notice that there is no separation. The world outside is constant, the reflection shifts as I move and the surface holds and balances both, without needing to resolve either of them.

Perhaps visibility is less about being fully seen and more about being willing to stand in that space. To notice what appears, to allow it to remain partial, and to recognise yourself within it, even if it is not yet clear.

Creating space for attention

There is also a way of experiencing this beyond the page. In the coming months, as I prepare for my very first Isle of Wight Open Studios, and a series of summer workshops at the Green Barn on the Island, I’ll be creating spaces where this kind of attention can be shared in real time, as something to step into - to see what becomes visible when we slow down together.

A practice for the windows you pass

Your turn … When you encounter a window this week, you might try this.

• Pause for a moment. Notice what is visible and what is reflected in the window

• What happens when you move your position. What do you see now?

• No need to do anything with what you see. Just pay attention to what happens when you become aware that both inside and outside are there.

In that meeting point between what is seen and what is reflected, the moment you can see what is already there… that’s the moment everything begins to make sense.

Leave a comment

If this way of seeing calls to you, there’s a place waiting for you in The Alchemy of Listening. Each email offers a fusion image to explore, a few lines of reflection, and a prompt to help you look into your own inner spaces … the ones that shift and shimmer just out of view.

Join the Alchemy of Listening series

Related Posts

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

A free gift

I’ve made something for you. The Art of Moodling is my free 6-page guide for all subscribers. It distils years of moodling into simple practices you can use anywhere: at your desk, on a walk, in a pause between things. If you want a small, steady companion for your creative life, this is it.

*️⃣ Subscribe to get it for free. If you’re already a subscriber and you want the guide, DM me and I’ll send you the link.

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We don’t always need a clear story to get started

In my experience, most meaningful personal maps don’t start with clarity at all …
they start with moments that feel disconnected, unfinished or downright confusing.

If you’ve been circling ideas without knowing where to start, begin here.

The feeling that you're ready yet or you don't have a strong enough insight or clear enough thread to follow…

Interestingly, mapping works the other way around - you don’t need to have ideas and clarity up front.

If you are willing to take a meander (moodle) back through your life and remember your experiences and commit those to paper, connections will appear. Your map naturally forms out of that commitment to wanting ton understand your story and yourself. That collection of separate moments slowly becomes a story.

The thread of drawing

A simple map revealed a thread running through years of creative experience.

Pointing the Compass Inward

An introduction to mapping from lived experience; where direction comes from the actual life you’ve lived so far.

When a Map Feels Messy

Why do maps often feel unclear while they’re forming and why that is part of the process.

Find Your Words

Its time to place words into your map, allowing meaning and story to emerge gradually.

A map doesn’t begin with a clear story. More often than not, the story appears because you started in the messy place.

Return to the Map Room

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Moodling Letter sign up here

Support me by signing up for a paid subscription, restacking and sharing my stories and posts. For the price of a coffee, you can also support me through my Buy Me a Coffee page ⬇️

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Sunday Pocket Notes are small reflective postcards - moments of curiosity, insight, and exploration from inside Kumapelo.

The opening of this piece is free to explore and orient yourself. Further down, additional material is available for those who want more structure, guidance, or time with the practice. You’re welcome to read what’s here now and stop there, or step further in when it feels right. Follow what catches your attention, and moodle, as always.

That moment when we are in the middle of making a map

The relief that the page is no longer empty. Marks have been made. Words have been selected and placed. Lines and arrows connect one idea to another and colour has begun to show up in different ways. But the initial energy of starting has passed and suddenly, it feels overwhelming to continue. And very messy.

In this stage of visual journaling, you are deep in the detail. To move forward, you are now asked to be patient. Can you continue to pay attention? Are you willing to keep noticing what wants to come out next?

If you are, then this is often when you begin to recall details you hadn’t expected: names, places, conversations, or small turning points. It can be uncomfortable. Small decisions suddenly become ridiculously important: Where should this word sit? Does this symbol represent what I actually believe?

Read more

I mapped something I had never thought of as important

Drawing has been part of my life for as long as I could remember. Tattered but precious sketchbooks tucked neatly into school bags. Margins of notebooks filled with lines, hatching and shapes. Random doodles where my science notes should be. The satisfaction of learning how images grow out of the marks made on surfaces.

It did not feel remarkable in any way. It was just something my hands liked to do when they had a spare moment.

One day, in my mid 40s, I opened a new page in my notebook and wrote the word ‘drawing’ in the centre, embellishing it with some swirls and flounces. I jotted down some notes about where it had been important across the years: the first sketchbook from my grandmother; the winter evenings copying library books; the years in my twenties when it disappeared entirely while I built a career. Then later, when I had some time on my hands, the slow return of doodling in odd moments.

As my visual journaling doodle unfolded, I saw that “Drawing” (it felt like a friend now, with a name!) had never really left my side. There it was, through the years, changing shape, waiting for me to pay attention to it so it could make a comeback in my life. I’d thought of drawing as “just a hobby” that appeared and disappeared depending on the circumstances of my life! How wrong I was.

Seeing the thread

When I held my notebook out in front of me, the page looked like a map, of sorts. A map that showed me a thread, weaving through my life: the thread of drawing that has always been woven there.

An unfinished story

At that moment my way of thinking about “Drawing” forged a new path.

This is what happens when you move beyond the “to-do list” of your life and start a personal mapping practice. You stop searching for meaning and start seeing the direction that was already there.

If you’d like to find the hidden threads in your own history, why not give The First Map a go. This 20-minute guided mapping practice lowers the stakes and invites you to align with one specific experience, giving you a simple, unpolished way to see the story that is already there.

Give The First Map a go...

Looking for updates from my studio?

The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.

Moodling Letter sign up here

You can support me by signing up for a paid subscription, restacking and sharing my stories and posts. For the price of a coffee, you can also support me through my Buy Me a Coffee page ⬇️

Subscribe now