The Paradox of Being Seen

Paradox Log 01

Why My Inner World Became My Most Important Work - 

We often chase visibility in our art, our work, our lives but the deepest kind of recognition begins in the quiet return to self. This is the story of how coming home, again and again, reshaped not only how I create, but why.

If you’ve followed my online presence for a while, you know I’ve lived many lives across cities. From Detroit to Chicago to Los Angeles, with soul-shaping travels in between, I’ve been in constant motion seeking, shifting, growing. But if there’s one thing that movement has revealed, it’s that “home” isn’t always where you expect to find it. It’s not just a skyline, a zip code, or the people waiting on the other side. Sometimes it’s a feeling. A moment of clarity. A pause that reminds you of what truly matters.

This Mother’s Day, I returned home for the first time since my grandmother’s funeral. There was grief, yes but also a quiet settling. A sense of perspective that softened everything. It reminded me that stability, safety, and meaning don’t always come from external structures. They come in flashes through connection, memory, or the creative process itself. That visit stirred something in me: the why behind my art, the truth I’ve always tried to honor through the lens.

For over 15 years, I’ve been creating visuals that help people feel seen. But behind every image behind the clarity and color there’s always been contrast. Light and shadow. Joy and loss. Direction and surrender. What I’ve come to understand is that art doesn’t just arise from aesthetics or intention. It arises from attention. From being present enough to notice what the world—and your own experience—is trying to teach you.

In a culture obsessed with achievement, metrics, and visibility, it’s easy to drift. Success becomes a script. A role to play. But what happens when the script stops feeling true? When the version of success you’ve built doesn’t bring you closer to what matters most? That’s when I had to ask myself a harder question not just “what do I want to create?” but “what do I want to feel?” That’s when I began to understand: success, on its own, doesn’t always lead to fulfillment. And maybe that’s the real work rewriting the equation, again and again, until it reflects something honest.

On a recent flight, I sat next to a man who kept getting up to stretch and move. I’ll admit, I was a bit irritated I had the aisle seat and had to keep standing to let him through. But as we landed, he turned to me and said he was a monk. He’d been getting up to pray.

He had noticed the tattoo on my hand the symbol of the crown chakra and asked if I believed in awakenings. I told him I’d had several. What followed was a short but profound conversation about death, the afterlife, and the process of letting go. A bit intense for two strangers mid-flight, maybe but also, not unusual for my life. Before we parted, he handed me a book on self-realization.

That encounter stayed with me. It nudged something open. For years, I’ve poured myself into self-actualization: refining my craft, expanding my perspective, building a body of work. It’s a path many of us know growing into the fullest version of ourselves through dedication, discipline, and vision.

But self-realization asks something different. It’s not about building or becoming. It’s about remembering. About peeling back the layers of performance, of striving, of external proof and recognizing what’s always been there. Not just your capacity, but your essence. Not just your voice, but the stillness it emerges from.

That’s where I find myself now: in the space between doing and being. Between creating and simply witnessing. It’s what inspired Paradox Blog the tension and harmony between outer expression and inner truth. The idea that we can move through the world fully alive and engaged, while also tending to the unseen: our rest, our intuition, our roots.

These days, my work is less about proving and more about aligning. Less about showing up polished, and more about showing up real. That shift isn’t always graceful. Sometimes it asks you to fall apart. To question old definitions of success. To let go of what no longer holds weight.

But each time I listen to that quiet tug whether through a conversation with a stranger or a pause in my day I reconnect. Not to a role or a persona, but to something honest. Steady. Unchanging.

Maybe that’s the invitation for all of us: to build lives and creative practices that are rooted in what’s real. To allow the outer and inner to inform each other. To soften without losing strength.

So I’ll ask:
What are you building on?
Have you made space to pause, to realign?
Can you allow yourself to be powerful without performing, whole without being perfect?

This is the paradox. And this is the path

“The paradox is this: I disappear behind the camera

only to find myself.”