The following is an up-to-date list of books I have authored or co-authored (as of Jan. 2026). I am also the illustrator of several of the books, as noted.
For the last ten weeks, I was part of an experience that didn’t look like an experiment at first. It wasn’t framed as disruption or acceleration. It wasn’t about chasing the latest tool. It was a practice lab inside the Mastermind at AI Salon, led by Liz Miller-Gershfeld and Kyle Shannon, and it gathered people who had largely met through our shared work with generative systems.
On paper, this could sound like a story about AI.
It isn’t.
Black Ink Drawing by Cyndi Coon
This is a story about attention. About permission. About noticing friction instead of smoothing it over. And, unexpectedly, about getting pulled back into my studio like gravity had been waiting patiently for me to remember it existed.
Somewhere along the way, the most meaningful thing that happened to my work with AI was that it pushed me deeper into my hands.
That became the through-line.
We started with a deceptively simple idea: intention before interface. Before opening a tool, pause. Ask what you’re bringing as a human. Ask what you’re actually ready to explore. Then put the work inside a time container. Set a timer. Notice what’s happening as it unfolds. Write while you’re in it, not later, not as performance, but as part of the thinking.
That small shift changed everything.
It made the work deliberate instead of incidental. It also made resistance visible. Slowing down enough to name intention meant I could no longer disguise avoidance as productivity.
When confusion or discomfort showed up, the invitation wasn’t to fix it immediately. It was to stay with it. Long enough to see what it was pointing toward.
That’s when I started tracking complaints.
Not big, dramatic ones. The quiet, habitual grumbles that surface when something feels inconvenient, unclear, or slow. I wrote them down without judgment. I treated them as data. Complaints, I realized, are often early signals of learning. They show up right at the edges of what we don’t yet know how to do.
Around that same time, I pulled out inks and watercolors and put them next to my notebook. At first, it felt like a minor choice. In hindsight, it was a turning point. I wanted slowness. I wanted texture. I wanted the kind of thinking that only happens when the hand is involved.
I’m trained as an artist. This wasn’t nostalgia. It was a dormant system coming back online.
As the weeks went on, my digital and physical practices began to speak to each other. I explored AI image generation not as a finished output, but as a way to spark ideas. I loaded years of my own artwork into mood boards, generated images that echoed my visual language, printed them, and brought them into the studio. From there, I drew, collaged, and made by hand. Then I scanned those pieces back into my digital work.
It wasn’t replacement. It was circulation.
That loop changed how I thought about authorship and credibility. When I stopped outsourcing my hand by default, the work didn’t become less professional. It became more grounded. When I used hand-made images in client-facing work for the first time, the response wasn’t hesitation. It was recognition.
This experience also reshaped how I think about community. Instead of abstract ideas about connection, I created a simple weekly ritual with a small group of friends. Three questions. Once a week. Wins, support, and one intention to revisit. That structure created coherence without pressure. It allowed work to be witnessed, not evaluated.
As the tools grew more capable, the need to stay awake inside them grew stronger. Ease, I was reminded, is not neutral. Systems that work well invite overuse. Grounding practices became a way to calibrate.
When I write with a pen, I can’t move faster than my thinking. When I draw, I have to sit with uncertainty. Those limits aren’t obstacles. They’re feedback. They show me what I actually understand versus what I can generate quickly.
The final week was about integration. Not neat synthesis, but coexistence. Holding my creative practice, my professional work, and my technical fluency in the same space without fragmenting myself. Integration showed up in decisions: what I included, what I stopped outsourcing, what I allowed to be visible.
And here’s the irony I keep returning to.
My relationship with AI led me back to my hands.
Not away from them.
Back to a way of working where attention is not optional. Where thinking slows down enough to feel true. That wasn’t the conclusion I set out to reach. It’s simply where the path led.
That has been the gift.
What I’m carrying forward isn’t a framework. It’s a practice. Timers as doorways. Complaints as signals. Hands as thinking partners. Community as structure. Screens and studios in conversation.
In a moment when many people feel unsettled, the most grounded thing I can offer isn’t an answer.
On November 1st, I made a decision that changed how I relate to my own labor.
I wasn’t looking for a better to-do list or a smarter app. I wanted a true reset. Not a cosmetic one, but a structural one. I needed to see what I was carrying and to stop pretending that all work is light, fast, or invisible once it’s done.
So I set aside a full weekend and did something very simple.
I externalized everything.
Step One: Get It Out of Your Head
I started with one rule: one task per sticky note.
Every task I could think of went onto its own piece of paper. Not just work tasks, but home repairs, family logistics, year-end responsibilities, creative projects, community commitments, and the quiet maintenance tasks that keep life running.
If it lived in my head, it qualified.
The goal wasn’t organization yet. It was honesty. I kept going until my brain got bored, which turned out to be a reliable signal that I’d reached the bottom of the mental bucket.
Step Two: Map Time, Not Importance
Next, I drew vertical columns on my whiteboard and labeled them with real-world time estimates:
15, 30, 45, 60, and 90+ minutes.
Each sticky found a home based on how long the task actually takes, not how long I wished it would take. When I hesitated, I rounded up. Underestimation is where momentum goes to die.
This step changed everything. Suddenly, my workload wasn’t abstract. It was measurable. I could see where my time was going and why certain days felt heavier than others.
Step Three: Work in Small, Honest Bites
From there, I worked the board in small increments.
Some days I cleared the 15-minute column to build momentum. Other days I gamified the process by drawing a random time card and choosing a task from that column. The method didn’t care how I chose. What mattered was consistency.
This wasn’t about optimization. It was about alignment between energy, time, and reality.
Step Four: Witness the Work
Here’s the part that shifted my relationship with effort.
When I completed a task, I didn’t throw the sticky away.
I placed a small trash bucket on my desk and committed to dropping each finished sticky inside. I called it my witness container.
The bucket began to fill.
Each sticky became proof of attention spent, decisions made, and care applied. Not just productivity, but presence. The work didn’t disappear the moment it was done.
Step Five: Weekly Reset, Not Endless Push
Once a week, I stood at the board and adjusted.
Tasks that took longer than expected moved columns. Stickies that hid multiple steps got split. Priorities for the next seven days came forward.
Patterns became obvious. What I avoided. What drained me. What consistently required more time than I admitted.
The board became a feedback loop instead of a guilt machine.
Why This Worked
Motion became my work for staying focused.
Focus in Motion isn’t a productivity system. It’s a witnessing practice. It turns invisible work into physical artifacts. It replaces vague, overwhelming feelings with a navigable map. It honors effort without asking for hustle or self-judgment.
Most importantly, it restores a sense of agency over time. You don’t disappear into your work. You can see it, touch it, and account for it.
As the year wound down and the bucket filled, I was left with something rare: a grounded sense of what I’d actually done, not just what remains.
That clarity is the foundation for any true fresh start.
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