A blank page is devoid of anything. A scattered mind is filled with mindlessness. Art is beautiful for the choices of the artist, and each choice is an acceptance of restriction, an acknowledgement of the choice to be made and the sacrifice of the potential. Life feels much the same sometimes. As the painter paints, each stroke narrows the options of their work’s future, brings it closer to completion. Thus with each stroke of our hearts, each moment of discomfort brings with it the option to choose. As we make the right choices, we peel away the outer layers of potential and glimpse our priorities, some underlying fundamental that we are unwilling to compromise.

And so we create art from ourselves, with ourselves. We are building a puzzle from scratch, without knowing what final picture we are working towards. The pieces are each hidden from view until we find them, and some that were already placed when we began must be removed. They must be torn out, pulled at and painstakingly drawn away from the puzzle, with the knowledge that, if allowed to remain, some of these pieces will alter the final image, lessen it somehow by their presence in a greater way than their absence.

The uncertainty of the artist is when to put down the paintbrush, and the uncertainty of the author is where to quit looking for more words to describe that which does not exist in the present. The imagination of uncertainty lacks connection with the moment, and yet the artist paints on, paring ever downwards towards the completion of their art.

Good choices ought to stand by themselves. They ought to build you walls to shelter in, a roof to keep away the clouds and protect you from the rain. And they can. The “divergence” in neurodivergence is continuing to find yourself having stepped outside the house, and weighing the notion that getting there mindlessly ought to be counted as a moral failing. Feeling the rain isn’t helped by the knowledge that shelter exists mere feet away if the trouble is finding your way to it.