Ran across this post in My Memories from two years ago, when I completed my first intentional art project. Since I’ve been playing around with the AI a bunch, I thought I’d do a little experiment. I asked ChatGPT to rewrite the post with the “Tree Voice” I have been developing.

Tree Voice from ChatGPT:

Well, here we are, folks—my ONE HUNDREDTH “My Life: In Balance”!
A century of little yellow Post-Its turned into public therapy. A hundred jolts. A hundred tiny rebellions.

This all started last year during a 5-Day Fast when my stomach was eating itself and my brain was buzzing on ketones. Day 4: I was “meditating”—read: really, really hungry—when suddenly, zap! The balancing design landed in my mind like a telegram from the Source. I grabbed a Post-It (yellow, obviously, the universal color of warning and whimsy) and scribbled: “Make this a trope for CarlaGericke.com.”

Boom. My first one was “Crushing Mob Rule” vs. “Becoming a Populist.”
This was my experiment: public cognitive-behavioral therapy to murder my perfectionism, gag my inner critic, and exile that worm called fear of judgment.

The rules of the game:

1. There is no wrong way. No judgment. Nobody cares. (And that’s not depressing—it’s liberating. My “Nobody Cares!” one, with a sad face on one side and a smiley on the other, is still one of the most popular.)
2. First take, post it. Unless illegible, no do-overs. Okay, maybe 10 out of 100, but you get the point. My brain would whine: “But the line is skew! The ‘A’ is wrong!” And I’d slam back: IT DOESN’T MATTER.
3. No deadline beyond “Do 100.” Not 100 in a row. Not 100 in a week. Just 100, however long it takes. Because I know myself: if I set a too-big goal and don’t crush it immediately, I spiral into “failure.” This time, I granted myself grace.
4. After 100, figure out what it all means. Maybe a book. Maybe 3-minute videos on universal truths. Maybe essays. Maybe all of it.

And now? Here we are.

What I’ve learned: you cannot heal the world until you’ve healed yourself. Childhood shadows, old brain-worm grooves, ancient scripts—they can be jolted, broken, rewritten. That’s what this was: a practice in jolting myself awake.

And here’s the kicker about being human: you want to be seen and understood. But you cannot be understood if you cannot articulate your thoughts.

For years, while climbing my legal-career mountain, I knew my real hunger wasn’t law—it was words. Writing. Expression. Articulation. When I returned to college in my mid-30s for my MFA, the angst-y twenty-somethings always asked, “When can I call myself a writer?”

When you claim it.

I sold my first story in 2008, but it didn’t feel real until I held my book, THE ECSTATIC PESSIMIST, in my hands. That was the moment I said: Writer. But here’s the thing—I want more.

Last year, I wrote in my journal, all-caps with three question marks: ARTIST???
And immediately, like the Post-Its, it clicked.

Why this word? Because “ARTIST” gives me freedom.

Art is subjective.
Art is permission to be weird and not care.
Art is misunderstood.
Art is individual.
Art is trying to make sense of your own imagination and the world around you.
Art is showing your soul and hoping someone likes it.
Art is continuing even if no one does.
Art is unstoppable.

So am I.
And so are you.

That’s the story of these hundred little squares. My declaration. My hundred jolts. My way of saying: I am—I was—I am becoming. Writer. Artist. Tree. Me.

Onward.