I always meant to make my own work as an artist. For years I thought what stood in the way was time and circumstance — the job, the obligations, the hours that went elsewhere. Then those changed. I had the time. I had the studio. And I still didn’t create.

That was the part worth paying attention to. The circumstances were gone and nothing had moved. Something else was holding it, and I couldn’t see what.

So I went at it the way I know how. I’m an adult educator by trade, and the kind of person who reads the source rather than the summary. I looked at what was actually holding me — not what I wanted, which I could talk about endlessly, but what kept me from moving toward it. I went through the psychology properly, the research on how adults actually change, and I tested it on myself: what made a difference, what only sounded good, what I had been avoiding. It was slower and less flattering than I’d hoped. It also worked.

The Authored Life came out of that — not a summary of what I read, but a structure built from doing it, and then from doing it with other people.

My background is a mix that took me a long time to see as coherent. A fine arts degree from Emily Carr, and the painting practice I’m building now — which is where all of this started. A Master’s in Adult Education from UBC. More than two decades working with adults in a university. Coaching certification through the Co-Active Training Institute, accredited by the ICF. And thirty years of meditation, which isn’t a credential — it’s the daily practice that taught me how to stay with something uncomfortable long enough to see it clearly.