§The Notebooks · El Códice

Where the thinking began.

These are my original notebooks. A lot of what I build now — ecological psychology, the Sensory Environment Score, the decision to do this work for people who've been given nothing — started on these pages, written by hand in prison. They're not the center of the story. They're where it started.

The seed of the Score

A diagram, years early.

On one page I drew it: how stimulation, stress, and fear move through a person over time. I called it Environmental Psychology Stimuli. Years later it became the Sensory Environment Score, the tool I use in all my work now. The same pages say who the work is for — not powerful people, but people who've been given nothing. That hasn't changed.

From the pages

In his own words.

A few lines set in type for reading — then the complete pages below, raw, in the original hand. The only thing touched: other people's names, blacked out for their privacy. Everything of mine stays exactly as written.

"It is not the strong, the powerful, and the rulers I must aim to lead — but the poor, the mistreated, and the neglected."

Notebook · 2020

"A person who has lacked empowerment and healthy ecosystems will be inclined toward rebellious, self-masochistic, or dark spiritual beliefs."

Notebook · November 2020

"If the stimulus isn't present, the arousal is absent. A strong fear negates it; incremental, achievable exposure maintains it — and deters the fear."

Notebook · November 2020 — the mechanism that became the Sensory Environment Score

"To be empowered by the tribe, or strengthened by individuation? If the tribe is a community for pleasure and not for health, I must resist. I am swimming upstream toward success."

Notebook · November 2020

"One who has no control over their life falls to supernatural belief. Reason and intelligence are how you meet the complexity of the world."

Notebook · 2020

"Composure. Guitar and singing. Eco-warrior. Artistic. Smart."

Notebook · 2020 — written under the heading "Quality Self": a list of who to become

The page, in full.

In the hand it was written. This is the first; more pages release over time, as each is cleared.

Handwritten notebook page from 2020: a list of traits under 'Quality Self' and a hand-drawn 'Environmental Psychology Stimuli' diagram plotting arousal, environmental stimuli, cortisol, and a distress event over time.
2020 · "Environmental Psychology Stimuli" — arousal, stimuli, cortisol, and the distress event over time. The Sensory Environment Score, in its first form.

The arc

Bent, then redrawn.

A hard stretch of years bent the path, and I made some bad calls inside it. What these pages show is what came next: I sat down in prison and started building the ideas I work from now. Everything since has been the answer to it. Read where it led →