🔥 The Letter That Changed Me (And Why MicroGenesis Exists)
Where Heartbreak, Art, and Attention Met -- and Everything Changed
Editor’s Note:
This piece reflects how I felt at the time it was written. The relationship described here has since ended amicably. I’m leaving it intact as an honest record of that moment.
___
Six months ago, when I left Indiana and moved to California, I thought I understood who I was.
For most of my life — as a professor, as an academic, as someone trained to survive by thinking — I lived as an INTJ, the Myers–Briggs type known for logic, systems, planning, and emotional containment.
I wore that identity like armor.
It kept me safe.
It kept me efficient.
It kept me distant.
But California cracked something open.
Not all at once.
Not because of any single event.
But because life here — the losses, the heartbreaks, the rebuilding, the art, the loneliness, the love, the moments of collapse, and the moments of wild creative fire — demanded something entirely different from me.
It demanded feeling.
It demanded that I become someone who could not only think deeply, but feel deeply — without retreating into analysis, without hiding behind structure or theory.
Somewhere between the heartbreak that shattered me…
the art that rebuilt me…
and the new, grounded love that holds me now…
I felt myself cross a threshold.
And when I took the psychological test again, the letters reflected what I already knew in my body:
INTJ → INFJ
The T became an F.
The thinker became a feeler.
Not by abandoning logic, but by letting emotion take its rightful place in my life.
And that shift didn’t just change how I relate to people — it changed everything I create.
It changed the way I draw.
The way I teach.
The way I understand presence, attention, and meaning.
The way I talk to the people I love.
The way I show up for myself.
And it changed the way I see my purpose.
For months, people have been asking me:
“Will you ever teach again?”
“Will you teach art?”
“Will you share your techniques?”
“Can you show us how to do what you do?”
For the first time in 20 years, I said yes — not from obligation, but from that new part of me that cares, that feels, that wants intimacy and connection more than intellectual distance.
That’s how MicroGenesis was born.
Not as a business plan.
Not as a “good idea.”
Not as a way to make art more accessible.
But as the most honest expression of who I am right now:
A man rebuilding his life through presence, attention, and small, meaningful acts of creation.
MicroGenesis is emotional.
It’s human.
It’s grounded.
It’s the result of listening to the part of myself that I ignored for decades — the part that doesn’t want to plan life…
but feel life.
And the courses themselves reflect that shift.
Ten tiny gateways.
Ten invitations to slow down.
Ten ways to create in miniature, to breathe, to move your hand, to be with yourself again.
This is where the Patreon comes in.
Not as a marketing tool.
Not as a “support me, please.”
But as a continuation of this new chapter — the part of my life where I teach from the heart, where I show the process behind the drawings, where I invite people into the intimacy of attention.
This is not the professor version of me.
This is not the hyper-logical INTJ who built a career out of clarity and structure.
This is the INFJ version of me — the one who knows that creativity is a lifeline, that small practices can save us, that art can hold emotions that words can’t.
The version of me that finally understands that perfection is meaningless and presence is everything.
MicroGenesis and the upcoming Patreon aren’t products.
They are the shape of my healing.
They are the proof that emotion didn’t break me — it opened me.
They are the bridge between who I was and who I am now.
And as I write these words, life is still teaching me in real time.
Someone I cared for — someone whose voice once meant a great deal to me — responded to my final message not with anger or closure, but with silence. And somehow, that silence hurt more than any breakup ever has.
Not because of the circumstances, not because of any label we once used, but because some people live in your heart in ways that don’t fit cleanly into the story you tell the world. Their absence echoes differently.
Their quiet lands deeper.
But the difference now — the part that feels like growth — is that the silence isn’t destroying me.
It’s simply reminding me that I’m human, that I can grieve and move forward at the same time, that I can feel a door closing without collapsing inside it. I can hold that ache… and still choose to open my life to what’s honest, mutual, and present.
Six months in California changed me.
It changed my letters.
It changed my art.
It changed my heart.
And this time, I’m not hiding any of it.
AFTERWORD — CONFESSIONAL
When I sat down to finalize this piece, “Send the Pain Below” (by Chevelle) came on — like the universe pressing its thumb into a bruise.
Because that song… that used to be my whole nervous system.
But the man writing this now isn’t the man who hid everything. Not after these months in California. Not after heartbreak, rebuilding, and the unexpected tenderness of someone new.
I’m still grieving someone who once held my heart. That kind of connection doesn’t disappear.
But at the same time, something new is growing.
Mariela.
She isn’t a replacement. She feels like a door opening — not to erase the past, but to imagine a future.
And that’s the truth of where I am:
Two emotions, two timelines, two truths living in the same heart.
Loss and hope.
Heartbreak and connection.
Yesterday and tomorrow.
This tension is exactly why MicroGenesis exists.
This is how I transform chaos into clarity — one breath, one line, ten minutes at a time.
___
Jeff Brackett
Artist • Writer • Educator
Exploring the intersections of art, autism, and human connection through the ongoing creative project Lines on the Spectrum — an illustrated memoir in progress.
https://www.jeffreymbrackett.com
Aspie Art Journey — reflections on art, perception, and creative process.
Dating App Diaries — essays on vulnerability, connection, and rediscovery
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That's quite the transformation. For me I feel like I'm transitioning from INFP ---> INTP, at least in some areas of my life. I'm still not convinced the whole MBTI thing is really the best personality theory but it does explain a lot. Do you think another state or country would have a different outcome?