Posted by In December 2022, I wrote three blogs about digital storytelling in which I explored some thoughts I had had about telling our own story.
Being completely honest, I was mostly just talking to myself.
I didn’t know exactly what I was trying to say, or why. And, even when I had finished them, it still felt that there was more to say, but what that was, I didn’t know.
I went back to look at some blogs before and after that trio, and saw there was a theme. I had felt homesick and restless, in October 2022, wishing that I could, like they do in the beautiful Disney Pixar’s Coco, spend time once a year with my deceased parents.
Then I went back even further, and saw that I had been thinking about time travelling to different parts of my life: La Belle Époque (when I met my husband) and Mutherhood, mystism and menopause (the time I had babies and cancer and a bald head).
And then I went back even earlier, in the Accidental techie series, I talked about being a woman in STEM and, I saw that I had been figuring out my story and place in this world for a lot longer.
But today is the day I am finally beginning to realise why.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda?
Sometimes, life is complicated. Between dealing with illness and balancing heavy family responsibilities, I felt a nagging sense that I hadn’t achieved the things I should have in life. Shoulda, woulda, coulda?
Today, older and wiser, I hope, I am asking: How did I even arrive at the moment when I thought I have failed? Failed what, for goodness sake? It’s not like anyone was expecting anything from me. Except me and where did I get that from?
And, what is success anyway?
I am beginning to think now, here let me put it into a pull quote to remind myself:
Success is knowing exactly who you are.
Ruth Stalker-Firth
However, finding out who I am has not always been a straight line. It has often taken other activities, from doing the famous 30 days of Bikram yoga to learning how to plaster. Not as any grand career move, though I often think I should finish my yoga teacher training, but simply because a) the plastering needed doing and b) I love yoga, and also:
I firmly believe how you do one thing, is how you do everything and as I often say and have done ever since I did the plastering course, where there were no shortcuts:
The key to excellence, is doing the basics, really, really well.
From plastering to coding to living your life!
Feeling inspired comes and goes throughout life, and I have often wondered and looked for what someone needs in their toolkit to help light the fire in those times, when life feels cold and lonely.
In December 2022, I went on to create a full storyboard of my life with a little help from my Gacha expert daughter and I was thrilled. This was something I’d been trying to do for ages.
Then, I turned into a Gacha movie. Something else I had been wanting to do ever since we had been making movies for my course on HCI, (which still get divided feedback to this day – some people love them, others find them annoying).
Finally I had a movie of my life! Well some of it anyway (which is another blog altogether) and I LOVED IT.
Gacha Life Merch
My family, being the absolute legends they are, noticed how much I loved my Gacha life storyboard, so they got me a custom mug with my CV printed on it for Christmas 2022. I loved it! Then, for my birthday just gone, they surprised me with the matching t-shirt and also a Lego mini-figure wearing the same t-shirt. They are brilliant.
I absolutely love my merch!
But, it’s not just the merch, what began as a simple presentation, in the summer of 2022, became a roadmap of my journey so far. I looked at that storyboard of my CV and was so dazzled, by what I had done and where I had been, that I stopped mourning the things I hadn’t done and started being amazed by everything I had.
Lately, my work has come full circle. I’ve been spending my time demystifying AI which, is exactly where my journey originally began, back when, as I say in my Gacha movie, enticed by a summer in Paris, I signed up to do AI.
Looking back at the months of effort it took me to create my story and looking for an easy way to demonstrate the speed of AI, I fed the 20 key ‘storyboard’ points of my life, just 283 words, into Gemini Notebook LM.
The result? It captured my story brilliantly, quickly, and succinctly.
Is it exactly how I would have written it? No, but if I wanted to, I could go back in and tweak it.
But it was so fast, so good, and so better done that perfect, that I left it how it was.
It is enough.
More than enough, because what it does is that it gives an outside perspective, especially when I get the famous AI hosts to talk about me – it provides an incredible psychological boost! I have a whole series on that too: A Deep dive on Ruth Stalker-Firth of course I have!
AI takes what might not even look like a clear story, and turns it into an objective, amazing narrative – something we all need from time to time.
With AI, you don’t need months of free time or a film degree to reclaim your narrative. You just need to start.
And I can show you how.
An AI invitation to dazzle yourself
To watch the full video of my AI-generated life story, learn about where AI comes from, and see how to do the same for yourself:
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Let’s stop wasting time fretting about what we haven’t done and start celebrating what we have, by writing our life story so that it genuinely dazzles us.