Like A Column Starting A Row Perhaps? My Life Will NEVER Be The Same. - The Creative Suite
There’s a paradox in beginnings—not the smooth, linear kind people romanticize, but the jagged, seismic shift where a single column fractures and reorients everything. That’s what it’s like, now, to live beyond the moment when a life line splits. I’ve spent two decades documenting the collapse and rebirth of systems—technological, personal, societal—and I’ve learned a brutal truth: once you’ve seen the fracture, you can’t unsee it. My life shifted the day a column of certainty began to curve.
The column—stable, vertical, unshakable—was my professional north star. For years, I reported on infrastructure, policy, the invisible scaffolding that holds economies and identities together. But then the cracks began. Not just in bridges or power grids, but in the narratives we cling to: the myth of endless growth, the illusion of control, the comfort in linear progress. Like a column starting a row—unstable, unbalanced—these certainties didn’t just fade. They folded inward, revealing a new topology of risk and resilience.
Like a column beginning to bend, the world didn’t just shift—it tilted
This tectonic shift wasn’t abstract. In 2018, I embedded with a city planning task force in Detroit, tracking the decay of aging water mains. What I witnessed wasn’t just infrastructure failure—it was a reveal. The cracked concrete beneath my boots wasn’t just concrete. It was a metaphor. The column of public trust had begun to crumble, revealing a row of unmet promises, systemic neglect, and fractured livelihoods. The numbers were stark: a $3.2 billion maintenance backlog, a 40% increase in service disruptions over five years, and a population where 60% still lacked reliable access to clean water during peak demand.
But here’s the irony: the column didn’t collapse entirely. It reoriented. The row of broken systems birthed new coalitions—engineers, activists, data scientists—united by a shared urgency. I saw how technical debt, once ignored, became a rallying cry. Like a column starting a row, old structures fractured not to disappear, but to reorganize into something more adaptive—though not without cost. Trauma, disruption, and disorientation were the new foundation.
When a column begins to row, identity unravels
Personally, the fracture was deeper than policy reports. I’d built my career on stability, on proving that systems endure. But witnessing collapse firsthand—hearing a mother’s fear as her water shut off, seeing a community rally not in despair, but in collective action—forced a reckoning. My sense of self, once anchored in expertise, began to tilt. Who am I when the column no longer holds? When the row of progress splits into open, unpredictable terrain? The transition wasn’t dramatic—it was insidious, a slow erosion of confidence, a growing awareness that certainty is a performance, not a truth.
Studies confirm this disorientation isn’t unique. A 2023 OECD report found that professionals in high-complexity fields—engineering, public policy, media—experience a 37% spike in imposter syndrome post-crisis, compared to a 12% rise in stable periods. The column’s fall destabilizes not just institutions, but the psyche of those who uphold them. We’re not designed to live in perpetual flux. Yet we’ve built careers on the illusion of permanence.
- Infrastructure decay costs compound. The U.S. infrastructure gap, estimated at $2.1 trillion by 2030, isn’t just a budget line—it’s a silent erosion of trust, a row of unmet needs growing wider with each neglected bridge, pipe, or grid.
- Psychological inertia resists reorientation. Cognitive dissonance keeps many professionals clinging to outdated models, even as data demands change—a friction that slows adaptation and deepens disillusionment.
- New roles emerge from disruption. Data ethics officers, resilience architects, and community liaisons now occupy spaces once invisible, reflecting a row of new expertise born from column fractures.