The pattern is not the person.
“Becoming homeless was almost the easier transition. The hard part — the part that nearly killed me — was coming back.”— House, Not Housed
For a long time I had it together — well, most of it. The one strange part was that I kept finding myself in the same situations over and over, like I was running a script nobody had handed me.
Then the bottom fell out. I lost just about everything, and getting back to some kind of normal was no easy thing.
That's when it clicked. The things I kept repeating weren't bad luck — they were patterns. And once I could finally see them, I could aim a little differently. Slight Angle Studios came out of that one realization: see the pattern, change the aim.
"Bob's Blobs" — the manual nobody got.
It started in rehab. I was sitting in a group and the thought showed up fully formed: Bob's Blobs. That's what I'll call my patterns. Right behind it came another: I wish there was a manual for this. Maybe there'd been a meeting once about all the things nobody actually teaches you — how to feel a feeling, how to come back, how to be a person on an ordinary Tuesday — and I'd just missed it. Out sick the day they handed out the instructions.
Then the cast showed up — Iguana Bob, who walked into every room scanning for the exits (turns out that one has a clinical name). Llama Bob. Piranha Bob. I-Don't-Wanna Bob. Once I could see them, I couldn't un-see them — and naming them out loud made them smaller, every time. That's when it clicked: if nobody ever handed me the manual, I'd write it. The one nobody got.
The timeline.
Combat medic — learning to assess, name, and adapt under pressure. The discipline that later became the method.
One lived idea, many forms.
The books, the Blobs, the curriculum, the research framework, and the organizational work all come from the same place: once a pattern is visible, it becomes more interruptible — and you can aim a few degrees better.
No shame
The pattern is not the person.
No guru
Bob is a learner. So am I.
Aim, don't fix
Not perfection — a better direction.
This page touches on mental health and recovery. It's shared as lived experience, not advice. If you're struggling, please reach out to a professional or trusted person for support.