I've been falling in love and threatening to walk out the door since the day we met in March of 2023, That was the spring when everything changed. The consumer debut of Midjourney. An LLM that used Discord as it's front end.
We didn't have prompts. We didn't know what prompts were.
These days anyone with a smartphone and AI can make jaw dropping images.
Here's one of the dirty secrets: the first image you create is usually the best one you'll get.
Then you try to make it better by changing something — and every version drifts further from the thing in your head. Or worse, further from the thing your client is expecting before you call it a day.
FFS, you are now entering a death spiral.
It's the only software I've ever used that didn't come with any instructions.
What I brought to it wasn't prompting skill. It was 4 years of art history study and a love of readiing books. Those two gave me a head start, by already knowing what makes a thing that thing, and which words combined can snap it into focus.
That doesn't make me immune to the spiral. Nobody is. It just means I typically recognize it sooner and change course — while everyone else is still wondering if they smell smoke.


































