loving the process

This is an amazing algorithm: do interesting things and magically arrive at a complex understanding of the world.

My job is to be a musician and make music and do what is authentic to me and reflect my inner world in the most personal way possible. In songwriting, the most personal is the most universal. It's about using my own emotions as a connective tool.

We design our lives by every choice that we make—from how we plan our days, to how we approach our relationships, to our interactions with our environments. The question we can all practice asking ourselves, she offered, is: “Is what I’m about to do conducive to life?”

I liked mattering. I can live with less money and with “regular” cars and without a job title ... it’s very possible to live a very nice life without those things. But mattering ... yeah, I miss that. I want to figure out how to matter again1. Let’s put a pin in that one, consider it a work in progress.

All desire is a desire for being.”

We think we want things, but every desire points to a way of life, a kind of person we long to become. Objects seduce us not with their utility but with their promise of transcendence—status, attention, belonging.

Creativity, Tinker likes to say, is a function of the “library in your head.” “When you sit down to create something…what you create is a culmination of everything you’ve seen and done previous to that point.” What you pour out is a culmination of everything you’ve filled up on previous to that point.