loving the process

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.

Remember, people are often drawn to things that are done imperfectly. Whether it’s art, movies, or books, people tend to talk more about the flawed things that get stuck in their heads than they do the obvious, perfect things.

As Malcolm Gladwell says, “You want an aftertaste, and that comes from not everything being perfectly blended together.”

Back when I was feeling a imless and lost I used to read and reread something Cheryl Strayed wrote about writing: The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering... See more

Through DJing, sampling, mixing, music embodies so much of what we’re exploring. It’s our job as builders to find references that “re-unlock” the values we’re trying to embody in the present, and turn these into new forms. Allow yourself the joy of losing yourself in the inputs; this is the nature of remixes or samples. We’re both looking at the... See more

“One of the most satisfying feelings I know — and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other person — comes from my appreciating this individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset. People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be. In fact, perhaps the reason we can truly appreciate a sunset is that we cannot

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Again, the idea of manifesting your own ideas of success, your reasons for life, plays a huge role here. It allows ego to be put to the side in favor of accomplishing a common goal, an idea that we can do it differently this time.

The better life you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own expectations. You live here. This is it.