loving the process

Here’s something I’m very thankful I was told while I was still in my 20s: that the point of all this “hard work” is to recognize the person it makes you, not what it “gets” you

I place a lot of emphasis on generative making and process. Of course, institutions also give us rooms. A lot can happen in a room if we don’t let ourselves be limited by the expectations of what should happen in the room. A stanza, too, is a room.

Alchemize the pickle. You will be relentlessly confronted with conundrums, situations, pickles, and dumpster fires for which you do not yet have the knowledge or skill set because you have not had to navigate it before.4 Take a moment to reflect on why, check whether your privilege has anything to do with it, then send a sweet, loving, and... See more

I think a lot of people want to be but they don’t want to do . They want to have written a book, but they don’t want to write the book. They want to be fit, but they don’t want the tedium of working out. They’re ashamed of rejection and they’re ashamed of imperfection. I might want lots of people to subscribe to this Substack, but do I want to... See more

"If you already live a comfortable life, then choosing to make more money but live a worse daily life is a bad trade.

And yet, we talk ourselves into it all the time. We take promotions that pay more, but swallow our free time. We already have a successful business, but we break ourselves trying to make it even more successful.

Too much focus on... See more

Nothing looks the way I thought it would look. Some of it has been more delightful than I expected, much of it has been more heartbreaking than I ever planned for — or thought I could survive. Yet here I am, living out the story that I am, at best, co-creating in collaboration with mysterious and invisible forces. It has been, at every turn,... See more

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push... See more