loving the process

Choose work you have a natural aptitude for and a deep interest in. Develop a habit of working on your own projects; it doesn't matter what they are so long as you find them excitingly ambitious. Work as hard as you can without burning out, and this will eventually bring you to one of the frontiers of knowledge. These look smooth from a distance, b... See more

The meaningful middle is where everything that matters actually happens.

The monotony of life contains a reservoir of ways to find relief, if we can only muster the courage and energy to dive in instead of opting out. If today you find yourself bored with your work—perhaps surfing around and reading some random essay on happiness—you may have just gotten a signal from the universe that it’s time for your spirit to evolv... See more

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.

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.

So I got my ass back into therapy. It was a slow, humiliating, expensive process, as the acquisition of self-awareness tends to be. All these heartbroken fascist wannabes are running around, yelling about how being “woke” is like some form of chemical castration. All it means is that you are becoming less of an asshole. That’s what therapy did for ... See more