Love the process, you are going to be in it for a lifetime
Love what you do and then share it with the world.
I have been kicking around this feeling for a while now; I think I first read it in Suneel Gupta’s Everyday Dharma. The idea that when you share something with others, it becomes real. The true essence of you is only fully realized once you share a work of art with another person. For me that has been the journey of the past 12 months.
Progress as happiness, not as a measurement of achieving a goal.
If I rewind the clock 12 months, I am building a website for our band The Feral Toms, finalizing the mixes on our first three singles and wondering what it will all mean. It was typical for me to lay out goals, put them on a timeline and then start chipping away. Then at some point in the fall of 2025, months after our first music had hit the market, I started realizing that I was finding my essence when I would get lost playing bass, lose track of time working on a new demo or while up on stage with my friends. None of these were necessarily completed goals, they were more just parts of the process and I was loving it.
A sustainable life
Design a life around the things that engage your essence and watch a world form around you and fill in the gaps. I sit here a year later, with new relationships formed around the art that we create. I cannot imagine what the next year will bring, but I know one thing: I will not be setting rigorous long range goals, I will be listening to myself and leaning into my identity…artist/engineer, not the other way around. Thanks Zoolander. 😉