+++ title = “08” date = 2019 +++ We all create art, whether we admit to it or not. Perhaps your art is your fine art, or perhaps it’s your children, or perhaps it’s your cooking. When we look at it this way, it’s easy to get offended when others don’t like or connect to our art. We get defensive, and we start to question our abilities as an artist.

As I was building my recording studio in my early 20’s, it felt like I bought a new microphone every day. Not just microphones in fact, but pre-amps, software, headphones, guitars, and other various tools that I could use to make music. I’d buy some stuff, figure out it wasn’t for me, and then sell it on eBay or another site. People thought I was crazy. Of course, I rarely re-sold these items for more or equal to what I paid, so what was the point?

+++ title = “08” date = 2019 +++ When the muse hits us, when we come up with a stroke of genius, we often describe the feeling as inspiration. Inspire literally means to breathe something in. We see something in culture that we take in, that finds its way into the crevices in our bones, that changes our brain chemistry (even a little). We say “I’ve been inspired” when that happens.

I’m fascinated by environments that contain tiny little worlds. Places like restaurants, where each booth contains a different group of oeople, a different story, one that is entirely different from the story of those in the booth just one over. College dorms are like this too, except a little more specialized. Take a bunch of people who were children yesterday and expected to be adults today, pair them up with another random person in the same situation, and see what happens.

+++ title = “08” date = 2019 +++ Mindfulness, meditation, thought-naming… whatever you want to call it, is a little bit like playing tennis with your mind. In a world without mindfulness (which I live in about 99% of the time), It’s as if my mind is constantly serving me tennis balls. I let the balls hit my body, and then I cry for a while over the pain. Being pelted with tennis balls for most of the week means being tired and worn out on the weekends.