There was a time in my music career when I wanted to be famous. I dreamed of playing to huge audiences at large amphitheaters. I loved the idea of thousands of fans buying my records. If there was a word for what I wanted, it was glory. Then I read Steven Pressfield’s War of Art and in the first chapter, he talks about how this kind of thinking is the behavior of an amateur.

I used to google health things incessantly. If my head hurt, if my skin was unusually dry, if my mouth felt weird… I’d google the symptoms. You can guess how that went. After a while, I turned into a full blown cyberchondriac, which is the same as being a hypochondriac, except you not only believe you have illnesses you don’t have, but you also google the shit out of those symptoms until you’re all but convinced that you are dying.

+++ title = “01” date = 2019 +++ Before becoming a parent, here’s a sample of some wisdom other parents tried to pass on to me: you will never sleep again. you think a newborn exhausting? It gets worse. I feel like a shadow of my former self; everything is about my kids now. my options are narrower than before kids. I regret the decision sometimes. Having been a parent for a few months now, I can say that these are only true if you believe them going in.

There are some movies or TV shows that leave you with gruesome and vivid images. Images that leave you with nightmares for years. Shows like Breaking Bad. Then there are movies and shows that fill you up, that leave you more together than you were before. Movies where you remember the emotion you felt so clearly when you were in the theater. Films and shows like Big Fish and Six Feet Under.

+++ title = “01” date = 2019 +++ So many services use the five star review. It’s an interesting way of judging work that you’ve consumed, and also an interesting way to compare work that you are thinking about consuming. I used to look up one-star reviews of classic kids books, ones that are accepted as amazing, just to see what people would say in a one-star review of, say, Goodnight Moon.