Something that I notice when writing my morning pages is that if I get animated about something, I’ll swear a lot more than usual. I should clarify before going on: I’m English; I already swear a lot—so when I say “more than usual,” I’m starting from a pretty healthy baseline.

I’ll clarify something else: it’s almost always positive. I’m not cursing anyone out or complaining or getting angry. Usually, I’m getting excited, or giving myself a pep talk. Less “I fucking hate this” and more “you’ve fucking got this,” if an example helps. It lights a little fire under me. It make me feel like I have fucking got this; like, I’ve really got it.

As I write this post—like, right this second, as in just now—my eyes find a book propped on my desk that I’d forgotten was there: Do the F*cking Work by Jason Bacher, Brian Buirge and Jason Richburg. As you can imagine, my chosen word features pretty regularly. They make a popular poster, too—one that hung in the office of Jony Ive at Apple, and the first few lines of which read as follows:

Believe in your fucking self. Stay up all fucking night. Work outside of your fucking habits. Know when to fucking speak up. Fucking collaborate. Don’t fucking procrastinate. Get over your fucking self. Keep fucking learning. Form follows fucking function. A computer is a Lite-Brite for bad fucking ideas.

I could say that this book influenced my tendency to swear quite so much in my morning pages, but I was doing it long before I knew of it. Reading that poster gives me the same feeling as writing those curse-heavy pages, though: my heart rate goes just a little faster than if I take the word out. Try reading the above without the cursing—it’s positively anemic.

For me, that’s the power of cursing, especially in writing. It adds something that you might normally express with a louder voice, a higher pitch, or by using body language (that is, jumping excitedly up and down). There are many ways in which cursing isn’t helpful, but there are a few ways in which it’s great—where it’s really fucking great, actually.

I love that a simple word written or read can add so much. That it can turn the volume up, get your blood pumping, and inspire in you a feeling that only comes from writing it more often than you’d ever speak it. If you haven’t tried it, I invite you to flagrantly curse in your journal entries right alongside me—because you, too, have fucking got this.

I’m a little under the weather today and feeling a bit sorry for myself. It got me thinking about other times that I’ve felt a little worse for wear, and the first one that came to mind was my recovery from an otoplasty.

An otoplasty is the pinning of the ears—a procedure given to those whose ears stick out a little (or a lot) too far for their liking. As far as I know, it’s almost entirely a cosmetic issue, but it can have a pretty big impact on those who go under the knife. It did for me.

I remember the first time I was bullied for my ears. I’d be running around on the playground at Northwick Manor primary school when I’d hear “hey, Dumbo, nice ears!” shouted by someone nearby. As soon as someone said it, others had to join in—or at least laugh.

It might seem small—and it is, in the grand scheme of things—but I remember feeling so self-conscious. I was a shy kid, but I’d started to make friends, and I wanted to to keep it that way. Every time someone bullied me for my ears, it felt as though that might slip away. I wasn’t old enough yet to understand that this too would likely pass.

Fast forward a little, and I was scheduled for my procedure, although I didn’t really know much about it. I just knew that it was supposed to stop the bullying. The hospital staff would talk to me about my “bat ears,” which—whilst I had learned was an informal medical term—didn’t feel much better than the bullying, only this time from adults.

Following the surgery, your head has to be wrapped up in bandage like Mr. Bump, covering both ears completely and making it look as though you’re getting ready for a Halloween costume party. Fortunately, you stay at home whilst recovering—I think that my new headwear might have got me more name-calling than my ears had.

I’ll skip the gory details that make up the healing process, suffice to say that it wasn’t very fun, and was made only slightly better by video games and an almost-unlimited candy supply. I don’t remember very much of it anyway, to be honest—just the most disgusting bits.

The thing that I thought would stand out in my memory that absolutely doesn’t, though: how it felt afterwards. How it felt to go back to school, back to the playground, and never hear anything about my ears again. People had forgotten over the summer, I suppose, that they’d bullied me at all; they’d moved on to the next thing.

Some part of me wanted the other children to notice, I think. I almost wanted them to compliment me on my completely average ears—“wow, they’re so ordinarily close to your head.” They did not, and I don’t know what I would have done if they did. Instead, I simply carried on as if nothing had happened, and so did everyone else.

I’ve sometimes wondered in the years since if it was worth it. I’ve wondered whether those kids would have just grown up a little, gained some compassion, and ignored my ears for the rest of time. I’ve wondered whether it was worth the pain and whether it was the right response to bullying; whether I should have worn my ears proudly.

Of course, I can’t know, and I’m thankful to have avoided the years of bullying that might have happened. It’s strange, the things we do to protect ourselves, and how sensitive we are to what people think of us at such a young age. I’m more sensitive now, I think, but I care much less.

I’m experimenting with ways to recall my own memories, and to make it slightly more interesting than slogging through chronologically. One of those experiments I published a couple of days ago, where I enumerated some foods I remembered eating before I turned ten years old.

I ended up posting the same content directly to Threads (since links seem to get down-ranked), and doing so caused an unintended but very welcome side-effect: someone replied with a specific memory of their own along with a question that helped me to recall another of mine.

Without stating the town in which my memories had taken place directly, I’d included details that would make it obvious to anyone who either recognized or researched the places I’d referred to. I don’t know how the post got in front of this person, but I’m glad that it did, because they were clearly from the town that I’d grown up in.

Still crave Grays herbal tablets from the sweet shop on the Corn Market. What was your vending machine snack after swimming at Sansome Walk? Scampi flavour fries for me.

Immediately, memories that I hadn’t thought about in years came flooding into my brain. Sansome Walk Leisure Centre was the local public pool in my hometown, and I went there more times than I could count growing up. We’d take the coach there from primary school for swimming lessons, and I’d go there with my father frequently.

There was the memory of the snacks I’d get from the vending machine, sure, but that wasn’t the only gift that this question had given me. I remembered the songs we’d sing on the coach on the way there (Charlie had a pigeon, a pigeon, a pigeon…), how difficult I found learning to swim, and how much I loved going to Sansome Walk regardless.

I hope that by sharing these small memories, I helped this person to recall fond memories of their own. I know that by sharing their own memories in return, I was given a wonderful, unexpected gift. I googled it after to find photos, and it made something stir deep in my stomach. I was taken right back to those days at the pool, and I loved it.

Write down your memories and put some of them out there. You might be surprised with how it makes you feel to sit with them for a moment. You might get to surprise someone else. If you’re lucky, you might get a gift from a stranger that makes you feel something.

Headed home from an evening in San Francisco, I stopped by City Lights Books to browse the shelves before the store closed for the night. The cover of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tail caught my eye, but when I picked it up, it was the pages that really grabbed my interest.

I don’t mean the content of the pages (at least not at first), I mean the pages themselves—they had a deckle edge, and I rushed to project a whole lot meaning onto the content of the book itself. How brilliant, I thought, to treat the object in this way—how profound!

I thought of how it reflected on the book as a recovered artifact, or as a banned book pieced back together by many hands. I thought of people reproducing it in secret and cutting pages roughly by hand. I felt the rough, uneven edge with my thumb, and I felt connected to this object.

After some research it became clear that this wasn’t the purpose of the deckle edge at all—I was simply holding the 40th anniversary edition published under the Vintage imprint of Penguin Random House. It was the same deckle edge that they apply to many anniversary editions, and apparently had nothing to do with the content of this book.

I started reading the book on the BART and was presented with another example of readers making their own assumptions. Atwood claims to have not named the protagonist anything other than Offred—readers had simply assumed her real name.

Some have deduced that Offred’s real name is June, since of all the names whispered among the Handmaids in the gymnasium, June is the only one that never appears again. That was not my original thought, but it fits, so readers are welcome to it.

It’s what I was referring to in I, Art when I claimed that the audience contributes the final leg of the journey in a piece of art. It’s easy to simply think that you were “wrong” once you discover that the creator had not intended what you had assumed; that I was wrong to assume the intent that I had. You’re not wrong, though—it’s just your contribution.

I love the copy of the book that I purchased because the form of the book connects me to the content of the book, even if that was unintentional on the part of the publisher. I romanticize it because it could only have happened with a physical book—there are no deckle edges on my Kindle books; no texture to rub my thumb against.

All art is interpreted by its audience. You should feel free to interpret how you wish, and to leave that mark on the work if it makes you feel more connected to it. You should expect that your own art will take a similar journey, and be open to the audience contributing their part.

Sugar mice from the cathedral gift shop. Chocolate flavored carrots from Iceland (not the country). Chocolate nibbles from the sweet shop on Tunnel Hill. Atomic fireballs from the newsagent’s by Gheluvelt Park. As many PEZ as I could fit in my PEZ dispenser. Boiled potatoes with butter. Spaghetti and ketchup. Tiny Cadbury chocolate bars from a red plastic chimney that required a two pence coin. Clotted cream fudge from my stocking. All of the crisps except prawn cocktail. Victoria sandwich. Crumpets and butter. Little burger-shaped sweets from Lidl. Pilchards on toast. Butter on a spoon. Barratt pink and white nougat. Candy sticks (and pretend they were cigarettes). Pork scratchings from the pub. Pickled egg from the pub. Angel Delight. Turkey Twizzlers. Super Noodles sandwich. Crisp sandwich. Branston pickle and cheese sandwich. Powdered sugar on bread. Bread and butter. Chicken Cup a Soup. Grays herbal tablets. Salt ‘n’ Shake crisps. Mint imperials. Marzipan with hundreds and thousands. Saveloy and chips. Chicken and vegetable pie. Tuna sandwiches with malt vinegar. Chocolate donuts from the Cornish Bakehouse. Cornish pasty. Pork pie. Parma violets.

This thought isn’t fully developed and might sound strange (even to me a few minutes from now), but I think that memories—all memories, if we consider them for long enough—each have a color, form and texture.

My brain—and maybe your brain; maybe every brain—really leans into associative thinking. It tries to make lots of connections very quickly. If you told me one of your memories, I suspect that I’d see a color in my mind and could imagine the texture and form of the memory.

One memory might feel like a smooth blue sphere. Another could look and feel just like a misshapen Brillo pad. A third resemble a piece of warm yellow tissue paper—the kind used to wrap gifts—crumpled up, but then smoothed back out (no you’re being too specific).

If you imagine a room filled with endless items in every color and made of any material, I suspect you could think of a memory and pick out exactly (or close enough) the things that feel just like that memory.

Of course, I really like moments and memories, and I like making art, so I’ve also been thinking about how I might represent a memory with a piece of art. Not in a literal sense, but by picking out the color, medium and material that feels right, and then finding the right form.

One of my favorite recent purchases is a Paper Republic journal, in which I’ve added two inserts: a ruled notebook, and a sketchbook. I use the notebook to capture memories and the sketchbook to (attempt to) represent that memory with a piece of art—it’s a strangely joyful act.

When you find the right form for a memory, you feel it; it just clicks into place. You—and I suspect only you, to be honest—can look at it again later and recall the memory that it represents. It almost feels like a secret code, or a hidden message sent from you, to you; you alone.

If you’ll humor me for a moment, try closing your eyes, thinking of a memory, and really considering its color, form and texture. If you’ll humor me further, try to find some items that feel like they fit—or if you’re so inclined, try to make that item (art; object; etc.).

I think there’s a great deal of joy in sitting with your memories, and even more in bringing them out into the world; giving them form. I’ve enjoyed trying to bring mine to life, and I hope that you do, too.

This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.

Today’s rerun is Creative Constraints, and I’m really only re-running it because something has changed and I wanted to talk about it. You can read the original post, but this should basically stand alone just fine.

When I started my daily art practice, I added a bunch of constraints to help me show up every day and just do the work. Fewer decisions to make; fewer excuses. At some point in the past couple of weeks, those constraints stopped serving me, and started having the opposite effect.

I put the constraints in place because I didn’t know what I wanted to make, nor which medium and materials I wanted to use to make it. Of course, once you start making anything you start to find things that work for you, and you want to do more of those things (and more often).

At first, I didn’t allow myself to move on because my rules told me that it hadn’t yet been 30 days. I’d committed to a medium and material for one month, and I wasn’t quite at the end. When I sat down to do the work though, I didn’t really want to do it. The purpose of the constraints was to motivate me, not to sap my motivation.

As fellow completionists and perfectionists might know, you can become beholden to your own rules even when it makes no sense. Even when no one else is holding you to those rules, and there are no negative consequences to changing them (or simply not fulfilling them). Against the desires of my subconscious, I just… stopped following them.

Immediately, my motivation sprang back. I was excited to sit down and make my small piece of art every day, and started to think more about the larger pieces of art I’d like to make with the mediums that had most resonated with me. I didn’t need the rules to help me make art every day—it had already started to feel strange not to make art.

It wasn’t very long ago that I started making art every day, and more recently still that I wrote so confidently and publicly about the power of my creative constraints. Letting go of things that no longer serve us is almost always the right thing to do, though, and this is a gentle nudge to consider whether you can retire any rules that no longer serve you.

I saw a post on Threads today from lettering artist Simon Walker that pretty much sums up the creative process much of the time:

DM: Hey I love your work what’s your process?

Me: Staring unblinkingly at the screen while drawing and redrawing and zooming in and out and clicking my mouse furiously and going “please look good, please look good”

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in process before you’ve even gotten started, but once you do get started, things often seem much messier than when you were thinking about The One Right Way.

A neat process always sounds good. You’ll be asked about your process in interviews. You’ll talk about it in case studies. You might even try to follow it in earnest most of the time. In reality, though, I’d wager that you bounce around a little more than you care to admit.

Making things for humans is messy, because reality is messy! People change and the world changes and we face unending challenges along the way—but we persevere. We pivot, and we adapt, and we figure it out. That’s the beautiful part to me—that we muddle through it all.

If you drew the path you took from problem to solution, it might look more like a blind contour drawing of the wind than a double diamond, and that’s okay. The story of our lives probably looks pretty similar. Have a process, sure, but remember that much of life is improv.

Writing a memoir seems like a lot of pressure. Whenever something feels immovable to me, I like to think about what the very smallest, most simple expression of the idea might be; the essence of the idea.

In 1970 Joe Brainard published an experimental memoir titled I Remember. The entire book is a collection of statements prefixed with those words. What is a memoir, after all, if not your memories.

If you reframe a memoir from the idea that you likely have in your head to the idea above, I’d bet that it becomes easier to get started. Not “write this masterpiece,” but “write down what you remember.”

You might not want to publish an entire memoir like that, but you certainly need the memories to write the memoir you want, so you almost can’t lose. It’s either final or it’s fodder, and both are just fine.

To help me write my own, I’ll take the opportunity to borrow from Joe and recount the memories that surface for me whilst I sit here today.

I remember buying The Animals of Farthing Wood on VHS from Selfridges during my first trip to London as a young boy. I played that video tape non-stop, because it’s the only one I had.

I remember going down into the cellar of our house for the first time, and wondering why old cellars were required to look (and smell) as though bad things had happened in them a long time ago.

I remember when our parrot, Max, escaped his cage and pooped right on some Monopoly money that was on the table. I remember how—for some reason—that money instantly became lucky.

I remember being upset with my father (in the regular young-child sort of way), and destroying a pom pom hedgehog that he’d made for me. I remember feeling terrible about it. I still feel terrible.

I remember having a family picnic on the racecourse and seeing a hot air balloon about to take off the other side. I remember sprinting towards it, hoping they’d let me on if only I could get there in time.

I remember excitedly buying stick insects from the pet store, and—once in their enclosure—never really knowing whether I was looking fondly at my new pets or simply staring at an actual twig.

I remember when my goldfish died, and the hours I spent crying afterwards. It was the first time I’d thought about death, and I’ve thought about it almost every day since. I’d happily have waited.

I remember when I got zip-up shoes, and how my first-grade teacher would dismiss students by whether they had velcro or laces. She took a few minutes to notice that I hadn’t gone anywhere.

I used to feel proud of how many books I read per year, and it’s still a popular thing for people to brag about today. Reading lots of books is good, sure, but I’m convinced that reading a smaller number of books over and over again might be even more valuable.

Reading lots of books is the easy part, but why do we read books? Why do you read books? Surely not to tell people that you’ve read them. I’ll assume that it’s to learn something new, to challenge your current biases, or to entertain yourself (amongst other things).

I just read The Egg by Andy Weir, and at first it just entertained me. I read it again and it started to make me think. I read it a third time and it started to connect with other ideas that had been wriggling up from the depths of my memories during the first two readings. What if I read it once per year (or per month, even—or every day)?

A handful of ideas taken seriously, I think, might be better than hundreds paid lip service. Read The Egg enough times and you start to wonder about yourself, the universe, and everything in it. It made me think about the times I could have been kinder to others, kinder to myself, and whether in principle they’re the same thing.

There are probably a handful of books or stories (maybe fewer) that really feel as though they’ve changed me, and I tend to read them more than once. Between readings I might change, or the world might change, or (usually the case) both might have changed. The story hasn’t changed, of course, but it might still feel different each time you read it.

As I get older I find myself seeking out simple rules that I can follow often, simple stories to revisit often, and simple pleasures to indulge in. Which stories have changed you, and when was the last time you read them? If you read them again today, what might they teach you?

My wife is a wonderful ceramicist. She started in London at the Leyton studio of Turning Earth, cycling there several evenings a week after work and most weekends. The house filled up with beautiful pots made with care, and I was in awe of her patience, skill and dedication.

When we moved to New York she joined another studio, Brooklyn Peoples Pottery, the working studio of ceramicist Alice Waters. Our Bed-Stuy carriage house started to fill up with wonderful work yet again, and I found myself increasingly interested in her practice.

Over the years, one of the things I’d most admired was her ability to work in a medium that had such long stretches between the conception of a piece and its eventual completion: sketching, wedging, throwing, drying, trimming, drying (again), bisque firing, glazing, glaze firing. Some of these steps had days or weeks in between them.

The medium I’ve most used to express my ideas is software, which is immediate and almost always a two-way door. It’s never done. Always malleable. I could make things quickly and rework what I’d made for eternity (in theory). With ceramics, this wasn’t true—at least once the piece had been fired, and especially once it had been glazed.

At some point, my wife suggested that I join her studio and make work of my own. After dragging my heels for a while, I signed up. I didn’t know if I had the necessary patience and perseverance that she seemed to possess, but I thought that I might as well find out. I attended class once per week and had longer studio hours on the weekend.

From the very first class, I was hooked. I wedged my clay, centered it on the wheel, opened it up, pulled up the walls and… fucked it up. Over and over again. I’d smush the wet clay back down into a misshapen lump, center it again, and just keep going. An experience I’d expected to frustrate me had liberated me instead, and I loved it.

I’d started that first lesson with a lump of clay, and I ended with a lump of clay that was a good bit smaller and good bit wetter. I had nothing concrete to show for the hours in the studio, and I didn’t care at all—I knew I’d be back, and that the next session wouldn’t be much different.

Over the next few months I’d slowly improve my skills, but the vast majority of my time in the studio was spent centering clay on the wheel, opening it up, pulling up the walls, and then… taking my wire and cutting the pot in in half, top to bottom. I was obsessed with the thickness of my walls and the consistency of my pull. Shape, chop, smush, repeat.

Eventually, I’d finish a few pieces—but that wasn’t really the point and isn’t the point of this post. It took months of slow progress and days or weeks of waiting in between steps to get anywhere at all. It taught me a new kind of patience. A new kind of care, craft and consideration.

My wife has inspired many of my best qualities, to be honest, and I’ll forever be thankful for all of them. This particular lesson is one that I’m constantly thankful for though, and makes me appreciate even more the care that she has for her own practice. The care that she has for everything that she does, actually—this is just one example.

There’s beauty and clarity to the slowness of ceramics and mediums like it. There’s meditation in the making and in the waiting. It makes you look at the world a little differently, and to appreciate more of the things around you. If you get the chance, try making something slowly—and like my wife, be kind enough to encourage others to do the same.

This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.

Today’s rerun is Make-It, Post-it. Back when I published this post I’d only just started writing publicly every day, and I had no idea if I’d keep up with it. I started those daily blog posts after sticking this Post-it note to my display—a simple rule that I could repeat and act on.

Over the years I’d created many complicated systems in pursuit of doing the things I wanted to do, and none of them really worked; none of them stuck for very long. This time, I wanted to try removing all of the rules but one: make something every day and share it. That’s any something so long as it’s shared. It just had to exist, every day.

Ever since, I’ve doubled down on other simple rules or frameworks. There are endless ways to describe the full complexity of a product design process, for example, but the key one for me is simple: observe, reflect, make. We’re observing to make or making to observe, making sure to reflect as we transition and to keep moving—more loop than line.

That’s not to say there’s nothing else to it—there’s lots more. If you’re not building on this simple foundation, though, all of that stuff doesn’t mean very much. Similarly, it’s not always easy to make something every day and share it, but it’s a simple foundation with a lot of flexibility, and that’s often what we really need vs. complex, rigid process.

Life is always much messier than most of us would like to imagine, and rigid, multi-step processes start to break down quickly. If that’s all you have, you’re left with a pile of rubble, but if you can fall back on simple rules there’s always a next clear step you can take. Do we know enough to make? Have we made enough to observe?

Writing this simple rule on a Post-it note is responsible for my daily writing practice. It’s responsible for the art I make every day, and for the renewed focus with which I approach my work. If you’re struggling with rigid rules, try paring it down to the smallest, most simple rule that helps you move forward. It worked for me, and I hope it does for you.

I was having a conversation with someone today about writing, and about my own daily writing practice. I’d published things here and there over the years, but it was only this year that I started to publish regularly; that it started to feel weird not to publish regularly—or at least to write.

This might seem obvious once I state it, but it hadn’t yet dawned on me that my ability to write publicly every day arrived the same year that I started to write privately every day (via morning pages).

I claimed that I don’t keep a backlog of posts, but in reality that’s only a half-truth. I journal 750 words every single morning—inevitably I end up publishing something that began as a small thought in those pages.

I wondered for years how I might develop a writing practice. I’d put pressure on myself to first come up with good ideas, but sitting down to “think of good ideas” is harder than it sounds. It turns out the solution was simple and sounds silly: to write more I just had to write more.

When I sit down with my journal every morning, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to write about—I just start writing. When I sit down to write my daily blog post, I… mostly same, to be honest—but I do have lots of thoughts rattling around in my head, and a few come into focus.

Annoyingly, I find that’s how most things work. The “one weird trick” to doing the thing is simply to do the thing, which makes you more likely to do the thing again, which… (you get the picture). Since I started making daily art, I started making more art period, and so it goes.

I sincerely doubt that I’d be sat here writing this post if I hadn’t first committed to writing morning pages (and finally sticking with it). I simply wouldn’t have built the muscle to write for myself, nor the confidence to just write about anything vs. some elusive “good idea.”

If you’re struggling to do the thing, do the thing. More practically, if you’re struggling to write something and share it with the world, start by writing something—really, anything—for an audience of one: you.

I was reading James Edmondson’s (excellent) new book over the weekend—the Ohno book; a book about type design. One small comment caught my eye in the chapter on spacing, and stayed with me:

Tape and scissors are go-to sketching tools for their immediacy

I thought back to my time studying type design at Cooper Union in New York. I recalled the endless hours of sketching, cutting and rearranging, and—this is key—how much I hated my damn scissors.

Tools are just tools, but when tools don’t work as you expect them to, they really do impact the work. They impact your enthusiasm to do the work. They chip away at you, bit by bit, until you’re exasperated. These scissors did that to me. I couldn’t cut another letter.

That might sound dramatic until I tell you that I mean it quite literally. Somehow the combination of those scissors and the kind of paper that’s useful for sketching type just didn’t want to work together. I’d blame the paper, but I think that I know the real culprit.

I’m going to start a new type design project, and the Ohno book was making me excited to get going… but then I read that line, and I thought about those scissors. If bad tools could chip away at my enthusiasm, I thought, surely good tools could make me even more excited.

As the internet often does, it presented to me moments later a pair of scissors that I needed (yeah, I know). They were made the old fashioned way—all metal, no plastic—and looked beautiful. The kind of object you want to keep on your desk rather than shove in the drawer.

As soon as I saw them, I immediately imagined them gliding through the paper holding my sketches. Crisp, clean lines. None of that weird thing where the paper just sort of flops between the blades. I’d cut, I’d rearrange, and I’d cut again! Sketching would be a joy.

The tools that we gather—especially those that could last us a lifetime—are often worth the investment. If you love the thing that they help you to do, bring them into your workspace. Whenever I do work with tools that feel great, I feel great too. I feel great about the work.

This time, it’s scissors. Sometimes it’s paper, or the right pencil, or something much more expensive. Each one adds a little more joy to my making process, and that’s worth so much more than the tools cost.

Yesterday I published my 100th post. That’s 100 days of sitting down and writing something new, without drafts or a backlog. It feels like yesterday that I celebrated 28 days. I was almost reticent to claim that it had been 100 because of reruns, but even then I don’t just re-share a post.

It all started with trying to build community, and that’s already started to work. I’d been writing morning pages for a long time, but I wanted to make something every day and put it out there. I specifically wanted to write every day, but of course I started making art daily, too.

With my writing, I wanted to write about life. I wanted to write about places I love—like London, Brooklyn, my hometown, and of course home. I wrote about my love letter to California, about my grandfather, about places that call to me and about memories from my many homes.

Like everyone else, I’m a work in progress. Evidenced by the fact that I’m still working on things from months ago. Evidenced by this very post, and the last two paragraphs of equal length. Despite that, and despite what I claim to the contrary, I’m proud of myself and this blog.

I believe that stories matter. I believe that my story matters, and absolutely that your story matters. I wish that everyone told their story, and even though it’s hard, wish that they’d just start—despite the many challenges. If they don’t write it, I hope they at least tell it.

One hundred consecutive days is a big milestone, but I’m not going to stop there. I’m going to try really hard to keep posting every day for as long as I can. I’ll post because I really care about it. I’ll post even if I can barely show up. I’ll post to plant seeds that might one day grow.

If you’ve been reading along, thank you for that. I’m grateful and I’m honored. Whilst I mostly write for myself, I sincerely hope that you enjoy what I’ve written and would love to hear from you if you do.

When I first stumbled upon The Great Discontent by Tina and Ryan Essmaker many years ago, I thought one thing: great fucking name.

The magazine itself turned out to be wonderful, too—I reference it to this day when talking about great editorial design, interview technique and community building. The name though left an indelible mark on me.

I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to validate the origin of the name, because I felt it deep in my gut as soon as I saw it. I knew that I was part of that class—the class of the great discontent. I knew that it had been bestowed on me, and that it was both a blessing and a curse.

A friend recently asked what piece of work I’d shipped that I was most proud of, and I found it difficult to answer. Even more difficult than I thought I might. I’ve thought about it since and why it felt complicated, and the best I’ve got is this: I’m regularly proud of the work I’m doing, but I find it much harder to be proud of the work I’ve done.

The reason for that, I think, is twofold: I value collaboration so much that the real joy of making for me is in the beautiful, messy process, and; you can feel yourself getting better whilst making things, but once you’ve actually finished it you’re better than when you started. Of course few things are ever truly finished, but I think you get the point.

I might be misremembering, but I recall Frank Chimero talking about this when he reflected on the the writing of his book, The Shape of Design. In my memory it went something like this: once you get to the end of a draft you’re better than when you started, but that’s basically true in perpetuity so you’ll never really be satisfied.

Of course with a physical book there really is something finished—you have to print it, bind it, and ship an actual artifact to someone. I mostly design software, so surely I could simply update it? We’re often talking about work done months or years ago though. Work that’s difficult or impossible to revisit. As good as bound and shipped.

I called it both a blessing a curse because I really believe that it is—the curse that makes it difficult to feel truly proud of past work is identical to the blessing that keeps me striving for more. Striving is part of my personality. Striving is the thing that I am actually proud of.

All of that to say: I don’t think that I’ll ever feel totally comfortable with the question, but I feel completely comfortable with the reasons why. The question made me reflect on when I do feel pride, and why. It made me glad that I keep striving. That I always will.

I love the outside big-light. I hate the inside big-light.

During the day I want as much sunlight as possible. I want to be soaked in it. I want it to fill the room. As soon as the sun goes down, I want as little light as possible, especially from right above me.

I don’t know when I first noticed this about myself, only that I can’t remember a time before it. Perhaps I was born hating the big light. If I bothered to Google it, I suspect that would be the consensus.

It’s a visceral feeling—both my love of sunlight and my hate of overhead, bright-white artificial light. I feel pure joy when soaked in sunlight and borderline-distressed whenever I’m subjected to that big light in the ceiling—as if it’s a beam from an unfriendly extraterrestrial and I’m about to embark on an unwanted adventure.

The perfect artificial light comes from 1-3 warm-toned lamps, casting just enough light to go about your business, but no more. If I could afford both the money and the risk, I’m sure that I’d simply light hundreds of candles every evening instead (unfortunately or fortunately, I cannot).

My love for sunlight and distaste for artificial light means that I spend an odd amount of time thinking about light. It’s the reason that I enjoy yellow quite so much, perhaps—sunlight that I can draw and organize and surround myself with, even when the sun goes down.

Creating an environment that brings you joy is one of the kindest things that you can do for yourself. You don’t always get to do this, of course, and when you share an environment you have to compromise—but all the more reason to surround yourself with small reminders.

Lately I’ve taken to standing in my office—the only light coming from my Benq ScreenBar Pro set to the warmest tone—staring at my art that I’ve increasingly started to make only in yellow. The kind of yellow that feels like sunlight at golden hour. The kind of sunlight I love.

This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.

Today’s rerun is Work in Progress, and it’s a pretty painful one to revisit if I’m honest. The post was about a compulsive behavior that I’m plagued with to create paragraphs of equal length in a piece of writing.

If you read my last few posts, it will be very obvious. Obvious to the extent that someone recently commented on it. Despite the fact I knew it was obvious, I still felt a knot deep in my stomach at the knowledge that it had been noticed. A sort of embarrassment or shame.

It’s not so much that I care what others think, more-so that I care about what I think, and actively want to work on it. It’s not an overnight thing, of course, which is why the original post is titled “work in progress”. It will take time, discomfort, and a little patience.

My motivation to write the post was to state publicly that it’s a thing I’d like to work on, in the hope that the commitment would help me to do so. My motivation for this rerun is to share that of course it doesn’t work like that, and it’s totally fine that it doesn’t. Nobody’s perfect.

The reason I know it’s difficult? I really planned to make all of the paragraphs a different length in this post, but my brain steered the last three toward the compulsion. I almost went back to fix them, but resisted.

Posting this rerun, I think, is mostly a reminder to be kind to myself. To give myself the same grace I’d give to anyone else, because we’re often so unlikely to do so. We expect perfection that we wouldn’t from others.

A few weeks after writing the original post, I wrote something very short recalling how Elizabeth Gilbert had encouraged people to consider how they feel about themselves vs. toward themselves. I didn’t feel great about myself when I first thought about posting this rerun, but I’m trying to feel better toward myself. To give myself a little more patience.

You probably won’t notice this change about my writing very quickly, but you might notice it change. You’ll notice it a little in this post, and in a couple of others maybe. In a few months you might notice it in a few more. In a few years… well…who knows—work in progress.

If there’s something that you’re trying to work on in yourself and it’s taking longer than you’d hoped, give yourself a little grace. Consider how you’d feel towards others struggling with the same thing. You deserve the same kindness that they do, not least from yourself.

A few months back I got around to reading On Quality, the notes of Robert M. Pirsig—author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—edited by his wife Wendy K. Pirsig and published after his death. Both books attempt to articulate Pirsig’s theory of Quality, or “the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object.”

I’d do a terrible job of trying to explain it, but I’m not totally sure it’s worth explaining in great detail anyway. You could tie yourself up in knots considering the stuff in On Quality, but I think that most of us intuitively get what he’s talking about (which is sort of the point)—broadly: you perceive quality before rational thought.

A few weeks back I was watching a conversation between Jony Ive—who needs no introduction—and Patrick Collison—who likely doesn’t either, and joked that Jony doesn’t even need a last name. At one point, Jony said something that summed up what I took from Pirsig’s writing, and that I think would likely resonate with more of us:

I really do believe—and I wish that I had empirical evidence—that we have this ability to sense care. You sense carelessness, you know carelessness, and so I think it’s reasonable to believe that you also know care and you sense care.

To me, this is both unambiguous and true. It might not be your truth, but I suspect that it is. I suspect that you enjoy golden hour as much as the next person. I’d bet that the sound of the ocean brings you some peace. I’d wager that you don’t need to rationalize it before you feel those feelings.

Let’s say for a moment that all of that doesn’t resonate, though. In that case, I’d still suspect that the opposite is true. That—as Jony is suggesting—you can sense carelessness immediately, and are repelled by it immediately. I’d bet that even if you do rationalize and articulate it after the fact, that the perception and the feeling existed regardless.

It’s why I’ve struggled—increasingly—with the idea that all beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I don’t know if I ever did—I simply repeated it ad nauseam because that’s what people do. I think that some things are just more beautiful than others. That we can sense beauty as we sense care. That they are the same thing.

That’s the main idea for me, actually—that our sense of care comes from experiencing quality and beauty, and that the care it encourages creates more beauty in the world. A goofy example, but if you wipe the water droplets from around the airplane bathroom sink, I suspect that the next person is more likely to do the same (and vice versa).

There is beauty and quality in nature, of course, which is why I think it’s so important to get out there and experience it. If experiencing that quality makes you act with more care, we get to transfer that beauty into the things that we make ourselves. We get to make the world more beautiful and act as a catalyst for more care, and so it goes.

I believe that we have this ability to sense care. I believe that we have the ability to express care. I hope that reading this makes you take even more notice, and to bring it back into your life, home and work.

After writing yesterday’s post I was reminded of a chapter in Frank Chimero’s The Shape of Design. It’s not the same thing exactly, but it resonated for similar reasons. After all, one of the reasons I like making art is that it does something helpful for my brain.

In the post, Frank writes about making mindless marks as a proxy for a walk through the city without a destination. Something to help “the hitches in his mind begin to unravel.” Here’s a quote from the book:

There is no subject, just as a good walk has no destination; their purpose is movement. My pencil cuts across the paper like a figure skater zipping around her rink, overlapping, skipping, and spinning. The skater ignores the mark that comes in the wake of her movement, and I do the same. This drawing isn’t aesthetic, it is kinetic—more like dancing than drawing.

From time to time since reading that years ago, I’ve done the same thing—sat at my desk with a pencil in hand, letting it roam the page with no purpose other than to get my mind moving in the right way. It turns out that to be the same feeling I want when making art, though.

My day job as a designer means that many of my waking hours are spent meticulously thinking about details, edge-cases and systems. I want my art to be something close to the opposite—at least right now. To simply start moving, intuitively, and let the piece reveal itself.

We spend so long sat in front of screens, making our brain work hard while our body just carries it around. Whether it’s your hand or your body, a little or a lot, movement unlocks so many wonderful things.

For a long time I thought that I couldn’t be an artist because I simply wasn’t drawn to rendering some some scene in realistic detail. Silly thought, of course, but one that I think is shared by many.

The kind of art I most enjoy making is both abstract and immediate. That is, I want there to be immediacy to my movements—almost to have my hand move faster than my brain, lest it start judging.

A few weeks back I was listening to the wonderful Kristin Texeira being interviewed. She made an offhand comment that struck me and stuck with me: that art can simply be a physical expression.

I’m sure it’s an opinion shared by many, and I’m sure that I might have suggested as much myself, but sometimes you need to hear something. I needed to hear this something, at that exact time.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Every day that I’ve made art since, I’ve felt so much more connected to the work that I’m making, and (suddenly) completely content to think of myself as an artist.

If your work is more than a physical expression, that’s great (obviously), but it truly can be nothing more and still be wonderful work. The movement itself is as much of the art as anything else.

Something similar is true when viewing works of art too, I think. For years (again) I felt sort of embarrassed that I couldn’t articulate why I liked a piece of art or why an art movement resonated with me.

For some reason, it didn’t feel like enough to just enjoy the work. It seemed insufficient to say that I simply liked how it made me feel. That it tickled my brain in a satisfying but totally ineffable way.

Spoiler: it’s totally enough. You have nothing to prove. Like Rick Rubin, you can just “know what you like and what you don’t like, and be decisive about what you like and what you don’t like.”

So whether it’s art that you’re making or works of art that you’re enjoying—and if you have the same reservations I did—I invite you to join me. Our art movement can simply be art; movement.

I think that everyone has a color that moves them. Some people might have many colors that move them, but I think that everyone has at least one. A color that takes their breath away, or makes their heart heavy.

For me, yellow is one of those colors. Not any old yellow, but a sort of golden, ever-so-slightly-orange yellow. The kind of yellow that reminds you of liquid sun—especially during golden hour in some beautiful place.

I want to be surrounded by that color. I want to see it for as far as I can see. To climb up high and jump into it. I want to just stare at it until the feelings wear off. Odd things to say about a color, maybe, but true.

I doubt that many people get up-close to a single color regularly and just stare at it for a while. Perhaps when you’re decorating a home, but even I (despite the above) wouldn’t paint an entire room yellow. I want to engage with my color actively, not turn it into some passive thing.

As strange as it sounds, though, I think that more people should find their color, and to really think about what that color is. Not to recall their “favorite color”—likely repeated indiscriminately for years—but to really think, at this time specifically, which color most moves them.

My color—one of my colors—makes me feel something close to joyful. Just a strange little feeling that starts in my stomach, goes all the way up to my head, and then pops above it and hovers there for a minute.

How wonderful for a single color to do that. How curious that it should. I’ve learned to stop interrogating why quite so much (for many things) and to simply accept the feeling. To turn my brain off for a moment and just experience that moment instead.

If you have a color, I’d love to hear what it is and how it makes you feel. If you don’t have color, I encourage you to find it (or them).

Patrick Collison shared in an interview that the folks at Stripe have a saying: they really, really, really care. They don’t just care, nor simply really care. They care, presumably, to an abnormal degree.

I think that when you look at what they put out into the world at Stripe it’s pretty clear that that’s true. I’m not just talking about the main thing that they build, either—one of my favorites is Stripe Press.

I could probably write a whole essay about Stripe, about Stripe Press, and about the many other things that the Collison’s have helped to create or inspire, but I’ll save that for now—this is about caring.

The reason that the phrase struck a chord with me is that I really, really, really tend to put a lot of care into my work, too. In some scenarios likely to a fault, but it’s difficult to turn off, even if I wanted to.

Lots of folks talk about finding your passion, and Cal Newport wrote about the reverse: getting good at something such that it becomes your passion. The common element for me, though, is simply to care.

It turns out that deciding to care is pretty much the secret to feeling some sort of pride about my work. Even when there are situations outside of my control, I decide to care—then I at least have that.

It’s not philanthropic—I simply want to live in a more beautiful world and want for things to work as well as they can. I haven’t written about this yet, but I simply want to experience Pirsig-esque “Quality”.

Over the past few months, I’ve decided to really, really, really care about more than ever: morning pages, writing, art, mental health. It turns out that you can fit a lot of Quality into your life. More than I thought.

For some goofy reason, starting to tell myself that I “really, really, really” care has created a little feeling inside of me. Makes me push a little further. Try a little harder. I recommend really, really… (ah, you get it).

This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.

Today’s rerun is Nervous Twitches. I have a fondness for (very) short stories that try to say a lot. Stories that could be mistaken for poems; that have a similar economy of language. The post contains 12 words.

I haven’t written many of these kinds of stories because they don’t come to me very often, and there are few ways for me to sit down and try to think of one without it feeling super pretentious. It’s not like some challenge I want to fulfill—some stories simply require few words.

There are these small moments in life that can be captured in a single sentence, but where each word holds an entire story. I wasn’t trying to be clever when writing that post, I was just capturing a fleeting moment. It was only afterwards that I realized what the story really captured.

It did capture a moment in time, of course. A moment that has occurred several times, actually, but a moment nonetheless. It also tells you something about my nervous system, though. It tells you something about my wonderful, caring wife, and perhaps that we weren’t alone.

I enjoy this story more than many of the others I write. A short story that, really, took years to write. I spent seconds typing the words, but I couldn’t have written it without the preceding decade building a relationship with someone who both notices and cares.

These are some of my favorite things to read from others, too. Little vignettes that contain so much, but barely exist on the page. I hope that you’ll capture your own whenever you notice them.

For some reason I like doing things the long, hard stupid way, and this blog is no exception. If you’re planning to post something every single day, it would probably be easier if you had a bunch of drafts; a backlog of posts that you could publish at any time. I have neither.

Every day, I sit down and wonder what I’m going to write about, and I write it (unless I really can’t). The reason for that, of course: this blog is the backlog; the posts are the drafts. I simply share with you what others might keep private until it’s “good enough” because… why not?

There’s something liberating about hammering out a post and immediately typing ship into my terminal—an alias that instantly commits and pushes changes to the main branch of the GitHub repo, making the post live. I’ve toyed with doing it every time I hit save.

For some reason, the idea of a backlog feels like cheating to me, and the idea of a bunch of half-written drafts just hasn’t worked for me yet. Maybe it will one day; maybe both will. For now though I like to sit down, engage my brain (or very purposely not) and just start writing.

One reason is that I want to stay open to each and every day. I rarely write about what happened on a given day, but the thing that happened might inspire the post. I wrote yesterday’s post after telling a friend (who had just been to London) that 5% of my heart still yearned for it.

The drafts that I write here and the backlog I’m building by publishing them will feed the essays that I want to write. The books I might eventually write. The moments I simply want to recall a memory, regardless of literary merit. With that said: welcome to my drafts.

There are several places over the course of my life so far that have called me to them. I don’t think that I could really tell you why—it’s just feeling.

The first place I recall feeling this way about is the Malvern Hills. They’re close to where I grew up, and I’ve been there more times than I can count, but they stayed on my mind all of the moments in between. They’re still on my mind, years later and thousands of miles away.

We’d go there when I was very young, and we’d collect water from the spring at St. Ann’s Well. The same building was home to a cafe where we’d get hot tea and scones as an antidote to the cold wind. It was built in 1813, and you’ve never had tea and scones somewhere more perfect.

When I got older I’d go there alone. I’d ride my motorbike halfway up and climb a few trees. I’d wander, and sit, and wander again. I’d sit quietly with the wild sheep and cows—suspicious at first, but if I stayed for long enough they’d eventually amble over to eat their grass next to me.

The second place that called to me was Trafalgar Square. London was the first place I went that really made me feel like I wasn’t at home any more, and Trafalgar Square was the first time I remember feeling butterflies. It still makes me feel butterflies, every time and especially at night.

When I was old enough to catch the train by myself (and afford the fare) I’d travel here alone, too. I’d wander around the city for hours, and I’d always end at Trafalgar Square. I’d sit on the steps in front of the National Gallery and just feel my insides endlessly swirl around.

I was lucky enough to live in London for several years, and whenever I ended up in Trafalgar Square those feelings would come right back. My sense of direction is terrible, and my wife (knowing that) would sometimes make sure we went there if nearby. I love her for that.

When we moved to New York it was the Brooklyn Bridge that spoke to me. It spoke to me before we lived there, somehow, but it was undeniable once I was up-close. It was beautiful and intimidating and I couldn’t believe that I could just stand there, looking up at it.

We had family visiting one year and they asked what I wanted to do for my birthday whilst they were in town. I knew exactly what I wanted to do: get up early and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge before everyone else did the exact same thing in droves; before it was engulfed.

The weather was terrible and somehow that made it even better. The clouds hung low and the bridge rose up into them. I didn’t want the walk to end. I wanted to walk on that bridge forever. To stand in the middle and look at that view. I still think about it now—all the time.

I live in the Bay Area now, and the first place to call me here was Point Reyes Lighthouse. I know this sounds a little… something, but I knew that I was supposed to go there before I went, and once I arrived I instantly felt that it was one of those places. Like the places I just spoke of.

The reason I drive out there—the reason I slog along the sand for hours to sit underneath, the reason that I’m drawn to make stories and write poetry and tell stories about this place—is because it’s one of those places. A place that calls me to it, for no clear reason.

These places that call us to them are special. They stay with us, and if we’re lucky, we get to revisit them. I get butterflies from the hills just as I do from the square, the bridge and the lighthouse. I’m so grateful that each of them exists, and even more-so that they called me to them.

The last two lines of Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day have been quoted into oblivion. Quoted to the degree that makes people roll their eyes. Framed alongside quips such as “live, love, laugh” and typeset in the swirly-whirly typefaces of wedding invites.

Despite that, I urge you to read the poem every morning.

The Summer Day is such a perfect way to start your day, because reading the whole thing reminds us of at least two things: that life is precious, and that spending the day doing almost nothing is a perfectly great way to experience that life—especially on a summer’s day.

The last two lines in isolation might suggest you’re not doing enough. Like you’re never doing enough. What pressure! What will you do, with your one wild and precious life? What could possibly be enough? But really, on that summer’s day… what else should you have done?

The thing is, if you read the poem enough times and think about it for long enough, you start to imagine how you might spend more of your days. How you might discover the things that feel less like pressure to live someone else’s life, and more like the fulfillment of your own.

Something strange happens, I think, when we get intimate with an idea. When we really internalize it and think about it all the time. It starts to change us. Gradually, at first, and then all at once. I believe that The Summer Day can do that, and I really do urge you to read it.

I worry that my memories are slipping away, or at least enough of the details that I’m no longer sure how accurate they are. Today’s post is simply the result of sitting quietly and trying to remember.

1. We were living on Maple Avenue so I must have been under 5 years old. I thought it would be funny to pretend I was hiding behind the long curtains by putting my shoes at the bottom, poking out, but really I hid behind the chair in the corner. There was fake alarm (“oh I really do wonder where he is”) and then real alarm. I couldn’t keep it going for very long. Never could. It’s hard hearing people in panic.
2. When I was at Gorse Hill nursery, I didn’t really like vegetables. The rule was that you couldn’t go out onto the playground until you ate them all though. I ate them, slowly, but most of the time I took so long that playtime was over. The lunch lady noticed and would sit with me until I finished—chatting to me about nothing, encouraging my progress, and celebrating joyfully when I was done.
3. One of the few times that I did make it onto the playground, my sister came running over to me. She excitedly told me that we’d been invited to a birthday party by her friend, who followed her over. I remember beaming with pride before the other girl said “not him—he can’t come”. It was a weird sort of pain, and I don’t think I’d felt it before. I didn’t usually get invited, but I didn’t get rejected, either.
4. When we were living on Perdiswell Street—I must have been around 5 years old now—I got some firetruck-themed, light-up trainers. They lit up when your foot struck the ground, so I’d run up and down the street over and over before twisting my body to make sure that they were flashing as promised. I felt so lucky to have them, and didn’t ever think about the batteries running out (which they did… quickly).
5. At around the same age (same house), my mom liked listening to Right Said Fred, and in a music video I’d seen he did this thing where he sort of span around and got lower to the ground. In the summer we’d lay a tarp out and run water over it with the hose. I’d pretend to be Right Said Fred for hours, spinning around until I was dizzy. For some reason I thought he was cool—he seemed free of worry.

Yesterday I became a U.S. citizen. I’m fortunate to have been eligible just three years after entering the country, and yet those three years felt long. I say the following with awareness of how incredibly privileged I am: it’s strange to feel like a guest in the place you call home.

There are, of course, many reasons to become a citizen—not least the right to exercise your vote, and to run for office if it becomes obvious that you should do so. You get protections that you didn’t have. Benefits should you need them. A certain security that you otherwise lacked.

Those are all reasons that I care about, but they weren’t the first things I thought of the moment I completed my oath and received my certificate. The first thing was a little more human and a bit more squishy: it was simply the feeling you get when you’re home.

I mean that in the most literal way possible. I’m not commenting on politics or immigration. I’m literally speaking about that feeling you get when you crawl back into your own bed after spending the last week at a hotel for a work trip. A soothing off-ramp for your nervous system.

You don’t realize that you’re carrying that feeling around until you’re not anymore. This will seem like a goofy example, but it’s like when you forget that you’ve left the extractor on whilst cooking, and once you switch it off you realize how wonderful the world sounds without it.

For the past three years I’ve lived in and contributed to this place that I call home, but without fully belonging to it, nor it to me. You feel responsible for your home because it’s your mess to clean up and life is better if you do. I’m glad to feel at home, and I hope to look after it.

This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.

Today’s rerun is First, a History. It’s the very first post on this blog—the blog that I publish a post on every day. I talked about my history, but really, it was about community. I said that I was writing—among other things—to discover a community; to find my people.

Tens of posts later and I’ve started to find it. I’ve had strangers reach out to talk about wonderful things they’re building. I’ve had friends reach out to reconnect and talk about their own writing practice. I’ve gained new friends who discovered me through my writing.

In the original post, I said that the way to discover a community of kind, creative people was to be kind and creative myself. I’ve tried to live by that through writing every day and putting it out there. I’ve started to make art every day, too, and it’s already helped me find new folks.

When I wrote that first post I had no idea what would happen, but I was convinced that I needed to make something every day and share it. I’m happy to report that instinct was on the money, and that it’s brought me joy regardless of any other outcome. Making just feels good.

If you’re looking for your own community, try putting your work out there, or whatever it is that you want to see more of in the world and connect with people over. Make something as often as you can and share it—you never know what might happen if you do.

If you can get past my goofy title, I’d like to describe something that I’m starting to believe in more than ever: you can write your destiny into existence. You can write what will be in order to, well, will it to be.

I’m obviously not talking about anything new here in the abstract, but in a concrete, practical, actual-lived-experience sense I feel as though I’ve stumbled upon something genuinely extraordinary.

I’m sure a simple Google search would unearth many books and blogs describing exactly what I’m talking about, but I can do that for almost anything—it doesn’t mean much without actually trying.

The most common example comes from morning pages, and sometimes it sneaks up on me. I might write about wanting to publish more for months in my journal, and suddenly (hello) here I am.

I wrote about starting my Point Reyes project for months, too, and suddenly found myself slogging along the sand under a hot California sun. I’d thought about similar projects for years beforehand.

It almost sounds romantic, but the truth is actually closer to being annoyed into action. There are only so many times that you can write about what you want before you have to do it (to shut yourself up).

Another example: writing a case study before actually doing the work. Writing for an imagined audience (without context on the problem or sympathy for the constraints) created instant clarity and urgency.

It felt so simple, and at the same time profound. Problems that I might have worked on in the abstract suddenly had to become concrete, plain-english language, and the solution started to emerge.

Again, almost poetic—but the reality is that I didn’t have the patience to stop my flow of writing, and so I had better figure this thing out fast. Write, get stuck, make. Repeat until problem solved.

Even this blog has made me start doing things that I had thought about for a long time before starting, and now seem to happen with a strange sort of ease—as though I’m writing them into existence.

I’ll end by saying that my favorite (related) thing about this blog is that I absolutely did not search the web before writing this, because I might not have written it if I did. Instead, I just started writing.

If you make art, you always have collaborators.

One of my favorite essays is from Leonard E. Read titled I, Pencil. It’s a short essay written from the first-person perspective of a pencil, and all of the people and processes involved in its creation.

Of course, if you use a pencil to make art, you’re inheriting all of those collaborators—plus (I suppose) the pencil itself. It’s our art, yes, but we owe a debt of gratitude to those collaborators I think.

The reason I like to think this way is that it sort of takes the pressure off. Much like having a genius, it suggests that the creation process has already begun—you’re just playing your part in it now.

People talk about staring at a blank page, fearing the first mark, but of course the page is part of the creation! Many others collaborated to contribute it. The page is not the beginning, but the middle.

If I believe that I’m simply moving a creation along in its journey, I can do so with the same care but without the same apprehension. It’s not even the end of the journey—the audience contributes that.

If you read the essay I hope that it imparts the same thing to you that it did to me: so many people have a hand in almost everything that we cherish, and we can consider all of them wonderful collaborators.

Today I asked Claude Code to read a good chunk of my morning pages and tell me 5 things about the person who wrote them. I’m posting the response here verbatim, without commentary or judgement.

1. You’re a multi-disciplinary creative who refuses to pick just one lane. You’re actively working on art (especially abstract painting with oil pastels), writing essays and blog posts, recording audio stories, design work, and photography—and you’re figuring out how to make them all work together.
2. You believe in showing up every day, even when the work is bad. You’ve built a streak of making “lunch makes” (daily art pieces) for 30 days straight, publishing daily blog posts, and writing morning pages religiously—not because everything you make is great, but because you know that’s how you get better.
3. You’re obsessed with places and want to document them deeply. You’re working on a field journal project capturing California’s most beautiful landscapes through field notes, photographs, ambient recordings, and sleep stories—using humble tools and focusing on really experiencing places rather than just visiting them.
4. You value making new things over repeating what already exists. You see life as a chance to mark each day as different, to prove you were alive and that the world changed because of your effort—whether that’s uttering words that might never have been said or bringing something into the world that wouldn’t exist without you.
5. You believe quality comes from care, not perfection. Inspired by Robert Pirsig’s writing on quality, you’re learning to express care through different facets of your life—whether that’s really listening to the places you visit, thinking deeply about structure and communication in your design work, or simply noticing the small things that make something feel genuine.

For my wife’s 30th birthday I designed a newspaper called The Best Times and got it printed by the wonderful Newspaper Club. In it, I wrote 30 of my most cherished memories from our relationship so far.

What started out as a gift for her turned out to be equally precious to me. It’s so easy to let memories drift away and become lost to time, but taking a moment to sit with them and document them is wonderful. I couldn’t wait for the next evening to write some more down.

Of course, great relationships accrue many more beautiful memories than 30, so the hardest job was choosing which 30 to include in the newspaper. A problem that I was very happy to have, to be clear.

I won’t share the actual memories here, so you’ll have to believe me when I say that I felt things just from thinking about them again now. You’ll have to trust me when I say you should write your own down.

Our memories aren’t guaranteed, and there’s no (easy) recovery process for the ones you lose. Sometimes, they’re all we have. Often, they’re the best things we have. I don’t want to forget any of them.

Writing that newspaper really started my love for little vignettes and for memoir, I think. For finding beauty in ordinary, everyday experiences. For cherishing the extraordinary experiences even more so.

If you’ve never done so before, I urge you to write down more of your memories. I urge you further to share them with the people you love. To sit with them together for a moment and simply hold space for them.

When I’m struggling to do something and need a nudge, I’ll try to create a ritual around the thing such that it feels special, and I’ll invest in small things as a physical symbol of that specialness.

A recent-ish example was my to-do list. For years I’ve struggled to keep it up to date, and would inevitably get overwhelmed before declaring task bankruptcy (and/or switching tools).

Something that started to help was writing things down on paper and keeping it in front of me, rather than hiding them away in digital tools. It was helping, but it wasn’t really sticking.

To make it special, I bought some Analog cards from Ugmonk. Worried that I’d just give up after a couple weeks, I only bought the cards, not the holder. If I stick with it, I thought, I’ll get the holder.

After a few weeks, I’d stuck with it longer than my notebook, but it didn’t quite feel special enough. The card eventually got buried under other items as the day passed, and I’d forget about it for a while.

I had just enough evidence to commit a little more, so I bought the holder. A few weeks later again, and these little cards, propped on their stand, feel like a completely invaluable part of my day.

It feels like a small indulgence to sit down every morning, slide a fresh card out of the holder, and fill it out. It feels special to prop it up, facing me, without anything else getting in the way.

It might seem a little silly that the exact form of paper could make such a difference, but it does. Making it special made me want to do it, and that’s all that really matters to me—the outcome.

I could, of course, just “try harder”, but I think that most of us spend enough time beating ourselves up. Sometimes, it’s nice to do the opposite. To make a small moment a special one, just because.

This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.

Today’s rerun is Your Story Matters. It’s a post about telling your story (or any of your stories), even if you don’t think you’ve got much of a story to tell. To start putting words to your experiences.

I wrote it because when I speak to people about telling their story, invariably someone will say “I’m not interesting enough, I just had a normal e.g. American childhood.” Of course, you’ll know that I didn’t have a normal American childhood (because I had a slightly unusual British childhood), so their story would be fascinating to me.

And that’s all there is too it, actually. The opposite is interesting for different reasons. Someone might very well want to be reminded of their own normal but cherished American childhood. Of course, there’s no such thing—they’ll want to hear it from someone where they grew up, who had community like theirs, who know the same in-jokes.

So if this post or the rerun help you to start telling more of your story to more people, I’ll be happy. If it causes you to sit with your memories for a while but keep them to yourself, that’s a wonderful outcome too.

For a daily blog, this post is the cheat post of all cheat posts. It’s a post about the idea of re-sharing a post. I was going to just… re-share a post, but I first wanted a post to point to each time I re-share.

It’s common (enough) in radio to share a rerun every so often. If you’re a listener of This American Life, you’ll know this. I used to feel a little cheated out of a new episode, until I realized that… I wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve sometimes listened to the episode when it was first published, but on This American Life they don’t just share the rerun, no explanation. They’ll tell you it’s a rerun. They’ll add a little color. They might tell you when it was recorded and why, or why they’re rerunning this show specifically, at this specific point in time.

There are days—not that many of them, but they happen—where I have so many things to do that I really don’t feel like I can squeeze a daily blog post in. I have three options at that point: don’t publish a post at all (can’t), publish something crap just for the sake of it (don’t want to), or… what? I’m proposing that—just like in radio—I publish a rerun.

As with This American Life, I won’t just publish the same text—nor just link to it, no explanation. I’ll spend a couple minutes finding a post that I think is worth rerunning, and worth rerunning that day specifically. If I only have a couple minutes, I’ll spend it on curation, not on crap.

So from time to time, you’ll see a rerun from me. I’ll tell you it’s a rerun and I’ll add a little color. Some stretches might have more than others, and when there are more you can assume that I’m doing myself a kindness when it’s needed most. I hope you discover a post that you might have missed, or rediscover one at the right time.

I like work that moves me. I like work that shifts something in me such that I have some involuntary action (like laughing, or crying, or just feeling). I like work that’s surprising and touching and resonant.

When I come across work like that, I don’t try to interrogate it too much. I don’t try to dissect why it moves me, I just let it move me. I think that interrogating why it moves me might stop it from doing so.

I can’t even predict what will move me, really. I can’t seek it out in a way that I might want to. I just have to keep discovering things and occasionally it’ll hit me. A few examples of work that moved me:

1. The music of Ólafur Arnalds. I can sit alone listening to Ólafur’s music and just ride the wave of feelings that it causes within me. Sadness, elation, grief, contentment, wonder. All at the same time.
2. The paintings of Etel Adnan. Something in Etel’s work speaks to something deep within me. Makes me lose myself in landscapes that are barely described by the knife, but feel all-consuming.
3. Personal, spoken stories. The most recent by Ira Glass in act four of Ask a Grown-Up on This American Life. I don’t even know if I can relate to the story, but I felt the story as if it was mine.

None of this work was made for me, but it speaks to something ineffable at the center of us, I think. I suspect that I’m far from the only person moved by each of the works above—perhaps everyone would be.

Finding the work that moves you is such a wonderful, powerful thing. If I ever make work that moves others, I’ll consider it such a blessing and such an honor. One of the highest, maybe.

Something that writing and art-making has taught me is that I love living in moments and memories. I love staying awake to the things happening around me. To really look and see. To really listen and hear.

It’s the reason I love memoirs and vignettes. The reason that I love Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The reason I love slogging along the sand for hours to stare at the sea and capture the sound of it.

I like them because I like feeling things, and for reasons I’ll write about later my brain is wired to feel emotions much more suddenly and strongly than most other people. They take over me, briefly.

There’s something so wonderful about giving a brief—sometimes seemingly mundane—moment an internal standing ovation. To feel blessed to just exist in that moment and experience it. I love it.

I’m going to steer my art and writing more and more in this direction and see where it leads. I’ll sit with things a little longer. Look a bit more closely. Listen a little harder. Live for moments and memories.

Just over 30 days ago I wrote a post about spending part of my lunch break making a small piece of art. A couple of days later I committed to making a small piece of art for at least 30 days. Yesterday I made my 30th piece of art and stuck it to the wall next to my desk.

If I’m honest (with myself), I’ve always considered myself to be an artist. Making art has always made things feel a little lighter; always nourished my soul. I got into art school off the back of my stack of sketchbooks. In practicing design, I’ve always believed that there’s art to it, despite the protests from peers in the design world.

Making art for myself over the past few years has felt like a luxury though. Something that I’d do if only I had more time; if only I was less tired. I’ll do it when I’m between jobs, I thought. I’ll do it when I get a free weekend. I’ll do it; I promise I’ll do it.

A few weeks ago, I looked down at a pile of things on my desk half-way through writing my morning pages, and my eyes rested on a book of poems that had made its way to the top of the pile: Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara. Frank wrote most of these poems whilst taking a lunch break during his day job at the MoMA in New York.

If Frank could do it, I wondered, why couldn’t I?

It turns out, of course, that I could. It turns out that we waste many more minutes a day on mindless nothingness that many of us could repurpose for something greater. That I could repurpose. I set myself some rules and got to work—every day for the past 30 days. If Frank had Lunch Poems, I had Lunch Makes. A small something, just for me.

The wonderful thing about committing to 30 days of something is that you don’t want to stop when the time comes—and I’m not going to. Making art every day feels like part of my day now. Part of my life. I think it would feel weird if I ended the day not having made something.

I did the same with morning pages, and have now written them every day for many months. I did the same with publishing daily blog posts, and I’m sat here writing a post that’s a good leap past number 30. All three things probably take me about an hour (collectively) each day, but they feel like such a big part of my life.

The small things add up. If I swivel my chair I’m faced with a wall of art. If I open my website my finger gets tired scrolling to the bottom. If I look at a graph of my journal, it feels like a complex galaxy. After a single day they all looked a little pathetic, but the days add up.

So, I’m adding art-making to the set of things that I do every day to nourish my soul, and to reconnect myself with the artist that I’ve always been. If you’ve been wanting to explore your art, take this as a nudge to start today—just with something small; just for you.

I want to capture more of my memories (at least, how I remember things). I always think I’ve lived in a peculiar number of houses, so as a strange little exercise I’m going to try to capture one memory from each. Let’s just tackle the first 10 houses today, back for more later.

1. Maple Avenue: we’d play in the front garden during the summer and run furiously for the pop man when he drove down our street. I liked dandelion and burdock (and orangeade, and limeade), but really I think I just liked sugar and the thrill of overwhelming choice.
2. Perdiswell Street: me and my sisters had a club called “scavenger club,” where we’d explore the house and garden to find little treasures (like, you know, rocks and stuff). We stored them in luminous wrist-pouches that came free in a box of Cheerios breakfast cereal.
3. Northwick Avenue: my father set up the most elaborate easter-egg hunt, and we invited my school friend Jenny to join us on the hunt. It felt magical to live right next to a school friend at that age. I didn’t know that they really existed outside of the school gates.
4. Leslie Avenue: We had the longest garden I’d ever seen (which probably wouldn’t seem quite so long now). It had trees that I loved to climb. Not very big ones, but big enough to say that you’d climbed a tree, and that’s roughly 30% of what young boys want to say.
5. New Street: we lived above a restaurant housed in a (very wonky) early 18th century building. It had tiny windows that I loved staring out of, watching people walk up and down the street below. I felt so high up, even though it was probably just three stories.
6. Turner Close: my father told us that we didn’t have enough money for Christmas presents. On Christmas morning, we unwrapped a gift from his boss—bicycle accessories. After putting things in our bedrooms, we descended the stairs to see brand new bikes.
7. Blackpole Road: we’d buy groceries at the Sainsbury’s about 10 minutes walk away. My father would push them home in the shopping trolley because we din’t have a car. If my sister and I took it back to the grocery store, we could keep the pound coin in it.
8. Blakefield Walk: the loft was being converted into a bedroom and I was told that I could have the room. The offer was taken back (very reasonable) and for some reason I was given a PlayStation as consolation (unreasonable). I mostly used it to watch DVDs.
9. Newport Road: I lived with a school friend for a year, and most of it was spent partying. For some reason, he liked making egg mayo (like, a lot of it), so most of our drunken and/or hangover food was egg mayo sandwiches. The best and the worst, somehow.
10. Upper Tything: first place of “my own”—a little flat above a charity shop. It was another old, wonky building and the bathroom door was half the width of all the others so they could fit a bath in. Back when it was built, baths were in the living room (if you had one).

For some reason, I’ve always enjoyed bringing up the fact that Alex Tew, the co-founder of popular mindfulness app Calm, is also the creator of the (amazing, majestic, chaotic) Million Dollar Homepage.

I love this narrative arc for so many reasons, but for now I’ll note my top three, and I suspect I could write a lengthy blog post on each of these.

1. Not thrilled about the idea of student debt, Alex reportedly wrote down “how to make a million dollars” before coming up with ideas. He of course did make a million dollars. What if he’d written down “how to make a thousand”, or even “how to make a hundred million?”
2. Before there was Calm, there was a simple website, which only functioned to help you pause for 2 minutes. If you moved your mouse, the timer would reset. You simply stared at a picture of the ocean, listening to the sound of waves. Big ideas start as small ideas.
3. The main alternative to Calm is Headspace. Andy, the founder of Headspace, trained as a monk for a decade. Alex… also meditated. There are many paths to the same destination. You don’t have to train as a monk to champion mindfulness (but I do fucking love that).

I sit down and write morning pages every day. Occasionally, I’ll run Claude Code against my local Obsidian Vault (where I write my morning pages) to see if it can help me understand the common themes that I’ve been thinking about, or to suggest things that I could write about.

Whilst it’s rarely helpful in a practical sense, I do find myself surprised from time to time by what it gathers of me. The first couple of times I chalked it up to “LLM bad”, and assumed that it had hallucinated some details that weren’t really there. That is, until I checked.

It turns out that I write about things that I completely forget having written about. Sometimes, I write about those things a lot. Sometimes I’ll stop writing about it, only for it to pop up again weeks or months down the line. Who was that person, I wonder, who wrote those things.

I wonder that because… well… that’s how it feels. If I don’t remember writing it, perhaps it’s because I didn’t. Perhaps I’m someone else now, even if temporarily. Perhaps I’m not someone, but many someones. Perhaps I’m all of those someones at once, or just one at a time.

In the western world, we think so much about the self. We are, largely, self-centered (derogatory), and occasionally we’re self-aware, and unfortunately self-conscious. We center the self so frequently, but I’m not sure I could tell you much about myself, because it feels too singular.

Even that word, myself—as if it’s mine, as if there’s one. I heard Elizabeth Gilbert refer to Internal Family Systems (IFS) as “group therapy for one”, and that felt right to me. There’s a group in there, and one, some or all of them might sit down to write morning pages.

There’s been lots written about this, of course, but I’m not trying to parrot back the things I’ve read. I’m trying to actually think about how I feel, regardless of whether there’s prior art or not. Regardless of whether there’s ancient wisdom or not. Just actually sitting with it.

I’ll write more about this later maybe, but a silly Claude Code session served as a visceral reminder today, and I wanted to capture the thought before it slipped away. If you journal on your computer, I recommend running the same experiment and seeing what you learn.

A few years back I wrote a post about buying more books. At the time I’d created all sorts of arbitrary rules for buying books, but I’d like to re-state the case with fewer rules and fewer words.

Buy more books.

That’s it. That’s the whole message. I just think that you should buy more books. That everyone should. Most books are remarkable value for money and the right one can change your life. A few have changed mine.

Unfortunately, you can’t know ahead of time which books will change your life. Yours specifically. You can search for “life-changing books,” sure, but that rarely works. Life-changing for who exactly?

The only way to know if a book might change your life is to read it, and a great way to read a book is to buy it. If you don’t want to (or can’t), checking more books out of the library is great, too. Better even.

Owning more books is great. You don’t even have to read them, at least not all of them. You certainly don’t have to finish those you start. If you’re interested, buy the book. You never know where it might lead.

After I finish a draft of a post, I’ll read it out loud a couple of times. I find that reading my work out loud helps to improve how it’s written.

On this blog, I don’t often edit much. My goal (as you might know) is simply to publish every day—not to polish posts forever beforehand. For other work though, I might read it out loud tens of times.

There’s something humbling about thinking that you’ve nailed a piece of writing, only to stumble over every other sentence as you read it out loud. It helps you to write how you speak, and that’s the kind of writing I most enjoy reading. To hear it in the author’s voice.

To practice on a recent blog post though, I made a rough a ready recording to see where I stumbled. I did a couple of times, and I ended up just changing it a bit (in the spoken version only). Most of my blog posts are very short, so reading it took just a couple of minutes.

I have a note stuck to my display that says “make something every day and share it”, and whilst I share my writing and art every day, I thought I’d share this too. You can listen to it on the web for now, and I’ll update the post when it’s live on common podcast directories.

Listening back a couple of times, I can spot all of the places that I might change both how I wrote the piece and how I performed it in spoken-word. That’s why I love this blog though—it’s the cutting room floor for the things that I might publish later, inspired by posts.

If you read or listen to the piece, I’d love to hear about it—and if you’ve recorded spoken-word versions of your own writing, I’d love to hear about it even more (even and especially the rough cuts).

The first time I remember going to London as a young child—maybe even my very first trip—we went to visit Santa at Selfridges.

“And what would you like for Christmas?” he asked.

“A car,” I replied (confidently).

“You want a toy car?” he chuckled (stupidly).

“No… a real one,” came my (obvious) answer.

“I’ll see what I can do.” (no chuckle.)

(He did not do well.)

A couple of days back I read The Smoker—an essay written by Ottessa Moshfegh and published in The Paris Review. Actually, I first listened to the author read it on The Paris Review podcast, and was so enthralled that I had to go and read it (and re-read it), too.

It’s a short essay, and it feels even shorter than it is somehow. I think that’s because the bit that makes you really feel something is just a few words, but it needed the other words to set it up. Some of those words feel like they exist just to give you a moment to get ready.

Some parts of the essay have absolutely no right to be interesting, but somehow they are. They pull you along just a little bit further.

The layout of the house was nothing special. When you walked through the front door, you could go up the staircase on the left. Or you could walk straight down the hall, past the small living room, to the kitchen, and from the kitchen you could take a u-turn and step down to the side-door to the driveway, or continue on down to the basement.

That’s barely taken out of context, to be honest. The most normal description of the layout of a house, but somehow it pulls you along. It reminds me of Ira Glass stating that a great story simply needs momentum. It just needs to keep leading you somewhere.

The story told in that essay could have happened to anyone. Many folks would simply have said, “huh, that was strange” and moved on with their life. Perhaps retold it at the housewarming. It’s a small moment of many that could have slipped by unnoticed, but thankfully it didn’t.

That’s the power of a great personal essay to me. A little vignette that captures something meaningful in the almost-mundane. A story that makes you feel something when you read it. It could be a few hundred words but land harder than some of the best books you’ve read.

The Smoker is a perfect example of this. A short, personal essay that captures a small, meaningful moment. I’d encourage you to read it—it’s worth the handful of minutes that it will take you.

Most of the posts on this blog aren’t very good. I don’t say that to put myself down, and if your opinion is different that’s (obviously) fine by me. The thing is, I’m totally fine with it, because the purpose of this blog—the one you’re reading right now—is simply to post every day.

I think of this blog not as some repository of great writing, but as a very public scratchpad. A place to capture thoughts, opinions and little vignettes of personal life. Really, I think of it as a place to plant seeds, but I don’t require that those seeds grow into much—not here at least.

There are things I’ve written about that I’d almost forgotten, and certainly would have if I didn’t write them down. Sometimes that matters, and sometimes it absolutely doesn’t. I’ll be glad to relive happy memories down the line. I’ll be happy to forget silly opinions.

Some of the seeds I’ve planted so far I hope to grow into essays, short stories, and maybe even a book some day. I want to push them around the page and dig into my memory a bit more and (when the story warrants it) make a few things up—because the truth shouldn’t ruin a good story.

I’ll note a few of the posts that I could imagine growing into something else below. I’m doing this right now, right after I type these words, so my opinion could change tomorrow. Today though, right now, these are a few of the posts that make me feel a little something.

• On a Rock by the Ocean
• The Echo of Lost Words
• As We Change
• Work in Progress
• Nervous Twitches
• London, England

One of the useful and unexpected side-effects of creating art every day and sticking it to the wall is that it slows down time. The days can blend together—a day becomes a week, a week becomes a month. When you have evidence of your existence every day, that happens a little less.

If I spin on my chair by 90 degrees, I’m faced with half of a (small) wall covered in art that I’ve made. It reminds me that for each of those days, I made something. I did something small for myself. Something I’m proud of. Some of them take 10 minutes, but that doesn’t matter.

A year from now, they won’t all fit on the wall. They won’t fit across all of the walls in my small office. I’ll have a stack of art that I won’t know what to do with. A small mountain of things that I made, just because. I feel a strange sense of pride and energy just thinking about it.

When time feels like it’s slipping by too quickly, I’ll walk into my office and look at the walls. I’ll remind myself that each piece marks a day that I existed—that I did more than exist, actually. I made a mark—figuratively and literally—on my own small part of the universe.

I’ve lived with my brain for a few decades at this point, and it’s served me reasonably well. I sort of take it for granted though—don’t you? Lately I’ve been getting to know it better, and I wish I’d done it sooner.

You have but one brain (as most or all of us do) and it has to last your entire life. If you’re lucky, that life will be long, and if you’re even luckier your mind will stick around and serve you right until the very end.

It’s easy to think your brain just “works how it works”, but we could say the same for our eyes—and I know many people who wear glasses (myself included). We never tell folks to be “optically tougher.”

When it comes to our mind though, we often do the equivalent. We throw some negative self-talk at it and expect it to simply improve.

“Just suck it up.”

“Be mentally tougher.”

“Power through it again.”

“Stop being so weak; stupid etc.”

I saw a post on Threads recently that summed up this sentiment pretty well (and whilst it was a joke, it seemed to resonate with a lot of folks—me included). In case that link dies, the post read:

Me, to my nervous system: “Regulate you fucking fuck.”

Sometimes, we really do just try to will it to be. We get mad that our mind isn’t working the way we want it to, and then we get mad because we’re mad. You might be thinking that there must be a better way.

It turns out that there is, and it starts by taking your mind seriously and then being serious about your mind. Your specific journey is your own to embark on, but I can fully endorse embarking on it.

We have but one brain, and we deserve it to be in the best condition that it can be. To serve us as best it can. To treat it as best we can. I’ll write more about my journey some day, but I’m glad that I started it.

In the midst of thinking that something would go wrong recently (I’d name the thing, but it happens a lot), a thought struck me that’s stayed with me since: I only think this about the small stuff, really.

I’m purely reflecting on my own experience here, but—with that caveat in place—I rarely think with any sort of regularity that the really big things will go wrong. Some things that I assume to be true:

1. I’ll wake up tomorrow (and the next day)
2. Earth will be inhabitable for my lifetime
3. I won’t be directly affected by civil unrest
4. I won’t get terminally ill any time soon
5. My wife will love me for the rest of my life

I think those things (and more), I suppose, because life would be pretty difficult to lead if I was constantly thinking about them, or if I assumed that any of them would be (at least imminently) false.

When it comes to the day to day things, though, I’m somewhat regularly plagued by something akin to self doubt, or otherwise assume that things could (and will) go wrong. A few examples:

1. I won’t be able to solve this hard problem
2. I’m sure that I offended [basically everyone]
3. I’ll probably give up on [this idea I have]
4. I’m going to sound dumb when I express [thought]
5. I’m not prepared for [thing I want/need to do]

Of course, it can be healthy to have some of those thoughts, but it can be unhealthy to have all of them, or to have them too often. On the flip side, it can be good to assume some of the first list is false.

Because I (and presumably others) rarely need a nudge to think of the worst outcome though, this is a reminder to myself that I should borrow my assumptions about the first list for the second list.

1. I have solved hard problems and can solve this
2. I likely didn’t offend but I can ask and clarify
3. I’ve accomplished many things and can do this
4. People aren’t thinking about all the stuff I say
5. I’m prepared, and it doesn’t need to be perfect

At this point I realize that I’m simply giving myself therapy-via-blog-post, but it’s a thought I had and one that I wanted to articulate. One that I want to remember. To re-read a few days from now.

If you needed the reminder, then here it is. Most of us, I believe, move through life assuming that so many things will work out for us tomorrow. Let’s all borrow that energy for the stuff we doubt.

I’ve written about some of the places I’ve moved to, but I haven’t really written about the place I moved from. The place where I grew up.

I was born in the City of Worcester, England, in a hospital that’s long since been demolished. I lived all around the city growing up, in 10 different homes across just as many neighborhoods.

It’s called the “City” of Worcester, but it feels much more like a town. In England, there’s such a thing as a Cathedral City, and Worcester is one of them (that is, you were a city so long as you had a cathedral). That cathedral played a curiously big role in my life.

The town is exactly what you might expect when you think of England. Cobbled streets, Victorian buildings, surrounded by rolling hills and farmland. It’s got a rich history of royalty, battle and trade. You can almost hear the stories that it holds as you walk the old streets.

In all, it was a wonderful place to grow up. It’s full of artists and craftspeople and—most importantly—kind people. I remember the people from my town as creative, gentle and down to earth.

I live in California now, and when people ask where I’m from and I’m invariably faced with a blank stare, I say “it’s where the sauce comes from—Worcestershire Sauce.” If I’ve got the right audience, I might add “the place that Donkey can’t pronounce in Shrek Forever After.”

After leaving my hometown, I was contractually obligated to hate it just a little bit (as you might be of your hometown, and anyone else of theirs). With some distance and time though, I can view it through a more neutral lens. To me, now, I remember it with some fondness.

I learned to ride my bike in Gheluvelt Park and would spend summers splashing around in the pool there. I made fierce friends after my initial shyness, several of whom I’m still connected with and love today. I climbed the nearby Malvern Hills over and over, frequented the cathedral for non-religious reasons, and walked beside or boated along the River Severn more times than I can count.

Worcester is where I had my first romances and break-ups. It’s where I learned all of my early lessons. It’s where I learned to be brave and resilient, and where I failed to be either of those things so many times. Some of the lessons I cling to today, others I try hard to unlearn.

I could write forever about my hometown, simply because I experienced so much of my life there. I’m sure that I will write more about it someday, but for now I simply wanted Worcester to have a small post alongside London and Brooklyn. I wanted to start writing something that I’ll likely never stop writing. To revisit just a few memories.

I’ll end though, for now, by saying that I’m glad I grew up in that place. I’m glad that I was surrounded by art and by artists. I’m glad that I was surrounded by history and artifacts. I’m glad to have experienced beauty and slowness and kindness so frequently.

I might have left, and I’m almost certain to never permanently return, but I’m glad that it’s where this funny little life started.

A few weeks ago on a public holiday, I drove 2 hours from my home in Oakland to Point Reyes Lighthouse. I was going there to record the sound of the ocean. I needed to record the ocean here specifically, as close to the lighthouse as possible, on a perfect California summer’s day.

You can’t access the coast from the lighthouse, and you can’t record the ocean from way up high. You’d lose all of the detail and capture all of the wind—and oh boy is there wind. The kind of wind that chills your bones. The kind of wind that makes it difficult to breathe.

Instead, I had to drive to the South Beach car park and walk to the lighthouse along the beach. The walk takes (or took me) a good couple of hours. Why wouldn’t I just record the sound of the ocean from near the car park, you might wonder. I wondered the same, briefly.

The sand was difficult to walk on, even close to the water. The strong gusts of wind battered me just as the strong sun beat down on me. When the dunes dropped away the wind picked up, pelting my skin with sand. Too hot already, I pulled on a sweater to stop the pain.

Aside from a few folks near the car park taking quick snaps before jumping back in their car, I didn’t see another living soul the entire time. The long grass moved with the wind, the Pacific crashed with a force, and my body slumped and stumbled across the loose sand.

The end of the beach—underneath the lighthouse—felt as though it wasn’t getting any closer until suddenly it was right in front of me. I let out an involuntary laugh, and maybe a little whoop. My legs trembled slightly from the uneven ground, but I’d made it.

After drinking some of the water that I should have drank more of along the way, I climbed across the rocks until I found a space that looked comfortable enough to spend a while, and was sheltered enough from the coastal winds to make for a good recording.

When I found my spot, I got comfortable (or, as comfortable as you can get on a jagged rock), popped the binaural microphones into my ears, hit record, and closed my eyes. I stayed like this for 45 minutes, not daring to move in case the mics picked it up.

I heard the ocean like I’d never heard it before. I really heard it. In some ways it felt like the same song repeated hundreds of times. In other ways it felt like listening to an entire album, with no 2 waves sounding the exact same way. It was beautiful. Meditative.

When I opened my eyes, the world felt different to me. I felt different. I felt more connected to the earth and to the ocean and—more than anything—to myself. I’d gone there to capture the sound of the ocean, but I’d received much more than I’d bargained for.

This small adventure is part of my love letter to California. A slow, multi-year project that will weave together sounds, scenes and observations about this beautiful place. I’m starting with Point Reyes Lighthouse because it makes me feel things.

This place, where the land meets the sea, is like paradise to me. It fills me up with the feelings I want more of and rids me, for a moment, of the feelings I’d be happy to let go of. It’s the quality of light, the landscape, and the sound of that wonderful ocean.

A love letter—and indeed, love—requires effort. That’s why I didn’t record the sound of any old ocean. That’s why I didn’t record near the car park. That’s why I walked the ~5 hour out-and-back to sit here, on a rock by the ocean, right underneath the lighthouse.

If you’d like to hear what I heard that day, you can do so in Apple Podcasts and most other popular players. You can also listen on the web. It’s best listened to through headphones and—in my humble opinion—best enjoyed sitting quietly, with your eyes closed, in the sun.

In my morning pages recently, I started questioning some of the things I’ve been doing (as in, genuinely questioning, not necessarily doubting). The phrase I repeated over and over was “…to what end.”

I’m making art every day, but to what end.

I’m starting to run again, but to what end.

I’m writing every day, but to what end.

It only struck me after writing several of these that I was assuming that there needed to be an end, which is something I don’t do for the most worthwhile things in life. The most human things.

I’m showing my wife that I love her, but to what end.

I’m acting kindly towards others, but to what end.

I’m helping someone I care for, but to what end.

It sounds absurd to write those last three, but we so often ask it about the things that we do for ourselves. I like to believe that we’d ask it less if those things felt truly aligned with who we are.

For me, writing and art-making and storytelling feel that way, which is why I had such a visceral reaction to my own questions. What do you mean, to what end? Because I have air in my lungs!

There are some things that can feel as essential as breathing, and those things can be very specific to us. They don’t need an end because we don’t plan on stopping, and we don’t need a reason to start.

As soon as I recognized that, it felt as though a weight had lifted off of me. There’s no pressure to do these things that we feel drawn to. We don’t need external validation to continue doing them.

I’m going to replace the phrase I kept using with a better one. To assume that I’ll do them for as long as I’m able and interested in doing so. Not “to what end”, but “because it fulfills me.”

I’m making art every day, because it fulfills me.

I’m starting to run again, because it fulfills me.

I’m writing every day, because it fulfills me.

I’ve been to India and France and Italy and Ireland and Spain and Germany and Mexico and England and Japan and Qatar and Cyprus and Scotland and Canada and The Czech Republic and Portugal and The United States and Wales and The Netherlands and Greece and Thailand.

And I think my favorite place.

Is wherever my wife is.

Because that’s home.

One of the surprising things that comes from journaling (or whatever) every day is that you can read posts from weeks or months (sometimes days) ago and not recall writing a single word of what you’re reading.

Whenever this happens (i.e. almost every time that I read an old entry) I wonder what I must have been thinking, feeling, or doing that day to make me write what I had. I think of it as getting to know myself.

Sometimes, I’ll learn something new about myself—often because of just how much I’ve written about something. I might have written for months about something I wanted to do (and often hadn’t). It could also be something that I enjoyed, found funny, or was worried about.

It feels a little bit weird, to be honest.

It can also feel kind of cool though.

I enjoy writing morning pages for the act of writing them. The act of doing it that day specifically. Increasingly, I think about the idea that I’m writing for future me, who might be a totally different person. I’m helping to teach future me about what they might like (or not like anymore).

I hadn’t really thought about this part of journaling. In fact, I’d toyed with the idea of deleting each entry as soon as I’d written it. I still think about doing that, but the thought is a little bit harder these days.

If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to write something down every day. It doesn’t have to be long. It could be a thought, an idea, or how you’re feeling. A few weeks from now, it might teach you something.

Something I struggle with (although less now than earlier in my life) is separating the act of making from the act of judging. This might say more about my brain than humans in general, but the act of judging work too early just kills it. It kills the work and the motivation to do the work.

These days, I try to simply enjoy the act of making for the act itself. For the process, or the movement, or the collaboration. I try to withhold judgement until after I’ve made the thing. Sometimes until days, weeks or months after I’ve made the thing. Not every time, but I try.

The result is that I can look at work I shared weeks ago and think “that isn’t to my taste at all” and just feel sort of fine about that. Less “why would I make that” and more “oh, that’s interesting”. It’s good to learn about your taste through your own work without being hard on yourself.

I can make work that isn’t to my taste and still enjoy the act of making it. I can share the work with others knowing that it’s not to my taste, because I’m not committing to anything by sharing it. There’s no value judgement attached to it. I simply like to share what I make.

It almost feels meditative to me, and I try to quiet the critical voice and turn up the volume on the curious one. If I don’t like the work, I can try to observe it and really consider why. If I like the work, I can do the same thing (and it’s helped me to study the work I like more deeply).

It’s something I’m still working on honestly, but I’m trying to do it more, and it’s helped me to build confidence in the work I’m making. To enjoy the act of making more. To loosen up, lighten up, and just feel the work come through me. Slightly more body, slightly less brain.

In conversation with Tim Ferris, Elizabeth Gilbert recalled a framing device that she learned in IFS (internal family systems):

How do you feel about yourself vs. toward yourself.

It’s such a simple reframing, but one that—if you really sit with it for a moment—can completely change the tone of your self-talk.

That’s it. That’s the whole post. It’s been a day where I needed to try it, and maybe it’s been a day where you should try it too.

Try to be as kind to yourself as you would be to others.

I recently started a daily art making practice, and when I first thought of it my mind started racing with all of the things that I could do and all of the materials that I could use. It was exciting to think about!

Oil or acrylic? Or maybe pastel? Oil stick? All of them?

I’ll start on paper. Wait no, canvas? Panel? Wood?

Big paintings make me feel things, I should go big. Or…

I’ll do portraits, or landscapes, or objects, or anything!

I could feel that familiar voice starting to creep in that reminds me (too often) that I’ll probably never start. Recalls every time that I have started, but haven’t finished. I didn’t want that to happen.

I created some simple rules for myself so that I could focus on what was important to me. Right now, that’s exploring materials and using them for long enough that I use them in different ways.

The same 5x7in Stonehenge White.

Sennelier Oil pastels in 10 colors.

Every piece framed by a circle.

Nothing that has to be observed.

No piece takes longer than 30 mins.

Reset any rule only after 30 days.

These rules have helped me to just sit down and make, every single day since starting. I simply start by making a mark to create a situation, and keep responding to the situation presented to me.

We all know constraints can help us to get started, and even to arrive at novel ideas that we might not have done otherwise. I need to remind myself constantly though, and this is my reminder to you.

I was listening to Craig Mod’s Things Become Other Things podcast from the book tour. In the Beacon NY episode, Sam Anderson (who Craig was in conversation with), recalled the question that he’d asked during a Jeffersonian dinner on one of Craig and Kevin’s (Kelly) Walk & Talks.

So the question was my favorite conversation starter, which is very simple: what is your very first memory in your entire life?

I tried to recall my first memory (single) but I can never pick it out of the memories (plural) that all seem to clump together at that time—the very first time I remember being a living human in the world. Instead, I’ll have to write several and just hope that one of them is the first.

• I had a stuffed bear called Red Ted (yes he was red—I was very imaginative). One Christmas, sitting on the rug in the living room of our Maple Avenue house, I painted his paws with nail varnish.
• I remember my father having lots of DIY equipment, but my favorite was the large spirit level. My sisters and I thought it would be funny to turn it into a see-saw. My father thought it was less funny.
• My sister’s Teddy Ruxpin had a scarf that I was jealous of, so I took it off and tied it around my neck. It turned out that whilst my neck was small, his was smaller. Panic ensued. Fine in the end.
• We’d play in the front yard in the summer, and the best moments that I remember include the Pop Man arriving on our street on warm days. Limeade, dandelion and burdock, lemonade. Bliss.
• I remember so clearly the joy of Boxing Day. Bounding down the stairs to eat Christmas Day leftovers (mostly cake and mince pies to be honest) was so exciting to me. Sugar for breakfast!
• My first day of nursery at Gorse Hill. I hated the idea of being separated from my parents so much that I was trying to wriggle out of their grasp and run for it. Didn’t work. Was fine, actually.
• My bed looked like a race car, but at some point it broke. My father turned the wooden wheels into little tables for me and my sisters that we could eat at. I had a front wheel (smaller), I think.

I want AI to help me write, not to write for me. Recently I scripted a GitHub action that generates a new Moth-style story prompt for me each day. Here’s one below, and I’ll respond to it today.

Tell a story about a pivotal choice you faced at a metaphorical crossroads in your life. What were the options before you, and what factors weighed heavily on your heart and mind as you made your decision? Reflect on the path you chose, the path you left behind, and how this moment shaped your identity and future. Consider the unforeseen outcomes, challenges, and wisdom gained along this chosen journey.

My wife and I decided that we’d move to California on our very first date. Then again, many things are said on first dates—I’m not sure that even we were convinced that we’d actually do it one day.

We were still living in our hometowns at the time: her in Birmingham, me in Worcester—both of us with a Tinder radius that you could describe as “too wide”, but actually was “just right”.

Not too long into our relationship, we moved to London—a city that I’d wanted to live in since I was a kid. A city that my wife wasn’t totally sure about living in at the time, but one that she came to love.

A few years into our life in that wonderful city, and we were ready to buy a house together. We’d built up some savings, we’d found somewhere that we really loved, and we were ready to make an offer.

On that same day (let’s say that very same day, for the sake of the story) I got notice of my green card interview. We knew that it would be coming eventually of course, but you know… eventually.

We had a decision to make: should we commit—right now—to this huge (huge) thing, or should we stay in London? We couldn’t sit on it. We’d miss our window. We’d have to start all over again.

We loved London so much. Our relationship had grown there. I proposed there. She said yes there. We got married there. We loved the city and the food and the people. We loved our friends.

We could stay in this city, buy a house, turn it into our home, and keep our wonderful, comfortable routine. We could keep saving, stay close to our friends, and keep building a community.

Or we could not do that.

We could take the adventure. We could step into uncertainty. We could spend all of our savings moving thousands of miles. We could leave our friends and families. We could just say yes.

If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that we did the latter. It hasn’t been easy, and at times it’s even been hard, but we don’t regret it. We’d do it again. We’d vote for adventure; for the unknown.

I’d never before had such a big decision, nor one that felt easier to make. It only felt easy (for me) because I know what adventure feels like with my wife. I know that any adventure with her is worth taking.

Today’s post is more of a question right now than something I’ve properly ruminated on, but I think I’ll come back to write about this again, and again. Maybe I’ll never stop coming back to this.

I only wrote about Elizabeth Gilbert a couple of days back, but it turns out that she has many thoughts that get you, well… thinking. This time, it’s the idea of “purpose anxiety” (self explanatory).

The story that most of us were taught was some variation of: each of you was born with one unique offering, special spark that is only yours and only you can deliver on that. It is your job. It is your job to find out what that thing is that only you can do.

But Elizabeth goes on to wonder if it’s simpler than that, or perhaps less knowable. What if your purpose, for example, was to help that one elderly neighbour get home safely, or to let someone skip ahead of you.

We worry so much about purpose and legacy, but for all we know we might have fulfilled our purpose, or at least a purpose. Perhaps we can fulfill many. Perhaps there’s no single purpose for you.

I saw a guy standing on top of a ladder painting the awning of his storefront. I instantly saw that the ladder wasn’t steady. I had nowhere else to be. I was the perfect person for the job to cross the street and just hold the ladder. I probably held it for 45 minutes. He never saw me, but I felt better because I was like: I’m just going to make sure this guy doesn’t fall today.

Perhaps that was her purpose, Elizabeth wondered. Perhaps all this time she’d been waiting for this moment. Maybe, she thought, she’d become a writer so that she would end up in Los Angeles—here; now.

Having a single purpose can be a daunting idea. Even if it’s helpful, or makes you feel good, perhaps you have more than one. Maybe you have a big purpose and a million other smaller ones.

I think about purpose a lot, but hearing this story from Elizabeth (it was on her July 2025 interview with Tim Ferris) helped me to reframe it, and to look at my past actions in a whole new light.

In The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, one of the characters (Bill Gorton) asks another character (Mike Campbell) a question.

“How did you go bankrupt,” Bill asks.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, and then suddenly.”

A lot of things are like that. Slowly at first, and then all at once. Creative work, fulfillment and success can be like that.

If you write (something like) 250 words a day for a year, you’ll have written enough words to fill a novel, and amongst all of the things you’ve written about likely tens of ideas for the novel you could write.

If you’re learning photography, taking a single photograph per day could barely sound worthwhile—but in a few months you’ll have a body of work, and likely have made incredible progress along the way.

If you persist for long enough, you might be lucky enough for someone to ask how you became so creatively fulfilled or successful. How you ever managed to complete your most wonderful works.

“How did you get here,” they might ask.

“Two ways,” you might say. “Gradually, and then suddenly.”

I’m building a daily art-making practice, starting with oil pastel on paper. Yesterday, I made a mark that created a new situation, and when I responded to that situation, I felt something shift inside of me.

It felt like the frequency I’d been tuning into the days prior wasn’t quite right. Maybe I’d almost got it and it was simply too noisy, or maybe it was the wrong station altogether. The wrong music.

That’s what making art (or anything) can feel like though: tuning a radio until you find what it is that you need in that moment (for whatever reason you need it). Something to dance to, or maybe to cry to.

When you find the right station, it doesn’t mean that the next song is going to last forever, nor that they’ll keep playing this kind of music (or even stay on air)—but for now, in this moment, it can be right.

One of my more spiritual/cosmic thoughts is that there’s always some figurative music being played for you specifically, and you can choose to listen to it or not. You can respond to it or not.

The only way that you know if it’s right though, I think, is by actually responding. Trying to dance. Squeezing out a tear. Stepping away from the metaphor briefly, that means actually making something.

If you keep tuning, and you keep making, I think that you’ll find some frequency where things just feel right, and where the thing you’re making feels like the exact thing you should be in that moment.

I watched The Roses in the theatre yesterday (if you’re in Oakland it was the Rialto, a delightful neighborhood cinema), and it made me feel a little homesick for England, despite the fact that it was mostly set in California.

There was one word in particular—used several times throughout by Olivia Colman—that made me feel particularly fond of the country I was raised in. A word that I absolutely can’t use in the same way in California.

In England, this word is used as a term of affection at least as often as it’s used as an insult. A word that you can precede with “oh, you cheeky…” and cause no issues whatsoever. It’s funny, endearing and warm.

Language is a funny thing, and the things we hold close to us can be very strange. I didn’t anticipate that I’d miss using this word out of love toward friends, nor how hearing it would feel… comforting?

I love things like this. Small things, familiar only to a few people that you might know or bump into when you live thousands of miles from where you were born. Things that bond people in the strangest of ways.

Anyway, watch the movie. It’s a good movie. It has a wonderful cast. It’s worth watching for Olivia Colman’s performance alone. It’s funny, and emotional, and familiar (to some) and I’m so thankful it was made.

In a TED Talk from 2009, Elizabeth Gilbert—author of Eat, Pray, Love—talked about the idea of having a genius vs. being a genius.

The Romans called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a “genius”—which is great, because the Romans did not actually think that a genius was a particularly clever individual. They believed that a genius was this sort of magical, divine entity who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist’s studio—kind of like Dobby the house elf—and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work, and would shape the outcome of that work.

It’s common these days to refer to a “particularly clever individual” as a genius, but what pressure! What judgement we cast when they produce something a genius would not! I know of no one across history who would have been called a genius for every thought or work they put out there.

What if instead of being a genius, they simply had a genius—just for that moment in time. To help them with that work we so admired.

For me, and I assume for others, that’s actually closer to how it feels. We all, I believe, have experienced that moment where a flash of inspiration came to us from some place we can’t explain.

Sometimes it’s there, and sometimes it’s not.

Thinking of it this way can take the pressure off, too. You can keep showing up and hope that you have a genius to collaborate with. You can stay open to the collaboration and you can work even when you feel it isn’t there. Elizabeth made this idea feel light; playful.

I lifted my face from the manuscript and directed my comments to an empty corner of the room. I said aloud: listen, you… thing… you and I both know that if this book isn’t brilliant that’s not entirely my fault, right, because you can see that I’m putting everything I have into this. I don’t have any more than this. If you want it to be better, you’ve got to show up and do your part of the deal—but if you don’t, you know what, the hell with it, I’m going to keep writing anyway because that’s my job.

Many others have spoken and written about this idea, but this talk really resonated with me. It added humor to an idea that can be heavy; to a topic that can feel personal and sensitive. More people would make more creative work, I think, if they were less concerned with being a genius than with opening themselves up to having a genius.

1. I’ll start tomorrow
2. I’ll start next week
3. I’ll start this weekend
4. I’ll start when I get a day to myself
5. I’ll start when I feel better
6. I’ll start when work is less crazy
7. I’ll start when I’m less tired
8. I’ll start right after this
9. I’ll start when I’m good enough
10. I’ll start after I choose a name
11. I’ll start after I buy a domain
12. I’ll start after I’ve built the website
13. I’ll start when I’m inspired
14. I’ll start when I quit my job
15. I’ll start when I take a sabbatical
16. I’ll start a few years from now
17. I’ll start once I’m settled at my new job
18. I’ll start when I feel confident
19. I’ll start when someone gives me permission
20. I’ll start when I find a collaborator
21. I’ll start once I’ve finished this next thing
22. I’ll start once I’ve practiced enough
23. I’ll start at the beginning of the month
24. I’ll start at the beginning of the year
25. I promise I’ll start

I used to keep a tidy desk. I wanted it to look like those desks that people fawn over and write blog posts about. Calm, beautiful, and sparse.

These days, I aim for roughly the opposite. I want a pile of books, scraps of paper, and things that I can use to make marks. I want them in my field of view and within arms reach so that I’m compelled to make.

I’d call this “mise en place”, but I don’t think I could do so with a straight face. Mise en place feels organized and calculated to me, but my system is more… chaotic. Let’s call it… “mess en place”.

On my desk right now is a Time Timer, a desk fan, my AirPods, 2 sketchbooks, a pile of pencils and wax pastels, a Ricoh GRIII and (dead) battery, some washi tape, 5 books, a copy of The Paris Review, some incense, a pile of Post-It Notes, 2 notebooks and… more (in addition to my keyboard, trackpad, audio interface, headphones, mic and Mac Mini).

There’s barely any desk to see, and I love it.

I’m building a daily art practice, and my current tools are inches away from my hand. I immediately take a photo to share it with others and my camera is right there. I like to start my day by reading a poem, and Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems is 3 books down in the pile.

I want to be surrounded by things that inspire me and enable me to make. I want to put as little friction as possible between my body and the work I want to consume or create. I want mess… en place.

Unless I have a daily practice, I find it difficult to stick with things. If I told myself that I’d publish a blog post each week, I’d probably publish four and then stop posting for three years. If I told myself I’d paint one large painting every month, I’d… well… I’d never paint anything.

I used to hate this about myself. I don’t exactly love it now, but I have come to accept it, and even found some peace in embracing it. If my brain doesn’t want to paint something big once a month, maybe I can paint something small every day. Maybe I can change how I paint.

There’s something nice about embracing your brain in its most annoying state. There’s value in figuring out how to align your work with your mind. You can probably turn five years of daily blog posts into a book, even if you don’t think that you could sit down and… write a book.

I used to fight my brain on this; to make it change—because I do believe that it can change. I rarely stopped to consider if I could be just as happy (or happier) by changing my actions though. It turns out that I probably can. It turns out that you can accept yourself for who you are.

I started doing that with these daily blog posts. I have days where I don’t really write much at all, and other days where I write (I know, meta) about just showing up. I’m starting to do it with art. I’ll start to do it with exercise. A little bit, every day, until I’ve accrued a lot.

Starting something new can be scary. It’s easy for me to think myself out of it. Over the years, though, I’ve come to realize that I could think myself out of anything if I just keep thinking and don’t start doing.

Recently, I found great inspiration from artist and writer Etel Adnan in her wonderful interview for the Paris Review. When asked “with what element she begins a painting,” she responded:

At first, since I had these little ends of pastels, I’d start with a red square. And this red square called for the gestures that followed. That’s how it is. You make a mark, and the mark creates a situation, and this situation calls for other gestures. And it comes along, and you learn as you go.

How beautifully said: you make a mark, and the mark creates a situation. Much of life is like that. First, you must act. Thought follows action. Once you’re moving, you’ll keep moving, and the world will be changed.

Don’t think about the perfect painting—make a mark and respond. Don’t think about the perfect photograph—take a photo, adjust, and take another. The perfect pot follows a hundred less-perfect pots.

As I sat down to write this blog post, I thought I’d be spoiled for choice. When I tried to grab one of the many ideas I knew were waiting for me, however, I couldn’t bring a single one into focus.

I sat in silence, just waiting. I got dangerously close to a couple of them before they scattered like sand in a strong gust of wind. I continued to sit, brain buzzing, until it started to quiet.

When the ideas stopped moving around, I didn’t want to write about any of them. I just wanted to write this. Sometimes it’s good to just let your brain be quiet for a moment. The ideas can wait.

Before I started writing I titled the post placeholder, simply so that I could see something on screen when my Jekyll instance built locally. Now that I’ve written it, I’m leaving the title alone.

When I have an idea that’s exciting enough (to me at least) that I could actually imagine acting on it, I quickly come up with some sort of name and buy a related domain for one year.

That’s one year until you have to decide whether it’s still interesting enough. One year to decide if you’ll recommit. One year where at least some small part of the idea is real.

I used to think that this was bad. That the renewal reminder email was judgment; shame. Now though, I just see it as a small vote for an idea, and the renewal reminder as reflection.

You can’t commit to every idea you’ll have. Sometimes you might even forget that you had an idea (and bought a domain… or five). A small vote is still a vote though, and knowing that past-you found something interesting enough to cast this vote is useful information.

Sometimes it turns out to be the wrong time.

Other times a more interesting idea comes along.

Rarely you simply re-think, and think the idea is bad.

Come renewal, you can decide to:

1. commit to the idea fully now
2. cast your vote for another year
3. add it back to the domain pool
4. renew, but gift to someone else

Purchasing a domain is almost-guaranteed reflection a year later. It’s an opportunity to see how your interests have changed, or to consider whether a friend has something more to say on this idea.

Sometimes it’s a goofy domain like proudlypathetic.club, and sometimes it’s simply your name. Whatever it is, feel good about it, and keep casting your votes. There are no rules other than your own.

Frank O’Hara wrote many of the works in Lunch Poems whilst literally taking a lunch break during his day job at the MoMA in New York. These collected works are wonderful. They’re joyful. Relatable.

It’s so easy to convince ourselves that we’d make all of those things that we want to make if only we found the perfect time. If only we could take a sabbatical, or quit our day job. Even just a solid week.

Instead of scrolling my phone (or similar) during a recent lunch break, I pulled out some art supplies and sketched a tiny piece of art. Nothing special, or unique—but it existed. I made it.

It took less than 10 minutes to make that sketch. What could I have done with another 10, or 30? What could I make every day if I only ever had 10 minutes? A whole, small thing? A piece of a bigger thing?

There are no perfect times. There are no perfect conditions, or environments, or states of mind. There’s the time we have, the place we are, and the mood we’re in. We can still make things.

I want AI to help me write, not to write for me. Recently I scripted a GitHub action that generates a new Moth-style story prompt for me each day. Here’s one below, and I’ll respond to it today.

Share a story about a conversation that never happened—a moment when important words went unsaid. What held you back, and how did this silence shape your relationships or personal journey? Reflect on the potential impact those lost words might have had and how this experience has influenced your approach to communication and connection.

My maternal grandfather passed away just after I started high school. I knew that people passed away, of course. I knew that I’d pass, at some point. I knew of people who had passed already.

Until this day, though, I hadn’t really considered it.

Most of the things I know about my grandfather come second-hand. A few of them make me happy, a lot of them make me sad, and a couple of them make me laugh, but in a conflicted sort of way.

I barely remember a thing he said to me.

I don’t remember anything I said to him.

What I most remember is sitting on the ground next to him whilst he relaxed in “his” chair. I remember the bottle of cream soda he’d keep next to him, and how he’d let me sneak as much as I wanted to. I remember his rough voice and strong vocal fry from decades of smoking, and his laugh of the type that people referred to as a “dirty laugh”.

Now that I’m older, I have so many questions I want to ask him. I want to ask him about his life—the good bits and the bad. I want to ask him about my mother. About growing up when he did. About the places in the world that he most loved. About his love for cream soda.

A cane hung on the wall of his living room, covered in thin metal badges intended for just this purpose. They described the places that he’d visited, and I was enthralled by the idea that someone could have collected so many. I never asked him about any of them.

When I was younger I didn’t think about death. Now that I’m older I find it incredibly difficult to do so. I didn’t really consider that people would simply cease to exist. People that you love.

I didn’t consider that the questions you’re saving up for later might be left unanswered. That all of the things you’re wondering about, you might simply have to wonder about forever.

I didn’t say many words to my grandfather, and he didn’t say all that many to me. We shared a lot of cream soda, though, and I’ll forever try to explore as many places as he had badges for.

I love the Moth Club. I love storytelling. I love stories. I love hearing stories form ordinary folks about ordinary and extraordinary things.

I want to hear everyone’s story. I want to hear your story. I want to gather all of my friends and tell our stories to one another.

Something I’d love to start doing (and I’d love to see others start doing) is hosting my own Mini Moth Club—a small gathering of new and old friends with a single prompt, a bottle of wine and a dim lamp.

The Moth Story Slam event publishes their prompt online for the folks who want to give it a try on the night. Here’s the next one coming up at The Moth San Francisco, titled “Gumption”:

Prepare a five-minute story about go-getting. Moments of courage and the peaks and pratfalls of a daring spirit. Scaling mountains or admitting to mistakes. Nerves of steel or jelly legs. Tell us about your gutsiest gambles and the mettle that forged them. You’ve got moxie, kid!

Who wouldn’t want to hear all of their friends tell that story? Hopefully you’d be excited to tell that story yourself! Sometimes a simple prompt can unearth a story you’d almost forgotten, or help you to reflect on one that you think about all the time.

I scripted a GitHub action that generates me a new Moth-style story prompt every day, so that (even if I don’t write about it or tell anyone the story) I get to dig into my memory and see what’s there.

I responded to one of those prompts yesterday, and it was so wonderful to recount that moment in writing. It really made me feel things. Happy, sad, and a few things in between.

If you start your own Mini Moth, tell me about it, and tell me the story that you told! I’d love to hear it, however you choose to tell it.

I want AI to help me write, not to write for me. Recently I scripted a GitHub action that generates a new Moth-style story prompt for me each day. Here’s one below, and I’ll respond to it today.

Think of a time when a small, unassuming moment changed you in a big way. It might not have seemed significant at the time, but in hindsight, it sparked a transformation in your life. What was the moment, and how did it alter your path or perspective?

I was around 5 years old and had recently started at a new school—Northwick Manor in Worcester, UK. I wasn’t a very confident kid, and I don’t think I believed that I was capable of much. I’d come to this school from Gorse Hill, where the only friend I remember was the lunch lady.

I joined Northwick Manor starting with Reception, taught by the wonderfully kind Miss Scott. I didn’t have many friends yet, but I was glad to have another kind adult in my life. I didn’t feel much more confident yet, but Miss Scott would help me with that.

The one moment that’s always stuck with me was incredibly small and simple. I’d just changed back into my school shirt following P.E. class, and I was having a hard time doing the top button up. I’d struggled at my desk for what felt like forever, but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t capable.

I walked over to Miss Scott’s desk and asked her if she could help. I told her that I’d tried, but that I just couldn’t do it myself. It was too hard. Impossible. I needed her to do it for me.

She said that she’d absolutely help, but that she had a funny feeling it was going to solve itself. She believed in magic, she said, and thought that if she closed her eyes and counted to ten, the button would somehow be done up once she opened her eyes.

With a small, warm smile, she closed her eyes and started counting (slowly) to ten. I realized of course that the button wouldn’t do itself up, so I’d better go about making it happen. I wasn’t going to be the one standing in the way of her belief in magic.

My small fingers wrestled with the button, the stiff collar getting in the way and making it even harder. I got so close a couple of times before the button slipped from my fingers. With a second to go, success! The button popped into place with a tiny, satisfying thunk.

When Miss Scott opened her eyes, she’d have seen me, beaming; almost vibrating with excitement and anxiety. I’d just pulled off magic, for goodness sake! In only ten (very long) seconds! She couldn’t believe it—she was overjoyed at the apparent sorcery that existed in the world.

After a few seconds of shared astonishment (mine because I’d done it, hers because—presumably—magic had happened), she sent me back to my desk, and I realized that in this one small way, I was capable. In this one small way, I didn’t need help. I could do it all by myself.

I’ve thought about this moment hundreds—maybe thousands—of times over the years. Whenever I think that I can’t do something, I pause and wonder what magic I might conjure. Even better, of course, I remember that it doesn’t take magic at all. It just takes belief.

If I ever—god forbid—ask “what do you do”, I’ll really mean it. I’ll be looking for verbs, not a noun. Your occupations, that is, not your job.

Something that I’ve done unintentionally and would love to do more intentionally: read the same book (or watch the same film, or listen to the same album) once every year or so, and see how the work has changed.

Of course, it won’t have changed at all, but you might perceive it differently, and in the end that might feel like roughly the same thing.

I’ve fallen into the trap many times of sticking with an opinion that I might have formed long ago and never questioned again.

“I don’t like it.”

“It wasn’t to my taste.”

“It’s one of the best; worst, etc.”

Unless you’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met, though, your taste is not static. Your interests are not fixed. You’ve had new experiences that evolved and shaped the person that you are now.

From time to time, I find myself wanting some sort of yardstick for my taste (or aspects of it). I wonder if a book that I liked, hated or felt indifferent about 10 years ago would feel the same to me now. I wonder if my life experiences would make something resonate more (or less).

One of my favorite movies is Good Will Hunting (for reasons that I can’t entirely explain), and one of my favorite scenes includes the speech from Robin Williams whilst sitting on the bench with Will.

I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you.

I’ve watched that scene tens of times, and each time it’s different. Each time I’m different. I watched that scene before I met my wife, and I watched it afterwards. I watched it when Robin Williams was alive, and I watched it after he passed. When I was immature and… less immature.

The scene didn’t change, but with every rewatching I felt something different. I lingered a little longer. It’s just one example of many, but one of my favorites. It’s one that I’ll rewatch again, and again.

It’s hard to notice yourself changing day-to-day, but revisiting something familiar can hold up a mirror. It shows you the ways you’ve grown, shifted, or softened in unexpected ways.

There’s something wonderful—and rare—about discovering new parts of yourself through familiar work. The next time you return to a book, film, or album, pay attention: what’s different now?

Some of the most heartfelt, life-altering discussions I’ve had with my wife happened whilst we were walking together, slowly, in nature.

Some of my more meaningful and impactful 1:1 conversations with colleagues took place whilst strolling the grounds of the Barbican.

Some of my most profound personal reflections and realizations occurred whilst hiking in total silence, alone, for hours.

I like running, and over the years I’ve ran a lot—on, and then off, and then really off. Over the past few years, I haven’t ran much at all.

Today I went for a run—and it was truly pathetic.

I should clarify: that’s a compliment! One of my favorite things to do is take labels often used to chastise (usually myself) and turn them into something positive. A badge that I’d proudly wear: Proudly Pathetic.

In running and in almost everything else, I used to think that I needed to start on day zero with a massive plan. Grand ambitions. Something that people would notice. I wanted to get all of the satisfaction and glory as soon as possible, even if it was painful.

The problem is that most of those things never worked out, because I’d hate how it actually felt. I’d run until I was hurt and exhausted and never want to do it again. I’d sit down to plan out a massive project and immediately feel the weight of it, so I’d abandon it.

Over the years, I’ve found so much more fulfillment, enthusiasm and joy from trying to make things as small as possible when starting out. So small that I feel sort of embarrassed to even do it.

You’re running a block, not a marathon.

You’re reading a page, not a book.

Jumping rope for 30 seconds.

Drawing a single letter.

You could go smaller than all of those (and I do, all the time), and it’s still forward progress. One block is more than none. The next page is eventually the last page. Many single letters make the alphabet.

My run today had a single goal: for the whole run to be an actual run, which meant (for me, right now) the pace had to be absolutely pathetic—and I felt great about it. I didn’t hunch over with a stitch, my breath wasn’t ragged, and I didn’t constantly think about when it would (please) end.

Instead, I just ran. A Proudly Pathetic run.

It turns out that pacing yourself and listening to your body (including your brain) is the simple secret to sustaining something that you care about, and that you want to actually enjoy.

It’s one of those truths that we all know about already, but that we willfully and regularly ignore. It doesn’t mean that we don’t push ourselves, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t show up on race day—it just means that running ourselves ragged isn’t the default.

I’m still learning this lesson, and there are so many things that I want to do with my life that I still find myself wishing that I could skip ahead, but the only things that I keep doing are the ones where I start small.

Join my club. The Proudly Pathetic club.

If you look back through my previous posts, you’ll likely notice a compulsive habit of mine: unless I really force myself not to, I “need” paragraphs to be the same length.

I don’t know when it started, but I know that it’s been years. I know that I’ve thought about it for years; been pained by it for years. I’m doing it right now, in fact—right this minute.

The problem is that some peculiar part of my brain thinks it must be beautiful for every paragraph to be the same length.

In truth, the opposite is true.

When you vary sentence and paragraph length, and have the shape of the words match their natural rhythm, that’s beautiful.

You can already start to see it here, I think.

I’m really forcing myself to break my compulsive habit. To make it secondary to the writing and to stop centering my compulsion. I tried to do it in another post, too, and to me it looks much more beautiful.

When there’s variation and rhythm and—almost but not actually—randomness in writing, it feels like jazz to me.

There’s beauty to it, I think.

It starts too feel alive; to dance across the page.

I’m pulled into it, and then through it.

I’m obviously forcing myself to do the opposite now. To force a rhythm that maybe doesn’t even make sense—but sometimes I have to over-index to really see the difference it makes.

It’s difficult to write about this. There’s a certain amount of shame attached to it. To compulsively doing something that is in conflict with my own taste and judgement (and then to tell people about it).

My hope, though, is that by admitting it to myself and talking about it openly, I can catch myself and try to avoid doing it.

The funny thing is, of course, that this isn’t the printed page. We’re here on the web! You could be on a different device or have a different viewport width! I have no idea how you’ll really see it!

Rational thought rarely affects compulsive behaviors.

I could simply try to stop thinking about it. To write how I write, and to accept it. I consider myself the primary reader of my writing though—and whilst my writer-self thinks equal paragraphs are beautiful, my reader-self does not. My reader-self wants jazz.

I love writing, but I really love reading. I want to read what I write and feel joy; to feel proud of what I’ve written.

Here’s post number one to help create that feeling.

I didn’t decide to live where I was born (though it’s a wonderful place to have been born), and whilst I really decided to live in London, it came together pretty easily in the grand scheme of things.

Now, I’m living in California. I really decided to live here. It took effort, money, and lots of time. It meant selling most of my possessions and moving a few thousand miles (and then a few thousand more).

Now that I’m here, in this idyllic place, I find myself wanting to document it. To observe it well enough to capture it authentically. To share it with others in a way that makes them feel something.

My wonderful wife gifted me two things to help: A Ricoh GRIII and an OM System LS-P5. Two wonderful, tiny tools that I can take anywhere in my pocket(s). I added to that the Soundman OKM binaural mics.

My plan was (and is) to capture the most beautiful places in Northern California as they are. That is, as they actually are, not how I wish they were. I’m starting with one of my favorites: Point Reyes Lighthouse.

I’ll write more about that someday, but I’m going to take a detour here, because whilst the intention of these tools was for a single, specific purpose, the mere fact of their existence and presence has changed me.

A quote often attributed to Marshall McLuhan (unsure of actual source) goes: “we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.” We might make (or buy) a tool for one purpose, but the tools change us.

When I walk my dog (Cacio), I often now throw my camera strap around my neck before heading out the door. Every time I do, I notice things (new and old) that I simply don’t seem to notice sans-camera.

When I know that my recorder is in my pocket, I find myself listening more intently during a lull in conversation or when I’m having a quiet moment—just in case there’s something interesting to capture.

Simply knowing that I have these tools—and knowing what they’re capable of—makes me more observant; more mindful. I notice—acutely—the difference between when I do have them and when I don’t.

Tools are just… tools, but the right tool can help you think differently. Can you make you notice. Can make you pay more attention, or more care. The tools don’t need to be fancy, they just need a purpose.

We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us. If you’re looking to encourage something in yourself, it’s worth thinking about the tools that might help you get there and investing in them.

I was living back in my hometown after spending a pretty random year living with a friend in Cardiff, and I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. It was difficult to figure out what I did want to do, so I thought I’d start by figuring out what I didn’t want to do.

If I thought of something that mildly interested me, I’d just try it. This led me to all sorts of strange places, like trying to make the perfect leather belt, pitching “imaginary friends” to a large U.K. charity, having a trial day as a dental technician, and pitching articles to newspapers.

I’ll write about those some day, suffice to say that I was casting a wide net. Next, I started drawing, and then I drew some more, and suddenly I had stacks of sketchbooks. I emailed a university professor and asked if I could study art. After a cup of tea on campus, they said yes.

For the first year, I studied both art and design. I did reportage drawing in the rafters of a cathedral. I made expressive sketches of the naked form in charcoal. I etched, screen printed, painted and more. It was wonderful. It filled me up and gave me a new community.

At the same time, I started to tinker with computers again. I’d always loved computers—they created a world to which I could escape when I needed to. They let me learn things, make things, and meet people. I started to wonder if I should be making things on the computer.

From my second year at university, I started majoring in design, with art taking more of a back seat. I started making things on the computer, but it wasn’t fulfilling me in the ways that I’d hoped. I was making things on the computer, but I wasn’t making things for the computer.

If I was to make things destined for the physical world, I wanted to make them with physical media. I could do that in art class, so more and more I made things for the computer (by which I mean: software). If the computer was the tool, software was the medium.

I quickly realized that the medium wasn’t a picture of software though, it was the software itself. That could mean many things, but for me it at least meant “code”. I started to teach myself programming using books from the library, and turned every assignment into software.

That stuck, and in the years since I’ve helped to design and build lots of software. If you’d asked me what I wanted to at the beginning, I don’t think that “designing and building software” would have rolled off the tongue. I had no real archetypes demonstrating that it was possible.

So often, the things that resonate with us are a complete mystery. You can think long and hard about it, but it’s really difficult to think about whether you might enjoy something that you can’t yet fully imagine—let alone something you haven’t actually experienced.

Sometimes, you just have to start. You simply have to start doing, start making. You have to make something, anything, and it might lead to the next thing, and the next. We try so hard to think about the actions that we should take, but sometimes we should simply act.

I say this as I sit here, quite content making software, but suddenly wanting to make more art. I started writing here every day for that exact reason: to begin exploring my art. I’m writing about something, anything and seeing where it leads. Maybe more writing, maybe much more.

Life isn’t linear. The pace doesn’t have to stay the same. You don’t have to do only one thing. You can do many things. The one thing that’s still true for me though: you just have to start.

Sometimes it’s okay to show up briefly. To give yourself a rest day. I think that’s true in any area of life, but here I’m talking about this very post.

For me, it’s more important to show up every day—even if it’s just a little—rather than hope you’ll show up in a really big way every so often.

This post brought to you as I type directly into GitHub, flopped on the couch, with my dog next to me. Taking it easy today, but showing up.

Sent from my iPhone.

One of the most useful concepts I took from The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is that of Resistance: the insidious force which attempts to steer you away from the work you’re meant to do.

I’ll write about Resistance some other day maybe, but I’m writing this to reflect on a strategy to counter Resistance: Little Successes. A quote from Steven’s conversation with Tim Ferris:

Resistance with a capital R—that force of self-sabotage—will try to stop you, as a writer, or an artist, or anybody, from achieving your best work; from following your calling. It will try to distract you, undermine your self-confidence, make you procrastinate, make you quit, make you give into fear—or, on the other hand, make you such a perfectionist that you spend all day on one paragraph and you accomplish nothing. The concept of little successes, or of a routine, is to help you overcome that Resistance.

The concept of Little Successes was shared with Steven by his friend Randy (Randall Wallace, writer of Braveheart), and is basically this: before you sit down to do The Work, count all of the small wins that you accumulate along the way—and they can be tiny.

Made the bed? That’s a Little Success.

Showered and brushed your teeth? A couple more.

Brewed a cup of coffee and read a page or two? Count both of ‘em.

By the time you sit down, you’ve already accomplished so much. You’re not sitting there staring down a big, immovable task—you’re just doing the next thing, accumulating more successes.

Every morning, I sit down and write out a little Analog task card by Ugmonk. On the front I write my tasks for the day (work and personal), and on the back I write down the habits I’d like to keep up: jump rope, shower, make coffee, write morning pages (and so on).

I knock a couple of those out before I get started with The Work, and it warms me up for the day. I already feel accomplished, just from making coffee. You could make them even smaller (and I probably should)—you could accumulate 10 Little Successes before you start The Work.

At first it feels a bit silly, but the older I get the more I’m convinced that the primary obstacle to success is that of “feeling cringe”. Push past it, and you’ll start to feel good (or at least, I did).

You accomplish so many Little Successes every day. Count them.

When I wrote (half-jokingly) about being a good boy, I left out my commentary, which is: for me, in the way that it manifests in me specifically¹, it’s generally not a good thing to indulge in.

Unless I’m unique in this, the temptation to be seen as a good boy is so very strong, but only ever seems to result in compromise and crappy work. Doing things quickly almost always makes you a good boy, for example, even if you make total shit.

Being stubborn, by contrast, is almost always seen as bad, or annoying, or disobedient. What are we to do if we have strong conviction though? A good boy would roll over and accept the belly rub. It’s a trap, don’t accept every belly rub.

If your role in life (and especially at work) was simply to make people like you, this would obviously be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. If your goal was to make people happy, it might seem like the right thing to do. Rarely are either of those your role though—or anyone’s role.

I’d argue that a seemingly-similar but actually-quite-different approach is simply to try hard. Not be seen as a try-hard maybe, but to actually, properly try hard—to really try, very hard.

They sound similar because a try-hard often tries to make people like them, or tries to make people superficially and usually-temporarily happy. To actually try hard though means to try doing the right thing, and to be stubborn in your resolve to actually do it.

Sometimes trying hard doesn’t work out. Some cultures celebrate the good boy and the try-hard. Sometimes they actively resent those trying hard. I think that it’s worth trying even harder in these cases, but perhaps at some place that actually wants you to. In some places, trying hard is celebrated, and not only in hindsight.

Whenever I feel the pull to be a good boy, I try to ask myself whether I want to try hard or if I’m just being a try-hard. For me at least, it takes consistent effort to avoid simply being a good boy for the belly rubs, but it’s worth the effort.

Making good work sometimes requires being stubborn, having conviction, and (frankly) just being a bit of a nause.

Being a good boy requires no such resolve.

Nothing to do with the movie.

This is the 28th post, which—considering I post every day—means it’s the 28th day since I committed to a practice of publishing online.

Over the years, I’ve started and almost-started so many projects, but eventually abandoned them when I couldn’t find the elusive perfect time to work on them; to fit them into or around my life.

It turns out (for me at least) it doesn’t really work like that. The perfect time never presents itself (because it doesn’t exist). The beautifully uninterrupted hours, days or weeks where you can simply commit “enough” time never quite come together.

Something that I’ve started to realize (more slowly than I’d like) is that I didn’t need a project, but a practice. A project feels big—you have to start and end it, and there’s a big scary stretch in the middle that only seems to get wider; the end further away.

A practice, however, is just something you show up for (in my interpretation at least). It doesn’t have a real beginning and certainly doesn’t have an end. To the extent it has a middle, it’s unbounded, but not in the same way as the long stretch of a project. It goes on forever because it’s actually supposed to.

Publishing every day isn’t a project for me, it’s a practice.

So far, my practice has existed for 28 days, and my plan is for it to continue forever. This is an important milestone because—subjectively; symbolically—it proves I can commit. If I can do it for 28 days (4 weeks) I can do it for 3 months, then for 12, and beyond.

It’s helped me to see past projects through a new lens. If I were to build them around a practice, what might have happened? If I commit to a practice related to my other interests, where might that lead?

Here’s to finding out, and to the next 28 days.

In an interview with Rachel Martin on the podcast Wild Card (and you should listen, it’s great), Ira Glass answers the question “what truth guides your life more than any other” with the following (edited):

I don’t know the best way to put this, but it’s like I’m trying to be, like, a good boy. Like I’m trying to be… I’m just trying to show… I really am trying my hardest all the time to those around me. I’m going to show you how good I am—but not good like you’ll be impressed, just you’ll think like “oh, look, you were good”, like with a dog, like “good boy”. Like “you really tried, good boy.”

At first I found it funny, and then I found it… maybe one of the most accurate descriptions of how most people act most of the time (including me). Like, even if it’s just for myself, I just want to be a good boy.

Some things are irritatingly effective. Controlled breathing is one of those things. What do you mean I just have to “breathe”.

Feeling stressed? Breathe.

Can’t get to sleep? Breathe.

Mind racing? Yeah, breathe.

Super annoying.

When there are too many thoughts, ideas or worries rattling around in my head, I’ll stand outside in the sun and breathe for a minute. In through the nose, hold it, and then out through the mouth.

It almost always totally changes my state of mind.

When I can’t get to sleep, I’ll do it for a couple of minutes longer. I’ll hold it for a couple more seconds. I’ll inhale and exhale more slowly. In through the nose, hold it, and then out through the mouth.

After a couple of minutes, I often fall right asleep.

It’s the worst (obviously it’s the best).

You’d hear about their arrival before you even saw them. A neighborhood kid would excitedly announce to the street that they were coming. Heads would pop up over fences; peek out of front doors; appear between net curtains. It was true, they were on our street: the Pop Man.

They’d have everything: cola, lemonade, limeade, and my favorite: dandelion and burdock. The sweetness of much refined sugar with the slightly medicinal, savory quality of the ingredients that flavor it. I’d run out into the street with a quid and come back with a 2-liter bottle.

The pop man brought joy to a summer’s day (or any other).

I loved pop. Pop felt like one of the biggest treats I could imagine. A bottle of pop to myself seemed audacious. Who was I—the Queen of England? I wasn’t even sure my body could hold 2 liters of pop. I’d never try to find out though. I’d sip it; savor it—like Charlie Bucket.

The Pop Man seems like such an odd idea today: a stranger (sort of) driving around in a modified transit van, stacked high with soda and candy. A van literally designed to encourage children to sprint towards it, loose change grasped in their clammy little hands.

In 1990’s England, though, it was one of the best parts of summer for me, followed closely by the ice cream truck. The Pop Man was different though. No jingle, rarely a nice little menu affixed—just word of mouth and the promise of your favorite bottle of pop.

When I’m busy or stressed, I can fall into a routine where I’m not taking very good care of myself. It might start with skipping a workout (and then two, and then…), but progress to include things like:

1. Not drinking enough water
2. Skipping or eating a bad lunch
3. Avoiding plans and structure
4. Neglecting friends and family
5. Poor sleep and nighttime routine

I rarely deprioritize work—as if I must pick one or the other—but it’s not actually a tradeoff. Take better care of yourself, and you tend to do better work (or at least that’s true for me)—but it can be hard to remember.

Today, I took the time to eat a proper lunch, make a coffee, and sit in the garden at lunch time. Whilst I was out there, I wrote my morning pages, reflecting on self-care (how meta) and creative environments.

It was such a small act, but it completely reset my day. I started to feel more relaxed; more creative. My headache eased and then disappeared. I felt as though I was starting the day all over again from a better place.

Before I headed inside, I did a three minute guided meditation. Three minutes! You can spend longer getting distracted by your phone when you just wanted to grab a two-factor authentication code.

Those three minutes were so powerful. They allowed me to—just for a moment—pull my mind away from all the stuff and start afresh when I opened my eyes. Another tiny act of self-care that didn’t cost much.

I’m writing this as a reminder to future-me (and any of you) that small acts of self-care are important; that you do better work and become a better friend, partner etc. by first taking care of yourself.

I’ve always wanted to make and share more over the years. More art, more writing, more software, more… everything. I’ve often struggled to do so, at least in part because I’m a perfectionist (or… something), and there’s nothing forcing me to ship.

I’ve been writing morning pages for a while now, and I realized that I have no problem doing that every day. Of course, no one else gets to see those, but that’s not typically what I’m worried about. When I say I’m a perfectionist, it’s my own bar I need to hit.

The thing that makes it easy for me, I think, is simply that I do it every single day—no excuses. I don’t write because I have something to say, I write because it’s tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if I write total garbage or if I write something near-perfect. I’ll be back tomorrow.

That thought reminded me of something that Seth Godin once said:

I made a decision, one time, to write every day, and so I don’t have to revisit that decision. I don’t post a blog post because I feel like it, and I don’t post a blog post because it’s perfect—I post a blog post because it’s tomorrow… and that idea helps the work move forward.

So a few weeks back, I decided I’d do the same, and I stuck a Post-it note on my computer display to remind me. Most of the things I post are half-thoughts. They’re not written particularly well. Most of the time, they’re not even related in any meaningful way.

The quality that they do share, though? They exist.

It’s so easy to find an excuse not to make something, and especially easy to find an excuse not to share it. You’re tired. It’s not good enough. It’s not relevant. Someone has made something just like it.

It’s difficult to share things when that’s the bar.

For me, though, the act of committing to making and sharing something every day regardless makes it all feel lighter. All of a sudden, my goal isn’t to share something great, or novel, or unique. It’s just to make something—anything—and put it out there.

Walking my dog (Cacio) this evening, I listened to the very first episode of This American Life. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever listened to it. I’ve heard snippets before, but hadn’t heard the first act at all.

Kevin Kelly (of Wired and more) tells the story of a deeply personal experience that he lived through as a young adult—the central idea being that he started to live his life as if he’d die in six months.

And I wouldn’t say it was a voice, but there was an idea that came into my mind that just would not go away, and that was that I should live as if I would die in six months, that I should really, truly live. And that I could not tell for certain whether I would really die, but that either way, I should live as if I was going to die. And so that was the assignment.

I’ll leave you to listen to the story yourself, but (regardless of the rest of it) this idea really stuck with me. I started to wonder whether I’d still do what I’m doing right now if I was going to die in six months.

I’m pretty terrified of mortality (to the extent that I use the term mortality instead of death because the latter just feels more visceral to me), so I already think about this idea a lot, but not so concretely.

That is, I try to “live as if I’ll die” (because I believe that it’s easy to fall into the trap off living as if you won’t), but I convince myself that it’s still a ways off. In reality, of course, there are no such guarantees.

Six months is long enough to not immediately fall into a pit of despair, but not long enough that you wouldn’t dramatically evaluate how you spend your waking hours. Not long enough to change nothing.

If you were going to die in six months, would you follow through with all of your current plans? Would you do the work you’re about to do? Would you hold that grudge, make that apology, read that book?

You don’t have to upturn your life or run into the hills, but I think asking some version of this question is a useful reset. A way to say no to those things that you really don’t want to do (and yes to the ones you do).

I love large language models. I love building tools with them. I love using them for research. I love meandering chats about nothing much at all.

Occasionally, I’ll ask one (or more) to give me some ideas for blog posts based on previous writing of mine (including all of my morning pages). Every time, it makes me just a little bit sad.

I’m not saying that large language models can’t come up with interesting ideas to write about (or interesting writing of their own for that matter), but it always feels like they lack a bit of… soul?

You could say it’s a skill issue on my part. It probably is.

I’ve been trying to make sense of why it makes me feel this way, and the thing I’ve landed on so far is roughly: when you spend the time to look through your past writing; to sit there and slowly, painfully think of ideas, you’re not just thinking—you’re feeling.

You don’t only feel something when you finally land on what you believe is a good idea, either. You feel something as you get close to an idea. You feel it as an idea slips through your fingers whilst you try to grasp it, before you realize there wasn’t much there at all.

It’s a feeling (or a combination of feelings) that’s just completely missing when you craft the perfect prompt. When you sit there waiting for a tool to think on your behalf. When it trots out a long list of decidedly mid ideas that apparently reflect all of your own thoughts.

It took me a while to pin this down, but when I did, I found a new sense of appreciation for those feelings. For the struggle. For the almost-idea. For the break-throughs and for the many ideas that never would be.

After a busy few weeks at work, a tiring few hours of driving, and a long day in the sun, I was feeling a little cranky and couldn’t shake it.

We were driving through the redwoods in Humboldt County, headed back to camp, and I hadnt spoken for a while—just driven onward quietly.

Suddenly, I heard my wife’s voice (softly) next to me: “I love California so much”. With a few simple words, my perspective immediately shifted.

My field of view broadened, I took a long, deep breath, and the feeling I’d been trying to shake for a while immediately and completely dissipated.

I was in one of the most beautiful places on earth, with my favorite person in the whole world, on one of the most glorious, unexpectedly sunny days.

A few simple words spoken by someone you love, about some place you love, can change everything. Sometimes, your bad mood lasts as long as you let it.

I rarely look back at my morning pages, but today I looked back at the very first entry and found a passage relevant here, as I start to publish something every day:

One interesting thing about writing morning pages is that you want to write everything you’ll ever write, today. I want to write all of the things that will propel me into the future, all of the posts that I’d like to publish, all of the memories that I’d like to sit with. I can’t do that, but I find solace in the idea that if I stick with it, I’ll be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. If I really stick with it, I’ll have written at least 365 things within a year, and even at a conservative estimate of 10% turning into other writing, I could have 36 posts, essays, pitches, or whatever else might come of writing every day.

It’s popular in some circles to claim that a single person can’t possibly be expected to both (for example) design software and build software. It must only be possible to do one or the other.

Almost nobody (that I know of) upon hearing that someone is relatively good at cooking, however, exclaims “how is that even remotely possible when you’re also a competent driver?”

Humans are good at so many things; you can be good at so many things. Maybe not everything all at once, but most things eventually. If you assume that you can, you probably can (and vice versa).

For some reason, when I was very young, boiled potatoes (unseasoned, if I remember correctly) featured heavily in my diet.

I wasn’t very fond of boiled potatoes—or at least the sheer volume and regularity of them—so I would (increasingly) hide the ones that I didn’t want to eat around the house.

Occasionally, one of my parents would find such rogue potatoes—behind the bath caddy, a bedroom curtain, or occasionally on the flat roof below the bedroom window.

Mystery potatoes.

When I got older, I learned that boiled potatoes are much better with an ungodly amount of butter (which happens to be the same ingredient that makes everything delicious).

Most lies are bad, a few lies are good, and some fall in-between.

I was sitting in the garden of our home in Perdiswell, Worcester (I must have been around 6 years old) when my sister ran excitedly towards me: “my pet bee gave me some honey!”

I was amazed, and had so many questions: firstly, you can actually have a pet bee? Where does it live? How long have you had it? Where do you get the honey from? What does it mean to “give” it to you?

All of those questions became immediately unimportant with a single question from her: “would you like to try it?”

Yes! Absolutely I would!

It tasted incredible: sweet, sticky, and almost familiar—although I was quite confident I hadn’t tried honey before.

I couldn’t get enough, and my sister was only too happy to keep going back for more. I licked spoon after spoon clean before I returned to my questions, and the answers came thick and fast.

• “Yes little brother, of course you can have a pet bee”
• “It lives in these small holes above the back door”
• “Oh, a few months, but I only just got the honey”

Satisfied, I licked my final spoon clean and went back inside to drop it in the sink. I had learned so much about the world! So much about bees! What a kindness—the honey and the facts.

As I walked through the kitchen and dropped my spoon in the sink, a can on the counter caught my eye: Lyle’s Golden Syrup.

Funny, I thought, I like golden syrup.

I carry a little card around in my wallet on which I’ve scrawled a few facets of my character that I’d like to be known for. I’d like to be a great partner, for example, and a great explorer, friend, maker, athlete (of the Nike variety—if you have a body…).

From time to time I’ll pull it out of my wallet and wonder for a moment: which of these is playing more or less of a role right now, and is that what I’d hope for? I sometimes surprise myself with the answer, and it gives me a little nudge towards action.

On the other side of the card, I’ve written a few single-word directives—words like confidence, compassion, curiosity, and agency. They exist so that I can ask the question: what would it look like for the character to play with more compassion (curiosity; agency).

It’s such a small act and a simple question, but on many occasions it’s caused me to act in a totally different way than I’d originally been thinking about. It takes me out of myself for just a moment and lets me consider how I actually want to act.

About to present something you’ve made? What would it look like if you played it with 10x as much confidence? What would the athlete do with 10x more conviction? What would the partner do with 10x more compassion, or understanding, or care?

Increasingly, I find more joy in small, simple ideas repeated often than in big or complex ideas. I see it when I take the same walk and notice something I’d missed, or re-read a book and learn something new—not because the book changed, but because I have.

These simple questions for me often have pretty profound implications. I’m sometimes a few words and a simple thought away from doing something that moves me closer to the person I want to be, or—almost imperceptibly—a little further away.

I was listening to Craig Mod on a couple of podcasts recently, and he mentioned a text file that he keeps on his computer titled “you’re not a piece of shit”. Fortunately or unfortunately for me, it really resonated.

This thought is brought to you today after spending a few hours feeling like a piece of shit, and then writing my (belated) morning pages and snapping myself out of it. I don’t claim to be special in not-so-occasionally feeling like a piece of shit—I’m sure many people do. Over the years I have felt it with annoying regularity, though.

In lieu of a specific (hopefully append-only) file, today’s morning pages entry was essentially a big brag file with a lot of swear words (perhaps influenced by my copy of “Do the Fucking Work” by GFDA sat on my desk). I started my morning pages feeling like a piece of shit, and ended feeling almost good about myself.

I’ll keep my brag file private for now, but it really drove home for me how powerful it can be to have one. I’m constantly hard on myself about the things that I haven’t yet done (and I do want to keep some of that energy), and rarely celebrate the things I’ve accomplished so far.

I’m sure that my speaking about morning pages will eventually bore people to death, but they do give me a chance to reflect on things like this every day. Having said that, I rarely remember what I wrote in the early haze of morning a few days later, and I almost found myself wanting to open a single file that reminded me: “hey, you’re not a piece of shit.”

If you’re feeling like a piece of shit, I strongly encourage you to write down all of the reasons that you’re not. You shouldn’t need to do that. It’s very likely that you’re not a piece of shit even without very specific counter-examples. For me though (and for the aforementioned Craig, though I’m sure it isn’t just a Craig thing), it can help.

So, at risk of swearing a couple too many times in this post: I’m not a piece of shit, and you’re not a piece of shit either. Be kind to yourself.

“You’re getting a bit twitchy”, my wife says quietly, “is everything okay?”

I’ve started to write about life recently. Actually, I started writing about life not-so-recently, but I started publishing writing about life recently. For months I’ve written about life every morning in my morning pages (in one way or another). It’s hard not to, because life is the thing that I’m doing all the time, so it provides pretty good material.

Writing about life makes life better, I think.

When I wrote about controlling your destiny, I was thinking about writing. The writing comes right after the thinking. Sometimes, it feels like it’s happening at the same time as the thinking (sometimes it seems to happen before the thinking, but I’ve got to think about that some more). I’ve already said that writing about life has changed my life, but I think I’d write about life even if it didn’t.

Something that I didn’t realize that I enjoyed until recently (not because I only just started doing it, but because I only just realized I particularly enjoy it) is reading memoirs. Specifically, I love reading memoirs from regular people. People who I could imagine being friends with. People who I’ve met; everyone I’ve met. If I could read your memoir (if you wrote or have written a memoir) I would.

On a flight from Atlanta to San Francisco yesterday, I read Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly cover to cover. It’s a collection of 52 “micro-memoirs”, and I loved every one of them. Here’s an example titled Married Love, III:

As we lower onto the December-cold pleather seats of our minivan, we knock hands: both of us reaching to turn on the other’s seat warmer first.

In just a sentence or two you can convey so much about a moment. So much about your character and your life and your relationship. So many of your values. It doesn’t need to be for anyone else, even. Just writing it down can be a reminder of who you are, what you remember, and what you cherish (or maybe something you feel less good about).

Writing about life has made me notice more of it. A simple overheard comment that I would have otherwise forgotten about in minutes suddenly feels like something sort of special. I sit with it for a moment longer. Sometimes I type it out on my phone. On that same flight I typed out the below after the moment made me smile:

Heads, shoulder knees and toesss (drawn out, like a broadway musical), the steward sings, pushing the food cart down the aisle. I smile and mind all of them.

It’s a normal little moment, really. She probably does it every time she pushes the cart down the aisle. It wasn’t typical though—not for me. An instruction that’s probably been repeated thousands of times could have been delivered curtly, or with a hint of exhaustion. Instead it was melodic, almost joyful (and very quiet; just loud enough).

There are so many small moments like that one, and when you start writing about life you start noticing them. Enjoying them more.

It’s not just the small moments, either. You could unearth big, important memories from your childhood. You could sit with all of the small interactions you remember from your wedding day. You could recall what it felt like when something big changed in your life; when you started viewing the world in a different way.

Everyone should be a memoirist.

We’ll forget so many moments that might seem insignificant at the time, but might mean the world to us later. I’ve forgotten more memories than I can remember, I’m sure. If I can help it, I’ll remember more from now on, because I’ll write them down.

Christmas Day, Worcester, England, 1995 (ish?). I unwrap a toy parrot that repeats everything you say. My grandfather picks it up. “Fuck off”, he says. “Fuck off”, the parrot repeats. He’s cackling now. “Fuck off” he says again, cackling louder. Now I’m cackling (giggling).

I’m reading The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad, and I’m reading it on my Kindle. I love physical books, but there’s one experience I get from a Kindle that I don’t get from physical books (even if a couple folks have scribbled in the margins): seeing which passages readers have highlighted, and exactly how many have highlighted it. An example:

But I knew that a fear-driven life was one where I never made plans, where I stopped myself from dreaming ambitiously. It meant living safe and small, always hedging against the worst-case scenario. Instead, I wanted to live boldly. I wanted to hold the best-case scenario at the forefront and have that guide my decisions and actions.

At the time of my reading, 274 people had highlighted that passage on the Kindle. 274 people who maybe felt the same way as the author. 274 people who might similarly want to guide their actions with the best-case scenario. Kindle highlights are aspirational. They’re little nuggets you can collect to validate who you are or who you want to be.

When I was a young kid growing up in a small English town, there were two places that I wanted to live when I got older: London and New York City. I’ve written about why London was on that (very short) list, and the only post-rationalization I have for New York is “fancier, less accessible London”. London seemed out of reach for me back then, so New York City felt like a fantasy—one that I thought might last my whole life.

I’d search for images of New York and I’d stare at them (as soon as they loaded) imagining what it might be like to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, to look out from the top deck of the Empire State Building, and to stroll the length of Central Park. The TV we watch growing up in the UK is so often US-centric, and New York City always features as the most magical place. Home Alone, Friends, and (a guilty pleasure) Sleepless in Seattle.

When I got older, I’d replace the Google Image search with Google Maps, and especially Street View. I’d walk all around the city—panning the view left and right to memorize the buildings, to note the names of hot dog vendors, and to stare at a snapshot of Times Square. I’d explore for hours, wondering what it might feel like to really be surrounded by those huge buildings; to walk into those stores; to eat that hot dog.

Older still and you’d find me reading the poetry and prose from writers who were similarly in love with New York. I’d read Howl by Allen Ginsberg and recite it during poetry nights at college. When I got to my favorite string of words “…from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge…” I’d give it some extra zeal, punctuating the still air with the sort of energy that I thought it deserved.

I studied Design and Illustration at college, and I’d follow all of the artists and designers in New York. I’d read about the art of the subway. I’d look up artists collectives in Brooklyn. I’d imagine joining a studio near the Brooklyn Bridge where some of my favorite artists and designers worked side by side. I’d picture studying the typography of the subway, riding every line and stopping at every station until I saw it all.

At some point (as it does) life happened, and I stopped thinking about New York quite so much. I’d occasionally speak to people about how great DUMBO (probably) was and about the work of folks who lived there, but I stopped reading the poetry and walking the digital streets. I moved from my home town to London, and I was so enthralled by finally making it there that New York didn’t take up quite so much space.

Fast forward a few years and New York came up again—but this time with a question that I didn’t really think I’d ever be asking: should we stay in London, or should we move to New York. My wife’s mother grew up in California and my wife has U.S. citizenship. From the first day we met we’d talked about an American adventure one day, but it took us many more years to act on it. We were headed, we thought, for California.

When we spoke to the companies we worked for, they agreed that we could stay if we moved to the U.S.—but only on the East Coast. I hadn’t thought about the real prospect of moving to New York. I guess I’d convinced myself years ago that it was—or maybe even should be, in some pseudo-romantic sense—a dream; a fantasy. But now it became almost inevitable—we were headed to the East Coast, so… New York?

The next few months were a whirlwind. Selling most of our possessions, shipping the ones that we didn’t, saying our farewells to family and friends, and booking an Airbnb in Brooklyn—right on Fulton Street in Bedford Stuyvesant. When we finally arrived and stepped out of the cab, I was filled with all of the feelings. I don’t think I could even describe them. It was all of them, all at once—a Mega Feeling.

I lived in Brooklyn for 2 years. I’ll skip the details for now, because this post is less about New York than the idea of New York. I can tell you that I walked from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge. I strolled the length of Central Park. I walked so many of the streets. I ate the hot dogs. I’ll write more about that some other day—but somehow, I had made it to New York City.

I bought a book of “offline activities” (where you’re supposed to tear one out each week for a year). Here are a handful of my favorite ideas:

1. Look into someone’s eyes for five minutes without talking
2. Write a letter to yourself and open it a year later
3. Go to the library to solve a problem
4. Write down an overheard conversation
5. Take a new route to an old place
6. Re-read a book
7. Make someone breakfast
8. Write down a list of things you love
9. Write a letter to someone you admire
10. Plant something

The first one just because it’s weird and we should all be more weird together. The rest because they’re just genuinely good ideas.

For years I’ve tried to think about something interesting to write about, but when I started to question who I was writing for, I realized that the most common answer was: me. Every morning I sit down to write morning pages (750 words, stream-of-consciousness style) and it’s the most fun I have whilst writing. There’s no pressure, it doesn’t need to fit some theme, and I can keep trying to find my voice without judgement.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to care less about judgement—and I like to think that I’ve started to judge less, too. I’ve increasingly found joy in simple stories, and I’ve learned to disconnect the idea of “value” from “is interesting to a large number of people” and “makes money”. Maybe I was slow to do that, but once you have the world changes entirely. Everyone, it turns out, is endlessly fascinating.

I spent so long listening to the stories of folks who I find very impressive that I almost forgot about the wonderful stories that you can hear just by meeting someone—anyone—new, from some place that you’re not, from some background you don’t share. You feel it when you crack up listening to The Moth, and when you’re wiping away a tear (okay, many tears) during act three of This American Life.

It’s so easy to fill our ears and brains with the stories and thoughts of others, and easier still to make our own thoughts and our own voice more quiet—until it’s barely a whisper. What would you feel, though, if you wrote down everything that you can remember from your childhood? What heart-warming or tear-inducing story have you almost forgotten? I promise you that someone wants to hear it.

The stories that we queue up in our podcast app; that we stream back-to-back on Netflix—they’re interesting, but they’re not the only interesting stories. They’re likely not even the most interesting stories, at least not to everyone. I want to hear your story, and I hope that you’ll share it. Maybe just with yourself at first, and then maybe, slowly, with the internet—or at least with a friend.

If you write and share your story, I promise you that I’ll read it. Publish it and send me the link. Send it right to my email inbox, if you’d prefer. Speak it quietly (or loudly) to a friend, or a group of friends. Tell it how you want to tell it. Mess it up. Start over. Pause to laugh (or to cry). Even if it’s just for a day, pause the story that you were about to listen to and tell your own instead. I’d like to hear it.

We didn’t go on many vacations when I was young, but the ones that we did go on I remember fondly. We’d stay in a caravan in Wales, a tent in Cornwall, or a tent (again) in Wales (again). I liked those vacations, but the one that struck me so strongly was staying in a hotel in Paddington, London. I’d never experienced anything like it, and I was in love.

I barely remember any of the specifics, but I remember the feeling. I still get that feeling when I think about London now. Deep in my stomach, a fluttering that feels like it could make my whole body start shaking with awe and joy. A bit over the top? Maybe, but that’s how I felt as a young boy in London for the first time, and it’s how I feel today.

I decided in that moment that I’d move to London when I grew up. That I’d experience this feeling every day. I imagined a lot of things as a kid that didn’t come true though, and I don’t know if I really believed that this would happen—but I painfully wanted it to. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It felt like home more than my hometown did.

When I was old enough to afford it and to travel on my own, I’d catch the train to London by myself. I’d walk for miles, catch the tube, and ride the top deck of the bus—right at the front. I’d go everywhere, but I’d always end at the same place: Trafalgar Square. Sitting on the steps in front of the National Gallery filled me up with fluttering.

Occasionally I’d drag a friend along with me, and I’d take them to all of the same places. I’d sit with them on the steps of Trafalgar Square. I don’t know if they felt the same feeling that I did, but I like to imagine that they did. That it would be impossible not to. That this place is simply magic and casts a spell on anyone who walks into its midst.

A few months into a whirlwind romance (with the incredible woman who would somehow agree to marry me), we decided to move to London. It was finally happening. I still didn’t have any money to my name, but that didn’t matter. We were going on an adventure. We moved into a tiny room in a tiny flat right next to Hackney Central.

We stayed in that flat for about a year before the landlord decided to move back in, but that year felt like 10 wonderful years. I grew up in that one year. We grew up together. I got a new job at a startup, I grew a terrible mustache, and I plucked up the courage to propose (fortunately for me, through initially-ambiguous tears, she said yes).

In what I hope is a sign of my sheer commitment and not my poor planning, I decided that the day leading up to the proposal would be spent entirely outside. Under an overcast sky we rowed on the Serpentine, rode horseback side-by-side, and spread a wonderful picnic out on the grass—all in my favorite park in London: Hyde Park.

Fast-forward a few months and we’re living in another (slightly bigger) room in a (much bigger) house share. We moved our small bundle of belongings there in a shopping trolley from Tesco, because we moved less than 5 minutes walk up the road—near London Fields. We were saving for our wedding and turning this city into our home.

I still can’t believe this next part is actually true, but our wedding took place a few months later inside the Barbican Conservatory. One of our favorite places in this wonderful city, and soon to be the backdrop as we agreed to spend our lives together. A great huge concrete wall, covered top to bottom in the most wonderful plants you’ve ever seen.

This place—this city—that I’d dreamt about since I was a small boy sharing a hotel room with his parents and sisters, it was home. It held so many of the largest moments in my life. It filled me with that fluttering feeling every time I stepped out of the door. It cradled me and my wife and our relationship as we discovered ourselves—together.

I’ll skip the rest for now, suffice to say this wonderful place forever lives in my heart and in that deep part of my stomach. I live thousands of miles away today, but London will never stop feeling like home. I’m lucky to feel that way about a couple of places now, but London was the first. It was a literal dream come true, and I’m still in love.

I have a Post-it note stuck to my computer display that says simply:

Make something every day and share it

It’s advice for me, but it could be advice for you too, if you’d like. The best ideas (I think) are sort of simple and silly. Making something every day and sharing it isn’t a grand plan or even much of a goal, but I’m almost certain it will lead to good things eventually.

It’s hard to quote ancient wisdom without feeling like a Live Laugh Love poster, so I’ll try to share this more plainly. Over the years I’ve seen something like this shared (and attributed to lots of sources):

• Thoughts → Words
• Words → Actions
• Actions → Habits
• Habits → Character
• Character → Destiny

The point being that you can ultimately control your destiny by starting with your thoughts. Think mean things when your friends find success? You might be destined to have no friends (for example).

I won’t walk through every step, because I’m sure you could do that yourself—but I tried this recently when I realized my [uncharitable] actions weren’t aligned with my values (thoughts).

It turns out that (literally) a couple of minutes spent following a thought along to some big conclusion can have a pretty big impact on your life (hopefully for the better, but you do you).

Sometimes you only need to read 10% of a book to get 90% of the value it has to offer. The Artist’s Way is like that. The book is great (I still haven’t read it all), but there’s one idea in there—and it’s a super simple idea—that changed my life: morning pages.

Writing morning pages just means sitting down every morning and writing 750 words stream-of-consciousness. You don’t need to have a big idea (or even a small idea). You don’t need to write a diary (but you could). You just start writing and stop at 750 words.

Some mornings, my brain is so empty that I simply start writing “I have no idea what to write…” and hope that the words eventually come. Every time, they do—and all of a sudden 750 words feels like too few. I could go on for hundreds more. Thousands even.

It seems unlikely that 750 random words repeated daily could change someone’s life, but it’s changed mine. Often it works in the most fun way, too: you simply get sick of writing the same damn thing every day, so you do something about it instead of writing about it again.

I’ve had profound realizations. I’ve unearthed feelings that were buried deep. I’ve discovered ideas for creative projects that I might otherwise never have. I’ve talked shit about people (mostly just me). I’ve talked to myself about anything and everything.

I don’t show anyone my morning pages. I rarely look at any of them again. I’m sure that if I did I’d barely remember writing them. Giving myself 20 minutes every morning to write (and more importantly, to think) is just the best act of self-care I’ve ever known.

I was walking past Bushrod Park the other evening when two boys came running out through the gate. “Weren’t you supposed to be home by eight o’clock” the one boy asked. The other, without missing a beat, squeezed the side of his watch and said “Siri, change the time to eight o’clock”, and again (louder) “Siri! change the time to eight o’clock!”

I can’t tell you what I’m going to do in the future, but I can certainly tell you about the past. I was born and raised in a small city in England called Worcester. Yes, Worcestershire; yes, the sauce. My childhood was mostly great, in the way that childhoods tend to be when you’re just existing and have few prior assumptions about the world. We didn’t have much—but then again, I wasn’t very aware of folks who had more.

Growing up in a small English town (if I’m honest—it’s only a city because we had a cathedral) often means that you get to know everyone pretty well. You’d typically play with the neighborhood kids and maybe pop around for a cup of tea. I lived in 10 different houses in 10 different neighborhoods over the years though, so this wasn’t my experience. Small town community might have existed, but I wasn’t much a part of the community.

That might be a weird way to start talking about my history, but it’s part of the reason I’m writing it. Many years (and 10 more houses) later, I find myself living in Oakland, California—far away from that small town, and trying again to build community. I took a detour through Cardiff, Birmingham, London and Brooklyn, sometimes staying just long enough to almost find community. Finally, with no plans to move, it’s one of the things I now most want to do.

So how will writing help? Many of the best events in my life have been caused by transmitting some words via the internet. I figure if a handful of words can help me meet my wonderful wife, gain countless friends, find talented collaborators and enjoy the work that I do, they might help me go further still. My life is richer today than I thought possible as a small boy, and the curse of being British is the persistent whisper: “tch—haven’t you got enough”.

Truly, I’m so grateful. I’ve explored the world. I’ve learned everything about anything that I can. I’ve moved thousands of miles to a place that I love. I’ve made some cool stuff with some even cooler people. I’m lucky enough to be married to the world’s best person, and lucky too that we’ve got the world’s best dog (your dog is great too; all dogs are great). When I pause, though? I want to find my people, and I want to stick around long enough for that cup of tea.

So here I am, writing some words on the internet to start exploring community and in search of my people—but who are they? I’ll keep it pretty simple: kind and creative people. Of course, I’m lucky enough to live in an area of the world home to many kind, creative people. I’m also not planning on leaving any time soon. The best way to build a community of kind and creative folks, though? To be kind and creative yourself, of course. To make, not simply to wait.

These are the first few words and might not do much alone. They might never be read by anyone, to be honest. But they’re less for you than they are for me, right now. A small token of a big intention. If you’re a kind and creative person, do reach out. One day we might share a cup of tea.