*Typing*

Something horrible happens to you. Or, at least, something you deem horrible in the moment. You get fired from your job. You lose your biggest client. You wreck your new car. You get in a fight with your best friend. You get dumped by your partner. You blow a good chunk of your savings on a stupid investment. You become so stuck on a project that all the creative Imodium in the world couldn't get you unblocked.

In these horrible moments, it helps to look at your life as if you're reading someone else's memoir. When you read about horrible things happening to other people, you lean forward in your seat and hug the book closer to your face, because you know shit is about to get good. You're detached when you're reading a memoir even though it's deeply personal. This detachment allows you to enjoy the read.

You should challenge yourself to do the same with your own life. In the moments when it feels extraordinarily difficult to live your life, instead pretend you're reading about your life playing out right before your eyes.

Output is the quality and quantity of the work you produce. Outcome is the reaction to the work you produce. You have full control over your output. You have no control over the outcome. Creatives get themselves in trouble when they try to control the outcome, feel they are owed a "positive" outcome or allow a "negative" outcome to fuck-up their creative process. The only remedy to relinquish control of the outcome, is to take full control of your output. Create as much work as you possibly can, as fast as you possibly can.

You should create art for yourself.

You should paint paintings you want to gaze at. You should pen poems you want to read. You should write songs you want to listen to.

Creating art strictly for yourself is the only sure-fire way to create something that has a chance of resonating with others.

Your perspective is unique, yes––as is your experience and taste. But, your perspective, experience and taste are not singular.

Others share in this uniqueness; and by witnessing this uniqueness at work, they will feel understood.

To desire something is to want something.

Some desire is beneficial.

If we didn't desire sustenance, we would starve. If we didn't desire shelter, we would freeze to death or be swept away in some tropical storm. If we didn't desire love and connection, we would slowly––and then rather suddenly––die off.

Desire is tremendously powerful. After gravity, it might be the most formidable force on the planet. If we rule over our desire, it can be a lifelong source of fuel that burns inside each of us, allowing us to chase down our dreams and provide for both ourselves and others.

However, if we allow desire to rule over us, it will burn us alive from the inside out like a house fire.

The first sign of smoke is when desire gives way to desperation. Desire and desperation are two sides of the same coin. Desire is wanting something. Desperation is believing you can't live without something.

It's not only the feeling of desperation that destroys us––eating away at our happiness like a parasite––but it's the poor decisions that desperation spawns.

Desperate people do desperate things. It's these acts of desperation that lead to our destruction.

Desire is a flame. Desperation is the moth, flying towards it.

When something good drifts into your immediate vicinity, your natural inclination is to reach out and grab it. But, good things aren't unlike Monarch butterflies in that if you reach out and grab them, you will almost certainly scare them away––or, worst yet, crush them.

Many of good things have been made bad at the hands of impatience and desperation. Instead, you must create the proper conditions for good opportunities to find you. You must show up, work hard and be generous.

Once you've created these conditions, you must then recognize that everything else is out of your control. If the Monarch chooses to land on your shoulder or some else's shoulder isn't really up to you. It's up to the wind and which direction it's choosing to move. It's more or less a matter of luck. Humans have been trying to control luck for centuries. It has left many broke, broken-hearted and dead. You can't control fate just like you can't lasso an F5 tornado.

This is perhaps the most difficult truth to accept: that we can show up, work hard, be generous and still not get what we want. However, relinquishing control allows you to remain still, calm, centered and content during the inevitable moments in life when you aren't getting exactly what you want.

And when it hurts––not getting what you want––try to remember that while you may want it, you don't need it.

You need so very little to be happy.