out: open-endedness, hoarding information, second-guessing everything

in: focused professionalism, trust the process, stupid bravery

My big out for the year is being open-ended. Since publishing my last book, Introspect, in 2022, I’ve spent the next two years largely in a state of creative exploration– experimenting while I was figuring out what I wanted to be doing next. I think this was a good thing, but i also believe that there are natural cycles to things, and this phase is coming to an end for me.

Which brings me to my big in, which I’ll describe as a focused professionalism. I generally pride myself on being very improvisational, which has its pros and cons. And I think the time has come for me to narrow my focus. Creatively that means I want to have meaningful constraints. I want to challenge myself to publish something every week, rather than whenever I feel like it 

you asked for 3 each, so. my 2nd out would be… hoarding information. i have a lot of notes and drafts and so on, and I really feel it’s time that I ‘release them’ as best as i can. 

my 3rd out would be… second-guessing everything. I’ve spent a lot of time plotting and strategizing and gaming out possible scenarios, but there are diminishing returns to that.

which leads to my 2nd In, which is to trust the process. that’s one of those cliches that gets repeated a lot, because it’s legitimately foundational. I believe that the challenge there is to feel with our hearts, what isn’t for us to know, ahead of time. there are things that only get revealed halfway through a creative process, and we have to make our peace with that

and my final in would be to continue with a vibe I’ve tried to embody since last year, which is to be stupidly brave. I got that phrase from john mayer, he was talking about what it takes to write a song on the fly. the word “stupid” particularly resonates with me here, because when we say “be brave”, I think we tend to operate within a space that we’ve already defined subconsciously as sensible, smart, reasonable. so another way of saying it would be, my 3rd in for the year is to be unreasonable. 

that’s all from me, have a happy and blessed 2025