*Typing*

When I woke this morning at 8:08 a.m., I felt calm. When I looked down at June, who was in a little ball on her doggy bed beside me, I felt love. When the day's affairs slowly began piling up in my head like the leaves of fall, I felt anxious. When I got up from my bed, brushed my teeth, washed my face, pulled on my clothes, laced up my boots, saw to my chores and stepped out the front door, I felt productive. When I drove to the coffee shop and heard a somber song on the radio, I felt sad. When I settled into my seat by the window of the coffeeshop and sipped from my ceramic mug, I felt energized. When the words took some time and a great deal of wrestling to spill out of me, I felt discouraged. When my friend sat down beside me, cracked open his book and sipped from his coffee, I felt grateful.

Developing a greater sense of awareness doesn't require Ayahuasca, cold plunges, silent retreats, standing on your head nor placing crystals on your windowsill during a full moon. You can develop awareness by simply naming to yourself the emotions that you are feeling when you are feeling them. It's the same as birdwatching, really. You walk through a forest. You notice. You name what you see. With time, you develop a greater awareness of birds.

Awareness is like birdwatching but for your emotions.

Wood is the raw material needed to create a fire. But, not all wood is created equal. It's damn difficult to start a fire with wet wood. You can do it. But, it requires a lot of kindling, tinder and patience. It's far easier to start a fire with dry wood that has sat around for a couple of seasons. Furthermore, a fire running on dry, seasoned wood burns better than wet, unseasoned wood. It produces more heat and less smoke.

Like fire, creativity requires raw material. This raw material usually isn't something as tangible as wood. It is instead art, music, poetry, literature, experience, spirituality, ideas, love, tragedy and so on. Like firewood, not all creative raw material is created equal. Some are better for starting the fires of your creativity than others. Because of this, we must be abundantly aware of the art we are admiring, the music we are listening to, the poetry we're reciting, the literature we're reading and the ideas we're choosing to hold close.

There is a scene in Dune where Paul Atreides is piloting a multi-winged helicopter looking gizmo (called an Ornithopter) through a devastating sandstorm. Paul attempts to war with the crushing winds and sand but he soon realizes that his struggling is only making matters worse.

If he continues to fight, the Ornithopter will be dewinged and then entirely obliterated. Paul decides to do something radical. He surrenders. He retracts the Ornithopter's wings and then powers it down. The Ornithopter tosses and turns in the wind like a tin can in a tornado but it survives––it survives because it's no longer a foreign object flying against the sandstorm. It's a part of the sandstorm.

There will be moments in life where you will want to resist the natural order of things; where you will want to bend nature to your will. In these moments, it's especially important to surrender. Let go. Or, be dragged.

Tiger whiskers function like miniature radar detectors. They can pick up on subtle vibrations in the air, allowing them to intuitively gauge distances between themselves and their prey, as well as detect subtle changes in the direction of the wind. If you were to somehow snip a tiger's whiskers––without first being mauled to death––you'd effectively be snipping away a good chunk of their intuition.

Those of us who work a vocation that require a high degree of creativity, have hyper sensitive whiskers. Legendary producer, Rick Rubin, calls these antennae. The problem with whiskers (or antennae) is that in addition to allowing for heightened creativity, they make everything hurt more.

When you're young, you can withstand the hurt. But, as you get older, the hurt can become too much to bear. Because of this, creatives snip their whiskers. They build up scar-tissue. They stop allowing themselves to feel. With time, their art will suffer.

Stay open. Even when life hurts like lye in a paper-cut, stay open. Keep your whiskers.

You are capable of developing an immunity to snake venom. If each day you inject yourself with a tiny dose of venom, over the course of many months you will build up an immunity. For the past three decades, a rock n' roll singer by the name of Steve Ludwin has been running this very experiment. He has injected himself with venom milked from Rattlesnakes, Black Mambas and Cottonmouths.

While I wouldn't recommend trying this fucked-up experiment at home, I appreciate the metaphor. Self-doubt is its own kind of venom. It's a venom that anybody creating or striving for something has experienced firsthand. The only way to build immunity to self-doubt is to ship a small piece of work every day. Every time I hit "send" I feel a small pang of fear––but with each passing day, it becomes easier.

Here's the kicker, though. The moment you stop injecting yourself with venom, you begin to lose your immunity. Isn't that interesting? While Steve Ludwin could hypothetically survive snakebites that would kill most people, if he stopped micro-dosing venom, he would lose his immunity.

The same can be said with creating and shipping work. The more work you create and ship, the easier it is to create and ship the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing after that.