*Typing*

Everything will be okay the day you no longer need everything to be a certain way.

The Buddhists call this acceptance.

Acceptance, is our ability to be fully present in each of life's moments (even when life's moments aren't going according to plan).

Finding acceptance when life is going to hell in a hand-basket can be difficult.

Because of this, it can be helpful to have some sort of reminder to yourself to accept what is happening rather than fight it.

For Andy Warhol, this reminder came in the form of the words 'so what'...

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That's one of my favorite things to say. So what.”

I've driven about 32 hours in the past two days from Los Angeles, California to Nashville, Tennessee. You spend that much time behind the wheel and you start noticing little peculiarities that not everybody picks up on. For example, last night I noticed how often semi trucks flash their lights. I made a mental note to look into it a bit further once at home and in front of my computer. Apparently, semis flash their lights for several reasons: To warn of a speed trap, to say "thank you", to let other drivers know they've got room to pass or to alert of an obstacle up ahead. I find it to be an interesting metaphor for all the unspoken communication we share with strangers on a daily basis: the smiles, the nods, the waves, the stares, the winks and the looks all mean something. If you take the time to really notice, we're constantly talking to one another without actually talking to another.

Conditional happiness is exactly as its name implies. It's happiness as long as the conditions are right. It's happiness as long as you're not sick. It's happiness as long as you're not fighting with your spouse. It's happiness as long as you're not in debt. It's happiness as long as your flight isn't delayed. It's happiness as long as you're not underperforming at work. It's happiness as long as nobody is mad at you.

Conditional happiness is exhausting. It's exhausting because you must constantly be in control of the conditions in your environment in order to be happy.

Eventually, happiness must become a choice. It must be a choice that you make on the best of days and the worst of days; on the days when the universe is in total alignment and on the days when hell has opened its gates and unleashed a shitstorm of misfortune.

Until you remove the conditions surrounding your happiness, you will never be happy. Not truly.

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An impression used to be an idea, feeling or opinion on a piece of art. I like this kind of impression. It requires thinking and discussion; a point-of-view.

But, these days, an impression means something entirely different. An impression is a person who happened to scroll past your photograph or video or thought and lingered for a half-second (if that).

Social media platforms place this number front and center as a means of valuing your work. This is backwards, though. If a man drops trout in the middle of a sidewalk and takes a shit, dozens if not hundreds of people would stop and stare. His maneuver would garner a lot of impressions. Many more than the man on the corner playing his heart out on his nylon guitar. But, which is more valuable? 

In an age that has high-jacked the word impression and made it something shallow, shiny and new, it's worth asking ourselves how we will choose to value our work. For me, it's no longer about how many but who. If my work can leave an impression (the original definition of an impression) on just one person who cares enough to really think, consider and form a point-of-view around what I've created, then that's worth 100,000 of the other kind.

Ray Bradbury was once asked to give a speech at the University of Southern California.

He had prepared an astonishing amount of notes and read from them verbatim. Five to ten minutes into his speech, Bradbury looked up to see everyone was half-asleep. He yelled "Attention! Attention", threw his speech on the ground and stomped on it repeatedly. The audience looked up at him wide-eyed. He continued, this time speaking rather than reading.

After this, Bradbury would show up to speaking engagements with a list of metaphors. Each metaphor reminded him of a topic or a story he could riff on for an hour about.

In Listen to The Echoes, a collection of the great science-fiction writers interviews throughout the years, Bradbury shares, "So that's the truth here about public speaking. It has to be like acting, just as natural and wonderful as breathing."