Sometimes I hear people say: “Is there any good music being created anymore? It just doesn’t make me feel like it used to.”

I’ve often wondered that myself. There’s nothing worse than trying to feel something and coming up with *nothingness*. It’s actually happened to me quite a lot. I’ve come to learn that’s an indicator of me doing something wrong.

It’s not the music, it’s me. If good music sounds like nothing to me, it means I’m not open to feeling, I’m blocked in some way, or out of alignment, if you will.

I know everyone’s needs are different, but for me: if I’m forcing myself into a shape that isn’t in alignment with my core values, it dims my light. It makes music suck.

I say all this to say, I’m laying in my bed and listening to Manchester Orchestra. This is the most recent band that’s taken me by storm and it’s a perfect storm because I’m falling in love simultaneously and there’s complication and angst and delight and joy. It’s the highschool feeling.

I go for years sometimes without feeling it.

But it’s the feeling of immense possibility and the weight of it all. It’s the utter unknowingness and uncertainty of the experienced life and the unexperienced future. It’s feels really good but it also hurts. DMT was kinda like this x 100.

There’s a common sentiment in our culture that this feeling only belongs in highschool or to the youth. I contest that with every ounce and fiber of my being. There’s so much medication to take our feelings away. People are scared of staring into the abyss of the human experience.

And I get it. It’s terrifying.

It’s terrifying to consider one is heading in the wrong direction or toward danger or heartbreak or failure. But you need all of that. You need to the darkness to appreciate the light.

I wrote THIS POST thirteen years ago, and I’m still grappling with the same questions. What do I want? How do I want to feel? Who do I want to let in?

Yes, it’s exhausting and terrifying to be constantly evaluating and challenging and questioning and reinventing, but I don’t think I could stomach the alternative. I actually consider it life’s homework to do all of the above.

And we’re allowed to change. In fact, we should always be changing and growing. And maybe the questions never change. Maybe just me as the questionER changes. That’s a cool way to think about it. I never had before.

Maybe it’s like going through the same series of actions over an extended period of time and observing how I change as the questions stay the same (kinda like ashtanga or bikram yoga).

See, this is why I love writing, I work shit out in real time. This may be a huge epiphany I had just now while I’m writing. Love it.

So, how do I wrap this up… can’t have the good without the bad. Feeling (regardless of it’s a *good* or *bad* feeling) beats the monotony of the numb life.

And while my questions may stay the same, I will constantly be learning and growing and evolving in my role as the asker of the questions. That’s all for now. PEACE.

(now I’m off to google “how to make a million dollars without selling my soul”)