i want a love that doesn’t make decisions on whims and moods. my whims and moods have been changing too but i want to hold onto the constant, “the broader this” — and is that as easy as just choosing the other person? accepting them and in turn accepting yourself? saying something like: i choose you, and i want us to work through whatever we feel or experience. (does granting this unconditional steadfastness allow for better and truer communication?) to say: i choose you enough that voicing something “negative” isn’t going to change the course of our relationship. i choose you enough that some distance between us never equals distance between us. i choose you enough to always come back to you, and to give you a place to come back to.

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this, and if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions, and I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through."