Substack Reboot + 2024 Review Content

The creative process is hard — painfully hard.

Over the past year, I’ve come to understand why someone like Kendrick Lamar goes dead silent for 5 years before dropping new music while his fans are mystified, wondering why he’s not actively channelizing his poetic brilliance and visionary creativity.

Money, fame, virality, and public image all quickly become corrupting forces in the creative domain. It can be hard to locate one’s genuine passion for the art-form itself amidst all the public noise.

I’ve been fairly sick with the flu the last two weeks and have spent more time with my thoughts than ever in a long time.

I’d already been thinking about this for sometime but it didn’t quite crystallize till last week: I feel called to write about my “spiritual journey” (I know, that evokes many tired cliches) and inner process more than any other general topic.

What does that mean?

For all my flaws (which I see painfully too well), one thing I have been quite passionate about is self-improvement. I want to feel better, live in this world better, and interface with reality better.

I see it as the most important thing.

A distillation of what I’m pointing to: peace, contentment, healthy dose of ambition, surrender, detachment and action in harmony, love, friendship, enriching experiences, and joy.

Degrees, finances, views, clicks, politics, ideologies, debates, and all are important to varying degrees but if your mental health and moment-to-moment / day-to-day interface with reality is unwell or “pathologized” if you will, the politics, academic pursuits, viral pieces, and hot takes don’t really matter.

The psychological foundation of one’s life is paramount to relationship, work, physical health, sleep, hobbies, and more.

We experience the world only ever “psychologically” — everything we do is through the lens of our mind.

(Note: before you jump to assume I’m falling prey to the reductionist fallacy of viewing mental health as a silo disconnected from biological, social, and spiritual dimensions, you would be wrong! I will be writing about all this soon.)

There’s a lot here that needs to be unpacked, but for now I’ll just say that this Substack is officially re-booting with an invigorated purpose, meaning, and pursuit of something higher.

I think I will end up committing to a once-a-week cadence (TBA), but for now I’ll just say I have three end-of-2024 / start-of-2025 pieces in the works.

Yearly transitions are an illusion in the sense that nothing is fundamentally different about choosing today as a new beginning and fresh start as opposed to three weeks from now. I take Sam Harris’ point on this that every moment should be experienced anew — you don’t have to restart on January 1st and January 1st only. Russell Brand also articulates this well in a Christian sense of being “re-born every day in the image of God.” If baptism was just a one-time dunk in water for you, you may be missing the point of continual reflecting and awakening.

That massive caveat aside, 365 days is still a long yet manageable amount of time to reflect deeply on the trajectory of one’s life.

Life is hard and lots is always happening externally so it can be challenging to find time to ruminate on the patterns — good and bad — playing out in our life.

My three pieces coming up will be on highlights of my 2024, some thoughts going into 2025, and also just for funsies: my top 10 music albums of 2024.

I always found music journalism to be fun, enjoyable, and completely untethered from my public "image” as a “truth-seeking journalist”, which is a great. I’m tired of that image anyway.

I’ll also be writing and publishing a more formal mission statement for this Substack.

Watch out for new content in the next 7 days.