Category: life
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listening for spring
I started listening to New Found Glory in 2007. It was springtime when I picked up a copy of Sticks and Stones at a garage sale and after a winter spent nursing a broken heart, this was exactly the music I needed to bring me back to life. New Found…
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an itch you can’t scratch
I’ve done a lot of growing in the last year. So much so, my life doesn’t seem to fit quite like it used to. I’m sure you know the feeling: that sensation of having an itch you can’t quite scratch everywhere at once, like a snake shedding its skin. As…
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hack behavior
I haven’t been showing up lately. Maybe you’ve noticed. I wrote a little while back about breaking my schedule. Problem is, when you break something, you usually have to put it back together. When I started blogging again, it became one of the first things I do with my day.…
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do it for you
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard, “Don’t try to write for the market. Don’t write just to get published or produced.” This isn’t bad advice, but it doesn’t go all the way. I still know plenty of people who create to win approval or validation or…
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bad days
Some days, I just feel bad. Even as it seems the world could be on the upswing, it’s often hard not to feel dread in the air. Making things helps.
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walk your way into an idea
Some of my most important creative realizations have occurred while out for a walk. In college, walking around campus, often with a good record or a solid mixtape loaded on my iPod, helped ease my mind. Not only did it offer some physical exercise, it also provided a bit of…
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listening with intention
While siting through the piles of junk in my childhood bedroom, I found an old iPod classic, which by some miracle still works. I’ve had a blast the last week, bouncing through with this time capsule in my pocket. It’s also reshaped how I’ve listened to music recently. Instead of…
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nothing personal
My roommate and I have talked at length about how you can’t make your art personal. “Personalize it,” he’ll always say. “But never make it personal.” He’s 100% right, but as an artist, sometime it’s difficult to be honest with yourself. I recently scrapped an idea for a novel that…
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setting a song free
Making mixtapes has been my thing since seeing High Fidelity in middle school. Actually, if you want to get technical, I was making mixes even before that, shuffling songs around in Napster and burning them to CDs to play on my boombox. But it was John Cusack’s ranting and raving…
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seven questions no one asked me
Once again taking a page from Austin Kleon’s book, I really enjoyed reading and responding to this New York Times article, in which 75 artists were asked about how they spent the last year. Here are my own responses (even though no one asked me): 1. What’s one thing you…
joshua chamberlain 