Sometimes you need to turn things down in the interest of being able to do the weird, magical thing that you do that takes so much of your time, and effort, and requires so much of your vulnerability and presence. If you don't take care of yourself, that goes away and you don't have a leg left to stand on.

I would like to go back in time and remind myself that when you're working in music field, it's very easy to overestimate how much of yourself you have to give. It's obviously a competitive field, and it's hard work, and it matters if it's something that you care about, so you have to really pour yourself into it. But I wish I had been more aware of my limits when I was younger. I wish I had understood better that everyone is going to be looking out for their own interests, but the only person who is looking out for your best interests is you.

Sometimes you have to say no to things that people don't want you to say no to in the interest of self-preservation. I definitely went through some times that I did more than I could handle, and I was trying to make decisions for the best of my career; the irony was that those decisions were a direct cause of my inability to produce, perform, create anything. If you are not emotionally and personally stable and intact and healthy, then the entire foundation of what you do this for - the things that you make - is gone.

I don't think of music as being a competition - what I make is exactly what I want it to be for me, and it's not better or worse than anything else. I'm just trying to be the best at what I am, or that I possibly can be. And when I've done that, I feel incredibly confident and there's nothing anyone can see to dampen that, but I don't think that because it means something to me, it has to necessarily mean something to other people.

Sometimes you need to turn things down in the interest of being able to do the weird, magical thing that you do that takes so much of your time, and effort, and requires so much of your vulnerability and presence. If you don't take care of yourself, that goes away and you don't have a leg left to stand on.

I'm a real people pleaser, and for a while I was really desperate to make a kind of thing that would satisfy everyone, and I realized I was focusing so much on satisfying everyone else that I'd forgotten that the only real way to make anything true is to focus on making what you want to hear and saying what you want to say. Trying to people please with my art was a direct line to complete meltdown, writer's block situation, and I had to look inward before I could move past it.

A lot of mantras that I use in my daily life to get through - to move through the world in peace and harmony with myself - find their way into the music that I make. Many of the lines that people seem to be drawn to in my music really come from these mantras that I repeat to myself to try and move through the world in more thoughtful, comfortable way.