It took me awhile to not be ashamed to be a poet in the business environment, and to be a business person in the poet environment.

I do think that given my background as a poet, and also I work in a different field, you're sort of neither here nor there.

There's an attraction to emotional clusters or hypocrisies or awkwardness. A desire to expose something or point at something that's already poking out.

I just didn't want any order in anything. I have to leave an ordered life for them - the kids - and my job. I have to be at my desk at a certain time, and I have to answer e-mails within a certain time period.

I've always done things that were good for me, whether they were viewed as being as prestigious or whatever.

Whether people like your work or not, but it's also based on a lot of other things - geography, who you happen to connect with and where they sit in that ladder - and all of that felt really isolating and disheartening to me when I figured it out.

Sometimes I feel like I'm on top of the world, and other mornings I feel like crap.