How I wrote "Inhale Exhale (You Got It Now)"

My inner journey through the birthing of my upcoming single “Inhale Exhale (You Got It Now)” is one I think a lot of us are going through right now. Yes, I’d come a long way and was generally happy. But I got stuck in this cycle where everyday I found a new reason to criticize myself, and everyday I found my way back home to me. I’m glad I could find my way back to my center so reliably, but GEEZ it was prettay unpleasant and frankly, inefficient, to have to do this shit every day. Like, I know how the story ends now, why do I always start at the beginning? I felt like Sisyphus, only stupid & self-imposed. After all I’ve been through in situations I can’t control, why is THIS internal battle now keeping me from enjoying my life. Am I stupid? Then, I realized- I’m doing it again! Right now! Now I'm criticizing how critical I am towards myself- when will it end??? So I did what I knew I must do. I softened. I relaxed. I gave up. Surrender, I think they call it. I wanted to finally alchemize all this into a song (because that’s how I process things), to help me gain closure through a more complete understanding and finally close the cycle. I grabbed my Taylor guitar and started playing the chords of some of my favorite songs, most notably Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Snow, Hey Oh” and “She’s Kerosene” by the Interrupters. They are A minor, F, C, G (how I play them anyway, I think the original “She’s Kerosene” was in Bm… but, I digress). Super sweet and simple. The words flowed so quickly which usually means I forget immediately, but this time they were so succinct, so simple, so poignant that they came clearly back again so I could write them down. It felt like I was writing on behalf of so many souls who are waking up to the fact that we are allowed to be happy now. We are allowed to take care of ourselves and anchor into our beautiful optimism. 

If you want to hear me talking about this (not by typing but with the sounds from my face hole) you can listen to my podcast episode about it. I go into painstaking detail and yet barely cover what went into it. Such is art.

Love you for reading!

As always, let me know if you resonate! I love our conversations <3

Choosing to Write a Song

Photo by Nicole Glass

In my ideal world, I would write a song everyday. If I had no obligations, I would write a song everyday. So apparently in my ideal world I have no obligations… Yes, that definitely checks out. 

It’s hard to describe the mental state I need to be in in order to write a song. Most often I wait until it happens to me, but earlier this week, I decided to make it happen. I decided to spruce up the description of the Facebook event for my “farewell Stockholm syndrome tour” to include a promise of a brand new song about my imminent departure. 

I normally don’t do this- I hate fulfilling expectations, even my own (why am I like this??). But this time, it felt correct for me. I wanted to publicly declare my intention of writing a song, and in a way use the imagination of others to create a reality that I preferred. If more people expect me to write a song, I feel like that somehow helps the eventuality occur where I do write a song. 

I think the crucial distinction here of why this didn’t backfire was that I wasn’t using the public declaration as a way of forcefully overriding the resistance. There was no resistance. I was in total alignment with the intention and felt totally casual about it- actually no pressure. So, in retrospect, the conditions were good. Look at me! 

I feel like I finally found the key I’ve been searching for my whole life! I have inspiration on tap now- it’s like MAGIC!!

Tell me about your experiences with the inspiration tap and choosing to be creative!

Make sure to listen to episode 5 of the Self-Help Songwriter Podcast if you like hearing about the songwriting process. The other episodes too :D And let me know in a comment on Youtube or Instagram if you want me to share the song I’m referring to!