- Well, I think it might be just more agricultural like when you grow up on the land, you see hardwood trees grow slowly, and they last a really long time.

And then, you see softwood trees grow really quick and they fall over and I was just like, "I don't wanna be a softwood tree, there's no shortcuts.

"Hardwood grows slowly and so if I really wanna be here "in 60 years as a writer, what kind of things contribute?"

And so I looked at the soil, right?

What kind of soil does an artist need?

We have to have a lot of intake.

Then, it takes a lot of time to build something.

The very, very last thing is fruit, it's a phenomenon.

And so I became very process oriented.

I really trusted nature and the fact that if I do good work I believe something has to come out of that as a side effect.

Like I only signed to that record deal on one condition, that my number one job was to learn how to be a happy whole human, not a human full of holes.

That's literally what I wrote down.

And my number two job was to learn how to be a musician.

And under that I wanted to be an artist more than famous.

And I called those my North star decisions.

I promised I would make every decision based on that little matrix for myself.