Each Day Is Its Own

As we close out the year, I’ve been thinking about the pressure to measure progress in tidy increments. One year to the next, one quarter to another. As if growth were supposed to be linear and compounding, like interest in a bank account. That might be the game in corporate environments, where numbers are often massaged, distorted, or cherry-picked to create a positive story of progress. But real growth, especially creative growth, rarely follows a straight line.

I used to think my life ran on that kind of trajectory. I was programmed to believe it. 

I recall my days in yet another alternative universe—when I spent most of my twenties working in the mortgage industry. Everything was built around numbers and transactions. Working on commission, you set monthly and annual targets, forecasting how many deals you need to close to hit your numbers. You have quotas to reach in order to make bonuses or in some cases keep your job. It’s a high pressure environment that rewards hustle and productivity. The assumption was simple: more effort equals more results. If you put in the work, the rewards would follow. And for a while, it seemed to be true. The market was booming and constant growth was inevitable.   

But that model only works in a vacuum, one where the world never changes. The mortgage industry ignored every signal that the system was over-leveraged, unsustainable, and heading toward collapse. We kept pushing and exploiting, and when the crash hit in 2008, people inside the system acted shocked. Among the many lessons I learned from this experience, it taught me that sustained growth isn’t just about activity, it’s about awareness. 

You can have a great year, do everything right, and still find yourself facing a downturn that was never in your control. That doesn’t mean your work was wasted, it means your work exists inside a larger system. One that shifts, cycles, and often doesn’t respond to brute force.

What I’ve learned since then, especially through my creative practice, is that timing matters. Conditions matter. The world doesn’t always move when you want it to. And if you try to force expansion in a season that calls for pause, you risk breaking something that’s still taking shape.

I’ve had years where everything clicked, followed by stretches where nothing did. I’ve had long periods of visible momentum, followed by silent seasons where the progress was invisible, internal, or underground. One season never guarantees the next.

I’m reminded of this every time I build for a music festival. From Friday through Sunday, thousands of people move through an experience I’ve spent months designing. We create a multi-sensory world that involves a lot of technology to run on its own but also a big team to facilitate and guide the experience. I like to consider my art installations as their own living organisms. The big lesson I’ve learned: what happens on Friday doesn’t predict Saturday. We treat each day as its own world, its own experiment, its own chance to listen, observe, and respond.

We make obvious improvements based on things that aren’t working. But there’s also discipline in letting things play out, resisting the urge to overcorrect or force outcomes. The weather could dramatically shift. The crowd energy might spike or dip. The equipment might bug out or behave differently. You can’t optimize for that. You can only stay present and tune in.

That’s how I think about growth now, not as a staircase to climb but as a rhythm to attune to. Some seasons call for cadence: consistency, action, momentum. Others require rhythm: the inner tempo, the space between beats, the rest notes. We love to chase abundance and expansion, but growth doesn’t always look like more. Sometimes it looks like compost, decay, regeneration, and roots deepening out of sight.

So as I move into the new year, I’m resisting the urge to build new goals on top of this year’s numbers. I feel very lucky and happy to say that 2025 has been a great year by many measures. This doesn’t mean I need to increase my effort in 2026. That mindset assumes we’re machines. When things are flowing and momentum is strong, the impulse is to push harder and expand faster. But I’ve learned that doubling down to validate a past success is the fastest way to break the rhythm that made it possible in the first place.

The end of the year doesn’t have to be a reset button. It can also be a pause, a chance to reflect, integrate, and be still. We’ve been conditioned to believe that January is a time for new goals, new metrics, and new performance plans. But that’s a manufactured rhythm—one built for fiscal calendars and productivity culture, not for creative lives.

If you’ve been paying attention and listening to your rhythm, you already know what to do next.

Perhaps you need presence more than a resolution. And maybe a little rest.

Happy New Year.