Weight issues and untidiness.

I have a tip that can take 5 strokes off anyone's golf game. It's called an eraser.

I have to be optimistic. Otherwise I'll stop. And I think that when you're doing this kind of job, you have to keep yourself optimistic. You always have to find openings and entry points and try to see what you can work with and where you can create some opportunity to have a conversation that results in some concrete outcome.

Yielding to the wrong sort of melancholia.

No. I think when I first started writing songs, I was approaching it more literally or narratively in the beginning, but through observing some of my close friends and some of my heroes write, I pretty quickly shifted into at least starting the process from a more subconscious space, or a more instinctual space. And I’ve really come to believe that it’s all there. It’s all already there, and if you can just kind of open the window and step out of the way, at least at the beginning of the process, with your subconscious mind, you can unearth so much raw material, and then go back and sift through that and shape it.

I wanted to relinquish fear ...

I wanted to relinquish fear as much as I could in the writing process. I wanted to be really honest with myself; to lean into things I was afraid to say.