Well, that’s the optimistic reading of it, which you are never able to apply when it happens. You can read it this way when it’s over. Rationally speaking, it’s a period that’s needed, because the danger for every poet, I think, is to write too much. So these are the blessed moments of silence, protecting you from writing too many poems, diluting you and what you have to say in a stream of banal poems. It’s necessary, but still very painful, because I just don’t know what to do if I don’t write poems. I still survive, but it is painful.

There were times when I thought I wanted to be a cartoonist. If I weren’t a film director, I think cartoons would have been a good alternative. But I never properly studied drawing, so my drawings are strange. But when I’m prepping films, it’s good preparation — and comforting to me — to do the storyboards. It’s fun, too, like drawing a whole comic.

When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

But I am not looking to any accounts, and I’m not interested at all how many money I have in the bank, what is costing this or that. I’m only trying to realize my ideas.

My mentor heard it and said, “Derek, you’re just not a singer. You really need to stop trying. Admit you’re a songwriter, and find a real singer.”

When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” — then say no.

I read that at a key fork in the road moment for me where I just sold CD Baby and had a ton of money. I was like, “What to do now?” And I read this book from this filthy rich old man being entirely honest, and I thought I should just learn from his experience. ... So if what I’m doing seems weird, it’s because I took his advice to heart and I’ve quit the game.

Yeah, anybody asks me about it, my advice was always, do not do it. In fact, it still is. Somebody just asked me last week, I was like, do not do it.

The proudest achievement of my life at that time was that software. Wonderfully organized, extensible, and efficient: the culmination of everything I’d learned about programming in ten years. After a successful relaunch and Christmas rush, I was looking at my plan for 2008 and beyond. All my plans needed a huge effort for little reward, but were required for future growth. I had broken it into about 20 projects, each taking 2 to 12 weeks. But I wasn’t excited about any of them.

And this is my only pair of pants. These three glasses, I don’t even think about it because I just think about having enough.