I Believe

I believe in the power of imagination.

I believe in ritual.

I believe in intentional language.

I believe in creating the world you want to live in, even if it’s mostly for yourself.

I believe that the way you craft your environment will dictate how people behave within it.

I believe in homecooked meals, dinner parties, in being well-stocked with wine and a decent enough bar to mix up a cocktail on the fly.

I believe in homegrown herbs. I believe in mint in my bourbon and thyme or lavender in my gin.

I believe in elegant stemware, even if you bought it at Ross.

I believe in handwritten notes. I believe beautiful handwriting is a kind of love language.

I believe in Christmas cards and Christmas cookies.

I believe in birthdays, in presents lovingly wrapped in wrapping paper and matching ribbons, in fancy cakes. I believe that forgetting what we loved most as children is the dumbest thing we do as adults.

I believe that the fastest way to our healing is through play.

I believe in remembering what we wanted to be when we grew up.

I believe in finding the spaces where kindness is easy.

I believe in surrounding yourself with people you trust would only ever hurt you unintentionally. I believe in communicating your feelings while giving them the benefit of the doubt. I believe in letting go when it becomes too difficult too often.

I believe most arguments are completely unnecessary. I believe in the power of using your words to create solutions.

I believe that organized religions on the whole pervert the happiness that is our birthright in order to attempt to sell us a bridge in the afterlife. I believe we owe it to ourselves to find that happiness in our choice of spiritual teachings anyway.

I believe that romance is one of the most pleasurable and underrated virtues of the human experience. I believe that we’ve been robbed of the understanding of true love by a society that wants to either corrupt it and sell it back to us at a profit or convince us it’s a lie in order to keep us dependent on its other empty fixes we have to purchase.

I believe our conditioning starts in the womb, or even earlier. I believe in questioning everything we’ve been exposed to since day one. (I am still pro-choice. I don’t believe you can kill a soul.)

I believe in telling people what you like about them, as often and as specifically as possible. In fact, the weirder the better.

I believe in evolving along with the call of my heart even if it means I lose people along the way. I believe the idea of “losing people” is actually kind of silly when you think about it.

I believe in the healing power of cat purrs. I believe in communicating with our pets because that’s how they learn to communicate with us.

I believe in music that tells a story and dresses it in the sounds of its environment. When I listen I want to be able to close my eyes and know where I am.

I believe in being clever. Even if it makes people slightly nervous. I’m not giving it up, I derive way too much pleasure from it. I believe in making people blush just a little bit now and then.

I believe in double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple entendres.

I believe seduction done right is the most refined kind of emotional labor. I believe everyone secretly wants to be known.

I believe in taking anything that gets handed to you and making it your own regardless of its pedestrian origins.

I believe in dessert.

I believe we have only unlocked a fraction of our potential.

I believe that life is a series of choices, and that if we believe in our ability to make choices then the rest is just execution.

I believe in giving my energy to that which promotes happiness and positivity, but if I feel a serious tug in my heart to call out some bullshit, I believe in heeding that tug – mostly because staying silent means burying it and letting it rot within me, which doesn’t feel good. I believe in working to find that balance.

I believe in signs and synchronicities, because I see them. I believe being a skeptic with an open mind is the greatest way to learn magick, because magick will teach you exactly how it works as long as you’re willing to listen.

I believe in my power as a creator. I believe I have been way more powerful than I understood for a very long time, and that I shied away from that power because I felt like there was something wrong with me, and I couldn’t take the loneliness of being different.

I believe that all my failed relationships were ultimately due to my awkward attempts at trying to fit in and allowing myself to be convinced that I had to change myself in order to be enough (or not too much) for someone.

I believe it’s a white whale quest trying to get justice from those who hurt you, but I also believe in setting a standard that you are not to be fucked with. I believe there’s a difference between needing reparations to fill a void and clapping back to set an example. I believe that difference is a fine line to be approached with caution and forethought.

I believe that getting asked on Hollywood Blvd if I was from Disney right after I played a show with my band was high praise. I believe we should all dress and act like we’re in our own Disney movie. I believe archetype is how people recognize who we are. I believe in showing our inner world.

I believe in writing every song like it’s going to cost me $2-3k to make it, because it does. I believe funding my own music has given me deep inquiry for what messages really need to be put into song. Even with bands I love, I sometimes don’t understand how they thought half their discography was worth producing. I don’t understand how Pitbull can show his face after rhyming Kodak with Kodak in the first 30 seconds of a song when you consider how much budget went into it. I believe lyrics deserve more attention than they get.

I believe that when I follow my heart in my creativity, the reasons and contexts for my ideas always show up later without my having fully understood them at their genesis (see: MeToo and the Who Can You Trust EP).

I believe in feeling lucky that I get to pursue my bliss. There was a long time that I didn’t even want to be alive.

I believe everyone has trauma of some kind, and that it will dictate our actions from the shadows until we start to have an honest conversation with it.

I believe those who do the work, no matter where they start from, will always inevitably surpass those who phone it in and front.

I believe in the power of a fresh-brewed pot of tea. I believe in the sound of a whistling kettle.

I believe in recipe magazines and cookbooks.

I believe in making soap. I haven’t done it yet but it seems like such a nice thing to do and give to people. It’s so simple and personal.

I believe in unconditional love and conditional relationship boundaries.

I believe memes and emojis are an important part of understanding our evolving language.

I believe in good bedding and more pillows than I could possibly need.

I believe in building our sanctuaries.

I believe in the power of dressing both comfortably and elegantly at the same time. I believe those who think it’s not possible lack creativity.

I believe we don’t age like we think we do. I believe our thoughts and actions affect our age more than our years on earth.

I believe insomnia is a symptom of our bodies wanting to process or express something more than wanting to sleep.

I believe in doing things just because it would be awesome if we did.

I believe in tiny gifts to remind people that you care about them.

I believe in remembering how your loved ones take their coffee.

I believe gratitude has been marketed to us in a distasteful fashion that often robs us of its power. I believe you don’t have to be grateful for things as much as you have to simply focus on what you love (and that that’s really the same sentiment but with less implicit shame).

I believe in loving people you can text memes to.

I believe our lives are shaped by the stories we tell.

What’s something you believe?