8/31/26 Colike leaves for tour tomorrow, which means I’m going. I chose the first stop. I think the first is important.

Today is the work before travel. Checking everything off. It is mostly always like this. For the most part, we are in a good place. I do not feel that, though.

I see a cracked iPad. A Shopify POS app we cannot log in to. A research tab open: my agent says we cannot sell directly through Shopify in Canada. Bags that need checking. How many? How much? A music video Jo and Zach are working on. Brake releases a single Friday. What are the assets? What is the plan?

And somewhere in the back, or the side, or above my brain: am I good? Is my family good? How is Sarah?

—

Back to tomorrow. I realized I have been around a lot of first times. At the time they mostly feel like a run sheet, too many people in a room, somebody finding a cable, someone asking what time they need to be there. But I know the guys. I know what it takes for a first tour to exist before anyone calls it that.

Then later you remember the room.

I remember the first Upper Room conference at the Cavaliers arena in Cleveland—LeBron’s building. I remember the team, and the first time that many people got to hear Miller speak, Joel sing, Meredith lead, Sebas play.

I remember the first time Basketcase showed up in Paris: the first appointment, the first buyers, the first Nordstrom meeting, the first meeting with the Japanese buyers everyone respected, the first meeting with New Balance.

There is a particular feeling when a thing leaves the people who have been carrying it and enters the world. You cannot manufacture it. You can only recognize it, do the work in front of you, and make sure it is ready when the doors open.

8/31/26 I have been trying to figure out what happens when I am not in the room.

Not in a dramatic way. I do not mean spiritually, or emotionally. I mean: why does a thing become late after somebody says it will be done Friday? Why does everyone still seem busy when the thing is not done? What exactly is the missing part between a person agreeing to do something and it becoming real?

The office was full. People were working. Nobody was pretending not to care. This is what made it more confusing.

Maybe some people need more clarity. Maybe some people need less room to interpret a deadline. Maybe I have been making a lot of work sound optional by trying to make everything feel nice.

I do not want to become the person who checks every door before bed. But I also do not want to wake up in a house where all the doors are open.

8/26/26 I was explaining the system again today. Or trying to.

The simplest version is that I want the work to live somewhere. Not just in somebody’s laptop, or in a text thread, or inside the head of the one person who happened to be on the call. I want someone to be able to enter a project and find the actual thing: what it is, what has happened, what needs to happen next.

This makes total sense to me until I say it out loud. Then it becomes one of those ideas that sounds like a software demo, which is probably because it is partly a software demo.

We had been talking about a wine shop earlier. Somebody said we should pitch it. I think I said that I wanted to get access to more of the information first. This is the sort of sentence that can make people think you have a secret plan when you mostly just have a feeling that the room is missing a door.

I like the part before the plan. I like noticing that there might be another door.

8/24/26 There was a conversation about a performance tonight and I kept thinking about how easily a moment can get crowded.

Everyone wants to be useful. Everyone wants to get the photo, say hello, make sure it is documented, ask if they need anything. Then suddenly there are twelve well-intentioned people standing around somebody who has to go onstage in an hour.

The better version is quieter. A person who knows the room. A person who knows where the camera is. A person who knows when to leave somebody alone.

I do not think creative direction is always telling people what to do. Sometimes it is making sure the space does not start asking too much of the person who is already carrying the thing.

8/24/26 I talked to someone building a music product. It was one of those conversations that makes you remember why you liked music before it became a business category.

The idea was simple: a playlist could be more than a playlist. It could have notes, context, an actual person behind it. You could send somebody ten songs and mean something specific by it, instead of just forwarding a link they will forget to open.

I thought about how much of the internet is technically connected and emotionally useless. There are a thousand ways to get music to someone. There are not that many ways to make them feel like you knew they would like track seven.

That part is still interesting to me. Maybe it is the only part that is.

8/21/26 We were looking at the product wall and one little piece of white space was bothering me more than it should have.

It is strange what your brain decides to care about when there are invoices, samples, timelines, production, gifting, marketing, and a very real amount of money somewhere underneath all of it. A blank piece of wall can still feel like the emergency.

The truth is that we are doing everything at once. Designing the thing, figuring out how it gets made, figuring out how it gets sold, trying to make it feel like a world instead of a transaction. Everybody wants it to work. That is not the issue.

The issue is that wanting something to work is not a department.

I made little sections. Product. Design. Marketing. Finance. It looked very organized for about twelve seconds. Then somebody asked who owned the next thing, which is usually when the real meeting begins.

8/13/26 I spent part of today trying to put a future into a document.

It is a very strange thing to do. You start by saying what you believe could exist together, and then eventually you have to decide who is responsible when it is expensive, disappointing, late, or no longer romantic.

I think people talk about partnership as if it is mostly chemistry. The chemistry matters. But at some point you have to make a list of what belongs where, who decides what, what happens if somebody leaves, what happens if the thing works more than either of you expected.

None of this is poetic, which is probably why people avoid it. But I do think there is something beautiful about making a real container for someone’s belief in you. It is more serious than saying we should do something together sometime.

8/10/26 I wrote rules for the studio today.

Nothing glamorous. Put things back. Do the dishes. Do not let a preventable surprise become somebody else’s emergency. Leave the room ready for tomorrow.

It felt a little severe when I was writing it, as if I had become a person who has opinions about extension cords and countertops. Which I have. I do. I have very strong opinions about a counter that stays dirty because everyone assumes someone else will eventually notice it.

The studio is supposed to feel free. But I am realizing freedom has a lot to do with people not having to spend their morning cleaning up a version of somebody else’s evening.

7/18/26 I made a list for the studio party and another list for the studio itself. They started to look almost identical.

Cups. Flowers. A projector. A silver table from my house. A lamp from my house. A fridge with an ice maker. Nice black hangers. Couches. A printer. Extension cords.

I guess this is what I want: somewhere that can hold a meeting at noon and a party that night without apologizing for either one. Somewhere that looks like people work there, but also like they might stay after the work is over.

The line between a studio and a home is probably not a real line. It is just a room with enough chairs, enough light, and somebody who remembers to buy ice.

2/26/26 A proposal was almost ready to go out today. The work had been shaped into phases, sessions, deliverables, payments. It looked calm.

Someone asked, “Was this sent?”

There are questions that sound administrative but are actually about the entire difference between a good idea and a real thing. Was it sent? Did someone receive it? Is there a date? Is there a next step that belongs to a person and not a group chat?

I have spent a lot of time making things feel possible. I still love that part. But I am learning to respect the less romantic moment after: the email, the agreement, the follow-up, the quiet proof that something crossed over from conversation into the world.

8/26/25 My personal list and work list were sitting next to each other today and I could not tell where one became the other.

Call the lawyer. Check on the house. Reimburse somebody’s ride. Follow up on a payment. Work on the deck. Text the person in New York. See if the venue is still possible.

I wondered if hiring an assistant would solve anything. Then I wrote: for what? who?

That is the problem with being needed in many places. You start to think another person will remove the weight of deciding which place matters. They cannot. They can only make the list look less lonely.

By the end of the day I had not crossed off enough. But I did at least have the honest version of the list in front of me, which is not nothing.

2/2/25 It is the first Sunday of February. I have been thinking about the future in a wider way than usual.

Engineering. AI. Crypto. Political economy. All of the things that can sound abstract until you meet somebody who has crossed into the room where they are actually being decided.

I had met Hayden in London. He had met with the president of Argentina. I am not putting my faith in one person or one introduction. But I am paying attention to the world opening around it.

I want to understand the systems that make the future before I decide where I belong inside them.

9/6/24 I was leaving Boston and felt both blessed and behind, which is a combination I am getting used to.

We had been at Brimfield for two days. Old objects, long walks, the strange relief of looking at things that have already survived somebody else’s life. Then Boston, then New Balance, then the airport, then the computer opening before I had even made it home.

The work was exciting. I could feel that clearly. That is what made the backlog worse. It is hard to resent the work when you are also thankful for it.

I think I am always trying to find the point where opportunity stops feeling like a pile of open tabs. I have not found it yet.

8/20/24 I wrote down what I want because I was tired of saying it in ways that sounded more reasonable than true.

I want to build a business. Not a life made entirely from being hired for the next thing. I want to build in an interest I actually have, with people who are also willing to build.

Music is the clearest version of it. Not content around music, not a temporary campaign: the structure to release worship music that feels pure, made with the right people, the right agreements, the right care.

It is easy to make the desire sound too large. It is also easy to make it smaller until it becomes somebody else’s plan.

I would rather be exact about what I am trying to build.

2/13/24 I got back from New York with a list of people I did not want to forget.

Someone from a sports company who wanted coffee in Los Angeles. Someone whose studio we almost visited. Someone I met at a party after buying him a drink. People who said, sincerely or maybe just pleasantly, that we should do something.

I wrote all of their names down because I know what happens otherwise. A good conversation turns into a feeling you had once, and then eventually a story about how close something almost was.

The list was longer than it should have been. It made me feel fortunate and a little tired.

Relationships are not a pipeline, obviously. But they do have a half-life. You have to say hello again before the whole thing becomes a very nice memory of a loud room.

8/30/23 I sent a note about a project today that was mostly an attempt to make the project stop expanding while nobody was looking.

The work was good. People had worked hard. That was true. Another true thing was that we did not really know how much of ourselves we were giving away every time somebody asked for one more thing.

So I asked for a table. Hours. Categories. Strategy, design, communication, the things that disappear into a project because nobody wants to be the first person to say they take time.

I do not like reducing a creative relationship to a spreadsheet. It feels slightly rude, like taking the temperature of a dinner party.

Still, there is a point when clarity is kinder than generosity performed until everyone is resentful.

7/7/23 I was planning Mexico City today. The planning was not especially glamorous.

Find the house. Think about uniforms. Send an invitation that feels like more than an invitation. I wrote down something about a jacket and then moved to the next thing.

I keep wanting every gathering to have its own weather system. Not just a place where people arrive and talk, but a small world with rules, an object, a reason it had to happen there and not somewhere else.

This is probably excessive. Most people are happy with a location and a time.

But I have been to enough events that could have been an email. If someone is going to get on a plane, I want them to feel the difference when they walk in.

1/22/23 There was a calendar for Paris and it looked very clean on the page.

A red-eye. Setup days. Showroom hours. A week off that I am not sure anybody really believed in. Then back in the office.

There is something very convincing about a schedule in a new city. It lets you imagine that your life is about to become precise. You can see all the names, all the places, the people who might come. You can make a list of who needs to be there and feel, briefly, like the whole thing is already happening.

I like the part before arrival. The way a room exists as an idea before anyone has stood in it. The way you can still believe the table will be exactly where it should be and that everyone will remember why they came.

11/1/22 It is 11:14 at night and I am sitting in the living room on Cain Boulevard in Dallas.

I moved here when I was twenty. I did not know anyone. At the airport I could not get a taxi, saw a man in a Jesus shirt, asked if he knew where my school was, and he gave me a ride.

That has been Dallas for me: provision arriving before I knew how to ask for it correctly.

I met God here. I met Sarah here. I had Loua and Leon here. I bought houses here. I took a creative-director job, outgrew it, started a business, lived through COVID, and became a person I did not know how to imagine when I arrived.

We leave in a few weeks. I want to remember the city without turning it into a monument. I want to remember that a life can move like wind: not held still, not resisted, but received while it is here.

10/15/22 I had coffee alone in Córdoba this morning. The first time I have been alone in almost a week.

An Uber dropped me off and I sat there with all of the noise from the last few days still moving around in me. It is strange to realize your feelings have been waiting in line behind your thoughts. Even stranger to realize they have been waiting behind work.

There is always something I can organize. A meeting, an idea, a room, a person’s next step. I am very good at making a plan before I have admitted how I feel about needing one.

Last night was beautiful. I felt conviction in a way that was simple, not dramatic. This morning I mostly wanted to be awake enough to receive it.

I do not want a life that only works when I am moving. I want to be a person who can hear God without making Him compete with the rest of my calendar.

9/22/22 First night in California.

I arrived around noon, got on a Zoom with Upper Room, went to the studio, had lunch, worked, ran errands for a camera, worked again, then planned the next year. By eight I was having a beer with friends. Later I was sitting with people I had only just met, talking about houses, family, God, and what it means to arrive somewhere before you understand why.

Someone sent me a list of properties. I am staying in a house with children’s things in it. The whole day felt slightly unreal.

I keep returning to the same thought: I am only able to walk as far as I can see. But I can see enough to take the next step.

9/12/22 I tried to write down what I actually want.

Not ambitions in the abstract. A desired week. A desired weekend. What I want for my family, for Neww, for the team. Life has been moving so quickly that I do not always know whether I am choosing it or simply keeping up with it.

When I was younger, a summer felt like its own world. Now months can pass as one long open room.

I think I need more doors. More walls. More places where one part of life can end and another can begin. Not limitation exactly. Structure enough to notice that I am alive inside the days.

12/13/21 I sent my schedule to the team this morning.

It was not a dramatic document. Just the days, the meeting blocks, the places where I needed people to know I could be found and the places where I could not.

At the time I thought I was solving a calendar problem. I was really learning that a life without protected time gets spent by whoever asks first.

Communication stays open. It has to. But availability is not the same thing as being without edges.

11/30/21 The conference merch sold through fifty-eight bundles before we closed the link.

Then came the real questions: sizes, extra hoodies, what stays limited, what gets saved for friends, family, the people who helped build the thing before anyone knew it was a thing.

That is the part people do not see when they see a room full of merch. The count, the order, the decision to make enough without making it ordinary.

Early on, you are always building the world and its proof at the same time.