Navigating what you’re going to do with your life sounds daunting. The reality is that the moves you make matter and sure, they sort of do determine the course of your life and all your future opportunities. Eh, but nothing is permanent.

Traveling is a great activity and mode for gaining perspective and finding the source of who you are. When you take yourself out of your usual role and context in the life you’ve carefully (or not so carefully) constructed, there is blankish slate for you to start to draw out some options. Traveling also makes you realize that all the minutiae you think matters doesn’t matter. Who cares who’s going to come out with the first driverless cars? Yes, these things can change our world pretty fundamentally, but I don’t know that they’re at the core of where meaning comes from. We don’t engage with that often enough. We are human beings, not just a string of technological events we create, engage in, or are excluded from that we like to label progress. All that is meaningful in that way seems relegated to our private lives rather than our collective sense of belonging. There are probably just too many of us out there. It’s hard to see that we’re all part of the same continuous blob if we zoom out far enough.

And so from the blank slate, I started to see the arc of what I wanted my life to be like and put the pieces in place. I moved out of NYC. I tried to exorcise elements that were toxic. I moved to LA, which I always said I would do. I started writing and doing music, which are core to who I am as a person.

Going down this uncharted path has been uncomfortable. I have asked myself many questions. I am not overly concerned about what other people think, but I do think they probably think I’m having a life crisis. The reality though is that even though I’m worried about the future, I’m proud of myself for doing what many people want to do but are scared to do. I was in a privileged position to do it compared to many, of course. I realized that it’s not healthy to always delay your future happiness. And I was in a never-ending progression of thinking, “once I do XYZ, I will be happy,” or “once I hit XYZ milestone, I can really do what I want.”

Once you’ve blown everything up–relationships, career, house/apartment, city you’ve lived in for 17 years–it eventually starts to make sense to rebuild.

There are a few things I have learned:

• Travel is frequently a good reset and cleanse for getting that blank slate thing going on.
• Take time and don’t rush into anything – you will need more time than you ever thought you’d need if you’re doing it the right way.
• Start small – take on a project, don’t start a competitor to Uber. See some successes that remind you why you’re actually good and worthy.
• Exercise and eat well – nourish and develop your body, which fuels your sense of self-appreciation and practices of treating yourself well, especially if you’re someone who’s hard on yourself.
• Exercise mental muscles you’re not used to using, particularly writing. Writing heals. Everyone is creative. It is asinine to divide the world along the axes of creative vs. not.
• Meditate. Find your peaceful corner and create a space inside yourself that you can go to when things get confusing.
• Cultivate healthy relationships with people. Use the time and space to reflect on what serves you and your higher self best.
• Feel. Try not fight feelings with alcohol, being busy, food, or other devices – don’t think your way out of your feelings. Surrender.
• Most importantly, there is likely a voice inside you that knows what you need to do. Those are the constants that keep coming up. That’s why writing helps. And time, not rushing. If you look back over the things you have written or said over the course of months, there will be patterns that emerge and clues…really, truths…that you’ve probably been dismissing. One day, you might be ready to say WTF and just roll with it.

There is the voice of truth, and there is the voice of panic. Both need to be indulged in some way. I’m thinking about career and feeling that playing it safe could be a good route too – yes, this is fear talking. It takes a lot to be mindful about it and strike the right balance between logical impulses and the will to let this journey play itself out organically. So…no commitment for now, but I’m just going to talk to a few recruiters.