I'm a full-time YouTuber, and as I write this it's January 25th, 2025, day 4,989. My message for today is to encourage you to be willing to face the pain and go through the annoying, hard things now so that you can set yourself up for a better future.
Doing the Annoying Thing Today
Here's a small example from my own setup. I have a two-PC arrangement here. I've got all the music and performance gear on one screen, and then I have a second computer for streaming and recording. My Ableton was loading slow, taking a few minutes just to come up. That's because I had it on a SATA hard drive instead of on the NVMe. So I spent $250, bought a four-terabyte NVMe drive that mounts right on the motherboard, got rid of the old one, and then I reformatted my whole computer.
In the short term, this means I spend hours reformatting the machine, putting all my applications back on, like Native Instruments, taking a year and a half to reinstall Kontakt Complete, and having to leave the computer on all day. But what I get in return is that Ableton loads faster, I get to purge all the stuff from the past that I don't use anymore, and everything is quicker. In the short term it's an annoying thing to do, but in the long term it sets me up for success. It is well worth it.
What I notice a lot of people struggle with is putting off doing things like that, and tolerating 50 little problems at once. Then you end up feeling stressed out, like your whole life isn't working, when really you need to sit down and fix it one thing at a time. For instance, I took the car to the dealership the other day and spent $2,500 to get the hydraulics fixed on the back gate. The car is a 2016, so it's nine years old now, and the hydraulics that opened the back gate on my RAV4 were screwing up. It was annoying. The only difference sometimes between a life that's really annoying and one that's awesome is fixing 10 or 20 little things.
What I notice is that a lot of people don't want to face the pain, deal with it, and handle that stuff today until it gets extremely urgent or turns into an emergency. What I do that really helps me is I constantly tackle facing those little amounts of pain instead of pushing everything off and then getting destroyed.
How I Used to Numb the Pain
For example, I have a family member, and a lot of people do this, who numb everything by taking drugs and drinking alcohol. That's what I used to do. I would drink alcohol and try to numb all the pain of what were never major problems. It was often 10 or 20 minor problems that I wouldn't deal with. It was a financial issue. It was a relationship issue. It was my office. It was all these little things that, if I had just sat down sober and cried, been frustrated and angry, and figured it out, and then done that 10 more times, my whole life would have been fixed.
That's essentially what I went through getting sober, which is why it's so hard. It's so hard when you've been putting off all these little things and then you have to face all of them sober at once. What I've come to believe is that the people who are most miserable in my life are the ones who put off dealing with all these little things, so they drink and they use drugs. If you just sit down and feel the pain, cry and wallow in it for a minute, and then ask for help, all these little things in your life could be fixed.
Instead, what happens is what nearly happened to me. I almost ruined my entire life drinking. It was very close. And I see family members and friends absolutely wrecking their lives, instead of reformatting their PC, instead of reading a book on health, instead of trying a new doctor, instead of taking their car into the dealership. Often it's only 5 or 10 or 15 of those things that need to be handled in someone's life. Some folks are really in a tough spot and have 20 or 30 of those things, but it still comes down to handling them one at a time.
I'm glad I do that today. You might not realize this is something I do, but I'm consistent about it. Six months ago I reformatted both of my computers. With my streaming PC, that was a real pleasure, because that's half the machines I don't have to reformat again. Even though this PC isn't fully set up yet, I'm actually installing Ableton Packs while writing this, clicking a button to install them as I go. This is a challenge for you too.
Facing the Pain in Relationships
The same thing happens in relationships, where often you'll have all this bad feeling, but really what you're doing is running away from the hurt. I had a hurt with one of my family members this morning, not the same family member I mentioned, but a different one. I just laid there and cried and laughed, and I was thinking about this topic. I told myself I need to feel the pain of the hurt in this relationship. Often, if you stop to feel the pain of somebody hurting you, you'll know what to do going forward.
I had a situation with a family member a few months ago, and I was in massive pain about it. I finally just cried and felt all the years and years of hurt, and it became obvious what to do. With this particular family member, the answer was simple: don't be around them. You're not going to get hurt anymore. There's nothing worth having in this relationship, so just don't see them and it'll be fine. I've been doing that for two months, and it's been great.
Now I have another family member, and I just need to take some time with it. Some family members, friends, and coworkers you can cut off or remove from your life more easily than others. People like your mother, your siblings, or your children can be more difficult. But even in those cases, you feel the pain first, and afterward you'll figure out what to do. It's hard to figure out what to do before you face the pain.
My Agreement With My Body
I have a family member right now who feels like they have so much pain they can't face it sober. They feel they have to constantly be medicated, constantly under the influence of something, because they don't think they can handle the pain sober. My thought is, if I can't handle the pain sober, then I've got no work left here to do. I have an agreement with my body: you're going to be healthy and feel good most of the time, or we're not doing this anymore. That's a non-negotiable for me.
Today my back hurt a little, but I stretched it. I'm going to do my part to keep the body healthy. I'm going to take it to yoga and feed it well. We went to the mall today, and I had some Dippin' Dots and some popcorn. We had Cheesecake Factory for lunch, where I had an Impossible Burger, a soft-serve ice cream cone, and a few bites of a s'mores cookie. So I'm giving this body lots of energy, and it's ready to go.
At the same time, this family member said, "Well, you'll find out about this one day." And I said, no, I won't. I won't live like that. I will not live where the body is in miserable physical pain, in shambles, and I'm just taking drugs every day to get by. I won't live like that because I don't have to. To me, being here is a choice every moment. If I choose not to be here, the body will figure out a way; I'll stop eating, or whatever it takes. My uncle had Parkinson's, and he put up with it for years and years, and then he stopped eating. He didn't put up with it anymore, and that was it. He died right after that.
To me, a lot of people think too much about quantity and not enough about quality. The way I've found to get quality is that you have to handle resetting your computer, so to speak. And if you don't know how to handle something, ask people for help until you figure out exactly what you need to do about it. If this kind of honest reflection on getting sober and choosing quality of life resonates with you, I share a lot more of it in my Life playlist.
So I'm glad that today I'm resetting this computer and I'm feeling the pain. I'm facing the pain today, and I'm moving forward.