A decade ago I sat in the audience at the Circles conference in Grapevine, just outside Dallas. It was the first time I had been in a room full of creatives, and the energy was electric. Somewhere in that room a feeling hit me: one day I would be on that stage. In 2024 I was. This is the talk I gave, written down, so it can travel further than the room.
I want to start with the question I asked the audience, because it is the one underneath everything else: will it have made a difference that you were here? We leave a room like that full of energy and then go home to our routines, and the inspiration fades. For me it didn't fade. It became the launching point for everything I've built since.
I woke up at 29
Near the end of my twenties, something shifted. I turned 29 and I woke up. I realized I had been living on autopilot, letting society and the world around me make so many of my decisions.
I had been taught that there were mile markers to a happy life. Graduate from college. Get a good job. Get married. Have kids. Buy a house. I had reached every one of them, and I was happy. But there was a feeling underneath it. I felt unfulfilled, and I was confused by that.
Slowly I understood: I had been taught to live a stranger's life. The milestones were someone else's definition of a good life, and I had lived them faithfully. So I started asking harder questions. What does it even mean to be successful? What does it mean to me? Were any of the last decisions I made actually mine?
Those questions took me down layer by layer into understanding myself. And I came to believe something I still hold close: success happens internally years before it's ever recognized externally.
A personal renaissance
Waking up launched what I can only call a personal renaissance. I had never thought of myself as a creative. I'm an engineer by training. But suddenly I wanted to try everything. I wrote apps, did consulting, picked up photography and videography, designed and built websites for people. I even built a letterpress out of a car jack.
Then I found Kinfolk, the first magazine I had ever seen that looked like a piece of art, and I wanted to be part of something like it. I sent my work to independent magazines and heard nothing back. Not even a no. I knew I wasn't reaching the right people.
That was the season I first came to Circles. The first day left me so inspired I couldn't sleep. I lay awake churning through ideas until one thought cut through all of it: I don't have to wait for someone else to publish me. I can publish me.
So I got up and wrote the first article that night. The next morning I made a decision: I don't know how long this will take, but I'm going to give it an hour a day, every day, until it exists. A year later I published the first volume of the 3vies magazine. I was 30.
Every volume after that followed a year of my life: 30, 31, 32, all the way through my thirties. People kept telling me I had to pick one thing and master it. I didn't want to pick one. The magazine gave me room to be all of it: writing, poetry, photography, layout design, digital art, watercolor, all coming together in a printed object you can hold in your hands.
I'll be honest: I don't recommend making a print magazine in the digital era. It is extremely difficult, and people still ask me why. I don't fully know why. I just love it. That's the point.
Following the feeling opens doors you can't see
A decade of following that feeling led to work I never could have planned. One of my favorites: I designed a children's book for StoryBots. It started when one of their co-founders came across my work, complimented it, and bought copies of the magazine. A few months later he asked if I'd design a book with them.
Nothing I was doing pointed toward a children's book. If I had tried to apply for that project, I would never have been invited to the table. But by following that feeling and doing my own work, my work got in front of the right person. Opportunities flow in ways you can never see when you pursue what you love.
Looking back, I also see the meaning of the name more clearly. 3vies is French for three lives: when you live intentionally, you can accomplish the equivalent of three lives in one lifetime.
Going through the dark
I want to point something out about the years that end in eight, nine, and zero. They are transitions. 18, 19, 20. 28, 29, 30. Each one is a door into a new decade, and a new version of you that you have to come to know.
After that first awakening I thought the deep work was done. Then came my separation, the hardest and darkest season of my life. I remember telling my therapist, "I don't think I'll ever be okay."
The one thing I did right was that I didn't shrink away from it. It would have been easier to stay busy and not think about it. Instead I went headfirst into the deepest parts of myself. Years later, sitting in that same office, I heard myself say something for the first time: "There's nothing I need to be happy."
You have to learn how to be yourself, by yourself, for yourself.
I came out the other side liking who I am. Not for everybody, but at home with myself. Some people live their whole lives without that feeling, and I found it in my early thirties. Now happiness is simple: I wake up, and I get to be me again today.
That season also turned my attention outward. I started asking other creatives not about their titles or accolades, but about how they navigate life: their environments, how they make decisions, how they craft a life they enjoy. Part of that was for my three kids. I want them to see that there is no one way to a fulfilling life. There are many paths. Take the pieces that are true for you and build your own.
Principles to create a life you love
Over that decade I kept seeing the same principles at work. They aren't a formula. They build on each other, and together they become your own system for navigating life.
1
When you feel
Inspired
you have to act
2
Create daily
Rhythms
Give energy to ideas you want to grow.
3
Find a
Process
you love
The amplifier
Start to think in
Decades
Learn to shift between micro and macro vision.
1. When you feel inspired, you have to act
This is the most important one. Remember the night I couldn't sleep and got up to write? The ability to turn inspiration into action is everything. Inspiration is your subconscious trying to become conscious. Learning to notice those signals, and to trust them, is the foundation for everything else. Inspiration is the spark, never the end goal.
2. Create daily rhythms
The next morning I committed to an hour a day. Give daily energy to the ideas you want to grow. It has to be a daily rhythm, because otherwise your current routines will hold you exactly where you are. A small, steady rhythm is what slowly shifts the direction of a life.
3. Find a process you love
People often think they have to find their process first and then start. It works the other way around. You start creating, you do it daily, and along the way you find the thing that makes you feel alive. I tried a dozen things before I stumbled onto making a magazine. Try a lot. Notice what gives you energy. Then follow it.
The amplifier: start to think in decades
The last principle multiplies the other three. Learn to shift between micro and macro vision: be in the day-to-day making, then step back and see how those actions add up to the larger picture. When I published the first volume, I decided I wanted to do it for a whole decade, and I kept asking how each year's work would fit into that collection.
Thinking in decades also lets the noise drop away. My daughter once came home from third grade in tears, convinced she wouldn't graduate. I held her and told her that by next week she wouldn't be thinking about it, let alone next month or next year. We all need someone to remind us of that. Stepping back to the long view tells you what actually matters right now.
Your own path
None of this is about getting popular or making money. It's about contentment more than success, and letting your own energy be the teacher. You are successful at the life you have, and you are responsible for it. You already have what you need to begin.
The life you want is found in discovering your own path, not in following someone else's. Take what resonates from other people's systems, leave the rest, and build your own. Follow the feeling.
So I'll ask again: will it have made a difference that you were here?
Background - Adapted from my keynote at Circles 2024 in Grapevine, Texas.
