I realized that I’ve been having a quiet, months-long temper tantrum.

The last time I tried to knit something, I couldn’t get my gauge to come out right. That means that my stitches were too big for the pattern I was knitting, so anything I tried to knit would end up being too big.

I went down a needle size to see if my stitches would be small enough; same problem. I went down another needle size, and another—same problem. A problem I hadn’t really encountered in two years of obsessive knitting. So I put the project away, and nine months later I still haven’t knit anything.

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The best advice I have is this: simplify.

If you don’t have any problems, you might not need this advice. That’s great! Otherwise, simplify.

You can reduce physical clutter in your physical environment. You can strip away the emotions from a decision that ultimately doesn’t require them. You can do less, slow down, and eliminate tasks, projects, and routines from your life.

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Transformation is an experience both magical and unsettling.

Suddenly, the world you thought you knew is remapped. Like a bougie kitchen renovation, what was once familiar is made new, and even what has stayed the same is unrecognizable in its new context. We feel so different that everything around us feels different, too.

In such a situation, we might want to start over, with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. However, this can be just as deceptive as the illusion we now believe we’ve left behind.

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We had thought we were going on a sailing trip.

At least, that’s how it was pitched to us. But when we set out in the 38-foot Bantry Bay gigs, there was no wind. Therefore, the oars were distributed, and the ten of us rowed out of the harbor, stroke by stroke.

For the next six hours, we headed east over the gentle three-foot swells that were the only remaining vestiges of the previous day’s storm. For a while, we caught some wind and made way toward our destination, but the configuration of our sails made it impossible to sail upwind, and the wind shifted unhelpfully.

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Would you like to know my pricing strategy for when I expanded my music school to multiple teachers?

I took the teacher’s rate of pay for a thirty-minute lesson and added $5.

There was no thought to my own costs or the market rate or anything. It was a random number.

These initial mistakes in pricing compounded over time as I expanded my business.

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