I’m Howler. A man with a compulsion to create.Welcome back to the Bone Brew, Brave Souls. It is a new year and as is common for most, I have been looking back on things and thinking about where I will take my craft over the next year.

I wrote this article last year: This Time Next Year.

A vow, about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. This is somewhat of an amendment but not really. More like a reintroduction to Me, The Bonebrew, and the Art I seek to create.

I don’t believe in resolutions. I think that instead, Refusals are far more potent. I think that decisions are far more valuable. So this Article is an expounding upon the conversation in the video. Enjoy!

I have quotes and words that guide me.

Guide Posts:

* Temperance

* Awe

* Be a Monster

* Look at your life, look at your choices.

* Slow is Smooth, Smooth is fast.

* You are the Universe Experiencing itself.

The Newest wordAttendSimple, elegant, not as weighty or heavy as Responsibility, Discipline, Obligation, or Duty (ha I said duty)I think the word ATTEND, Is a North Star this 2026

The Lie

I have lived many a Life.

* Soldier

* Plumber

* Corporate drone

* Bartender

More I don’t even care to count. Thing is that Often times we will tell creatives that the breadth of experience is the key to making long lasting creative works. And to some degree that has merit but I posit after mulling this over for the last five years; that is frankly a lie, and at best a half truth.

We frame it as Tuition for lessons learned. We frame it as cutting our teeth in other fields, we frame it as the long way around. All of it is Cope. Stories to make ourselves feel better for not doing the thing. What ever that creative thing maybe, whether drawing, writing, painting, film making.

Excuses and AvoidanceAll of it.

Here’s a thought experiment. Do you think the first people who drew Superman ever went skydiving?

Just sit with that for a second.

Did they ever go skydiving? Would they know what it’s like to fly?

But they drew Superman flying, jumping tall buildings, running at the speed of sound. Did they know what that felt like?

So I know, and I can tell you, that art does not require experience.

My Road

I can’t speak as if I know you. I can only speak from my own road, my own experience. I opened my eyes one morning and felt like I’d wasted time. I was asking myself what the hell I was really doing. There was a festering rot in the pit of my stomach and in the back of my throat…

“Plumbing, feeds that part of me that wants to leave something behind so it’s feasible. You know, practical artistry…” Every time I said it, I could taste the bile of falsehood bubbling. A half truth.

I was sacrificing for love, for obligation, I was being disciplined.

There in lies the rub, the friction of it all. The greatest cage I could ever find myself in, the one of my own making.

The title of Father, of Husband. Titles I wear proudly.Yet, I could feel the rot. Bubbling, building.

This stuff here, this art thing for me, is like its own weird introspective therapy. Its own weird sense of clarity. It helps me think. It challenges me. Oh my God, does it challenge me.

And without that... I said this to my dad the other day about it.

I would be one mean son of a bitch. God, would I be one mean son of a bitch.

If I don’t get time to create, I get cranky.

The Cost

What pray tell is it?The Anchor of Resentment.

To name the thing is to disarm it, to remove it’s power. Or at the very least that is the first step.

I was resentful of the Titles I wore so proudly.

How? Why? How is it that I found myself resenting Roles that I have wanted since I was a boy? How was that even remotely possible?

It is far easier, to sail the seas of Novelty without any direction. Yet the cost is often being drowned by the Anchor(s) of Resentment, no matter how noble the Sacrifice. It is only when you are drowning that you will scramble for the closest piece of land. That is when you find yourself where you don’t want to be, where you never dreamed of being. The thing about the anchor is this. You might not drown today.

Tomorrow.

But if you allow it... you will find the entire ship of yur life sinking. And you won’t understand why.

I’d allowed myself to drift and be taken by the current on the Sea of Novelty, I’d Abandoned myself for the sake of Family.How dangerous a thing. Not for me, but for the ones I love so dearly. I found I was willing to kill my dreams for them, whether I wanted to or not and in doing so I would grow to hate them all the same.

The Remedy

But again friction.

The Rub

They didn’t ask that of me, they did not require I kill a part of myself. On the contrary they want the fullest version of me.

How would I ever be able to show up for them If I could not show up for myself? How could I ever fully give them my attention if I was always thinking of something else?

These were the questions I found and in the asking the answer came from an unlikely source.

My boy, my lil dragon, my monster. My son.

Attend

We find ourselves back at that word.I took to taking walks with him during the evenings. I try to see the world through his eyes.

He notices ants everywhere. The way a blade of grass is different from another. The awe in every lizard, every cloud, in the stars. He notices the things I walk by everyday without notice or care. The Mundane.

He simply pays attention to the Mundane.

Life is Mundane, most of us will not live some extraordinary existence, most of us will have died within a few miles of where we grew up. Creation does not require some grand adventure. You don’t gain the right to be creative because you were adventurous. There is no reward system for having had an extraordinary life.

Hell, Kings think themselves ordained by the heavens and it is as normal as breathing, they think their lives mundane because they awake in it each and every day.

So what does it take to be a Creative?

Attention.

In my estimate You must attend to three things.

* First and foremost

* Your CraftWhatever that craft may be, attend to it’s study, inner workings, and the pursuit of it’s mastery. Because there is no craft without it’s rules, principles, or best practices.

* Secondly

* SelfYour well being, your mental, your emotional, your spiritual. You ought to know what makes you tick. You ought to know what sets you on fire. You ought to know the question you are constantly seeking to answer within your own craft, and in life.

* Lastly

* The Mundane. The thing that spits in the face of the ‘Go live’ platitude. As creatives we are the ones who make the mundane spectacular, whether it be a starry night, the whine of string, or the horror of human depravity. We are the ones who open the eyes of others, we are the ones who remind people of themselves. We are the bridge between the fantastical and the mundane, the speculative and the everyday.

I don’t claim that this is easy. Or that world is even conducive to this always. I do know it is the only antidote I have found, the only answer that seems to work for me.

It is mundane, monotonous, repetitive, routine work.

I used to hate doing that. I used to hate doing the same thing over and over again. But it is here we find depth, It is only in repetition that you find mastery.

2026

So, this 2026, I am choosing the Depth.

I’m choosing the thing that keeps calling my name in the dead of night. The thing that keeps howling at me.

Regardless of what I’m doing. The thing I’m constantly thinking about.

I’m choosing it.

And as I choose it, I refuse to not attend to my life.

I will attend to the mundane in all of its glory.

That is my refusal.

That is my decision.

I refuse to be trapped and drowned by the anchors of resentment.

But instead, I am deciding to instead Dive into the depths!

This you?

If you find yourself on the same path that I was on, and you find yourself mulling something over for years at a time,

Find yourself resenting your titles, your Roles, then I implore you.

I implore you to dive into the depths, because that is where the anchor resides

Because only in the depths will you be able to cut yourself free from those anchors.Welcome to the bone brew.

I am Howler.I’m just a man speaking from the road.

A Birthday Request

I turn another year older TODAY!

I’m not a fan of gifts. I normally spend today Alone in introspection, which is a great gift I think> But… I do have an ask, for once, one I hope you feel inclined to Grant.

Share the Load: Send this to a friend who is drowning on the Sea of Novelty. Or just tell a friend about the Brew.

Engage: Talk to me in the comments. Join the next live stream. Don’t just consume; participate. A small birthday wish would be great.

The Cohort: I am not alone on this road. I am constantly shouting out friends of the brew. I would not believe this was possible with out their examples. So check my recommendations and make sure you tell them I sent you.

My Other outlet: Subscribe to the YouTube channel. It helps me without your cash. If you aren’t subscribed here hit that Button, Brave Soul, and Join me as we Attend this 2026!

Fuel the Work: And lastly, if you absolutely must get me something: Time to attend to the craft is everything! Become a paid subscriber or grab a relic from the BoneShop. It buys me that time.

If you are still here, reading this far? Thank you!

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