Well, hello everyone. It's Morgan Harper-Nichols here, and I am back. The podcast is back.

I decided to come back today, December 26th, the day after Christmas, because I was really overthinkinginking releasing a new episode when I wanted to

which was on January 1st in a few days. I cannot tell you how many episodes I recorded, edited the whole

thing made artwork for and deleted it. And I've been working on that

for months, thinking about January 1st and thinking about what I was going to say on January 1st.

And as I started to get from the point of thinking down or up, I should say, up into the path of

overthinking because there's like the layer of thinking and then there's the overthinking,

all of the stuff that happens on top

of the thinking that I was starting to do and I was starting to build an entire castle

out of that.

I just realized that you know what?

What I need to do in this moment, number one, is slow down.

And the second thing that I realized in slowing down, the first word that came to my mind was

expectation. And I started to think about the expectation that I have put on myself to not only just

create or put things out in the world, but the expectation that I put on myself to be proficient, to be efficient,

to be all of the issants that I can possibly think of.

And while I do think that there is a sense of drive and ambition that is beautiful, I do think that if you live, which is what I live in, if you live in a culture, if you live in a context where the drive and the ambition is prioritized, then in a way,

you have to spend extra time really questioning that and really challenging that and saying,

hmm, does this really apply here? Do I really need to approach this new thing or returning to something

with the utmost ambition and drive and focus and energy and even perfection or planning? Do I need to approach this new thing with that?

And sometimes, maybe even a lot of times, just depending on who you are, where you are,

sometimes that is it.

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