I Choose...The Power of Music with Samuel T. Herring

You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Hey everyone, welcome to the I Choose Me Podcast. This podcast is all about the choices we make and where they lead us. My guest today is a musician, a rapper, and the lead singer of the band Future Islands that I am a big fan of and you might also know him from the Apple TV Plus show The Changeling, where he made his acting debut last year. Please welcome Samuel t

I think your team is the first person to find my secret email who.

I was like, it does work, that's so cool.

Well, they're good, so that makes sense.

Yeah, I was like, I got a request, but it was excited. We were really excited to hear that you came to the show. That's just so cool.

I'm going to give my husband credit because we both love music, but he has introduced me to some of the best bands around, and yours is right at the top of that list. We just got you guys in La at the Shrine and Dave had had seeing Future Islands on our calendar since like May, right, and the thing was, I've been traveling a lot for work. I got home, I was home for one day. I had a photo shoot all day long, and I thought, there's no way I'm going to be up to going to

Well that's uh, yeah, that's awesome. I'm glad that.

You know, the whole the whole point of the show is to kind of crack people a bit, you know, break open something that's not there. And I mean that's you know, the my movement is to make other people move. Of course, you know that it's a safe space. If I can do it, you can do it. That kind of thing, you know, it's a hook. But yeah, that's just it's a high compliment and it's the goal.

We were like up in the back and everybody wanted to sit down and I was not having that and you were like, everybody, get up. And I'm so glad that you said that, because these old study dudies behind me wanted to like sit and watch you before. No, no, thank you.

And you know that that happens sometimes, especially when you move into theaters and stuff. But man, when I go to a show, I want to sit down. I'm always looking for the green room.

When I go to a sho I don't get to go back there.

Through the Roses that has been one of our songs, you know, for me, just like through All the Ship. Yep. It's an upbeat mode to how hards like relationships can be. But for me, it just reminds me that we're stronger together somehow. And Little Dreamer is the song that I am absolutely obsessed with right now. What does it mean? I mean, I can interpret it and maybe maybe you're

That's actually a good question.

At some point or another I knew it was probably I'm going to say it was probably William of Field recording that he made, and I feel like it was from Windell. His hometown is a tiny little town outside of Rally in North Carolina. I can't I'm not actually sure though. You know, in our not our most recent record, with the one before that, we also the record opens the song Glatta, which is it's the Swedish word for happy,

And the red kite.

But that that also opens with these sounds of geese, and I don't know, it's something calming when you when you have we used to do we used to play a lot more with field recordings.

It just reminds you of a place it puts.

It creates a setting, you know, and sometimes I think about you know, of course.

You saw the show, so there's a theater. There's a theatrical element to it. There's a theater to it.

But you know, and when I usually when I write a song, the first line is always the hardest, and it's about you know that those first lines are about like creating the setting, just like you would a play or something.

So I think when you have the ability to cheat and put birds.

Sound in the sound of the sounds of uh, you know when through reads. There's an album we have on the Water which is has the clanking of like the sails you know, on ships at night. Yeah, And I mean, I don't know what the average person hears when they hear that, but when I hear it, it takes me right back to that place.

So yeah, there's something that like forces my brain when I hear that to like stay really focused on what I'm listening to. I don't know what.

It is, but dream is, especially that little tweet something about it.

It's like we caught a really perfect moment from from a bird.

Uh, huh, what is that?

Was?

I even close with my interpretation, it's.

Not about my cat.

Okay good, but no, I mean that well that song, you know, that song in a lot of ways to me feels like it is the It says a lot about the life of this band. You know, Future Allens was is eighteen and a half years old now, and we had a band before that. You know, we had me Wayim and Garrett the William the bassis, Scarrett the keyboardist.

Of course we have Mike the drummer. Don't want to leave Mike out.

But in the beginning, the three of us had a band called art Lord with a couple other friends. Art Lord and this Portraits and that was like our college band, performance art piece and music was the was the medium. And then you know when Future Islands began in six So we did that for two and a half years, didn't have a band for about six months, and then started Future Islands in six I was going through so much in my life at that time. I had I

Because I tell it all.

But it the the band kind of began when I was kind of losing my mind.

I was at my bottom.

But it took another four months and then I was able to leave town and get clean and through you know, through my parents' help. But then I left and I was living out of my van doing odd job construction around North Carolina, for North Carolina originally for a few months, and I started talking to this girl down in Florida, and eventually I just went down there. I was spending time with her, and then I was like, come back with me to North Carolina and we but I didn't have a place to go.

I didn't have a house.

I just slept on friends couches around North Carolina. So she did that with me for a few months, and then we settled in a place in Asheville.

North Carolina.

And so that song is about that room that we stayed in. You know, it was like eight roommates, one bathroom, an old punk house.

It was like basically a squat house.

Like we split, like we split one hundred and sixty bucks a month rent. She worked at a little clothing shop and I worked at Domino's Pizza delivering pizzas, and we just like made it work, you know, And so that song, you know, she was really at that whole time, I was really trying to I'd lost myself, you know, within my drug problems. I didn't fracture my relationships with my friends and my bandmates, but I just wasn't there.

I was gone.

And then so that song has traveled for seventeen years through my life, through her being there and then her being gone, you know, at the very beginning of us splitting, and then like the years of noncommunication and then like recommunicating and then being like, I don't want to sing this song anymore, like if it hurts her.

Or if it hurts me, to really accepting.

In the last few years, it's been about like that meaning has changed, but it's been about it like accepting your past and accepting love that isn't there anymore, because it was still love, you know, And that's really what it means to me now, Like I can't stop myself from the good memories, even if I'm in a new place,

So the old the old Friend is me, you know.

Not not another person. I'm I'm I'm finding myself again. So really, yeah, that it's that song is very It has so much meaning, but it's so crazy that you can encapsulate that in those moments and then the original person or the original thought, the original feeling you're so far away from that, it can still take you there. It can transport you there, and then it can be something that people get their own feeling from because you

It's art. You know, it's supposed to move with people and move through people.

You said in your band Future Islands started just you and your buddies in two thousand and six. But I want to just rewind a little bit, and I want to sort of set the stage for our listeners. You're from North Carolina, as you mentioned. Tell me a little bit about your childhood. Do you remember the first time that you sang? And I wanted to know who was encouraging you to follow your dreams? Who was it that was standing behind you?

You know, I grew up in a really I grew up in a small town eastern North Carolina. I was just like a two minute walk to the shore, the sound, you know, the water trap between us and the Barrier Island that was out of the ocean.

I had my grandma right around the corner.

It was It's a pretty a pretty simple, I would say, a pretty simple, normal childhood. But that didn't really stop me from feeling weird and out of place. But you know, my mom loved to sing, so she played piano. We would stand around her while she played the piano with sheet music and sing songs together me, my brother and her.

I have an older brother. It's just the two of us.

And so my brother really was he was more of the the big He was more of a ham, I would say, than me even and he's still like such an amazing singer, such an amazing performer and really kind of my first, yeah, my first like idea of what a person was because like I saw his band play when I was like twelve, you know, and I did.

I would sing at a young age seven eight nine.

Like in school for what do you call them, like assemblies and then some drama stuff. But and I always you know, it was like I had a really good voice back then. I had this little angelic like kid's voice, you know, some children just having yeah, no no cigarettes back but I was like I could sing, but that wasn't really something I was trying to do. And then it was music hit me with hip hop, and so when I was thirteen, I fell in love with rap music.

You know, yeah, they were silent, Yeah.

Very slow.

There's not you know, there's like it's just text. You know, every website is just text. And he would print up these books of like how to break dance and how to like graph right and the proper like spray tips you need to do graffiti, and and you know, learning about just the music and the history of like how it came to be.

I was just fascinated.

And a lot of it was that it was so foreign to me, and it also I liked that it was like I had secret knowledge, you know, and I was like, I want to write. And at the same time, I was discovering poetry Carl Sandberg and Theodore RecA at like twelve and thirteen, and I went through like my first like my first crush. And then that also that just made you know, the poetry run, that made the wraps run. I wanted to be a rapper, and that's what when I went to college, That's what was my goal.

You know, that's just the way it goes.

Just happened.

But yeah, but I was, Yeah, there was always a safe space. Like my parents were very much. They both grew up in really hard working families and worked really hard and we're like the first to go to college and their families and because of that, they raised their sons to be artists, which they regretted later. And I also regret sometimes too, because like my work ethic is bad outside of my art.

You know, I feel I work really hard at what I do.

Yeah, you seem like a really hard worker to me.

Well, and that's it's me being hard on myself. I mean, I don't know how many partners I've had to have told me that, like, you know, you're allowed to rest. I'm learning now. I'm learning now, But it is you know, I gained that workaholic nature from my parents, and I would say even more so my father, And I was angry at him as a kid that he worked so hard. And now I find myself as the same in a similar position where I can't be happy unless I'm created

Tour and I'm beat.

But my first thing is like I got off this tour and I just sat down and I started writing a song and it made me happy. You know, it made me happy because I can move from that the crowd, whether you know, the stage work and the work of being on the road is very different than the creative process of creating a song. That's when you get to like pull something new and find who you are in that moment as opposed to working through old emotions or doing a performance.

You know, because there are.

Moments on stage, like what you saw is there are moments of transcendence where I'm discovering new things and I'm connected with the audience. And then there are times where I'm like, well, I'm going to do this high kick because it's going to look cool and it's for the audience, you know, and that's not that's the that's the once again hook people.

So that then you can go back into those spaces.

But there's the performance aspect, which is work, and then there's the and then if you're lucky, you are able to go into the body and find something new.

You mentioned I think it was at your concert actually, that when you finish an album, it's this huge expression and a release of emotions around the things that you are going through working through in your real life at that time. And then once the album finally comes out, you know, when you start touring with that music, it might be kind you might be kind of past those emotions or that, you know, onto that next hurdle in your life, but you're having to relive it all over

Uh? I mean it probably does a bit of I want to say that.

I want to say that performing the song helps to create some closures within the self. It doesn't create closure with a person, but it creates closure and acceptance with the self. It also a thing I found is it makes you you know, when you say something you don't want to say, especially if it's damning to yourself and you put it on record, you are saying, I'm living with this and I want everybody to know that I'm

And then me hide myself, you know what I mean.

And so so I push into those moments so that when I get on stage and I sing it out to people, then I see how it bounces back and then and then I become accountable not just to myself but to all of these people, and then it just uh. I found that it helps me to to accept things and just find you know. It's also about creating a space of you know, I see the stage as power.

You know, the microphone is power, and you have you can use it or lose it. I don't want that. I shouldn't have rhymed that.

And so I think it is like, if you can be vulnerable from a point of from a place of power, then you can you can change.

You can create change.

Because if I can get up there and be and and cry for you and then smile it off and be like I'm okay, we're okay together, then you you can break into people's and what their expectation of what people are.

Supposed to be, what people are supposed to do.

You know, I feel like you're talking about like it's sort of like a reciprocal release and connection with your audience that it's mutually beneficial for you and for the people listening or watching.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I think I even answer your question. Sorry, I'm real tangential.

Yeah that's okay, Yeah, that's okay. But you know, I was just because I think, like, you know, you wrote that song a while ago and you're still playing it

Yeah, and it can be hard to like, you know, my my partner now, you know, I've been like is it okay? You know, because because it's and I've talked to you know, old partners about like, is it strange to have to hear these kinds of songs that are about past relationships. But you know, they also they come you know, they understand like it's just your art, because

And maybe in some ways that's negative because.

It it changes the It can change the memory, you know if you if you just remember that this thing in this way. And that's why I think why it's important to be reflective and see how things move.

I think you said in some interview that after one of your breakups you started therapy. Yeah, how were you when you started therapy?

I would have been I was thirty seven. Yes, this was the end of the end of twenty one. And I mean to be fair, like I had been like that that relationship had been really had been really positive. In my life, and it, you know, it diminished through the pandemic in that space because my partner was overseas, my ex was overseas, and we just didn't we weren't able to get to one another for a really long time in it. And it never popped back like when the pandemic lifted.

It was the feelings.

Were gone and she or her feelings were gone and she let me go.

And then you just have to deal with it.

But because of that relationship and the positivity of it and the love that I felt through it and knew was real, it wasn't like does you know, was it not real? It wasn't one of those It was like, no, no, no, you guys had a real thing. And then sometimes stuff just happens and there are things you can't control and people and people change, and you know, feelings, our feelings are fluid and you can't really you have to look after yourselves and be good to yourself and move forward

I drink, but you know, just going down a bad path like like drugs, sex, just.

Like binge, eating, you know, any of these things. And I was able to find somebody. But even in that time, I was very it was very home and I think it's because that even though I was hurting from losing the relationship, the relationship also it had a positive effect on me.

You know.

I feel like the first relationship where I really had a true mutual love in my life. So I was able to grow in that, you know, and I was older, of course, you know, was in my I was in my thirties already, right, I.

Wasn't just some young punk, no.

But it takes that pain sometimes to get to that growth, and there's no way of getting around it. You just got to go through it. I mean, doing the work. When you know, when we talk about going to therapy and talk about the work that we have to do, our personal inner work whatever, it's scary and keeps people from seeking therapy, I think, and you know, I think a lot of people are just as great afraid to

Oh definitely.

I mean I think the world could use it, and even if just to I think, even if just to have I really think of it as a reflecting point. And you know, different therapists are different, uh, and in the ways that they they do what they do, and you can find people that specialize. Sometimes you just have a bad fit and that can be really off putting,

So I'll tell him, like, you know, I'll tell him this is what's going on and this is how I feel.

And he's like, well, you said something completely different through three months ago, or you know, I think this is what I need. And it's like, well, you said this, are you are you feeling or have you changed your mind?

Or you are you just feeling anxious? You know?

Are you you know what's happening to make you feel this way?

So he's like holding up mirror for you.

Yeah, So that for me, that's what therapy is is.

It's been beneficial is really holding up a mirror to me so that I can sit in my feelings again,

I am a kind of like you've been through it, Like you've talked a lot about, you know, your life experiences, not only through your music, but you know, in interviews and stuff, and you've talked about your drug addiction and about your challenges with mental health and how you've fought you know, your way from being a teen with suicidal ideations and you had you filled voids with substances and like you said, eating all the things, sex, eating, doing

Yes, and I thank you for saying that is something that I It's one of those weird things where I felt like that since I was a kid. So my father is a he's a divorce attorney, and my mother runs the office. So it's just the two of them, and they're so interesting because you know, they to this day, they still they wake up together, they go to work together, they work together, they come home together, and they're still just like pinching each other's asses, and they're just real cute.

They're just cute, funny people.

And so I come from this really loving relationship. But also I was in this in this office for so many years of my life. Up until probably was like fourteen or thirteen or fourteen, I'd probably stopped going to the office after school, and I would hear so much emotion coming.

Through those walls. I would hear people crying, I would hear people yelling.

I'd hear you know, I'd hear laughter, you know, and this, and I couldn't make out what was being said. It was just that who you know, like Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown mom voice over the phone. But but I could feel the emotion. And I don't know, Sorry, parents, But I don't think it was good for me, you know, I think.

It was actually.

I think it was maybe an over exposure for both me and my brother.

But I think it made me.

Extremely empathetic from a young age and like like really trying to to understand people or to just try to I don't know, Just like I do give my dad credit.

With a stranger.

But that thing also taught me about the way you treat everybody in giving everyone this like respect and like I said, you know, a small town vibe. And my dad really taught me how to how to you know, you talk to the judge the same way you talk to the janitor type thing.

And he literally has said that to me.

You know, there there are lessons in that in that office that I learned. It was also like learning to like take care of myself and play with myself, make my own games, you know, you know, playing in the woods, you know so much.

So much of those the songs.

Of futur Rounds are really about those places around that office.

There's something though about that time, whether you were with your brother in the office or you were out exploring the woods or whatever. That solitude and that like presence, just being with yourself, but knowing that you're just this big and there's so much around you. You know that it really makes you think on a deeper level. I think, and really I can I can hear that in your lyrics. I can definitely feel that from the music that you

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, it's interesting, you know so much of me and Garrett's friendship. You know, I have to the words don't have. The music is the bed that allows me to dream, you know what I mean. And so the guys are creating this music that isn't that is very emotional. It's not like I'm just implanting an emotion. It's like the things that some of the sounds that Garrett uses, the way where I'm like bows or like gets into these deep sounds like that remind me of the sea.

You know.

They take me to a place that allows me to reflect, but takes me to a place to reflect. But me and Garrett, you know, I know that we were really I think a lot of the reason that we became friends was because we both didn't feel that the world made sense and we felt like kind of isolated and then we kind of found each other. But we also both have that the darkness of spirit which we are fighting. And Garrett's done a better job in his life and he's you know, he has a beautiful family and and it.

Just makes me so so happy.

But I we still talk about it, you know, and understanding like where our friendship came from, and that those things don't go away. You know, we deal, We learn to deal and understand our emotions and those feelings. And then when finding a friend or even communicating with a stranger sometimes then we're we break out of isolation.

To have that place.

But for me, when Garrett in particular writes a sad song or I shouldn't say a sad song, but a song that is imbued with a deep emotion, I understand it in a different way. You know, there's so much to be said for the friendship of the three of us and now the four of us that really that is the spirit of the music.

Can we talk about life on the road for a second. Yeah, does it suck as bad as I imagine it to suck? Because for me, like when I go away to work, I can really easily lose my grasp with where I've come from or the life that I've just left for those weeks months, whatever it is. How do you stay grounded when you're on the road and what do you do to take care of yourself?

I mean it's yeah, the road is not for everyone, and it gets less a healing the.

Older you get.

The road was great when I was twenty six, you know, and I was free and I didn't have to call home or you know, call someone at home, and I didn't have to miss somebody.

When you're missing somebody, it makes it hard.

And if you have somebody who doesn't understand, it makes it harder.

You know.

My partner now is in the entertainment industry, and so they give me a lot of grace and they understand because they also have to go and.

Do work that but they are also a person.

At the beginning of our relationship was like, I feel you disassociating from me, and I need you to communicate more. And luckily, well I'm proud of myself. But within that time of hearing that and then like fighting against it a bit and to then recognizing and then working through it and then going on tour again to prove myself because you can't prove yourself. Say, at the end of a tour, you're like, well, now I can't prove that I'm not disassociating.

Or is over.

So then you you come home, you reset, and you're like, I'm going to do better, and then you know, since then you know, and she's said to me many times, you know, I see that you've changed that behavior and that work, and you've made me feel secure.

You know, you make me feel secure now.

And it's really just I think in those things, I mean I would rather have, I shouldn't say.

I shouldn't say I would rather have. It's hard to say.

What I was going to say was I like having someone to talk to and I don't want to be you know, being on the being on the road single is easy because you don't have to call home, but it's also really lonely, and you know, maybe maybe you do. You know in the old days, you might get some kisses one night, but you just feel like you just leave again, You just.

Leave your whole life.

Your whole life is gone, you know at times, and it's really easy to get lost.

So I feel so.

Much more comforted and comfortable when I have someone to talk to about what I'm doing, or I get a reflection of, or I get you know, to find out what's happening at home. It makes me feel like I'm not completely gone from home. So, you know, it helps to have a partner who understands and is willing to work through those issues with you, which I'm lucky to have. But yeah, you know, you have to find routines. That's what's helped me recently. You know, my routine is basically,

Do the sketching.

I like this.

You gotta strutch my my body is. I'm doing good now, but I have a lot of body pains from what I do.

So yeah, you saw. Yeah, I had to go take a nap after I watched.

You do it stretching.

Do the show, come off stage, you know, have a couple of drinks, have some laughs, and then go to sleep sometime around like one or two on the bus and then repeat. Yeah.

I mean just staying in a relationship under those kind of circumstances, while you're having your personal growth and your partners having their personal growth, it can be extraordinarily difficult to stay connected. I understand what you're saying about that it feels better to do that with somebody that's on the same page as you, because you're both committed to taking care of one another even though you're apart.

Yes, and you understand the distance, like understanding the distance, understanding the work.

Those things really help.

Last year, I think it was last year I started watching The Changeling because I wanted to check out your big acting debut just recently. Yeah, no, you did. This last year was for Apple TV, right the Change, and so yeah, I just started. I'm on episode two. I haven't gotten to your character got me yet. But how did that opportunity come? I mean, that's like the ultimate

Well, it came about because of it came about because of.

A future Island show. And I mean I'll tell the whole story.

So the writer of the show came to see us at the end of twenty twenty one. She had written the show. It was sold, but they were just they were on the back half of casting the main roles. So they had most of the main roles, but there was one role, my role, it was not yet cast. Kelly came out of the show. Kelly Marcel was the writer of the show and also the showrunner, and then she you know, we're playing and she he's just like

And she turns to her friend and is like, is he the guy? Is he? Like? Could he play William Wheeler?

And her friend, who I think I think she had read the book but had to read the scripts, was like.

I think I think he could. I think he could do it.

So, yeah, the show was back at the beginning of October, and now we're to February. I get a message request on on Instagram from Kelly and she's like, Hi, I'm Kelly. I've you know, these are my things that I've done in the past. This is who I am, and I'm writing the show and I've been trying to contact you through your manager and I'm not hearing anything.

Are you interested in acting?

And I'm just like, oh, this still it's real. So we talked through Instagram. I kept repeating like, you know, I'm not an actor, right, and She's like, I think you can do it.

Then on a Thursday, we had our first zoom.

And I was like, I think maybe I can do it, you know, and and she was like you She she was really on my side. She was like, I really want you in this, and I think if we if we can make good tapes, I can make a good I can make I can pitch it and we can do it. Once Kelly had once she had the director and the casting director. Then they they went to the studio. But but I had to I had to make my own.

Uh.

I had to go in and read with the casting director, who was really great. But I've I'm not nervous, Like I'm not a nervous person, but that I was so nervous that first reading I was.

It was I was like, this is not good.

You've never this is something you've never done before. Of course you were.

Nervous, yeah, but it was it was raw, it was in there, but it was wrong. So I read for them. They were like, we're gonna get behind this.

They they pitched me, but they were like, you got to come back in a week and do it again on camera and there. But they were also like, but you need to you also need to meet with an acting coach, Like we see you have the raw, but you should meet with somebody. So they set Kelly set me up with this guy, Larry Moss. Do you know Larry Moss?

I love that guy. Yeah, I still uncle Larry. Yeah. We had like we did six six sessions.

They're just like one hour sessions over zoom, and it completely changed my whole It just changed everything in my body, Like he released all my fear and stress in dealing with like this thing, and it was really simple. Like I to this day, I still want to talk to him again and be like, did you mean what you said or you just did you just like blow the perfect amount of smoke up my ass to like, but they went to my.

Head because the first thing he said to me was like, look.

I've you know, the first session, first thing, just like I've been watching videos of performances, and I've watched a ton of interviews of your and you're an actor, You're just like, don't you don't trust that you are? So we just have to get you to trust what you're doing. If your head itches, scratch it, you know, if there's.

Something, But do you have the bug?

Now? I would like to act again, but but I never That's why I told you, like you guys were the first ones to find my secret email that I had, so like the show came out, I got really great reviews for my performance from some big publications and then but nothing ever happened.

I was like, oh, well, no, no, I think every you know, everything happens for a reason. Everything, no matter how awful it feels in the moment, it all leads to the next opportunity. Even if it's scary, if it doesn't look like an opportunity, or if you don't think it's going to go anywhere, it all eventually works itself out in your best interest. And that's the beautiful thing

Get you back.

No, I mean I'm really excited for you. I think, you know, the sky's the limit for what you can do and where you can push yourself.

Yeah, it was.

It was a really cool It was something I needed in that moment to ye to a new challenge and something to make me feel to feel positive about myself.

But just to learn something new. It was really it was really cool. It was also really trying. It's a hard job.

I mean, I give you props because there's actually there's similarities in the job, which is the it's the hurry.

Up and way.

But but my you know, it was it was pretty chill. But in the beginning it was really frustrating. I had to find I had to find peace in it, and I drove Kelly crazy sometimes with that too.

Well, I'm glad that you know. I'm glad that it worked out for you, and I'm excited for your future whatever happens with it. Before I let you go, I want I ask everybody this, Damnuel Herring, what was your last I choose me moment?

I ate an extra large pepperoni pizza about three days ago. I eat the whole thing, probably in about ten minutes was really good.

Well, extra large in ten minutes, Okay, I can do it. How'd you feel?

I felt the I felt the warm rush of blood through my course and through my body.

I was just like, I mean, you know, people usually give me like answers that are a little different than that, but I say, I really like this choice, the large extra extra large pizza.

It's like, it's okay, you don't have to you don't have to diet today, you don't have to exercise, you get to relax. Yep, because I don't get to eat pizza on the road because it destroys my voice. It comes me up and gives me reflex, it burns my throat, so like when I get home, it's kind of a thing. And I waited and I was like, you know what, maybe not this time. Maybe maybe I'm going to have better habits when I go home. And then a couple of days went by and I was like, I'm gonna get that pizza.

Now.

It's all in moderation, and you know what, if it feels good, do it. But it's all moderation. But I love that. It sounds like you are more in touch with like how to take care of yourself and just you know, in those those dark times, you get stronger and stronger how to take care of you, you know, And I think I'm just happy to see you on that journey and on that right path because you're so so talented.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited about writing again.

Yeah, waiting, we'll be listening. Yeah, everybody, you've got to check out Future Islands. Take it from me.

Thank you, Jinny, I really appreciate it.

Samuel is so interesting. I have been such a huge fan of his music, so that was so great to get to know him on a more personal level. And I hope if you didn't know about his band Future Islands before this, you will go check them out now. The music is transformational as we continue to choose ourselves each week, I want to challenge you this week to consider something. Should you be getting expert help or guidance.