Billy don't brag.

I don't want to change the world. I'm not looking for New England. I'm just looking for another girl. Please, see if she has a coat so warm. For my writing to be any kind of good there must be noise and lots of it: bustling bars, coffee shops home to espresso machines as loud as wood chippers and music, copious amounts of music. When I write, I write to one song at a time, that I will loop fifty, sixty, seventy times during a single writing session; depending, obviously, on the length of the session. I imagine for many people this sounds like a metaphorical hell. But, for me, it’s become something of a meditation or a chant, that is loud and cataclysmic at first but then begins to fade away in the background like an ambulance that’s beside you and then, suddenly, far off racing to save the life of someone, somewhere, that for a brief moment, you realize is someone's mother or father or sister or brother or lover and you feel sad until the siren dies, and you feel overwhelmed with a sense of relief and calm that it is not heading in the direction of someone you love. [One Minute, Please?]( was written to several songs, one of which was Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash's "Girl from the North Country". Somewhere on my soul are tattooed the words... "if you go when the snowflakes storm when the rivers and summer ends please, see if she has a coat so warm to keep her from the howlin' winds." During the writing of that particular book, I fell just madly in love with a woman that lived somewhere cold and far away. The two of us spent a small fortune holding the entire thing together with plane tickets and hotels rooms and late-night phone calls. But, a year in, we realize long-distance was no way to live for too long; that we were killing ourselves in the bed full of daisies that we made and so one morning we both hung up the phone and I haven't seen her nor talked to her since. And, it killed me. Please know, it killed me. I'm still alive and I'm doing well and I'm happy again, most days. But, I am not the same person I was before meeting her, a part of me died the day we called it. Perhaps, this is the sacrifice we make in walking away. Upon the completion and publishing of One Minute, Please?, I began After Her as a way of mourning the loss of her and what we had and, very likely, the loss of myself and who I was whilst loving her. This second book, After Her, was written almost entirely to Miguel’s “City of Angels” and much of it at a noisy fucking joint in Nashville, Tennessee called Pinewood. It's a bit touristy for my liking but if you stay there when the lights go low and sit at the bar and order whiskey or tea or something in-between, magic will happen. After Her very likely won’t be my breakout book. But, it will be the book I look back on and say “that’s where I started writing, really fucking writing, for the first time”. Thus far, it's me at my best and I'm excited to share it with you soon. All that to say, at the moment, I’m looping a song my friend [Tristan Chancellor]( introduced me to. It’s by an artist you’ve probably never heard of, Billy Bragg. And, it’s called "A New England". In it there are three lines that shake me to my core: “I don’t want to change the world. I’m not looking for a New England. I’m just looking for another girl.” Like any good art, these three angsty lines create a contrast I feel every person has confronted, wanting to change the world and wanting to find love. And, why is it that one without the other never feels like enough? But, I digress. By Cole Schafer. P.S. I've got some good good shit for you this week. Keep scrolling. [One Minute, Please?]( I'm closing in on Hemingway. Not really. But, as you know, I've been trying for some time and it's become something of an obsession. So much so that I've named an entire newsletter after him called... "Chasing Hemingway". Unlike Sticky Notes, it's paid. And, unlike Sticky Notes, it doesn't spend too much time on advertising and marketing. Instead, exploring other topics like writing and life and how the two exist so magically together. If you're not subscribed and you've been following (and enjoying) me for a while, you should change that now by hitting the black button down below. I'm producing work I'm really fucking proud of over there and I'd love for you to be a part of it. <3 [The race starts here.]( The timeless advice David Bowie gives in this 1990 interview is something every competitive person needs to read. Interviewer asks Bowie... "Do you have competitors?" Bowie answers... “I would say that I stay out of it. I’d like to say that. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, you can tell me from the outside. But I don’t really feel that. I feel that, frankly, over the last twenty years or so, I’m pretty much my own man...” [Read the rest of what he said, here:]( Read André Gregory's remarkable prose on finding your vocation. Growing up, Adnré Gregory was badly bullied in school for being Jewish and was discriminated against by both parents and teachers alike. His moment of revenge came when he landed a lead role in the school play, practiced (and mastered) his lines all summer and then took his anger out on the audience in a striking performance fueled by a rage he had “never experienced before”. *André Gregory is typing now* “From that moment on I could not live without the theater. It was my drug to relieve the pain of living. I had found my calling. And so, out of this petty but to me real and awful injustice—one of the prime traumas of my childhood—my vocation seized me.” [Go get 'em, kid.]( A short essay on the opportunity cost of dealing with bullshit. I’d say over the past three years, I’ve spent upwards of $10,000 with Airbnb –– a large chunk of that being the direct result of a long-distance relationship that has since ended. I adore Airbnb both as a customer and a marketer and have featured them multiple times in [a weekly newsletter I run that covers badass brands doing bat-shit crazy things with their marketing](. But, their customer service absolutely sucks. Let me explain. Last week I paid $125 for a one-night stay in Clearwater, Florida. I was in one hell of a time crunch so I booked it without looking at the final price (which ended up being $400+ when I checked my credit card statement the next morning). I was livid. So, livid that I spent three hours mid-workday, with Airbnb trying to get my money back. When I finally got someone on the line I said the following… “I’ve spent close to $10,000 with you over the past three years. I’ve never, not once, asked for a refund. And, while I recognize this is my fault, I would like just that, a refund. I’m a loyal customer and I feel I deserve one.” They gave me $200 store credit. I felt somewhat victorious. (After all, I had gotten “some” of my money back.) But, then I did the math… In the three hours I spent on the phone with Airbnb, I could have knocked out a small copywriting project that was paying me several multiples of the $200 credit I was given. If I were being logical, I would have eaten the $400, shrugged it off as a silly mistake, and spent those three hours kicking ass on the project and making 8x the amount I had saved bartering. Instead, I chose to deal with the bullshit and my loss ended up being $1,700 versus just $400. Is this making sense? A good practice for people to do is calculate how much money they make per hour. This is done by taking one’s annual income and dividing it by 2,000 hours (the number of hours in a year). Let’s say you make $100,000 a year ([because you took my freelance course]( your dollars per hour would be $50. Think about this number every time bullshit comes up in your life that you tell yourself you have to handle… If arguing the parking ticket is going to save you a $50 ticket but it will take you 2 hours, even if you succeed you will still be out $50. So, you’re far better off paying the fucking ticket in a few minutes and getting your ass back to work. This was the lesson I learned from my 3-hour clusterfuck with Airbnb… there is an opportunity cost of dealing with bullshit. But, I digress. [So, just don't deal with bullshit.]( [Twitter]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [Instagram]( [LinkedIn]( [LinkedIn]( Copyright © 2021 Honey Copy, All rights reserved. A while back you opted into a weekly email called "Sticky Notes". Remember? If not, you can always unsubscribe below... and risk breaking this writer's heart. Our mailing address is: Honey Copy 3116 N. Central Park Unit #1Chicago, IL 60618 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? 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