If you’ve known me for a long time, you’ll recognize the title of this blog. If you don’t, it’s taken from my first foray into blogging back in 2000, when I lived in San Francisco and documented my time working at a startup and finding out what I was made of (meat, it turns out).

After fifteen years (!!!) I thought I’d give it another go.

Since then, I moved to Seattle where I worked for Microsoft and shot a bunch of music for KEXP. I got married. I moved to China. I saddled up with IDEO. I traveled more than I ever did in my entire life, living and working in Japan, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. I got divorced. My mom died. I got married again. I moved to Tokyo.

A lot has happened. There’s a lot to say. But somewhere along that journey I got scared of writing. I used to be super prolific. I wrote almost everyday on adcm, and made so many friends and learned so much. I felt brave, open and honest.

And then the era of social media dawned on us. Suddenly, I was limited to 140 characters. Suddenly, I was “oversharing.” Suddenly, tl;dr.

So I stopped.

The other day my wife asked me to write something. Anything. For 3 pages. It’s something she does every morning, to clear her head, to jog inspiration, to put it down on paper. “It doesn’t have to make sense,” she said. “Just write something.”

I was sitting at a basement whisky bar in Shinjuku at that moment. We were texting on LINE. It made me realize that while I don’t write so much anymore, I definitely type more than ever. WE ALL DO. We are texting machines now. On our phones, on our computers, in emails, in documents. We type a shitload. But it doesn’t mean we’re writing.

I wrote my three pages into my little notebook at the bar with a Yamazaki on hand and a small bowl of edamame. And it felt amazing. I haven’t done it since.

This morning, I felt bad about that.

So, here we are. This will be my morning pages. It will be more than 140 characters. I will be oversharing. It will be too long, and you may not want to read it. And it may not always make sense.

But I just want to write something.

Additionally: Big ups to Mike Peng at IDEO Tokyo who inspired me to write more. He put up his first published essay on inspiring places to visit in Tokyo last week. It’s a good reminder to be brave and put yourself out there.