A Quote by Phil Elverum

It's really hard just making dinner as a single parent, but I'm figuring it out. I just have to be more focused and efficient with my little scraps of time that I do have.
Writing a song to be a single is hard, and I don't like to focus on that because you can get caught up in making something just terrible, which is really easy to do if you're focused on making it a single. It's more fun when you focus on what excites you musically.
I'm a single parent, and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn't miss it.
I put running into my schedule just as I put anything else whether it's a meeting or an event or a dinner. I think carving out time to run or exercise gives you brain power and makes you more efficient in other aspects of your life, so it's worth taking the time.
And it's given me great perspective. It makes me really focused and efficient, which - I was focused before I had babies but I wasted a lot of time. Prior to having babies I thought I was so busy and now I realize just how ignorant I was.
You just don't have the time to worry about what others are doing. You just want to take care of your own business. You are focused on that tee shot on the 10th tee and making it to the finish line. It's one of the most stressful moments in professional golf, but you have worked so hard to get to that point, that it really is fun.
I was proud, excited and a little frightened. It was all taking off so quickly…the more successful the boys were, the further away from me John felt. I was getting used to being a mum, but most of the time I felt like a single parent…it was hard not to feel frustrated with being stuck at home. I loved Julian, but I knew that if I hadn’t had him I could have seen much more of John and that was hard…I felt shut off from the life he was living. After years at his side, I was excluded, just as it was all happening.
I guess it's a little bit sentimental, but at the time I was really very focused in on really my performance. Afterward, it was really just a breath of fresh air, just like, 'Oh, yes, I'm back now. I'm doing good.'
I can't imagine being a single parent or a single parent that doesn't have a lot of money. That's a big, huge impact on your life and your dynamic and everything - I mean, that's huge. It affects how much you have a break from just concentrating on just one other person in your life. It becomes so myopic that way, and more intense, probably.
I really am focused on making sure we're doing everything we can so every single person in our country... has the right to thrive... and live in a just and equitable society.
I've never been much of a craftsman, in an educated way. But I think just the experience of writing makes the avenues I follow a little more efficient in some ways. At the same time, when you're young, you're a little more fearless, and there's less of an internal critic.
Steve Jobs just made a product. He started off where a lot of people were skeptical of what he was doing, and he basically just focused on the product and making it the best he could, and really focused on what it was that these products would take into your lives.
When everyone agrees to a single solution and a single plan, there's nothing more efficient in the world than an efficient democracy.
I didn't start really playing the guitar till I was about seventeen, and I never really had those formative years are where like I was in my room, figuring all that stuff out before I hit the stage. I just did all that on the road all at once, so all those years of playing roadhouses in bars and clubs, I was really figuring it out.
When I saw music as a means to an end - more fame, more money, dating celebrities - that's when things have gone terribly wrong. Now my life is focused on just trying to keep making music. Because when it's really good, it's just the most remarkable feeling on the planet.
I've dedicated a lot of my life as a writer to understanding how to hear the divine voice, or the music of the spheres, or whatever it is that we do when we're making art, making something out of nothing. Figuring out how to do that is much more important than knowing how to execute a good line. I don't think about that anymore, I just write.
In this achievement-based lifestyle, most of us have certain boxes we're checking to make us useful humans. But a lot of things you do as a parent are kinda invisible. There's a lot you achieve - just getting dinner on the table - that are more than making a song.
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