Attachment to perfection - especially to the idea of my own perfection and invincibility - has been my Achilles heel my whole life.

I'm working on it, you guys.

One night about five years ago, my friend Bill and I were sitting at the bar at Open Mike's. It was open mic night, and Bill was about to go up.
Bill carried around a three-ring binder full of songs he'd written. Some of them were brilliant .

Others were, by his own admission, stupid.

Those songs, he said, were just practice for writing the good ones. He just kept writing, unafraid of failure, vulnerability, imperfection...

He asked me why I never put out any original music. "Because I only seem to be able to write bad songs," I whined into my beer.

"Then just write bad songs," he scoffed.

So that's exactly what I did. I guess I just needed someone's permission.

I'm going to release my fourth album on my 49th birthday, October 29. It took just over a year to record and mix. It will have ten songs.

Some of them are, by my own admission, stupid.

Seventeen people will listen, and a few more kind souls will tell me they did. It doesn't matter. I'm not doing it for anyone else. It makes me happy - or, as close to happy as a guy like me can be - just to make music.

It is not a great album. But, it's better by far than the one I released three years ago. That one was better than the one before that, which was better than the last one.

That's what matters. Progress, not perfection.

Actually, now that I think of it, I'm not even sure progress matters all that much. Just do stuff you like, and as long as no one's getting hurt, don't worry about the outcome.

As you were.