I NEVER imagined I’d be a tattoo guy, but it’s happening, slowly but surely. I got a new one this past week. I’ve gotten most of my tattoos in Japan, and others in South Korea, Thailand, Portugal, and two on my recent trip home to Los Angeles. Whether heartfelt and well-thought-out or half-baked and impulsive, tattoos tell a story, and I like that.

When I ask people if they have tattoos, they often say that they want one, they just don’t know what to get.

It’s a logical answer, as tattoos are permanent, and we want them to be something we won’t one day regret. We may have an idea that we like now, but we wonder, will I regret it in five, twenty, fifty years?

My approach is that if a tattoo gives me joy and reflects a moment in time, then it’s worth it. I may look at one or two of my tattoos in the future and shake my head smiling, but I won’t regret them.

I’m proud of who I was. I like who I am. Tattoos remind me that each chapter of life is what we make of it. That we are constantly changing, growing, stumbling, moving forward.

Who we were is nothing to be ashamed of.

Who we are is a soul who’s trying with what we know and what we have here and now. My tattoos mean something to me, not because they express who I am at this second, but because they represent the chapters of my life, where I’ve been, the man that I’m becoming.

This relates to something I heard recently from legendary music producer Rick Rubin on the creative process. Like my tattoos, what we make is nothing but a reflection of who we are in this season of life, says Rubin.

That’s all art has to be.

Rather than creating based on what we think the audience wants or needs, we instead express our current experience, and let the world make of it what it will.

That’s where great art comes from — not from those trying to make a splash or create something groundbreaking, but from those who illuminate who they are and where they’re at.

It may be a tough spot, yet we share a piece of ourselves, what may seem like a unique detail, and we realize that what seemed so specific is actually universal.

We share how we’re hurting, what we love, how we’re feeling, and may find that we’re not alone, wherever we may be on our journey.

Embrace where you’re at.

I don’t enjoy writing about chronic pain. But I can’t deny that this is who I am right now; pain has been my greatest teacher.

One day it will no longer be a crucial part of my life, and I won’t feel the need to write about it. That day is on the horizon, but I’m still navigating the forest of my soul, dealing with shit I can’t quite understand.

Writing is the best way I can cope with it.

What I make reflects who I am and the challenges I’m facing, the way I see the world and the life I dream of living. Right now, I’m struggling in certain ways. I’m also happy as can be in others.

I’m a sunny day and the next I’m rain.

This voice is mine, these words lessening the weight I feel, the lessons I share what I take and chew and often forget just as easily until they arise again in another way on another day, inspired by the things I see, the beauty in the world, the pain in another’s eyes, the encouraging words of a friend.

Wisps of color come in waves, aches and pains come with age, a cold wind blows across the landscape of my soul. This is me — shifting tides which ebb and flow, pulled by the moon and warmed by the sun, rolling on, rolling on.

I’m tired of trying to understand the seasons of my life. I’m tired of deliberating whether I can trust myself, my thoughts, my emotions. I’m sick of fighting, trying to understand chronic pain.

It feels like there’s nowhere I can run. There’s no escaping myself. I’m learning to let the things I feel pass through me, as the only way out is through.

I cried a few times this week. I needed to let out the frustration, trying to hold myself together. I want my life back, but I don’t know what that means. This is my life. I’ve been given this gift to rise to a new level, no matter how much it gets to me day-by-day.

It’s okay to feel this way. Melancholic. Sad. Like I want to give up, give in, stop trying. Life is beautiful. This work keeps me alive. Sane. On some sort of path. I got things that keep me busy, keep me going, keep me seeking.

I just want to feel good, healthy, strong. Everything flows from there, and when your health is taken away every act feels insurmountable. I work so hard at staying healthy, and it feels unfair that my life has been riddled with pain.

That’s life though, isn’t it. There is no fair. No matter who we are, we all have our cross to bear. I hate complaining, but this shit is frustrating. Yet I keep going.

Where am I today, both happy and weary, overwhelmed and inspired, at peace and struggling. I’m all of these, a universe unknown, the darkness and the day, a river flowing gray toward the blue of eternity, and I can’t hold on, can’t let go of the parts of me I’ll never know.

I’m the voice, the song, the love behind the words and the shadow of the clouds, for there’s the sun, and soon this storm will pass.

I’m the books on the shelf and the writing on the wall, the empty candle glass charred and dancing in the autumn cold. Writing sets me free, learning to be nobody but me, the sun falling through the window, a reflection of today captured in words swiftly written, my truth.

And the truth just like the weather is seldom black and white, but gray one day and golden in the morning. The landscape of our inner world is continually shifting.

Do we try to understand it? Hold onto the sun and fight the winds of autumn? Or do we watch with appreciation the varying sky, knowing that everything passes, the storm settles, the sun rises, the moon falls. We’ll be okay.

Who am I. Not the season of enduring or the voice that tells me I’ll never be whole. I am the witness, safe in the seat of my soul, growing wiser from this chapter. Who can I be if I step from the edge and I look into the valley, the sky, the changing colors of the world.

Who am I.

Not my name or my body or my voice. Not my laugh or my tears or my smile. Something deeper, beyond and beneath the shifting winds, a life made of pages, chapters, love and pain and a human heart beating, stories like these made of words that say — keep going.

This is me.