While everyone is flexing on social media with their “New Year, New You” content, I started the year falling on my ass, literally. Sure, it hurts, but with pain comes introspection and insight, and the willingness to throw out the playbook, on day one. As a society, we are entering a challenging year. We are inundated with pain, fear, and rage across all walks of life on a daily basis. How are we to respond with our creativity and curiosity? How can art, beauty, and love stand a chance in an ocean of anger? The answers to these questions aren’t easy to find—and they definitely don’t fit into the perfect 10-slide Instagram carousel—but we can start to see a path toward possibilities as we look to transform pain into love, every chance we get.

1. Our work is more than just a means to an end.
   
   
2. Avoiding pain and love, emotions in general, creates the blandest work possible.
   
   
3. Transforming pain into love is going to take everything you’ve got.
   
   
4. A critical part of transformation is learning, which is two-fold: knowing how you learn best, and putting yourself in a position to be learning and applying that knowledge on a daily basis.
   

• The Art of Asking: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer
  
  
• Midjourney prompt for episode art: transform pain into love, sin-eater, creativity, hope, love, in the style of futurism –ar 16:9