Alongside me, slowly becoming a reclusive while being protected from all the outside dangers of the world, is my sociality. The breeze pays a visit like a welcoming neighbor when you first move in, every evening. I removed the windows, and took the doors off their hinges, the way Jeep lovers parade their vehicles on highways. In my hand is a glass of electrolyte water. I no longer replacе my genuine enеrgy with taurine infested, health-diminishing, enticing cans. Instead of putting my eardrums through a fight club – something I should not have just mentioned – I let it heal by the sound of cicadas, birds in nests, and callings.

I'm in a rented house my manager confirmed was “off the grid”. The rented house I hide in is mostly glass. For a modern home, you can see it aging with every step taken within it. By next month, this will have marked by 7th year in hiding.

I’m used to having a villa, a loft, a mansion I bought, but never get to use. I've replaced those houses with one home that's secluded, yet visible to those who have come for the same purpose. I’ve replaced those houses with thousands of sheets of paper. I might as well have destroyed the forest that surrounds it.

With these papers come scribble, crumbled verses, laughable choruses, and disowned thematic material. Disowned like some children by their parents. I've replaced my fortitude with solitude. But what I don't know now is that, in my return from this hiatus, my album will have charted the U.S. Billboards Top 100. As you'd expect, my ungrateful piece of work just couldn't take the accomplishment.

So, I'm here: suppressing the ideas that try to escape captivity, executing my darlings and then murdering them, forcing this album to become a reality. This is the process of a perfectionist. The progress bar reaching 99%, and by the time 100% arrives, every second waiting felt pointless. Had I not driven away to the mountains, the woods, the outer borders of my shrinking world, my label would've dropped me. I'm still grounded in my awareness, despite the duration of my rehabilitation. I’ve regrouped long enough to buy me another year of having a career.

The USB flash drive is corrupted with my dissatisfying abomination. And while that genie stays trapped in that USB, the board and business moguls get their three wishes: take a percentage of my earnings, take a percentage of my endurance, and take a percentage of my life.

Once again, I’ve broken that glass ceiling; the one many people before me claimed they could even reach. Once again, I've broken the fourth wall. Once again, I’ve told a lie to myself: that this would one day be me. Now I take my sledgehammer and shatter that dream.