September 2026: "The Self-Improver's Dilemma"
Hey y’all,
Here’s the Austin B. Sweeney newsletter coming in hot for the month of September. I put these out once a month to keep you updated on upcoming shows, what I’m listening to, general musings, lyric breakdowns, and much more! I hope this newsletter will provide value for you, if for no other reason than it may introduce you to music you haven’t heard before!
Let’s quit wasting time here and jump into it, here’s what I’ve been listening to in the last month:
Song: “The Life” – Kenny Chesney
Album: “Chain Yer Dragon” - Goose
Artist: Van Morrison
I’ve got a new live album, “BE HERE NOW (Live in the PNW)”, recorded at The Artichoke in Portland, OR and it’s OUT NOW, everywhere you get your music! Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, etc.
If you’d like to support me monetarily, you can purchase the album – and any of my albums - here
Also, if you want to read any past newsletters, click here
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“The Self-Improver’s Dilemma”
I usually write these newsletters during the middle of the month, as I’m doing right now. Which means when I’m writing next month’s newsletter, I will be within about a week from the birth of my son (assuming he arrives near the actual due date).
That is a wild thought.
I’m just some guy. Who gave me the authority to have a child of my own?
Anyway, I’ve been ruminating (as I am want to do) on a thread I read the other day, and I wonder if it will resonate with you as well. I realize that some of you in this group of awesome, good-looking folks who subscribe to my newsletter are in your fifties and sixties and beyond, and maybe you read some of this and remember when these were the concerns you had in your twenties and thirties. Then you smile, because you’re glad you’ve worked through some of those things that bothered you, but maybe not. Maybe it still would resonate. Here’s what the thread said:
“Your relationship with yourself cannot be built entirely around improvement. At some point, you have to become someone you are allowed to enjoy being. You get to be proud of who you are. Present tense.”
It’s not like I’m not aware of that already, but it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day minutiae and forget the bigger picture.
There are a few different threads I could pull on that could be the source of my constant striving for self-improvement – which also implies that I’m rarely content with who I am at the current moment.
· I grew up in a Christian household. From day one, Christians are told that everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We’re all broken and need God to make us whole again. Quite a thought to throw at a developing brain. Ergo, we are not all that we could be. Keep working at it.
· I am a ruminator, as previously mentioned. Ruminators tend to circle around specific anxious thoughts and drill deeper and deeper until they can excavate everything about a situation that might be worth worrying about. That rumination, by the way, is the negative flipside of creativity. The ability to – or inability to stop – ruminating also produces a lot of art.
· I am a songwriter and musician. I don’t have to tell you how many talented songwriters and musicians are out there. The invention of the internet can now tell you that no matter how good you think you are on the guitar, there’s an Asian ten-year-old outplaying you right now. Plus, being both a songwriter and a guitar player pulls me in two directions, songwriting vs. musicianship. There’s only so many hours in the day and one of the two doesn’t always get practiced.
· I grew up on a farm with extremely hardworking parents. We measured ourselves mostly by the hours we put in each week. I used to get anxious as a kid if my dad would come home and see me watching TV. Being branded lazy was akin to a death sentence.
There are many more examples I could provide, but that’s the gist of it. I’ve always wanted to be #1 at any and all endeavors.
Therefore, I am constantly on the road of self-improvement.
Don’t get me wrong, self-improvement can be great. It forces us to rise to higher and higher standards that we set for ourselves. The downside is that since we’re always raising our standards, we never reach the peak where we can just sit down and breathe for a while. To put it in a gym context, our previously difficult workout is now just our easy warmup.
So, when we’re constantly working on self-improvement, we rarely take the time to sit and reflect on how far we’ve come. Sitting equals not working, and that’s simply unacceptable for a striver.
At the same time, however, we’re going to die someday. When do we reach the point where we can fully exhale and kick up our feet for a while?
Even during our honeymoon, it was also a tour. I had shows to play, songs to release, music videos to edit, and shows to book. On our honeymoon, I edited and released this video. Laura worked remotely at her job as well. We’d work during the mornings and then participate in our honeymoon in the afternoon. I’m blessed to have found a wife who also works hard and understands the demands of being a working musician.
However, this is getting away from the point. That’s all backstory and context to the main point. The main point is:
“At some point, you have to become someone you are allowed to enjoy being. You get to be proud of who you are. Present tense.”
However, what does ‘enjoying’ being who you are in the present actually look like?
Anybody else have trouble simply relaxing on vacation? Laura and I haven’t taken more than one actual vacation together. Anytime we had time off, we were traveling for holidays or to see family. Going home to see the family means very little relaxation gets accomplished. We’re usually shuffled from one event to the next, making sure to see old friends, etc. We’re always on the go, so we never really relax and vacation.
The only actual vacation I know that we’ve taken together was going with her family to the Florida Keys the year before we were married. We ate conch fritters and drank margaritas and watched boat races. Neither of us did any work and we truly relaxed for once in our lives. It was lovely.
Those are vacations though. They come around once in a blue moon, if you’re lucky.
What about learning to enjoy yourself in the every day.
It reminds me of a Ram Dass quote that I’ll paraphrase here:
“Anyone can feel connected and one with the universe when they’re meditating with the monks in a temple, the real test is finding that same peace on a Tuesday morning sitting in traffic.”
That’s where the juice is. That’s where it becomes a philosophy that is actually worth pursuing.
What does contentment in our current state look like? As far as I can tell, it looks like realizing how far we’ve come, how far we still need to go, and being at peace with that fact. Realizing that we’ve handled every shit problem that has come our way, big and small, and accepting that we’ll be able to continue to tackle the myriad problems that will come our way in the future. We’ve figured it all out thus far, after all.
Maybe it’s trite to say, but most of our suffering is imagined. I’ve found that my anxiety about future problems is always much worse than when the problem actually arises. I’ve always stepped up to the occasion when trouble had finally reached my doorstep. Not only that, but I’ve typically handled it with aplomb. Upon reflection, I’ll wonder why I was so concerned in the first place. I wore myself out with worry before the problem arose, and then when it did, I handled it just fine. No hemming and hawing, I just knocked it out.
Not to mention, that’s if the problem even arises. Most of the time, it’s more like the Mark Twain quote:
“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
Intellectually understanding it, though, and embodying it are two very different things. Do you think an anxious person isn’t aware that most of their worry is pointless? They know.
They know all too well, which causes more anxiety.
It’s been said that problems that occur in the mind cannot be fixed by the mind. The only way out of the mind is to get in the body. There are obvious physical activities that can mitigate mental stressors such as exercise, walking outdoors, dancing, etc. But those things require taking time out of your day, and as a self-improvement person, you’re probably already doing those things, most likely first thing in the morning.
So, what else can be done physically throughout the day to get back into your body so you can learn to be content with the road you’re on and learn to simply be?
It’s pretty simple and we’re all doing it already.
Breathing.
A lot in the self-improvement space has been made lately of breathwork, meditation, Wim Hof breathing techniques, etc., which are all great, but still require setting aside time outside of your day.
“Breathing” is akin to meditation but the term meditation has its own baggage.
If we call it meditation, you feel like you have to go out and buy candles, a bell, a pillow to sit on, a tiny buddha statue; it’s a whole to-do.
This, however, is a mixture of gratitude and breath that can be done in as little as ten seconds, but can re-center you within your universe, and the more times a day you do it, the better.
As often as you can remember to do it, do this:
Take a deep breath. You can close your eyes if you want to. As you breathe in, focus on the sensation of the breath coming in and going out. As you focus on that, let your mind find itself. Realize that nothing in this specific moment is wrong. If you took all your previous history up to this exact moment, and then all the future potential from this moment on and cleared them from your mind, is there anything in this exact moment that is wrong? The answer is nearly always no, and if you have time to do this in this moment, I would imagine the answer is definitely no.
Then, recognize all the good things in this present moment you can experience with your senses. Whether that’s the sunshine on your face; the birds singing; the gentle breeze on your skin; the sensation within your body that feels like a buzzing or tingling that you experience when you actually ask yourself something like what the inside of the tips of your fingers feel like.
Then, realize again that everything is going just fine in this moment. You’ve come so far in this life and you should be proud of it. You’ve got further to go and you’ll handle it; you always have.
Life is grand. There are songs, movies, poems, art, babies, and people falling in love right at this moment. You don’t need to do anything about it, just breathe and realize that everything that’s happening is happening in this moment and that there’s nothing to be done about it other than be grateful for it.
Then, breathe out again and get along with your day.
I know that it can sound flowery and hippie-ish and whatnot, but it works. I wrote it in three paragraphs, but truly, all of that can be done in about ten seconds. You can take as long as you want with it if you’ve got the time.
If you can find ten seconds to do that five to ten times a day, you’ll find that you were more present within the day as a whole as you reflect upon it.
The secret is to not expect anything to change. You’re not going to enter some mystical new phase of life after three months of practice (as much as the self-improver would love to imagine that). No, you’ll be the same person, but with a slightly more connected feeling to yourself and your place within the universe. It never lasts though, nothing does. That’s why it’s a practice.
You don’t need to put yourself on a schedule or mark down how many times a day you do it, that’s just falling back into the self-improvement trap.
The goal is to do it every time you happen to think about it, or you can use it every time you get an anxiety spike. That can be a good way to engender the practice. The more you remember to do it, the more you will remember to do it. A few moments a day of pure presence can really make you feel more connected. I just did it right now while writing this sentence.
Well, after I wrote the sentence.
There’s nothing mystical or woo-woo about it. This is boots-on-the-ground, tactile, practical shit.
Just breathe.
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Here are the shows that are coming up in the month of September. I would love to see y’all out at some shows. The end of the month will not have any shows as my son is due on September 26th, so I am taking some time off starting a week before the due date.
· 9/4 – Chehalem Valley Brewery, 5:30-8:30pm (Newberg, OR)
· 9/5 – Domaine Willamette, noon-2pm (Dayton, OR)
· 9/5 – Kopitos, 5:30-8:30pm (Newberg, OR)
· 9/8 – Two Dogs Taphouse, 6-8pm (McMinnville, OR)
· 9/9 – Oregon Garden (Fireside Lounge), 7-10pm (Silverton, OR)
· 9/10 – Chemeketa Cellars, 6-8pm (Salem, OR)
· 9/11 – Dry Town Tap Station, 7:30-9:30pm (Monmouth, OR)
· 9/17 – Stickmen Brewing Company, 6-8pm (McMinnville, OR)
· 9/18 – 503 Uncorked, 7-9:30pm (Sherwood, OR)
· 9/19 – Lady Hill Winery, 6:30-8:30pm (St. Paul, OR)
Stoked to see y’all soon.
Austin
Listen now!
https://open.spotify.com/artist/433eTr5V5LEv1VtP1ejbkt?si=Jlzl5oz8RvulN-ocxrGqyg
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