It was a week of extreme highs and lows...in all walks of life. With good news and bad news coming so close to each other, tensions ran high around my house, and at my restaurant.  Some very hard issues arose. 

Without going into it, let's just say the problems of this week were complicated.  And my initial response was to come up with complex solutions to tackle them. 

And I wound up making matters worse. 

So here's my takeaway from a complicated mess of a week: the more difficult the issue, the more important it is to return to the basics. 

After shit hit the fan at the restaurant, my crew and I ended up tackling our worst problems by revisiting our fundamental mission statement together and letting it guide our decisions. We sat in a room together and went through a group training on our core beliefs. 

After my husband I got into it at home: we faced the challenges in our marriage by trying to identify the traits that define our family values.  It was so much easier to talk about the small stuff when we remembered the large foundation that we had built. 

And on the music front, I fixed the production problems on my upcoming album by stripping away the bells and whistles and remembering what I wrote the songs about.  I let the bare songs themselves make the production decisions for me. 

Reader, I don't know what this week will hold, but I just thought I'd share the revelation that--no matter how far we think we've come--getting back to the basics of who we are is never a bad way to face all the complicated matters that vex us. 

With that, I'm off to write a little music.  Wishing you a wonderful week. -Em