Dating can be fun. Dating can be complicated.

If you think you might want to get married some day, here are some ideas that can lead to a happier life.

1. Know why you’re dating people in the first place.

Some people want to get married. Some people want a summer romance. Others are trying to catch a body and forget your name.

Figure out which one you are. Make sure the people you’re dating are on the same page.

My opinion is that you should only date people you would consider getting married to. Otherwise, you might get knocked up or spend 5 years dating someone that you knew from the beginning you didn’t want to marry.

2. Make sure the timeline in your head actually works.

If you’re young and think you don’t have to worry about serious dating until later, double check the math.

For example (feel free to adjust the numbers to whatever ages you like):

Let’s pretend you want to have a baby at 30 and have two years together as a married couple before changing diapers. That means…

You got married at 28, which means…

You got engaged at 27, which means…

You started dating at 26. Some people think you should date longer than one year before getting engaged, so let’s say you started dating this person at 25, which means…

You began “dating with the intention of eventually getting married” at 24. It might take a couple years to actually meet your spouse, so you really started dating seriously at 23, which means…

You stopped dating “just for fun” at 22. For example.

Whatever timeline you have in your head, make sure it’s realistic enough to work.

And remember: the above is just a made up timeline. People find happiness in many ways at varying ages. It’s just that if you’re trying to get married and have kids, it’s easier when you’re younger.

3. Be The Right Person

Everyone says they’re looking for The Right Person™️ to marry.

They say, “When I find The Right Person, everything will be easy and perfect, because they’ll love me for who I am. That’s what makes them the Right Person.”

So, you should ask yourself: “Am I who the Person I’m looking for is looking for?”

Picture your ideal spouse. Write down all the qualities you want your husband or wife to have: is s/he kind, honest, funny, good-looking, generous, trustworthy, healthy, gainfully employed (or not), etc? What’s his or her eye color, height, hair color, hobbies, favorite foods, whatever — think about whom you’d be thrilled to marry.

Then ask yourself: would this person be thrilled to marry you?

Based on who you are, how you behave, how you interact with the world — is your dream spouse going to be attracted to you when you meet?

If your answer is yes, you should be excited — it’s only a matter of time before you encounter him or her, and they’ll be thrilled that they found their “Right Person” (i.e., you).

But if your answer is no, now’s a good time to reflect on why not. Do you need to practice being more trustworthy or honest? Do you need to improve your wardrobe or learn to cook?

Figure out what you can do to be more appealing to your dream spouse, and then focus all your energy on that.

You’ll never need to worry about finding the Right Person if you commit to becoming the Right Person.

4. Remember: healthy people are not attracted to unhealthy people.

If you find yourself consistently drawn to problematic people or relationships, it means that you have been hurt and are seeking healing.

Somewhere in your body and in your subconscious, there is an emotion that is so overwhelming, you have kept it locked up.

The repeated pattern of problematic relationships is your subconscious attempt to recreate the conditions that hurt you, in the hopes that you will be able to embrace the overwhelming emotion, allow it to flow through your body, and then dissipate.

Until this hurt has been allowed to heal, your subconscious will repeatedly guide you into hurtful relationships.

Know that all healing occurs within a healthy relationship. It can be between you and a friend or family member, or even between you and Nature or the Divine. But there must be a release and healing.

And once you are able to accept your past emotional hurt with grace and compassion for yourself and others, you will find that you are no longer attracted to emotionally unhealthy people. Instead, you will see that they have also been hurt and need compassionate help, not turbulent romance.

There are many people who have written about how to heal from these past hurts: Joe Hudson, Anthony De Mello, Gabor Mate, Bessel van der Kolk, Stan Grof, The Buddha. Seek healing and wisdom, and your whole life (not just your dating life) will benefit.

Sharing a short post about one of my new favorite concepts: small, beautiful choices.

A small, beautiful choice is one that improves your life in the moment, in a way that’s consistent with who you wish to be, without radically altering the overall course of your life.

I’m not talking about deciding where to live, what to do for work, whether and whom you’ll marry, or whether or not you’ll have kids — those are all BIG decisions. They can certainly be beautiful choices, but they will also dictate many of the other facets of your life, a la the 80/20 Principle.

No, I’m talking about little decisions like ordering dessert or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Making either choice once or twice will not determine your destiny, but, in conjunction with all your other decisions, it will lead your life closer or further from a future you’d want to inhabit.

At this point, you might point out that I’m just talking about habits. And small, beautiful choices, when combined with other similar small, beautiful choices, will move your life in a particular direction, in the same way that habits do.

But what I’m focused on here is not so much the formation of repetitive behaviors that we carry for years on end, but rather a short trigger phrase, meant to reframe our outlook in a particular moment.

The idea of “small, beautiful choices” is not meant to replace “habits” — instead, the point here is to narrow our attention, to point out the value of the choice in this moment, with little or no regard to our usual habits.

Imagine a health-conscious person who has no dietary or allergenic concerns but has decided she will not eat any desserts for the sake of her waistline. She has made it her habit to eschew all forms of culinary indulgence, whether naturally or artificially sweetened.

We might agree that her seeking to be healthy is generally both virtuous and wise. But you can imagine a situation — a birthday party or retirement celebration — where her refusal to partake makes her feel disconnected from her community, or makes another friend feel ashamed or, worse, makes her subtly resentful of the people around her, merely for enjoying their treats.

In such an instance, maybe she should maintain her general habit of not eating desserts, but — for just this instance — she could focus on connecting with the people around her and uplifting her mood by making the small, beautiful choice to have a dessert. (And then carry right on the next day with her health-conscious habit.)

As my wife and I like to say, sometimes the wise thing to do is to eat the ice cream — maybe in a moment where the point is not about the calories, but to connect with the people around you, to show your shared sense of humanity and celebration; even, perhaps, just to improve your own mood.

Small, beautiful choices require sensitivity, awareness, presence — you must be alive to what exists in the reality of a moment and then act according to the specific contours of that exact instance. This is different from a habit, which might produce a tired, automatic response, regardless of nuance.

So, if the notion serves you, I invite you to take it and run with it. Go and find moments in your life where you can make small, beautiful choices that are in line with the kind of person you wish to be, and that will improve your life right then and there.

I’m writing this from Kansas City, Missouri, where The Show is halfway through its two-week sit-down at Music Hall.

I’ve just come from my trunk, which holds, among other things, my music scores, tennis racket, archery equipment, and books.

It’s the last of these I’d like to write about today — my little traveling library.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen how easy it is for a person’s spark to be nurtured into a flame — and how much more easily that same spark can be blown into smoke and ashes without careful nurturing.

In the past few years, I think I have been teetering closer to ashes. The fire and drive that helped me find my way out of my hometown and onto the touring Broadway circuit have been content to stay nestled in the comfort of a familiar gig, with friendly faces and a steady paycheck.

But, as Gottfried Keller warns us, “we do not remain good if we don’t always strive to become better.”

With The Show preparing to pack up and move on at the end of the weekend, I took some time today to clear out my trunk of things that I no longer need. To my surprise, the only thing I decided to discard was the electric coffee grinder. (I’ve reacquainted myself with the wonders of instant coffee.)

But while I was sorting through my belongings, I was surprised to find some of the books I’ve been carrying for over a year and still have not read. They include:

• 6 books on Score Reading (orchestral transpositions, instrumentation, etc)

• 3 books on Orchestral Conducting

• 2 books on speed-reading

• Maxims and Reflections, Goethe

• The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway

• The Only Skill That Matters, Levi

• Scoring to Picture in Logic Pro, Piorkowski

• The Aenid, Virgil

These books, along with perhaps a score of others, were slightly shocking to me. I felt a pang, poring over the unread titles in my collection — here were all these tomes, ready to impart knowledge, skill, even wisdom, and I had not in over a year made the time to absorb their teachings.

And yet, what struck me more was how aspirational this collection is. The version of me that sought out and purchased these books had dreams of being more than smoke and ashes — and the greater part of me still feels very much the same.

So I’ve resolved to dispense with the berating of the self that might follow such a concrete example of my lassitude. Instead, I decided to pick myself up, dust myself off, and do the things I’ve been meaning to do.

Recently, I’ve taken to calling this making small, beautiful choices.

Such choices include the fact that I’m writing this blog post. Then I’ll read some of the wisdom in my collection. And I’ll spend some time score-reading.

And then I’ll do it again, and again, and again. And, somehow, that will change my life.

Perhaps I won’t ever be good, but you can be damn sure I’m striving to get better.

Part of a conductor’s training is learning how to read a score — the ups, downs, and arounds of the musical dynamics, expressions, staves, and clefs.

You must know your C clefs from your G clef, your F clef from your baritone. (Just kidding! The last two are the same.) And, of course, you must know which instruments are written in transposition, and by how much.

Here, then, are the best books for pianists looking to practice reading full scores:

• Preparatory Exercises in Score Reading, Morris & Ferguson

• Music for Score Reading, Melcher & Warch

• Bach Chorales 1-91 in Open Score, ed. Boyd & Riemenschneider

• Partiturspiel (Vol. 1-4), Creuzburg (Published by Schott; these are excellent, but tricky to find in the US)

• Score Reading Exercises (Vol. 1 & 2), Lang

• Score Reading of Orchestral Music: Guide for Conductors and Music Readers, Metelska-Räsänen (This is the academic, one-stop-shop textbook — you can skip this if you just want materials for reading practice)

“Character is who you are when you think no one is looking.”

“Understanding begets compassion.” - paraphrase of Christopher Paolini

“Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.” - Theodore Rubin

“The beginning of wisdom of the desire of discipline.” - Wisdom of Solomon, 6:17

“We do not remain good if we do not constantly strive to become better.” - Gottfried Keller

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” - Theodore Roosevelt

“As you think, so shall you become. “ - Bruce Lee

“If you’re not going to worry about it on your deathbed, don’t worry about it now.”

“Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say.”

There was a point as I got older — say, around age 25 — that I worried I was kaput. My fear was that anything I hadn't yet mastered — speaking French, reading alto and tenor clefs, and surfing, for example — would forever elude and frustrate me. My fear was based on the childish (and erroneous) belief that grown-ups can't learn.

Well, funny enough, one of the things I've learned in my 30 years of life is that, yes, grown-ups can learn. And, in fact, if they have spent time honing their learning abilities and habits, they can learn better — more quickly and more deeply — than younger people. By leveraging my experience in speaking Spanish, playing piano, and ice skating, I have been able to improve (though not yet master) my French, score-reading, and surfing.

My initial fear was grounded in a certain truth — that young brains are receptive and have higher crystallized intelligence than older ones. But, at the end of the day, I am smarter, more experienced, and more capable at 30 than I was at 25, and it's because I can enjoy the benefits accrued in my younger, more quick-witted years while leveraging the experience and wisdom that have colored my life in the intervening years.

I'm not old (yet) — just older. But if I were old…would that be so bad?

I keep trying to write an introductory post, but I haven’t found quite the right words.

Eventually, my hope is that the writings I share here will give you an idea of who I am and what I’m about.

Until then, here are some writings from other people that have deeply influenced me:

• Man’s Search for Meaning, Dr. Viktor Frankl

• The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey

• Antifragile and Skin in the Game, Nassim Taleb

• The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield

• Awareness, Anthony De Mello

• As a Man Thinketh, James Allen

• Atomic Habits, James Clear

• Mastery, Robert Greene

• Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned about Life in School — But Didn’t, Peter McWilliams

• The Art of Learning, Joshua Waitzkin

• Unscripted, MJ DeMarco

• Tribe of Mentors, Tim Ferriss

• The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle