Q&A: Ok Cowgirl’s Leah Lavigne on Gaining Perspective and Continuously Evolving Through Music
WHY ELSE ARE WE HERE, EXCEPT TO GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER AND LOVE EACH OTHER? — These words are not part of an age-old proverb or a regularly quoted phrase, but sourced straight from the mind of Ok Cowgirl’s frontwoman, Leah Lavigne.
Two years ago, I sat down with Lavigne and her bandmates for the first time. The four of them (Lavigne, John Miller, Matt Birkenholz, and Jake Sabinsky) buzzed with anticipation for the release of their debut EP, Not My First Rodeo. Now, ahead of their debut album, Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut, I sat down to talk with Lavigne again.
While they might not be geographically situated anywhere near actual cowboy territory, Ok Cowgirl brings the cowboy mentality to what some might consider to be the wild west of New York City: Brooklyn. With classic cowboy-esque swagger, independence, and grit, the group has laid their claim to Brooklyn’s DIY scene. For the sake of continuing this metaphor, consider the venues that they play as their saloons and their instruments, their trusty steeds.
On a surface level, it doesn’t seem that much has changed in the two years since I last chatted with the band. Lavigne is her same sunny self that I remember, happy to talk about music and play catch-up. While it’s safe to say that Ok Cowgirl hasn’t fundamentally changed much — besides the addition of one band member (Ryan Work) and a new publishing deal — the immense personal evolution that Lavigne has undergone in the past years is evident in the words we share, as well as within the record itself.
“In the past year, I've really been working on listening to myself — respecting and honoring myself and taking care of myself,” Lavigne asserts. “It's such a cliche that you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others, but it's so true. Taking care of myself not only makes me feel better all the time, but it allows me to take care of others, which is my favorite thing to do in the world.”
Ok Cowgirl has always been much more than its musical container — it is the tangible form of Lavigne’s goal to have her own experiences transcend the individual level and connect to all. Regardless of whether or not listeners share an identity or experience with Lavigne, they are bound to find something to relate to within their discography. After all, who hasn’t felt angry at the maelstrom that is modern day life (“Larry David”), wistfully pined for the love of another (“Her Eyes”), or posted something on their Instagram story as a slight (or maybe not so slight) attention grab (“Little Splinters”)?
Lavigne’s innate ability to meaningfully connect with others, paired with her immense sense of gratitude, has allowed her to form a strong community around Ok Cowgirl. Always quick to express thanks for all who have helped her on this path, Ok Cowgirl’s journey as a largely independent band has been made easier by the people who continue to support and lift them up.
“We don't have everything,” Lavigne shares. “But we do have a few people who really seem to care about us and believe in the music.”
Speaking of someone who believed in the music, Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut features the band’s first-time collaboration with producer Alex Farrar (Indigo De Souza, Snail Mail, Angel Olsen), who helped them turn Lavigne’s introspection into 10 tracks of crisp sonic variation. Whereas before the band had largely self-produced tracks in basement studios with friends, working with Farrar allowed them to invite an outside ear into the fray.
With four tracks released so far, Ok Cowgirl has teased listeners with an abbreviated journey of emotional whiplash. Starting with the boisterous “Little Splinters,” then pulling them into the forlorn ballad “Forever,” the band immediately throws listeners back to the raucous noise of “Larry David,” and finally immerses them into today’s heartbreaking release, “Our Love.”
Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut is simultaneously a call back to and a reinvention of the Ok Cowgirl sound. Despite the songs being Lavigne’s brainchildren, this record would not have been possible without the input of her trusted band members. Miller, Sabinsky, and Birkenholz supported Lavigne back when she was playing to crowds of five in small cafes, and have now seen the project through. Now they play packed rooms with her on the regular.
You have to have a lot of trust in someone to let them convince you to run amuck in the streets of New York clad with Larry David bald caps in broad daylight (see the “Larry David” music video).
“I'm so grateful to be making music with people who I really care about and who make me feel cared for,” Lavigne emphasizes, knowing she has found her people.
For Lavigne, Ok Cowgirl’s output has always been ruled by thoughtful intention. Imbuing a sense of care and gratitude into everything that she does has enabled Ok Cowgirl to have had the lifespan it has had thus far as a project. Serving as a time capsule of growth that will be in turn, a catalyst for others’ growth, Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut is the beginning of a new era for Lavigne and Ok Cowgirl. Read our interview with the band below.
LUNA: I want to start with a little catch-up question. It's been two or three years since we've last talked around the release of Not My First Rodeo. What have you been up to in the in-between besides working on the upcoming album?
LAVIGNE: Since the release of Not My First Rodeo, we just kept playing shows in New York City. I kept writing songs because I can't not write. We had a bit of a band member shift, too. That was really fun — we became a five-piece. We had done everything very DIY up until that point. We had recorded Not My First Rodeo with some friends in basement studios. We wanted to make something that felt maybe even more legit.
We were very happy with Not My First Rodeo and what we were able to come up with, but thought we could work with some producer or go to a real studio or something. When I was listening on Spotify to whatever I was into at the time, you can see in the song credits who produced it. I kept seeing this name “Alex Farrar” pop up for Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, Indigo De Souza, Angel Olsen, Waxahatchee, and Snail Mail. I was like, "What? How is this one guy making all of my favorite records right now?" So I looked him up, and he works out of this studio called Drop of Sun in Asheville, North Carolina. And I was like, "I don't know, we're probably too little for him to care and we don't have enough money, but let me just try."
I sent him an email, and I was just like, "Hey, we're this Brooklyn indie band. Here's some demos, here's our last released recordings. We love your work, we'd love to work with you. Hope to hear from you." The next day, he responded and was like, "Yo, dudes, this is totally sick. Let's make this record." And we were just like, "Wow, okay, well, we have to do it now. We have to make it happen." That was really exciting.
It was actually around that time we also got a publishing deal with this company called Sentric. We also signed our first record deal with the Chicago/Nashville based label, Easy Does It. The biggest thing that's happened between Not My First Rodeo and now is that we've slowly assembled this little team. We're still fairly independent — I still manage us, I still book all of our shows. We don't have everything, but we do have a few people who really seem to care about us and believe in the music and who have helped us procure some new opportunities and reach that next level that we're gunning for.
LUNA: That's so awesome to hear. It must have been such an ego boost to have Alex respond a day after. It's so lovely to hear about all of the things that you've made progress in since I last talked to you, because you were fully indie then and it was just you, John, Matt, and Jake. Who's the fifth member now?
LAVIGNE: After we went to the studio, we laid down so many guitar parts and new synth parts that we were like, "How are we going to play it live?" The songs evolved a little bit. We were playing around with an SPD — it's like when the drummer hits this pad and it makes some sort of background recording happen. When it came to playing with tracks, we thought somebody could hit play on the laptop and that the synth part could come in, but that's just not our style. We didn't want it to sound like a recording. We didn't want to have to always lock in to the same tempo as a recording. We wanted to be able to be present and be playing our instruments, feeling it in the moment, in that room with each other. To be able to change and play with things and let the songs be a little different every night in a way that you can't when you're playing to tracks.
For some people, they love that, and they want it to be like a perfect little exact replica every time, but that's just not our style. So we needed a fifth member, because we only have so many hands. Our good friend Ryan Work joined and now is playing bass… John plays both guitar and synth, depending on what we need in the song.
LUNA: I'm so happy to hear that you guys have remained a unit for these past couple of years. I got the sense from the last time I interviewed you all that you were just such good friends and have such a good camaraderie with one another.
LAVIGNE: Totally! And Ryan was an obvious choice for our new band member. John and I used to play in Ryan's band called Fair Visions. Ryan also plays in Jake, my guitarist's band, with Matt. It's a big family affair. Everybody's supporting everybody's music and songwriting. We all really love each other and love each other's creative output and want to be a part of it. He was the obvious next addition to the Ok Cowgirl family.
LUNA: Something I've always admired about you guys is your ability to cultivate this really strong community — especially within the Brooklyn DIY scene. That's such an important thing to have in New York, which is known for being somewhat dog eat dog. How do you know that you have found a good community?
LAVIGNE: At this point, I've been in New York for 10 years. But honestly, my first five or six years in New York I felt kind of isolated and like I was still trying to find my people. It really wasn't until I started Ok Cowgirl around 2018 and started playing indie rock shows and frequenting certain venues in Brooklyn that I started to just feel like I was meeting people who were like-minded.
I went to NYU, and I knew a lot of people studying music who were really serious about pursuing it. I knew a lot of people who were passionate about community and social justice and ethics and philosophy. I was somewhere in the middle. It wasn't until I got out of my college bubble and started hanging out with people of a huge age span who do all kinds of different things for work. These very thoughtful and creative people, whether they're musicians themselves or just love music.
I found that these Brooklyn venues were hot spots for people who seemed like my people. I'm so grateful for that and so grateful for all the support that we've received from that community of people over the years.
One of the best things about this show we played this past Sunday at Purgatory was that it sort of felt like a return home, in a way. In the past year, we've been playing a lot of shows with touring bands — Friko, the hottest band out of Chicago, was coming to New York, and we happened to know them so we played a show with them. That's so cool and fun. We got to meet new people and expand our network. We got a chance to play the Music Hall of Williamsburg with this sick band out of Minnesota called Bad Bad Hats, a legendary indie band that paved the way for female fronted indie rock for me. Obviously we have to do that.
But there's something about playing a show with your homies, where it's Allison from Wetsuit — who also played at the show on Sunday — who is one of my best friends, and Mary Hood, who we've known for years from the scene, we run into each other all the time. There's something so nice about sharing space with these people that really are a part of your community. Cultivating those relationships really does have this genuine payoff of feeling like there's people in your direct vicinity that know you and that you know. You're sharing care. There's nothing like that, especially in today's world where so much of our lives is taking place on our phones. It's such a breath of fresh air to look at somebody face to face and have a little conversation and run into them the next week while they're walking their dog down the street. There's nothing like real-life community.
LUNA: Definitely. That really translates to your listeners. I remember when we first talked, you discussed a girl crying at your show and you hugged her and talked to her. I think it's so important to see people as human, and I think that's something you've always really been able to do with how you present yourself, even on social media. It has always come off as very authentic and community-oriented, which I think is something that the music industry really needs.
LAVIGNE: That's so gratifying to hear, because it is something that really, really matters to me. That girl who you're mentioning — we've gone back to Austin for three years in a row now, and she's been at our show every single time we've gone back. This past time, I think we played five shows, and she came to three out of five of them and brought friends. I actually got to have a conversation with her, and it turns out she plays guitar and she sings and she's interested in getting into songwriting. I gave her some encouraging words. That is so gratifying to me. It's all about connection. Why else are we here, except to get to know each other and love each other? Not to get all preachy, but it's really important to me, and I'm glad that it seems to come across.
Photo by Rita Lovine
LUNA: That's what life is about — that's the stuff of life! Going off that, you really tap into this vulnerable, intimate connection with people on your upcoming record, Couldn't Save Us From My Gut. How does it feel to have this debut album getting ready to come out in August?
LAVIGNE: I'm really excited for this project to be in the world. It definitely took some time. There was quite a gap of time between these two projects. There were definitely times in that time span when I felt a bit impatient with myself and felt sort of anxious. I thought, "Is everybody going to forget about us? Why is it taking so long?" The thing is that life is complicated. Sometimes doing things intentionally and in a way that makes you proud takes time. We definitely took our time, but I am so glad to finally be getting these out into the world. First of all, because the songs mean so much to me and come from a really deep place, but second of all, because I'm excited to move on to the next chapter. I've been songwriting a ton lately and I'm so excited for what's to come after this.
LUNA: Having releases that are spaced further out makes it even more of a treat. If you're releasing something all the time, you're probably burning out and it's less of a surprise to audiences. When I heard the news that you were releasing an album, I was so pumped. Spreading things out builds anticipation.
LAVIGNE: I'm so of the mindset that you can't rush it…. It should feel right. There's so much music out there, and I really firmly believe that if you're just releasing music for the sake of releasing music, you're doing us a disservice. It seems ego-driven to me. I don't want it to sound too dramatic and purist, you know, but I think that there's value to being intentional with your art and really believing in what you're doing.
Whether it's a song about a gut-wrenching heartbreak [or something else]. Our friend Mary Hood, who we played with on Sunday, has a song about drinking with her dog. She's like, "I'm getting drunk with my dog, he knows me better than anyone." It's this silly and fun song, but there's a grain of truth in that bop. I don't want to gatekeep what's important enough to be released, but I think that doing things for the right reason is so important.
LUNA: I totally see what you're saying. I've run into artists who buy their followers and their streams and then release song after song after song. Of course, they put work into that, but I think it's so much better to have a song that you pour your heart and soul into and know you've worked really hard on, and get maybe 1,000 streams or whatever number of streams, than to just buy a million followers and a million streams and a million comments. Because you know in your heart what you've done is a solid piece of work and is part of you.
LAVIGNE: Sometimes it takes time. I mean, look at Chappell Roan. She released her album a year ago and it took a while before people caught on. If you really focus on making work that you believe in and trust that the right people will find it, maybe it will take time, but I think that there's something to that.
I find myself looking for shortcuts or a cheat code, too. We get impatient and we want to know that what we're doing is worthwhile and is going to pay off. Being a musician — especially an indie artist — in this day and age is really difficult. I pay my band, I pay the producer, I pay the mixing engineer, I pay the mastering engineer, I pay a designer to make merch, I pay somebody to design the fliers, I pay people to take photos of us so we can get press. I work so hard in my life to make money to then pay all of these other people and also try to find the time to be in touch with myself and create work that I think is important and get that out there. It's a lot.
I really, really empathize with the urge to be like, "I deserve listens and I deserve this. There has to be some more straightforward way to get that. And if there is, I should do that" — I totally understand that appeal. As music tech and stuff has evolved more, we've been finding out that a lot of those things are sort of scams, too, unfortunately. So, slow and steady, nice and organic, seems to almost be the safest route. I'm glad that I've always been of that mindset of it taking however long it takes. I'm not gonna quit, so we'll see.
LUNA: It makes it all more rewarding in the end, too. You've released three really awesome singles off this record. How do you choose the leading singles from the record, as opposed to the other ones? When I first listened to the project, I thought any of them could be a leading single. Why "Forever," "Larry David," and "Little Splinters"?
LAVIGNE: Totally. It was definitely difficult to decide which song should be singles. "Little Splinters" was sort of a unanimous decision amongst the band that it should be the first single. It felt like it was the center of our sound. If you've ever seen us live, seen us play a whole 45 minutes of music, you know that we've got some elements of weird ambient stuff in our set. We've got some country elements of slide guitar and chicken picking. We've got some more rock ’n’ roll moments where I do weird stuff with my voice, sort of growly things, or some shouting. We've got really sweet, pretty things. I love sweet, pretty things. We really cover a whole gamut of sounds. "Little Splinters" really just sort of felt like such a good, straightforward, poppy rock song that would give people a good taste of what Ok Cowgirl is, if they had never heard us before. We're a fun indie rock band, and we're going to start with a sort of confessional, stripped-down verse, and then we're gonna get really loud and then we're gonna get quiet again and then we're gonna get really loud. It's a song that we all enjoy playing so much. We think it's so fun. We knew we were gonna put this out sort of around summertime, that seemed like the right call, the right present to give to our listeners around that time of year.
"Forever" was our second single. We were really excited about "Forever" because it varied from our usual sound. It has this more repetitive drum beat, and I find the arpeggiating guitar part in that song to be meditative in the way. That song, to me, feels a bit restrained and cool. I'm so extra usually, I just want to be really dramatic with my music. With "Forever," we were holding back a little in a way that felt really cool and interesting and different to me. Giving that to our listeners second felt like a good way to be like, "Oh, but you thought you knew us. Here's a curveball."
"Larry David" is rock ’n’ roll. The lyrics of that song are so relatable to most people. The crowd had always responded so viscerally when we played that song live that I wanted to get it to them as soon as we could, because we had so many people asking about it. So that had to be a single. We've got one more coming out too, “Our Love,” which is a slower, more dramatic love song. And with those four singles, I feel like we give everybody a pretty well rounded taste of the variety of sounds that Ok Cowgirl makes.
Photo by Rita Lovine
LUNA: “Our Love” was one of my favorites. I'm obsessed with that song. You drop a really hard-hitting line in it: "The truest love doesn't always have to last forever." Do you find that you come across these realizations while in the process of writing, or do these realizations strike you and then you go to writing from there?
LAVIGNE: I think it's a little bit of both. As a songwriter, I never shut it off. I have a folder in my Notes app called “lyrics” and I scribble down lyrics constantly. I also have a tiny little notebook that I keep in my purse for moments when it's inappropriate for me to be on my phone, and I scribble down little lyric things here too. They can be anything from just a word that catches my ear, that made me feel something or like an idea, a little story, or an actual verse that comes to me out of thin air. I'm always sort of collecting thoughts and words. A song like "Our Love" is very specific because that one just came to me all in a big rush.
I was in the middle of a very intense breakup and the song poured out of me. These are ideas that I had been thinking about for months. I had conversations with my mom and with my best friends about really loving this person and knowing there was nothing wrong with our relationship. I felt so antsy and so unhappy with my life. I wanted more, and I felt guilty asking for more. In different words, I had been talking about that idea for a long time and it came out of me in that instance.
It really does feel quite poetic to me that the truest love doesn't always have to last forever. “Screw the tyranny of time / And the linear design / Days and years could never really measure / Our love.” That's one of the lyrics that I'm most proud of. I do think that a lot of people have felt confused when realizing those things on their own in the context of their own lives. The older I get and the more I have seen friends go through love and heartbreak and big life decisions and stuff, especially in your twenties, when you're just trying to figure out who you are and what you want, it does seem to be quite relatable, even out of the context of romantic love. Change is always hard because you're letting go of something at a certain instance of your life. It doesn't mean that you can't always cherish what it was and that period of your life when it did serve you and was the right thing for you.
LUNA: It's so beautiful that you’re able to immortalize all of these experiences. They're already very relatable to other people, but you write them in a way that even though it's your personal experience, it's universally relatable to other people. It takes such talent to do that. "Our Love" is a gut punch right from the beginning, but it's incredible. You're also able to establish this sonic variation between all of the songs on the record. There are very similar feelings of vulnerability and stress and anger, what have you. The variety of musical texture that you're able to put on display is really cool. How do you kind of pair the emotions that you're expressing with the music and the production?
LAVIGNE: I wrote every song on this record, except for "Larry David," which we wrote together. That one was very simple to write. I was like, "This is a banger. We're angry. Everything is effed, just go be loud!" That one was easy, but for a lot of other songs, I bring them to the band and play them through for them and then tell them what the song is about to me. They are all very intuitive.
One of the reasons why I love working with this group of people and have held onto them for so many years, is because I do really feel like they understand my music. They understand me and our musical instincts really gel with each other. It's really sort of effortless. We're very collaborative in our process. We go back and forth and discuss dynamics and certain production elements. There's really nothing like it. Sometimes I think of it as if you rolled out a giant sheet of paper and put a bunch of buckets of paint around us, and we're just painting it, dipping our hands in the different colors and covering it all up. That's sort of what it feels like when we're in there arranging a song. We're blending and all up in each other's business, but somehow working as this cohesive, harmonious unit.
LUNA: It seems so effortless. I've been watching some interviews of yours all together and the dynamic that you all have seems very honest and playful and lighthearted, but I know you're able to get down to business when you need to. That's such an awesome dynamic to have with a band and it certainly helps that you've known them — especially Matt for like forever now.
LAVIGNE: I'm really glad to have been on this journey together. We've done so much together at this point. Matt actually has a little shoe box where he keeps every setlist from every show we've ever played. The stack is pretty big, it's insane. To be able to share all of those memories and witness each other's personal growth, our musical growth and growth and evolution of this project that we're all a part of is such a beautiful and intimate thing.
I'm so grateful for that in this world that can be so transactional. I'm so grateful to be making music with people who I really care about and who make me feel cared for. They have been with me when we were playing to small cafes of five people. It's always been fun. I can't wait for what's ahead.
LUNA: I feel like the culmination of all of this growth you've experienced is represented in the track "Nighttime Thinking." I was just reading the lyrics — they're like poetry. It feels like this immense reckoning with your own humanity and consciousness. It reminded me, in a way, of "Deer in the Headlights" from Not My First Rodeo, because both tracks have this acknowledgement of your own existence in them. "Nighttime Thinking" has more acceptance of this person and this being that you are, rather than a resistance and wanting to be more than that. After four years of Ok Cowgirl, how have you come to accept the person that you are, the Leah that you are today, and how has music played a role in that?
LAVIGNE: Self-acceptance is such a process. I'm actively working on it; I have both hands on the wheel. Although I have, over the past many years, gotten to know myself better and learned to accept and love myself more. It's a process. Your observation about the similarities and the differences of "Deer in the Headlights" are so astute, thank you for sharing that. I think you're spot on. I have a lot of friends who are a little older than me. When I was freaking out in my early twenties about not being where I wanted to be and wanting this and wanting that, they were always saying, "Leah, relax, you have time." And I was like, "I don't have time!" So many people say, "Oh, just wait until your thirties. Your thirties are the best." And now those friends are in their forties and they're like, "Just wait till your forties, your forties are the best."
I think there is something that maybe happens — I don't know, because I'm not there yet — for most people, maybe not all people, but as you get older you have a greater view of all the things that life is. It becomes easier to manage your emotions and to make big decisions. You have that extra perspective, which is so invaluable. I'm really excited for my songwriting. I'm really grateful that I've had such a rich relationship with songwriting for so many years. Looking back, I can witness my own growth over at this point 14 years in regard to how I am thinking of myself, how I'm thinking of the world, how I'm thinking about my emotions. I can sort of see that evolution in my lyrics, which is such a really cool and interesting thing to get to do. I am excited to live more and hopefully get wiser and write even better songs.
LUNA: You've captured your whole journey within your discography. It reminds me of my own journey, in a way, because I'm also an Asian American, queer woman learning to adapt to the world after living in a very white community. So I've always interacted with your music in a way where it also helps me step into myself. That is super cool. I'm very grateful that you've been a part of my own growth; it's like a reflection of your own journey in a way.
LAVIGNE: That's so awesome. I try to sort of keep things just removed enough so that people who don't share those same identities with me can still relate to things. But so much of my music is directly related to those specific journeys of self acceptance that I've been on as a queer person and an Asian person and also somebody who grew up in a white environment, somebody with that immigrant family culture. It's a very specific experience that you either get or you don't. That obviously has been so much of my life, so the songs really reflect that. At the end of the day, we're all human. We all feel alone, we all feel confused, we all feel love, we all feel heartbreak. All of these things are so universal, and so I really try to find this very delicate balance of keeping my music very personal, but also taking a bit of a bird's eye view so that it can be relatable to a wider audience.
LUNA: I think you do a great job at balancing that. We're at my last question. I always like to end my interviews on a lighthearted note, so my question for you is: What has been giving you joy lately? It can be anything, not even just music-related.
LAVIGNE: I do think something that maybe that is not giving me joy, but it's something that is enabling me to experience joy more often and in a deeper way, is the way that my relationship to myself has evolved in the past year or so. A big journey I've been on is reflected in "Little Splinters," specifically; this journey of learning to take my own side and listen to myself. To listen to my body when it says, "Hey, we're tired, we're hungry, we're thirsty, we want to be alone right now, we want to see people, we want to move our body, we don't want to move our body." I spent most of my life up until this point never listening to that and always challenging it. My body would be like, "We're tired," and I'd be like, "Okay, well, that sucks. You can't rest because you ought to do XYZ instead — and if you don't, you're a horrible person." I spent so much of my life giving myself such a hard time and pushing myself to always do the opposite, or do something different than what I wanted and what my instincts were telling me that I needed. In the past year, I've really been working on listening to myself — respecting and honoring myself and taking care of myself. It's such a cliche that you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others, but it's so true. Taking care of myself not only makes me feel better all the time, but it allows me to take care of others, which is my favorite thing to do in the world. It allows me to show up to my day job with a smile on my face, and be really kind and lighthearted and have lovely interactions. It allows me to be present with my friends and pay attention to them and how they're feeling. It has really revolutionized everything and kept me from being in this state of panic, fight or flight, or deprivation.
I spent so many years of my life being sleep deprived and hungry and dehydrated — my basic needs just not being met. I was in this crazy, high strung state, and I would get really upset about things and would be mad at myself for getting upset. I was constantly in this chaotic existence. Learning to slow down and listen to myself has allowed me to enjoy my life a lot more. No shame on the old me, because poor little baby Leah was only like that because I didn't know how to be different. Nothing but empathy and compassion for old Leah, but I'm so proud of the Leah that I'm working on becoming. It's just been a joy to chill out a little bit and be good to myself.
