Especially in music, you wonder, Okay, should I still be doing this? Like, are you overstaying your welcome at the party? But I don't know.
If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.
I never contemplated any kind of existence or identity after my career. I never thought at some point the entertainment industry is going to be through with me. And when it first occurred to me that my career was going to cease to be ascendant, then I freaked out.
I remember immediately - immediately - feeling like, 'I don't want to play 'We Are Young' when I'm 35. I don't want to be defined by this.'
My biggest fear is that I become useless or less useful by not being up to date - be it with technology, changing consumers, changing global situations. You continuously have to have a little level of paranoia that forces you to set the bar higher every day.
The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.
I don't always have the time I wish I had to understand something I don't understand. So I'm trying to do a little bit less of the quick pieces and a little bit more of the "here's how the Singaporean health care system works" kind of stuff, because to be good at my job, I have to keep learning. The thing that I fear the most is becoming one of those journalists who is still trying to apply the thinking of the decade in which they started three or four decades later.
Our culture has become something that is completely and utterly in love with its parent. It's become a notion of boredom that is bought and sold, where nothing will happen except that people will become more and more terrified of tomorrow, because the new continues to look old, and the old will always look cute.
When my pop career was over, I was scratching my head, thinking, "God, how am I going to do something after I'm forty?" I was in my mid-thirties, thinking I was on the scrap heap.
You reach a certain age, and you realize, 'Wow: there are younger people doing this better than I can, and don't leave me out - I don't want to be left behind. I want to do it, too. Where are you going? I want to be part of it.'
It's age. It's a diminution of energy and the worry that there are no new ideas. It's an increasing lack of confidence. I'm not the only one. I've checked with other people.
In next five to 10 years I probably would have done my best work, but I was afraid of having another 10 or 15 years ahead of me and feeling stale, so this was an opportunity to reinvigorate myself.
The day an actor is not required, the day no one is writing for you, is when you're actually dead… That's a very scary moment.
You've got to do a lot of research. That's the biggest thing: I try to gather as much information as I can to maximize myself. Because if you're just standing still, you're going to be a dinosaur and everyone else will go around you. That's like my biggest fear.
The fear of a work becoming dated is one of the most effective tools for keeping people from writing political work.
It always makes me sad when someone comments on how much they love my work- from 15 years ago! I don't want to be just another old school guy that fell off.
I don't want to find myself at the age of 60 waiting by the telephone for someone else to decide if I am capable of being in what might be a crummy TV production.
Always I'm feeling, 'You're never going to work again.' That's going to happen one day, but I hope I'm not alive.
Here is a fear for me, I never wanted to be one of those guys that was defined by a body of work 20 years old.
If something brilliant comes along but I really feel like it's too old for me - that I'm not gonna have the experience it takes - I'm not gonna do it. Even if it's "a big mistake for my career".
I've always worried that one day women would figure out how to get along without us and they would be able to reproduce unilaterally, like sponges.
I think there's, you know, somewhere inside of us there's that - that fear of one day waking up and, you know, the fans - the fans move on to the next band or something.
If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more.
