I know that it feels like I should talk about a positive experience, but actually, the first experience that comes to mind was also the worst: It was the time I flew down to Washington, D.C. to write a Tool cover story for Alternative Press in 1997.

I’d love to tell you the whole story — and one day, I will write this all down — but for now, I’ll distill it into this synopsis: I have never met any one group of people so collectively deluded about their own so-called artistry as I did that day. Their naive sense of entitlement was absolutely staggering, and at the end of the day, I called my editor and told him that I would not be writing this piece after all. He’d have to send someone else to get treated like a moron, I told him, because that’s not what I tell people I do for a living.

It ultimately affected me because, at this point in my life, I realize this was a major missed opportunity. The story was there, but I was too caught up in my anger to see it: It was the best 4,000-word argument for humility that I never wrote.