545 - Make Your Life & Creative Work More Rich with Meaning with Jarod K. Anderson

15:10Jarod K. Anderson:Especially writing about mental health. Sure. you know yep i i had an editor that kind of had to walk me back on not throwing caveats on everything i said yeah i get you know not an expert i get that yeah i totally get this book is a me too not a how to yeah yeah but fiction like i'm not worried about that as much so you know at the risk of of sounding a little insufferable i can think of like truth rather than fact.

15:38Creative Pep Talk Host:Sure. Yeah. I think what you're, you know, I love all the stuff you're talking about. And I think it's a, it's something that I've tried to explore on the show because I experienced this. But I don't, I honestly don't feel like I hear artists talk about this much, but it's so prevalent in my life, which is it's somewhere between either like ego and heart, or I think about it like it's because you need a little bit of both in a lot of ways. And it also feels like acquired tastes that are like the right tastes versus what we would deem as guilty pleasures. And I think to me, so much of my journey has been trying to figure out what is the relationship between those, because a lot of kids go to art school and they do get better and they do, they learn so much and they acquire taste.

16:32Creative Pep Talk Host:And for me, I didn't go to edit proper art school, But even that experience for me, design illustration college that I went to, my taste was elevated. I learned so many very, very important things. But so much of my journey to getting to anything worthwhile was picking and choosing and also, you know, disappointing your heroes kind of thing, right? So I love what you're talking about there. And I also wonder, like, it encourages me when I think about my own writing and things I'm trying to make. When you learn devices and tricks, and I like devices and tricks. They're fun and they're interesting and they can help you.

17:14Creative Pep Talk Host:But it is easy to get to the part where you forget where's the part that is the heart and what you really feel. And where you, you know, how did you, how do you think you got past that, you know, what you learned in college? Or how do you, how do you reconnect to that?

17:34Jarod K. Anderson:I mean, the thing I'll say is it's an ongoing process of me like feeling like a creeping urge to be, you know, capital A artistic or capital L literary. but one counterbalance for me is like you know I developed a bit of an Instagram following with these very short very accessible little poems or poem adjacent things yeah and people would send me messages about how like they didn't think of themselves as someone who liked poetry and now they're interested and who could I recommend? And so it's like ego is on one side of the scale. And then I have these conversations, um, around accessibility that kind of counterbalance it for me where it's like, okay, like I want to, I want to write a, a fancy castle on a forest hill, but I also want a really big welcome mat, like a really friendly entrance.

18:43Jarod K. Anderson:Um, and you know, more and more in my creative practice, like what I am figuring out is that I hate saminess, um, in my own work. So like, I like to go back and forth between like, Even in my poetry, I'll do a very plain, very direct statement, and then maybe I'll do a more abstract image. But it's the journey between the two ends of the spectrum. And I think that's personal, impersonal, concrete, abstract, ego, accessibility. I like to ping pong between these things, and I think that's what keeps art interesting. Like that's what I want to read. Yeah. So that's what I want to create.

19:30Creative Pep Talk Host:My next question is about ADHD stuff because you mentioned that you were up for talking about that kind of thing. And I think that's such an interesting – I think there's a lot of talk around being neurodivergent, being ADHD that makes you more creative. I had a spell where I was medicated. I have no – I have lots of friends that are medicated that are ADHD. I have no global take on that. It's purely my experience for me. In this time in my life, that had too many downsides for me. And I grieve not having it too because there's so many downsides to not having it. But when I was medicated, a lot of people think, oh, I'm going to lose my creativity.

20:11Creative Pep Talk Host:I felt I had just as much access to it. I didn't have as much of an impulse to do it for a bunch of reasons. One is that it's harder than regular things when mundane things are easy for you. So I don't know if that makes sense. But the other reason that I think I less needed to be creative is what you're speaking to, which is what feels like part of the super creative quality of an ADHD person is I just desperately needed novelty. I needed everything to be different. And so that, of course, breeds creativity. So I love what you're speaking to there. It makes me think about my, how that, it definitely plays out in anything I write, but no otherwise.

20:53Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. So, I mean, my two big ones are chronic major depression and ADHD. Yeah. And so, you know, I have found antidepressants that don't work for me because they even me out so much. I don't have the like spark to create. And I only recently started trying ADHD meds. Like, but I have like the quick release Adderall that lasts like three hours. Yeah. So I only reach for it when like.

21:23Creative Pep Talk Host:Taxes time. Well, or like, or like, um, you know, over the last couple months, it's been like big

21:29Jarod K. Anderson:edits due. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, that isn't exactly, I mean, if we're talking novelty, that isn't, that doesn't really put a spring in my step necessarily when I'm heading to the, to the desk in the morning. So like, okay.

21:42Creative Pep Talk Host:That's not the juicy stuff. the ADHD brain loves. No.

21:46Jarod K. Anderson:So like the meds have helped with that a little bit. Although I will say that like the meds are great, but I have to make myself start doing the task when I take the meds. Yeah, true. Or otherwise I'm just very focused on anything. Yeah, I was like that too.

22:01Creative Pep Talk Host:I totally relate to that.

22:03Jarod K. Anderson:Like, whoops, the kitchen's very clean, but.

22:05Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah, but I still miss my deadline. So what I wanted to ask you about ADHD neurodivergence, I have to do a little setup here. So I think we've talked about my book, Invisible Things. Some of the stuff we're writing that's going to be more long form fiction is very similar in that it's a kid that sees invisible things. And so there's some very, there's big similarities between the book you wrote and the ones that we're working on. And I felt I got really emotional thinking about that and why that might be, why we need, want, drawn to, hidden world. I don't want to put words in your mouth. So what do you make of that?

22:55Jarod K. Anderson:So honestly, it's a little of that thing I said earlier about truth and fact. Like truth and fact are sisters. They're not twins. and I have a six-year-old. I have a six-year-old son named Arthur. And he doesn't need a lot of, he doesn't need the same tricks I need to remember that we live in like a magical world. Right, yeah. You know, like I've said before, like I've seen him like shake with excitement just watching a bumblebee, right? so like i think that's a core aspect of the world um but i think that stuff fades a little bit from from familiarity as an adult so like you know we live in a world with electric eels and colossal squids and like those are all out there right now as we're talking um but it it can feel like you know, inert textbook stuff.

23:58Jarod K. Anderson:So I like to reach for the hidden worlds, like the monsters, a level of nature kind of lurking beneath the surface of what we see. I also think that's true. Yeah. I was looking at lichen on the sidewalk outside a little while ago, and it's like, all right, what's lichen? It's an algae and a bacteria. So the metaphor in my brain is it's a gardener in a garden or a shepherd in a flock and which is which, like the roles are always changing. So there's a kind of honesty for me in the fantastical or the hidden world that I don't know how to express without it. Yeah, I totally relate to that. I love that.

24:50Creative Pep Talk Host:And I think it's at the heart of my work around invisible things. And Sophie and I wrote that together. I think it's a, I think we both have an impulse. That is something like realizing that 95 % of our universe is invisible. It helped me. I, it wasn't until I was like 17, 18 that I started to read like pop quantum physics stuff and just all kinds of things in that realm and realize like, oh, our universe is truly bizarre and weird. And it was that kind of stuff that made me feel, I'd spent so much, you know, I'm a big believer in imagination, but I'd spent so much time up until that point trying to escape reality because it was boring.

25:35Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah. Just trying to get away from it. Yeah. When I was a kid, just imagination as a teenager, it was more than imagination. It was anything I could get to like, get out of here. And so So it wasn't until I started to realize like, oh, our universe is crazy. And even the psychology of another person is so there's so much depth there that I started to like, oh, what if I I could go deeper into reality and find what I'm looking for rather than escaping it. And so, yeah, I don't I think I was reading your book and feeling this kinship to. And again, it doesn't even though there's fantasy, it's fantasy.

26:13Creative Pep Talk Host:It doesn't feel like that. it feels like trying to get more to truth than fact as you would say i'm i'm curious like i sort

26:22Jarod K. Anderson:of grew up in a very we don't talk about stuff midwestern household yeah um where you kind of like you rub the shine off of reality so much that you almost have to relearn it like um i wonder if

26:37Creative Pep Talk Host:you have any of that in your background can you say more about that like yeah that looks like yeah

26:42Jarod K. Anderson:So like, you know, I write a little in the memoir about it being a facet of toxic masculinity, but I think it's actually bigger than that. Of the like polite conversation or the water cooler conversation or what subjects are acceptable or, you know, it's cynical, it's troubling, but like you don't show weakness. Yeah. And what's weakness? Well, sincerity or honesty are weakness because like if you let somebody see the real you, you've let them in the house. The front door is unlocked. And so, you know, being raised in a culture that gave me those kind of guiding principles for how to conduct myself was a thing I really had to unlearn.

27:33Jarod K. Anderson:and nobody did it on purpose. You know, I don't remember being sat down, but like, I do think like, um, I sure could have used some mental health intervention and help and maybe medication when I was younger, but that was not one of the subjects that was okay.

27:49Creative Pep Talk Host:That we could talk about. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I get that. I think even I lived in England for five years and my wife is British and I'd say it's even more true in my experience there. And obviously I haven't lived there in a long time. So things may have changed. And we only saw, I only experienced a portion of that, but that was, you know, it's very British to be like, we're not going there. Like we don't, we're not going to talk about feelings and what have you. And I think that, um, yeah, I definitely had the urge to mask hypersensitivity, um, to the world and things of that nature. And so, you know, making art, sometimes I think like I'll find myself masking in so many different situations.

28:32And I think I'm supposed to be an artist.

28:36Creative Pep Talk Host:I'm supposed to be me professionally. And I still fall into all of these traps of hiding who I am. And so art also becomes a practice of trying to be honest. There are times where I'll be like, okay, you're going to go right. and we don't know if this is going to be for anything and you can literally say anything that you want. Say the most, whatever, the wildest thing you can think of that you feel and put it in here. Maybe something will come from it, maybe not. But that, I'm always surprised by how much there is. You know, how do you, as you're working through this, you were talking about, I really wanted to get to, a thread through the show is this idea of taste being the starting point, being one of the only things you have is like, what lights me up?

29:28Creative Pep Talk Host:And that looks like, yeah, at the start and at different points in the journey, other people's work, but really it's the same for your own work. You're tasting it as you go. You're trying to see, does this do the trick? And you said, as you were writing this, there were times where it made you cry. It made you feel something. can you speak to what you think did it for you? What is this piece of work? I have another way of asking that too, but what does this piece of work do that? And I know it's hard maybe sometimes explain it, but yeah.

30:03Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. You know, there's kind of a running arc for the main character is having a moment where he suddenly feels like a stranger in his own life. and why did I make the choices that landed me in this job in this city? Kind of comparing notes with his current self versus his childhood self and thinking of it as like, okay, was this just a series of compromises? And then, you know, ending up out in the woods and feeling completely lost and vulnerable and like he wasn't in any way qualified to be there and he wasn't. That feels like a metaphor for all kinds of times in my life. And so when he gets back up on his feet a little bit and gets his weird found family, a lot of those just little moments in the story where he starts defining himself and being more open to the world, some of those just little moments would hit me and make me tear up.

31:15Jarod K. Anderson:Um, and you know, full disclosure, lots of stuff makes me tear up constantly. It doesn't matter what it is.

31:21Creative Pep Talk Host:That's what it's like. Uh, the, uh, the, I mean, I'm a big believer in all the stories that I try to tell. Sometimes, sometimes I'll go into a story with more of an impression or a curiosity of like, Oh, I like this image. I like that kind of thing. I'll do that. But a lot of the stuff that I really – my go-to is much more of a write what you know sort of thing. Like what are the stories that I've lived? What are the perspectives that have changed? That sort of thing. It sounds like that is coming right from your life. Yeah. Is that true? Yeah. And do you feel like, I'm also interested in like, I think the younger, this isn't always, this isn't a rule, but the younger I'll make something for, the more I'll be like, I want to have lived that story before I tell it.

32:14Creative Pep Talk Host:If I'm making a picture book, I want to be like, I'm 10 years out of that. I feel kind of like I have a perspective on it. If I'm writing more like grownup stuff for the podcast or whatever, or for my sub stack, I usually, I'll allow for more like, I still don't know about this. do you, this thing of escaping, I think a lot of people when they get to 40, I know I do, I feel like so many ways where I tried to avoid doing the thing you're supposed to do. And then I did all a bunch of them. I didn't even realize I was doing that. I didn't realize how many compromises I was making. I didn't really, you know, it it's so ingrained in everything, the expectations and the norms and all that kind of thing.

33:01Creative Pep Talk Host:Do you feel like this book is a story that you lived or that you're living? And if, and yeah, maybe you could speak to what that is really like in your life.

33:13Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. I mean, I do feel like it's a story I've lived. I mean, at this point, I see all kinds of stuff in the woods and a lot of it's there, but, you know, the, the baggage I take with me, um, I think is, is an unusual perspective sometimes. And I mean, one of the parallels is I was definitely the guy who made a bunch of choices that I, I later saw as compromises. Um, and I think a lot of it was just fear, you know, like, um, I was, I was first, uh, generation college student and I was a non-traditional college student when I went and, uh, yeah, that's a lot of risk. Yeah. And so, so you get in this mindset or I got in this mindset of, of living defensively where a lot of what motivated me was, um, trying to anticipate and mitigate dangers.

34:12I relate.

34:13Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. You know, financial dangers. There's, you know, this, this world is not kind, um, to, to poverty in this country, um, or anyone who doesn't fit kind of the, the norm. Um, and so, yeah, you know, I think I was just living defensively, you know, I, I, I took out loans to go to college and stuff. It needed to turn into something recognizable as a job and a career path. Now I've totally left that behind at this point, but like for a long time, like I was definitely living in that defensive mindset. And if you couple that with a kind of tendency toward all or nothing thinking I have, it made creativity really hard because if I can't write all day, what's the point?

35:11Jarod K. Anderson:Or if I can't be a capital W writer, what's the point?

35:16Creative Pep Talk Host:You know, every, I, every listener can feel that I'm certain of it.

35:21Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. So, you know, like, especially with ADHD for me, I feel like sometimes I have to spin up like in preparation to do a thing.

35:33Creative Pep Talk Host:I have a, um, yeah, go ahead. I feel that 100%. I was just getting ready to do an episode about this idea of these two kinds. I've seen these two, I don't know if it's neurotypical versus ADHD, but it's just what I witness in people. Like a lot of people, when they're doing tasks, they look like a little race car on a track. And you know, the finish line of finishing the task is like this little thing. That's a motor. And so like when the car passes through, it goes, voom, and it gets another one. So every task they complete, it just kind of perpetuates. Whereas mine is like the car that you pull backwards a bunch of times, rev up, and then you blast through the task and you get slower as you go.

36:12Creative Pep Talk Host:Each task is like a wall that you break through. That's a really good metaphor. Yeah. I completely relate.

36:20Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. I have that. And I also have the, like, I have a dentist appointment at noon. So it's hard to do something in the morning. Oh yeah, me too. Yeah, for sure. I'm already thinking about the thing that's coming. So true. Yeah.

36:32Creative Pep Talk Host:Um, it's hard for me because that, that in particular really hurts my, I, I have had to learn that I require quite a bit of stimulation to be happy.

36:42Jarod K. Anderson:Yes.

36:43Creative Pep Talk Host:And I, so I have to schedule a lot of things knowing I'm going to be uncomfortable with it. Knowing that part of the discomfort is for me, I think why I fixate on the, you know, noon dentist thing is I know if I don't give it my full focus, I will miss it.

36:59Jarod K. Anderson:Oh yeah. Yeah. You know?

37:01Creative Pep Talk Host:And so I've tried recently, especially to lean into all these things and give myself grace. Like you will make mistakes, but if you don't schedule this stuff, you're not gonna be worth anything anyway. Like you have to be doing stuff, man. Like you have, you're happier. You're, you know.

37:18Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. Yeah. That's the catch 22. It is. Like the other answer is nothing.

37:24Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah. The other answer is nothing. And there's a lot of times where I just go ping ponging from one to the other. I'm like, I'm going to fill up. I'm going to do all this stuff. I'm going to go, go, go. And then I'd make so many mistakes. I'm like, you know what? The problem is stuff, doing stuff. Yeah. I'm getting rid of it.

37:37Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah.

37:37Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah. I've done that.

37:38Jarod K. Anderson:And it didn't fix things. It doesn't fix things. No. I mean, your matchbox car metaphor too of like the finish line supercharging. Like, so I don't have that.

37:48Creative Pep Talk Host:Me neither.

37:48Jarod K. Anderson:But the other problem I have that I've been thinking of lately too is that like, I don't feel the finish line.

37:57Creative Pep Talk Host:I don't feel the finish line either. No.

37:59Jarod K. Anderson:Like, and I keep, I keep chewing on that as a, as an issue of like, why don't I feel the finish line? I've even started like writing out to-do lists and check mark and taping them up so that I can at least see.

38:10Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah. Because otherwise I'll sometimes get into this like identity issue where I'll have a,

38:16Jarod K. Anderson:I'll catch a thought like, ah, you know, I never finish anything. And I'm like, hang on. Like I finish all kinds of stuff. Why am I having this thought? And sometimes it almost feels like accomplishments are just like a debt I owed. So they're nothing to celebrate. It's just like, okay, well, that was a thing I was supposed to do. What's next?

38:36Creative Pep Talk Host:I've heard it explained like what your brain's supposed to do is when you finish the task, it gives you a little boost. And then, but what people with ADHD often experience is a relief. Like you say, with the debt. And my dad would like, I used to hate mowing the grass. That was like one of my main chores, hated it to the point where when I was like 13, I pretended to get injured. Cause I was like, I can't, I went up that hill, went wrong. You know, I'm embarrassed by that, but that's true. That's a true story. I was just, I hated it. And then he would finish the grass and then stand and look at it.

39:12Creative Pep Talk Host:And he's like, don't you like feel like, I feel nothing. I feel like I hate that I did this. I feel worse having done it, but I'm glad that I don't have to do it for a week. That's it.

39:20Jarod K. Anderson:Were you worried about critique? Oh yeah, for sure.

39:24Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah. I definitely have that too. Very like hypersensitive to the whole time over thinking.

39:30Jarod K. Anderson:I used to, I still struggle with insomnia, but, but I think part of it was that I always wanted to do work when everybody else was asleep. Cause my least favorite thing in the world was somebody commenting on the work I was doing.

39:41Creative Pep Talk Host:I feel that. Um, that's why for a long time I was getting really not enough sleep because I would wake up so early so I could write. Yeah. Because, yeah, that's the only time it feels okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

39:53Jarod K. Anderson:Like the stolen moments were when I could be me. And so like even now when like no one is, you know, I own a house. Nobody is paying attention to me. Like I'm still like. Yeah. Like, okay, I'll wait till my wife and son are asleep. And then I'm like, why am I waiting? Yes. What is this leftover thing? I completely feel that.

40:30Creative Pep Talk Host:For me, a home-cooked meal is very hard to beat. Fresh food, real ingredients, nothing is better than that. HelloFresh makes home cooking easy, delicious, and fun night after night. Look, my family has freaking loved our HelloFresh meals. It was amazing for my 17-year-old because it's been this easy entry point to cooking real recipes, which is just so cool to see before she starts going off to college. We are a family that loves food, but the portions have been great, and we've had leftovers after every meal. It's inspired us to try things we've never made, and my youngest daughter can't stop talking about the coconut rice that we had with the rainbow trout.

41:11Creative Pep Talk Host:You can pick from lots of high-protein meals, feel great about the wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and 100 % antibiotic and hormone-free chicken, and even get seasonal produce that keeps things fresh and interesting. Go to HelloFresh.com slash PepTalk10FM to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling knife, a$144.99 value on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on FirstBox. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I freaking love having Squarespace as a sponsor because it's easy to sell it when you love something this much.

41:59Creative Pep Talk Host:I'm a big fan. Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform designed to help you succeed online. Here's what I love about Squarespace. They're intuitive and super versatile drag and drop tools. I mean, you can make a custom website without knowledge of code that makes people say, whoa, who made that for you? Looks like you built that from scratch. People have really said stuff like that to me about my site, and I built it myself quite easily with Squarespace. You can check it out at AndyJPizza.com if you want to check that out, what I did with it. It doesn't look templaty, and it screams my creative brand.

42:31Creative Pep Talk Host:I also love that I have all of my domains through Squarespace now, which makes it seamless and easy to manage. I know the first thing as creative folks do when we get an idea is to grab that URL. Now you can keep track of all your websites and your domains in one place that's super intuitive and easy to manage. Head to squarespace.com slash peptalk for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code peptalk, all one word, to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain.

43:03I just wanted to highlight the crying while working, crying at your own work.

43:08Creative Pep Talk Host:I know, I don't feel like, it took me a long time to make anything that felt like that. And to the point where I didn't know it existed. Then once you know it exists, I feel like you're like, oh, there's so much energy here. It feels real. And the reason I highlight it is you have to go along. I think you have to go quite some time not knowing that. um you know just working on stuff and it's i just wish someone would have told me like you're going to get to a point where what you're making feels meaningful yeah and that's a big theme in the book too of like making meaning how does that show up for you i know you have a relationship to animals and nature and what you see and it sounds like from what i can tell i relate to not knowing what to do with kind of the spirituality of that.

44:02Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I know so many creative people are so right-brained, symbolic, but it's difficult to access that in our world for good reason, too. Yeah, go speak to that.

44:15Jarod K. Anderson:I mean, I guess the upfront material on that is like, I'm very itchy about any kind of established religion or spirituality.

44:25Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah, me too. Um, somehow for me, um, accessing the sacred or spiritual, it has to come from me as a

44:35Jarod K. Anderson:creative act. It has to be sort of so personal that I know I was involved in the creation of, of the story. Yeah. You know, it's like, I understand my place in the world. I understand my identity. I understand the world through story. Right. And I think of myself as a storyteller too. So I was never interested in accepting anybody else's story in terms of like a doorway to a deeper connection with the world or spirituality. Okay, cool. But then also it took me a long time to find a place at which I could respect my own stories. because of course the problem is if you made your own story, not a lot of mystique there.

45:26Jarod K. Anderson:True. It's like you, you watched the sausage. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Right. So, um, but that's where go hand. Well, I was just, I was just going to say like, it's funny. Like for a while there was like, well, I can't respect my own sense of the sacred because it's like, it's not brand name. Right. Yeah. Like nobody else would get this. That's interesting. So like it's the who gives you permission to feel connection or a sense of the sacred. And so it kind of goes parallel with my development as a creative person of like giving myself that permission.

46:05Creative Pep Talk Host:And isn't that – and I think that's connecting to crying at your work, the journey to that, making meaning. And doesn't that end up being, I think that is, that feels like what a creative practice can become.

46:21Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah.

46:21Creative Pep Talk Host:Is this, and this is kind of one of those things where I was talking to one of my daughters and we both have itchiness around religion quite a bit. You know, having grown up in the Midwest, I got plenty of it, had my own experiences with that, et cetera. uh and i was talking to her about um we were talking about artists musicians and god and it was something that she hadn't made the connection that that was really a thing right and i realized oh for most of my all my 20s probably i didn't connect those two things and then after up until now i'm almost 40 i'm realizing oh all the artists that really get into it it ends up being kind of a spiritual practice and that meaning making and it's personal to you and that storytelling, that's what it sounds like you're doing.

47:16Creative Pep Talk Host:And it feels like that's kind of what is going on the book in the book. And I didn't really put those things together, but yeah.

47:22Jarod K. Anderson:It's funny too. Like I, I read like a negative review of my memoir a little while ago. That's always fun. Yeah. Well, you know, I've gotten pretty thick skin at this point, But it was interesting to me because it was like – I think it was like a 24-year-old dude and he was like, you know, just feels performative and overblown and stuff.

47:43Creative Pep Talk Host:That word loves to be thrown around.

47:46Jarod K. Anderson:But the thing of it was like I looked at that and I was like, I might have written that review of this book when I was 24.

47:52Creative Pep Talk Host:Right. Yeah, sure.

47:54Jarod K. Anderson:That's a good perspective. It's something I'm embarrassed to admit, but like I remember writing like a scathing review of Mary Oliver poetry when I was in college. I'm like, what's this? Like it's so simple and who cares about this bird? That's so funny. My brain flashes back to that often where I'm just like, what were you thinking?

48:17Creative Pep Talk Host:It almost feels like a critique of yourself in a way. I don't know if it was coming from there then, but yeah.

48:24Jarod K. Anderson:It absolutely was where like I I'm sure like the venom in that feeling I had or maybe even in that review. I don't know that person. Right. But it's like partly like I'm not allowed to access an honest version of this or sincerity or be open about this. So it kind of how dare you. And with the Mary Oliver, it was it was double edged because it was like, hey, you're writing really simple poetry. And that's not what we do here in in, you know.

48:53Creative Pep Talk Host:Which goes back to what we started the conversation around. Capital L literature.

48:57Jarod K. Anderson:That's not what we're doing. And you're being very open and sort of childlike in this poem. Like, what are you doing? Like, get out of here with that. And then later you learn that breaking the rules in meaningful ways is like where it's at.

49:12Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah. Yeah, how you can access that. So I want to just, I don't know if we belabored the point enough here, but I want to just go back to that thing of this storytelling, meaning making. I think, I wish I could go back to me at 24 and it was just starting to be like, I think I like these things. I'm going to start pulling on it. I remember doing that and thinking, this is nothing. There's nothing here. because I just didn't have any of the tools. I hadn't had the experience. And that's one of the things I would want to go back and say. It's like, this is what you do. This is the meaning making.

49:53Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah.

49:53Jarod K. Anderson:That's one of the things I talk about with aspiring writers and moments of epiphany I've had of like so many of the things I did over the years that felt like nothing were not nothing. And it always is nothing until it's something. And the only way you get to a place where you feel like something is all of those little quiet private moments with yourself that feel like nothing. Yeah.

50:19Creative Pep Talk Host:And I felt that same thing. And then now I'm to the point where like starting out, similar to you, I felt a lot of pressure to succeed. I had neurodivergent people, I at least assume are neurodivergent where this stuff comes from in my life. Watch the world be very unkind to them. Just thought, I got to figure this out. and so much of my early, I was so distracted by, I have to make this a commercial success. Yes. That pulling those threads were really difficult, but those are the things that led to things. Now there are projects I've done that feel, because of the crying while working, that kind of thing, so healing that I get, oh, I get why you would do this even if it wasn't your job.

51:04Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah.

51:04Creative Pep Talk Host:You know, and the podcast has evolved towards that as well.

51:08Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. Like a lot of it is a thing you enjoy and then a realization that no one is stopping you from participating in this tradition that means something to you. And then it's a struggle to take yourself seriously in it. And then like you said, a lot of it feels like nothing or time wasting or self-indulgent or frivolous. And like that's it. That's what it feels like. Correct. A lot of the time. Yes, exactly. You know, the editor I got for the novel, he was like the top of my list editor I wanted. He at Ballantyne, he was the editor for The Martian and Ready Player One. Crazy. Cool dude that I wanted to work with.

51:51Jarod K. Anderson:Wild. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I was so excited. And when I first talked to him, he really liked the manuscript. And he said, I also read like this piece you published in this tiny journal. and I went to OSU and I read your honors thesis on John Milton. I was like, what? This is a good fit. Yeah, but I was like, what? Like all these like little tiny things over, there was a little bit of a this is your life and tiny writing things that you put out into the world when I connected with this like dream editor that I wanted to work with. So it's like it was one of the most tangible moments of all the little things along the way matter that I have had.

52:37Creative Pep Talk Host:And all you, you know, I feel like all people in your position can do for younger people is to tell that story. And because it is so, so much of it early on feels like you're digging into nothing. I think it's just so important to be like, as long as it's rich for you, keep doing that.

52:55Jarod K. Anderson:If I could give one advice thing to people, to people trying out there is like, Process goals, not outcome goals, became like a religion to me when I was submitting to agents and editors and, you know, dealing with rejection for years and years and years, which is like, you know, I couldn't control outcomes. I can't say I'm going to get an agent this year because that's too far outside of my direct control if I want to feel successful. So process goals, I'm going to submit to 20 agents this year. You know, I'm going to write this many pages or, you know, for me with my brain, I'm a big believer in more than nothing.

53:39Jarod K. Anderson:Like if I'm trying to write a book or something, it's more than nothing every day. I have to visit it at least. That's, I love that. That's a great goal. I got to sit in the chair for 20 minutes. I might say the goal is 500 words.

53:50Creative Pep Talk Host:Every kind of goal. That's a great, that's a great way, especially one that's just so difficult to get to. Yeah.

53:55Jarod K. Anderson:Because, you know, I start skipping too many days and it becomes too scary because now it's touching the hot stove because it has somehow become an emblem of my failure, my inability to follow through on goals or whatever. So it's like the more than nothing and the process, not outcome were so important to me.

54:13Creative Pep Talk Host:I'm smiling because the episode we released this week, 539, is literally all about process versus outcome goals. So I'm totally on board with that. uh one question i like to ask um creative people that have a project like this is what is the nerdiest what's the nerdiest passion around this book that people might not ask you about like maybe something that and it can be something that you're like this is particularly successful to me like or like this aspect of it or it works for me in a way and maybe people won't notice it or maybe it'll just go subconscious or I don't know if anything comes to mind,

54:53Jarod K. Anderson:but I mean, something comes to mind,

54:55Creative Pep Talk Host:but are you scared to talk? I'm not. It's just, it's just that like, um,

55:01Jarod K. Anderson:there are Easter eggs in this book that relate back to the little fiction podcast I did.

55:07Creative Pep Talk Host:Okay.

55:07Jarod K. Anderson:But like that podcast felt like, um, building a show place for my imaginary friends. so like the book to me is the origin story of the main character of of the podcast that's very cool and there are a lot of references to little things in the podcast that are just part of this weird personal mythology that i've enjoyed yeah as like a sandbox to play in so like i don't even know if nerdy is the word like it's so like just a kind of a wink to myself that like feels like getting away with something because it's like you know it's a Penguin Random House book and it's like yeah but like look at all these nods and winks to my imaginary friends in it I love that so that you know there's some nerdy science stuff in it that's for me there's the like making meaning stuff that is like me saying I see you to some people who struggle with the same mental health stuff I do.

56:13Jarod K. Anderson:So a lot of it is like, I don't know, books are so cool. It's so cool to like connect brain to brain. Like, come on into my internal life and make yourself at home.

56:26Creative Pep Talk Host:It's kind of like, there's a theme of that in the book of going into each other's brains and stuff like that. I won't speak to it. I don't want to give anything away. But I, yeah, I love what you said about these imaginary friends and this whole world that you created. To me, it gets back to this theme of the creative practice as a way of make seeing meaning making meaning in your life uh you talking about storytelling mental health one of the things that i'm a big believer in um kind of the neils boer quote of the opposite of a profound truth might be another profound truth expect especially in creative work um so there's always like yes my random example is yes blue and yellow are blue and purple purple and yellow go well together right color theory works but sometimes we want our eyes to bleed and it be neon green and neon red like it there are times for things there's taste for things or it's personal subjective um and so i give you all that because i'm about to say something that um sounds like i'm you know being harsh on people that want nihilistic stories, want things that don't add up.

57:36And they want, they, their claim is like, uh, well, story shouldn't resolve because

57:42Creative Pep Talk Host:life doesn't resolve. And I, uh, I respect all that. I even like, there are examples of that, that I really dig. But at the same time, especially when your mental health is suffering, um, to me, I want to go the opposite way. And that's what my creative practice is, which is I don't need story to be more life. I need life to be more story. Yeah. And when you're making your own invisible world and your own invisible friends and you're creating all of this, there's all this richness in this book from your previous stuff that you've made. That's, it's so, it's such a rich mental health practice. Yeah.

58:21Jarod K. Anderson:I feel like a lot of people come to the conclusion that the world is meaningless and then stop there. Right. Yeah, right. Which you get to a certain perspective and it's like the world is meaningless and neat. Like meaning is subjective. So like making meaning is a practice that requires your participation and intention. so I don't think I'm gonna leave a story ever at that kind of a nihilistic everything is meaningless kind of place because that wouldn't jive with my worldview like that's an invitation um and you know as somebody who struggles with depression there are a lot of days that I wake up and feel like I'm starting at a deficit in terms of making friends with the world and reality.

59:23Jarod K. Anderson:And on the one hand, man, that sucks. And on the other hand, I've gotten pretty good at going out and making friends with the world in an intentional, practical, hands-on kind of way. Um, and if I can do anything in a story, it would be like helping somebody else model that and figure, figuring it out. Like sometimes it feels like a superpower. It's not a superpower I would wish on anybody.

59:53Creative Pep Talk Host:But it comes with certain, you know, some serious kryptonite situations too. Yes.

59:57Jarod K. Anderson:But like dealing with depression for a long time really is like, okay, I feel like this, but what can I do? Like what verbs can I reach for either in terms of making meaning like story, internal stuff or getting out and walking in the woods or making up an imaginary world? Like all this stuff feels so abstract, except that I know that it has concrete impact on me. Like it's not.

1:00:30Creative Pep Talk Host:And it has concrete impact on the people that consume the work. And you know that from the work that you consume. Yeah. And yeah, I think if anything I'm taking from this is to remember that that practice is the creative practice. It's easy, especially when you're doing any of it for any monetary compensation or any likes on the internet or whatever. It's very easy to forget that no matter how all that goes, this can be a practice of making meaning and making richness in life.

1:01:04Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. even even now that it's a career thing for me and like i'm signing contracts for next books and stuff like i still have to kick to some degree kick those thoughts out of the room when i'm deciding what i want to do because like what thoughts of what makes the most sense or what might be the most lucrative or like where the market is for something i want make might want to make. Cool. But all of that has to be secondary to something I'm actually enthusiastic about. Partly because of all of my neurodivergent stuff, like I need to care about what I'm doing. And especially at the beginning of a project, I got to feel like a spark of excitement to work on it.

1:01:55Creative Pep Talk Host:100%. Yeah. Anytime we talk about like organizing what project to do, So ease comes into it. And a big part of ease is I am obsessed with this. I want to do this. That makes it easy, right? And I'm not pro or against or whatever. I don't really have a take on Rick Rubin, but I like this one thing I heard him say, which was the audience comes last. I really liked that because he didn't say they're not part of the equation. He put them in a hierarchy. And I liked this thing, you know, You're saying that getting those voices out at the beginning, that's my same experience with when I'm writing or making a project.

1:02:35Creative Pep Talk Host:I always try to say, like, once we have it, I don't care if we look for where this fits in the market. I don't care if we look for, oh, we could, like, buddy up with this direction because that's working. People are interested in that. Fine. I'm up for that. But I don't want it to determine what I'm doing.

1:02:51Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah, absolutely. And part of it for me is like an act of faith that like there is an audience out there for whatever it is that I connect with.

1:03:01Creative Pep Talk Host:And it's faith with your taste. Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:04Jarod K. Anderson:Or just like the big diverse family of humanity. Right. Like nothing that I'm going to think is important enough to spend a whole bunch of life hours on is going to like butt against the backboard with everybody. Like it's going to find its people. and that was a thing I was missing when I was having trouble connecting with my own work is the like thinking of the audience first and then trying to somehow back in to what will make them like me. That's a bad recipe for making stuff. Yeah, terrible and people can sense it.

1:03:40Creative Pep Talk Host:Oh yeah, it's so pandering. Yeah. I know what you'll like, you know, it's very condescending. I like to think of that as, um, uh, I, I didn't do, I went to school in England, so I didn't have general studies. I never did philosophy. So I don't know a ton about Kant, but I do know that he called taste common sense. And the reason why it's a common sensitivity and it's just what you're getting at. It's this idea that if it is doing it for you, you can kind of trust. There are people out there that have that in common sensitivity that, and that's your best bet because it's also an intuitive impossible to pin down thing when it works so you have to tap into it in a emotional

1:04:22Jarod K. Anderson:intuitive way yeah you know what i mean sometimes i think about it with stand-up comedy me too like stand-up comedy works when someone says something out loud and like you laugh partly because suddenly it's like they pulled a piece of dirty laundry out of your house and yeah like because Because there's that spark of recognition in somebody else's like internal, small, everyday life, you know. But like stand-up comedy wouldn't work if we didn't have all of these little invisible threads connecting us in our lives.

1:04:52Creative Pep Talk Host:And it takes that trust of – especially if you're going to bring one of those pieces of dirty laundry out, for it to work, it has to be one that other people aren't pulling out as much or noticing. And that makes it especially vulnerable. That's the taste where you're like, I like this, but this is – I don't see anybody else saying they like this. You know what I mean? It's risky. It's hard to like get that level of muscularity to do that.

1:05:18Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah, and it's not an intellectual thing. Yes, exactly. It's that like instinct thing of like, oh, this connects with me. Oh, like you don't have time. You don't think through a joke, you know. And that's one of the weird things about – I'm not anti-critics at all.

1:05:32Creative Pep Talk Host:I think that there's a, uh, there's, there's a justified reason for that. Um, a lot of the time, but, um, but I do think it, especially people that, uh, don't engage a lot with art. It makes them feel like I have to know why this is good. I have to be able to explain it. Yeah. Um, versus the artist knows, I don't even know why I liked it. I don't even, you know, I can maybe give you reasons or I like to pontificate on that could be this might can, you know, but the best stuff you like is, you know, You didn't taste a bite of something and think, the reason I liked, no, you just liked it. You know what I mean?

1:06:07Creative Pep Talk Host:That's the good stuff.

1:06:09Jarod K. Anderson:Yes. Yeah. I mean, you know, I used to have to write essays of like literary theory. Right. Where it was like, no, no, no, this isn't a matter of taste. This is objectively good because of this argument I'm about to present to you. And I bet it serves you too.

1:06:23Creative Pep Talk Host:It serves you to do both. It's like that opposite of a profound truth. It serves you to go in that headspace too sometimes, I think. but and i don't know i don't know if you'll defend it as much as that but well like the thing i will say is like i i feel i wasn't always there this way but like i feel kind of like

1:06:41Jarod K. Anderson:extending grace to like negative reviews i see of even my own stuff like that guy where i was like yeah i was there once i'm like we're just not in the same spot like and good like i i want it to be a big unpredictable diverse world so that you know that is part of the act of faith of let's figure out what i'm going to hyper focus on next and it'll find its people you know yeah i i read

1:07:07Creative Pep Talk Host:you with that uh last question this feels like really well done in that it's if the book feels kind of like an amazing pilot that could be a special or that'd be cool it meaning like it exists on its own. It works on its own. Yeah. But it also feels like it kind of opens a whole world of a series. Have you, is that intentional?

1:07:30Jarod K. Anderson:It is a whole world. Okay. Like I did 70 podcast episodes that take place in this world and have infinite more ideas.

1:07:39Creative Pep Talk Host:If it, so it could have a follow-up.

1:07:41Jarod K. Anderson:Yeah. I mean, the novel I'm writing right now is in the same world. And I even built an Easter egg into strange animals about the thing that my editor doesn't even know that I'm

1:07:52Creative Pep Talk Host:I'm poking at right now you know that's this is where it gets fun yeah dude yeah just like the

1:07:58Jarod K. Anderson:interconnected like especially setting up a premise of like there's hidden kinds of nature and they interact with the real world in unpredictable ways and some people are experts on them but like you know a thing I'm playing with is like yeah they're crypto naturalists but they're also witches. Yeah. And their lens through which they view the strange nature is different, like different jargon, different terminology for the same thing, you know? And so I like to play with, with that. Yeah. Okay.

1:08:27Creative Pep Talk Host:My, my brain is going all kinds of places with that. Very interesting. I'm excited to see that when it comes out. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks for the book. I absolutely loved it. it's my taste in a way that I don't even know if I've experienced before. So thanks.

1:08:46Jarod K. Anderson:Thanks. Thanks so much for having me. And thanks for reading. Yeah.

1:09:05Creative Pep Talk Host:our creative call to adventure is called see the pattern and this is what it's all about this is not something you're going to create it's going to be seen differently you're going to do a mission to see patterns in your life. Now, this is commonly called synchronicity. In the spirit of Jared K. Anderson, the crypto naturalist, we're not going to, we don't need to. I'm happy if you want to see synchronicity, things, meaningful patterns, patterns in your life, these things showing up over and over, I'm happy for you to take them as mysteriously and spiritually as you want to see those coincidences.

1:09:50Creative Pep Talk Host:But I don't think that you have to have a mystic view on life to see value in these patterns and see meaning in these patterns. Like Jared K. Anderson, there is a meaning making. You can look at these patterns and these events and these encounters that you have in life as an inkblot test, as a way of being like, why, this is something that reoccurred in my life, but there's lots of reoccurring things in my life. Why did I notice this? Why is, pay attention to what you're paying attention to. You're seeing like, oh, why is it that today I'm noticing all the squirrels? Maybe it's ADHD, like me and Jared, I don't know.

1:10:32Creative Pep Talk Host:But what is grabbing your attention on a reoccurring basis? Next week, we're going to do some art around this. But for this week, just try to tap into that. Just try to notice that. For me, it looked like doing this for three days. For three days, I had to set my intention to be looking out at the universe, looking out at my world and saying, what is repeating? What is showing up? And some things showed up, you know, possums were one of them. another one was people mistaking me for living somewhere totally different like oh I thought you're from this place that happened in this very bizarre way over and over again and then instead of yes you can be like okay what's the universe tell me I'm game for that go for that but you don't have to you can say what is it about this that is so noticeable and remarkable to my brain how can I work with that how can I write about that your job as a creator is to create meaning from that.

1:11:31Creative Pep Talk Host:You know, sometimes you'll see these people and they're looking through history or ancient texts and they're reinterpreting, interpreting it and finding patterns and creating conspiracies and all that. And I think, yeah, you could do that or you could be an artist, you could be a writer and you could find those patterns and you could create those, connect those dots and be like, oh, this is a story. This is the callback. This is the full circle moment. It's the same energy. And so whether you want to see your life as this mystic unraveling from some higher intelligence, that's great. That's fine.

1:12:04Creative Pep Talk Host:More power to you. But if you don't have a higher power, there's still power in noticing what you're noticing, seeing the pattern. So my call to adventure for you this week is to notice. Notice the things that are coming up over and over, over this week. And it might take you a few days of just showing, like, you know, going to bed at night, waking up in the morning, just being like, hey, let's look for what's showing up. And then that can be creative fodder. That can be something for us to wrestle with and think about and use as symbolism and messaging in our life and in our work and find that meaning.

1:12:43Creative Pep Talk Host:I find this practice really, really valuable. It's been really inspiring me since I had this chat with Jared. Massive thanks to Jared for making time for this. and hope to have you back sometime. Everybody go check out Strange Animals. Link in the show notes to that book. Highly recommend it. I was right in. Very juicy, super fun. Some rich philosophy, some stuff that moved me, mental health stuff. Also just fun, weird creatures. I'm all about that. Loved it. And yeah, so go check it out. Thanks to Sophie Miller for being an editor and producer on this episode. She really helped me think about how to frame this one and how to approach it, putting it out there.

1:13:26Creative Pep Talk Host:Thanks to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for audio edits, video edits, sound design, animation. Thanks to Yoni Wolf of the band Y for our theme music and soundtrack. And thanks to all of you for listening. Till we speak again, stay pepped up.

1:13:57Creative Pep Talk Host:Not all darkness is dangerous. Sometimes, it's the doorway to becoming whole. On the brand new podcast, The Shadow Sessions, hosted by me, Hibab Al-Faqe, a psychologist and trauma expert, we shed light on the hidden corners of the human experience. Through raw, unfiltered conversations from the edge of healing, The Shadow Sessions invites you to do the deeper work that leads to real change. Follow The Shadow Sessions wherever you're listening now.

1:14:24Jarod K. Anderson:Sometimes it feels like red and blue states are just as divergent as post-World War II East and West Germany. So what can the U.S. learn from German political history in order to create a more perfect union? Find out on the new season of The Future of Our Former Democracy, the Signal Award-winning podcast from more equitable democracy and large media, hosted by me, Colin Cole and Heather Villanueva. It's time to rethink democracy, so follow The Future of Our Former Democracy wherever you get your podcasts.