560 - Get Back to Passion, Ignore the Internet, Reorient to "Bad" Creative Feelings and Find Your Next Season

0:00This is not an ad. It's a gift. I'm going to be at the Icon Illustration Conference this year in July doing a handful of different things. And I asked them if they could give me a discount for the listeners of the show because I would love to see you there and hang out at the after parties and whatnot. And they let me have a$100 discount to share with you, which is just so generous and so awesome. If you're an illustrator, I highly recommend going to Icon. It's been a magical experience. The times that I've gone, even the first time in 2014 that I went, it was a very scary leap. but so worth it.

0:31Go to icon.creativepeptalk.com to learn more. The discount is automatically applied to that link. Icon.creativepeptalk.com. Hope to see you there. Are you creatively hungry for something that you just don't even know what it is? You're creatively hungry for you don't know what. I just know I need something, feeling needy creatively. I know I need a boost. I know I need an insight. I know I need a fresh perspective, but I just don't even know what it is, so I can't even pick an episode I can't even find any book or resource that's gonna help me get out of it cuz I don't even know what it is if that's you this is your freaking episode it's a smorgasbord it's a grab bag of different ideas so something in this is gonna do it for you we're gonna explore a handful of different things that may be happening in your creatively creative emotional state or in your creative journey obstacles you're facing so something on this episode is gonna hit and help pep you up and help you feel like making stuff again I know that I from go even just going through this I am just raring to get raring I don't know if that's a term I'm just really wanting to get back to my desk and make stuff so yeah I think it's gonna work for you this is the ADHD grab bag episode I hope that you are super pumped by the end of it and at the end of it i'm going to come back with a call to adventure called seasonably appropriate season seasonably seasonally appropriate and it's about finding what you need in the season the creative season that you're currently in because what helped you in the last season unfortunately can't help you now you need something fresh you need something appropriate to where you are in this moment that you're listening to it i'm going to talk about how to do that We're going to move through this list.

2:27Something in this episode is going to pep you out of your gourd like I have been. And yeah, let's do it.

2:35Andy J. Pizza:On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost. But don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk.

2:53I'm always trying to up my game creatively. Recently, it's been comedy writing for my books and talks, and there's only really one place I know of where the literal best in the biz share all their tips and tricks, and it's Masterclass. The class with writer, director, producer Judd Apatow is especially great. I've been listening to it on audio mode while driving and doing chores. One thing that he said that I instantly started to apply was prioritizing FaceTime with the people working in creative roles that you wish you had. It erases your limiting beliefs when you see that they are human just like you.

3:28This was true for me meeting working illustrators when I was in college, but now I'm like, how can I interview people on this podcast that are where I want to go next? I know a lot of listeners to this show are interested in upping their storytelling game, so maybe the class learn how to tell a story with Big Short and Moneyball author Michael Lewis could be a good starting point for you. I love that three out of four Masterclass members say they feel inspired every time they watch. 83 % say they have applied ideas from the classes to their real life, and every new membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

4:00Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least 15 % off the annual membership at masterclass.com slash pep talk. That's 15 % off masterclass.com slash pep talk. Head to masterclass.com slash pep talk to see the latest offer. Last summer, me and the fam went on a once in a lifetime trip to Italy. It was amazing, but very hot. And I had to learn how to dress for that kind of heat. You want looser, breathable fabrics, which I hadn't really ever thought about. And I started carrying that learning and look back to my wardrobe here in the States for the summer.

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6:02And it's for those moments when you aren't sure what you need. You're like, I know I need something. I can't even pick a specific topic because I'm not positive I even know what I'm looking for. I just need some pep. I need some perspective. I need to something I don't even know what it is. That's what these episodes are about. It's just a handful of things that have been pepping me up and exciting me. And I really like the idea of doing five things in one episode. So that's what this is. Number one, the first thing that maybe, maybe you need is art for art's sake. Now, this is something that is tough for me because I am a professional creative.

6:50I have the pressure of providing for my family with my creative work. And so I often forget that in order for this whole thing to work, I need to be tapping into what I would make even if I wasn't being paid to make it. Even if I don't end up getting paid to make it, I have to be in touch with that or I lose my authentic connection to my work. And I think this is especially important to think about when the economy is not the greatest. Because now, it's important if you are a professional artist or a professional creative person or your income depends on your creativity in any way. It's important because that's the moment when it's hardest to remember this.

7:35But it's the core. It is the essential piece. Yes, if you are backed into a corner financially, you do have to figure that out. And I highly recommend you figure something out, something small, regular, a part-time job, a full-time job, if necessary, a client on retainer, whatever it is. It might not feel like it makes all the difference because it's not going to solve all of your problems, but just getting something that drips in, that's regular, that gives you a sense of like, I am doing something that I know pays off literally and money, that will help ease some of that pressure and get in touch with that part of you that you must be in touch with, which is I want to make this because I'm excited about it, because I care, because I would do it whether anybody would pay me or not.

8:23That is the heart of your practice. And so it's hard for me to stay in tune with that, especially as I've monetized all my hobbies. And yes, I feel sometimes very lucky and privileged to be in that scenario. But then sometimes I realize unless I have something that I am willing to trade a little bit of sleep. I am a big believer in sleep. So I'm not saying just don't sleep. I'm just saying a little bit of sleep or a little bit of Netflix or a little bit of doom scrolling. Like what, what of those things that are easy to fall into and give your time to little bit of video games. Am I, what am I willing to not play a video game for this month?

9:00If I allow myself to do whatever creative thing I want to do, that's a litmus test for me to like making sure I'm doing stuff that I would do whether I got paid to do it or not. And this is especially true, especially relevant in times where the economy isn't great, which it's not. Because like I said, if the pressure's on you, it's really, really hard to remember that. And then if the pressure's not on you yet, let's say you haven't, maybe you never want to make this your profession or you're really far off from that, or you don't know if it's even possible. Back in 2008, when we hit that recession, I just graduated college, thankfully, luckily, into that recession.

9:40And I'd had a lot of like little breaks, lots of little clients, a lot of positive momentum. And then it just kind of disappeared overnight. And for a minute, you know, I got a job at the youth shelter, juvenile detention center. For a minute, I took down my website. I put up an under construction page. But I took down my website and I really genuinely thought that I gave up on being an illustrator because it just wasn't happening. I tried. I got into that mode of like, how can I make money on this? How can I do this? And all of my work was coming from that place. And it was deeply inauthentic because of that.

10:12I wasn't passionate. I wasn't interested. It wasn't connected to. The most interesting thing about your creative work is that it is your perspective. It is your passion. It is what lights you up. that's what gives it so much weight and power and so as soon as you switch over to trying to just make it to make a make a dime it loses that and so i spent six months like being like i gotta get this back i gotta figure this out i gotta get some jobs i gotta make all this work that somehow bring something in and it was the most it was the least interesting work that i ever made and so it wasn't until i genuinely gave up and i even spent a few months really not making anything really moving on until I was like, wait, I actually love making illustration.

10:58I love making art. I want to do this even if it doesn't turn into anything financial. And that was the place where I started making this daily drawing project of these characters that ended up becoming the New York Times bestselling book, The Invisible Things. It's just Invisible Things. There's no the. But that came from that place of like, what would I draw every day if it was just for me? And so when economically there isn't a big incentive, that's the perfect time to think about your innate, your intrinsic motivation. What would you make with the only reward was enjoying it? If the only reward was what my buddy Dan Casaro of Young Jerks Design Company says, like the only reward was like you take a screenshot of the piece that you made and you just carry it around your pocket and look at it on your phone a couple times that day.

11:51That's a great reward. That's what you want to make for. And so maybe that's you. Maybe that's what you need. You need to think about, hey, this summer, this season I'm in, maybe you're listening to the winter, whatever. This next season, I need to once and for all let go of the extrinsic reward of adoration or money or fame or connection or whatever. And I need to get in tune with, what's the thing I'm going to set my alarm 30 minutes early this morning for? so I can make a little thing that just kind of sits in my pocket all day that I'm excited about. That might be you. That might be what you need.

12:29I hope it is. And yeah, let's move on to the next one.

12:41Is this what you need? Put the pickaxe down. Put the freaking pickaxe down. What does it mean? It means put the pickaxe down. I'm just going to keep saying it and pick up the guitar, pick up the pencil, pick up the paintbrush, pick up the utensil of making, of slowly creating. Put the pickaxe down. What's the pickaxe? It's what you do to mine for gold. It's the gold rush. It is the get rich quick scheme. And this is a concept that I think is incredibly important to internalize as a creator because it's easy to fall into buying pickaxes in a gold rush and not realizing that the people that are making the most money are the people making the pickaxes and selling them rather than actually looking for gold.

13:35And so there's a lot of nuance to this point, but I think it's important. And where I think this applies today is this notion of social media and gaining followers. Is that what you see, I'm very suspicious, I'm very suspicious of the value of social media followers in this day and age, especially on Instagram, especially on TikTok. in the age of short form video, Patreon, the head of Patreon, Jack, said that this is the death of the follower. It's the idea that we don't actually use social media in a social way anymore. We rarely consume things that come from people that we follow. And what that looks like is, it means there's very little to be gained by having a follower in this day and age.

14:33other than just the social proof, which is something, it's not nothing, but you should be very suspicious about how the people that have 500 ,000 followers, a million followers are selling you pickaxes to get the gold of more followers. If most of the benefit is selling courses on how to get followers, that's them selling pickaxes for the gold rush. if that was a destination that was worthy in and of itself in and of itself then they wouldn't be so focused on that and so there's no there there and that's why i'm very suspicious of putting my creative energy with that pickaxe into that gold rush and so i i told you this was going to require a little nuance and this is why because i actually think i'm a huge believer in teaching.

15:30I'm a huge believer in coaching. I actually think these are two of the most essential jobs and roles that someone can play in society if it's done in the proper way, if it's not done in the gold rush sort of way, selling you pickaxe sort of way. I am just a huge believer in teachers. and although for my journey personally it has always been of the utmost importance to stay both in the field creatively making my own creative stuff and in the lab on this podcast teaching talking about creative practice it has been so important that i continue to make work for clients i continue to make my best work with my books i continue to make merch and make art and posters and paintings.

16:22I have been doing that since day one. And I dedicated myself. I said, for me personally, this is only going to stay relevant. The podcast is only going to be relevant if I have that connection. If this is still, if I'm still mining for gold, if I'm still out there mining for creative gold, soon as I decide this is no longer worth it, I can't do the podcast. I can't talk about it anymore. But I just don't think that'll ever be true for me because for me, creative work is just completely and utterly essential in all sorts of ways. But I just want to highlight, I just want to be really nuanced here.

16:54I'm not saying that if you can't do, teach. I'm not saying that. I actually think that it's important to underline that I heard Seth Godin, the marketing expert, talk about this, like one of the best swim coaches, Olympic swim coaches of all time, never competed as a swimmer because what his gift was was seeing the pattern seeing the way that you needed to get someone to train that is a particular type of value so i'm not diminishing or denigrating any person that teaches and doesn't practice exactly what they teach i i'm a i'm a huge believer in school in education and teachers have changed my life so i'm not putting them down I'm saying be careful If what they're teaching you is how to get rich quick and the way that they got rich quick was Teaching people how to get rich quick And so we're never doing that on this show Every single thing it's sometimes I think it might be discouraging on this show because Everything that I recommend you do is slow growth.

17:57It compounds with interest the more that you do it The more effort the way you show up over time you will get to interesting places if you do this stuff but the last thing it'll be is quick and the last thing you'll be is rich. If that's what you wanna be, don't make art for a living, okay? I do believe that there are ways to approach this where you can thrive as a creative professional but it'll never be easy and it'll never be quick. That's a calling, you know, that's a dedicated thing where you are doing art for art's sake where you would do it whether you could make it as a pro or not. And the reason I bring this up is just because it's so prevalent.

18:38The way that there was a period of time where having a lot of followers really was valuable to creative people and we got hooked on that and then it just kind of easily slid into this moment where these platforms really benefit from you thinking that if I pour all of my creative spirit into this app, it's gonna pay off. They are loving that. They're all about that. They are very pro you feeling that way. whether it's true or not. That's the pickaxe that they're selling you. Maybe this is what you need. You need to ask yourself, is this thing that I'm pickaxing, is it native to the work that I want to make?

19:21Meaning, do people show up to this app, to this market, to this product, looking for the kind of creative light that I shine? meaning a lot of people go to short form video to be entertained, to be, to laugh. So if you're a comedian, boom, you're there. That's a great place to invest your time. If you're a musician, maybe not so much. That's not really where people go to discover music. Are there exceptions to the rule of people that have gotten big on social media and then got a career out of it? Yes. But what you don't want to do is there's a, there's a preacher down South that my dad likes named Andy Stanley.

20:00And he says, you can't plan on being the exception. The exception is not a plan. The plan is based on a pattern. And so if you want to have a good plan, what you need is a pattern. You need to say, okay, are there five to 10 people getting significant value out of pickaxing in that direction? And if not, I need to go find where they're searching, where they're digging, where they're investing. And it might not be the thing that's the hot new thing for the culture right now. And so highly recommend putting the pickaxe down.

20:55Man, I can't tell you how badly I wish I had been able to find a great therapist that accepted my insurance back in my mid-20s. I was figuring out I was ADHD. I was struggling in my career and struggling to support a new family. And finding a good therapist that I could afford would have been a total game changer. I'm almost 40 now and I've been in therapy in some capacity for the past few years. And it has made such a massive impact on my mental health. I truly wish that everybody could do it. And that is why I'm thrilled to tell you about Rula. Rula is an online healthcare company that allows you to quickly and easily find therapists that accept your insurance.

21:32Literally, the first thing you do on their site is put your zip code in and your insurance into the search bar and Rula asks you a few simple questions about the care that you're looking for and boom, delivers lots of options of therapists that take your insurance. Rula patients typically pay$15 per session when they use their insurance and I love how this is making therapy accessible to more people. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit rula.com slash pep talk to get started. That's R-U-L-A.com slash pep talk.

22:09You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. 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. 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.

22:48and I built it myself quite easily with Squarespace. You can check it out at AndyJPizza.com if you wanna check that out, what I did with it. It doesn't look template-y, and it screams my creative brand. 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 pep talk 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.

23:30Number three, maybe what you need is bad feelings. Who wants some bad feelings? Feelings that just feel bad. Who likes that? Not me, I hate bad feelings. But a lot of this podcast is about realizing that some of the quote unquote bad feelings, meaning they're hard to experience, are a part of the creative journey. So this is something that I've talked about a lot on the show, but I want to give a different example of this that's been true in my own life recently. But one of the things I've talked about is this feeling that the creative journey, the creative process doesn't always feel great. And often I feel like being a creative person is kind of like being a wrestler or a boxer.

24:20Like you have to kind of on some level enjoy getting punched in the face. Maybe you don't enjoy it, but you tolerate it because it's your passion. It's part of the game. If you can't accept that getting punched in the face is part of the game, You can't be a boxer and you can't be a creative either because getting punched in the face is part of it. I actually think genuinely it's one of the things that makes it interesting. I feel like there is an element of making creative work that is a little bit like being a gambling addict. Now, I don't want to diminish that. I know that's one of the most serious addictions and I have compassion for anybody listening that has that addiction.

25:01But there's an element of creative practice where hopefully you get good enough to sometimes win the jackpot as you're making stuff. But the cool thing, the interesting thing is that the most, if you're ADHD and you need the dopamine of the chase, like you need to know that sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. The best, highest form of dopamine is when that reward is not, is intermittent. It's not always happening. Yes, social media people, tech companies have taken advantage of this. They give you, if when you post, sometimes you get tons of engagement, sometimes you don't, you're going to be more likely to post because there's something about this roll of the dice that gives you more dopamine.

25:47And the fact of the matter is, I think that the creative journey is one of the most purely positive versions of that. is that every piece of work you make is not going to be your best. Now, most of the time making art, if you can figure out how to not put so much pressure on yourself, even just the act of it can be intrinsically rewarding in terms of it being meditative, in terms of it getting in the flow state, in terms of it calming your nervous system. There's so many just rewards you're going to get. And then sometimes intermittently, you're going to hit the jackpot and be like, oh my God, I made something that I'm super proud of.

26:26And that feels just incredible. And then sometimes intermittently you get a high response from the audience as well. And that's a dangerous one to mix into it. But hey, I'd be lying if I wasn't saying that that doesn't also feel good and isn't part of the process, this connective piece of making creative work. And so I think the bad feelings, the disappointment, that is part of what makes this a rich pursuit. But let's get to, and actually another bad feeling that I talk about a lot on this show is like Steven Pressfield talks about, there's a resistance to making the art. There is a internal battle to making art and creative work, to creating anything, whether you're a creator or a creative or an artist, whatever, however you think about any way that you make stuff, there is a challenge.

27:17And I always like to highlight, like, if it feels wrong, it doesn't mean that you're going the wrong way. One of my favorite analogies is this idea that making creative work is kind of like putting in a USB stick, where the only right way to do that is to put it in, realize you put it in wrong. There's some resistance. Flip it, put it in, try to put it in again, and you realize, oh, there's more resistance. This is the actual wrong way. Flip it back and put it in the right way and realize that's the right level of resistance. That the resistance is absolutely part of it, no matter how you do it.

27:49It's not going to just feel flowy and positive and good. And in fact, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is the researcher, who it was, the late researcher that made the book Flow, he talked about like the flow state that the high, he believed it was the highest like emotional state possible. The requirement of that would be that it's 70 % mastery, meaning 70 % like, ooh, I'm just like crushing it in my comfort zone and 30 % challenge that in even in the highest form of joy and reward that you get from making the art requires some of that challenge. Some of that, what we would think of as bad feelings.