562 - Show the Real You, Why the Death of Insta isn't All Bad, Do Your Thing by Being Part of Something Bigger & ADHD

33:29I honestly, like, as we were talking about the Instagram thing, I was getting pumped because I feel whenever this, uh, whenever the AI started really hitting probably about 2022, I started thinking about it a lot. I was like, I, at first I was obviously scared. Second, I was like, uh, actually every time something like this happens, there's like a counterculture. There's like a backlash. And, and I thought, I think that's true. And then now in 2026, I'm like, we're going baby because the indie bands are getting interesting again. And the commencement speeches, I don't know if you've seen these videos of these commencement speeches.

34:12No, no. They're so, I highly recommend this. They're so good. Like it will warm your heart. Like there are these people, they're like talking about AI and their commencement speech at the graduate college graduation. and they're getting booed by the entire crowd. It's nuts. It's nuts. Now, I am, I try to be a little bit more, every single thing that happens now instantly becomes binary. It becomes either for or against. You're in this camp or that camp. I don't really, I can see, I don't also want to be the person like, I'm not in any camp. I have my own camps, okay? And I'm generally in the anti-AI because I'm not interested in AI.

34:53And I also think it has, There's just so many problems that we need. Like if I felt confident that we would regulate it properly, then maybe I would be less anti-AI. I think there's probably – for me, there's probably 98 bad things, two good things. I don't know. So it doesn't, but I get, the reason I get sensitive, like going railing against it is because every person I know that's not a freelancer is in a scenario in their job where they're forced to use AI. And so I just think, again, that's just another thing that's going to separate us. Most people don't have the privilege of just leaving their job because they don't like AI.

35:40like so anyway i'm not trying to like shame anybody or and some people are interested like anyway i'm going way deep on that it's not what i meant to do we could talk more about it if you want to but it's whatever you want but what i was gonna say was um i think it's important to realize like yes being yourself is a big part of it but it's just as much a part of it to be like the movement that you love and be part of the scene and be connected to it even if it's not the coolest thing um absolutely and then the other thing i was gonna say was that the 2 000 followers. Yes. In the grand scheme of Instagram, it's nothing, but I know people that have 4 ,000 followers that make a hell of a lot more money than people with 2 million followers.

36:19And so, and you have to, you always have to think about where the incentives are for these tech companies. It's in the best interest of the tech companies for them to convince you that 1 million followers equals fame and money. Guess what? It doesn't. I know it doesn't. If you're a really savvy business person, you might be able to turn that into something decent. But it's not guaranteed. It's, yeah. So it's just important that, because, you know, if you know how to, you, if you know, if you have 2000 of the right followers, their client, their clients, art directors, creative directors, you are good.

36:57And guess what? A lot of those people love to discover the diamond in the rough. That's their job. They're like, nobody even knows about this genius. They love that. So, you know, it's important to highlight that. I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree with that. With the podcast, kids' books, and talks, writing has become as much a part of my job as illustration. And it can feel really hard sometimes. But I recently heard this thing from Goosebumps writer R.L. Stine that really shifted things in my mind. He said, writing is fun. Like, go sit down and have some fun. Like, that's what it's about.

37:33Don't listen to all those writers that say that it's torture. He went on to share three easy places to find ideas. He calls this the idea store, and it means mining your daily experience, your memories from the past, and your imagination. This made the prospect of returning to the page so much less intimidating. All of this was from R.L. Stine's class on masterclass on writing for young audiences, something that I know a lot of you are working on. There are 200 more classes like this, and for every other area of your work and life, chock full of little moments you didn't know you needed. Three in four members feel inspired every time they watch.

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38:41Man, 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.

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39:55You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. I mean, these companies and Meta and Google and everyone else, they kind of made us believe that the numbers, the followers are what matters in the end. But, you know, you can't have a million and not really be earning the amount of money to have like a regular life. But I guess that's what they need. And we have to play into it somehow, keeping the common sense thinking as well. But yeah, meta and everything is not the most ideal thing. And I was also talking with, well, again, illustrators. You guys think similarly, I think.

40:47Really? Yeah, I mean, the last guest on the podcast, Luis, he's also anti-socialist. social media the guy from the belgium this morning christophe devas was also kind of against it he doesn't even go to instagram he doesn't have his own thing so um i mean you do you have so many followers and it's a different scale but the opinion about the social media and the importance of social media is quite the same and i couldn't agree more because those numbers are not really what matters in the end because if it doesn't bring you any satisfaction if you were just chasing the follower number it's not really a fun thing to do so yeah especially when you're a freelancer and you can choose what you want to do and you can pick your own work you can you know create things that you love and chasing numbers on the other side is so such a boring thing to do and not fun at all.

41:50So I, I absolutely love that. Um, go ahead, go on. I was going to say, and I think it gets back to how I think about the word taste. I really think about it, um, which was my own little philosophical leap to, to reframe like the meaning of this idea. But, um, how I think about taste is it's something about, you know, it's kind of the, the, the palate of your soul. It's like your taste buds of your soul is like, what lights you up? What, what, what do you have a, um, a taste for? And I think that that, uh, while you shouldn't be chasing relevance, um, or the trend or popularity you on the counterbalance of that, you can't just do what you've always loved because things expire, things lose their flavor.

42:39If you eat the same thing every day, eventually you're going to hate it. Like you have to listen to your own taste. And that includes, um, things like, and what looks, what listening to your own taste also looks like, uh, what are you consuming and gravitating towards? And so when it comes to art, are you finding and discovering art on Instagram? No, probably not much, not at least not what you used to, uh, do. And the thing, the reason I bring it up is because the taste thing, what I like about is it forces you, if you let that be your guide, it forces you to be in touch with your body and yourself and your mind and really reacting to things and being and noticing like, Ooh, this used to taste like, even in music, I think about this a lot.

43:30Like there were times, there was a time when, uh, TLC, the band, the girl group, um, I was, I loved him when I was a kid. then there was a period of time where like no scrubs and that energy was like all a joke it just felt like a goofy thing and then a few years ago i was like dude nothing sounds better than tlc like for some reason this is just like i love this and then and a similar thing happened to like 90s pop rock like there was a time when i liked goo goo dolls then i hated them and then now i'm like dude there's i kind of am digging what is this i'm loving this yeah and so you have to be in tune with that taste thing because the reason I bring all that up is because there was a time where follower count did matter on Instagram.

44:19It did matter. That's why I pursued it so hard. It's why I built a following there. It's because when you, when they showed your work to the followers and you're in, and the people were looking for what I did, that was the best thing to do. But because of, you know, being in touch with taste and being like, okay, how did my consumption change? How did my taste change? And being aware of that, like, I eventually realized like, oh, oh, Meta is trying to like get me hooked on the drug and then up the ante. And now they're like, yeah, now let me teach you how to have a TV show that costs you tons of time and money, doesn't really pay off in any particular way, but really lines the pockets of the tech company.

45:01And you're like, wait, this doesn't taste so good anymore. I need to like, I need to be able to, be in touch with my own taste and intuition and then make those shifts when I need to make them. Yeah, I absolutely, absolutely agree. I have like a list of things I wanted to ask you and we are already like 40 minutes talking and I love the conversation, don't get me wrong, but there's so many things to ask you. So we'll have to schedule like another interview for another time. Yeah, all right. Definitely. there's so many things that you publish you are really active and I love that and you talk about the things that are really interesting to me there's one thing you are actually close collaborating with your wife on so many different things and you guys are like constantly changing ideas working on the same things and everything you publish books together and everything um how does that dynamic work because i worked with my husband and you know when it comes to creativity there are always some clashes i mean we are different people and it's completely normal and then i talked recently to um bryoni gomez and armin vet from the brand new conference and yeah they actually tried you know they work together as well only two of them but they try to separate their roles in the business.

46:33How do you two manage things? I think that's a great insight because it took us a long time to realize that our roles are different and that that's really key. I will say like it does often look like arguments. It looks like like it's not. there's two pieces to it. There's two reasons why we do it. The first reason is the work is better. The work is better. And so that's the first reason. The second reason is when we can do it right, it just feels great. It's an amazing experience to do something creative with somebody who you're that close to and and that invested in and also the other piece of it is the reason i think it works is because we are familiar with arguing because we're married we know how to argue we know how to argue and so you know i've done tons of collaboration like i think a lot about like the difference between a feature like on Spotify where this artist and that artist got together and made a song.

47:50That's almost always, if it's stuff, if there are artists you like, that's almost always fun. Like you enjoy it, but it's rarely great. It's usually fun, not great. It's kind of like a mashup, whatever. I've done tons of projects like that with people And it's fun, rarely great. Whereas if you think about not to at all compare myself to the Beatles or any of us to the Beatles, but if you think about that classic example, that's what I think collaboration at its best looks like in that they're fighting. and the work is better because they're fighting and I really like but also it's one of the reasons why they quit and I think about that a lot because I heard James Acaster tell this story he's one of my favorite comedians I didn't need to give you that information I'm just sourcing where it came from he was talking about Foo Fighters and Dave Grohl and he was saying that now i don't i can't speak to this because i'm not really a foo fighters fan i don't really know their catalog so i'm just i'm just i'm just quoting him um mainly because in some bizarre universe i don't want to hurt anybody's feelings if if dave grohl somehow happened to hear it which is ridiculous but i just i don't know anyway it's so dumb sorry um but um he said like the first two foo fighters albums were really difficult and really hard and then after that they were like you know what let's just have fun and then all the albums after that were tons of fun and james acaster is like but the only two good foo fighters albums are the first and so to me there's something about like this is so much of my podcast is about this guess what a lot of making art sucks a lot of it's hard but that is one of the things that makes it so satisfying it's and this is my favorite lesson from my dad.

49:49Uh, he, when I was like, life is so hard. And he was like, yeah. And he's such a positive person. I was like, why are you agreeing with that? I thought you would like push back on that. And so then I'm like, I have to take it to the next level. Cause you're not giving me what I need. I'm like, yeah. And it sucks. And he's like, no, life is hard, but it doesn't mean it's bad. Hard and bad are not the same thing. And I think for me with creative stuff that applies in a huge way. Like so much of it is hard and good. And I like to think of it like, Oh, I'm like a wrestler. I'm like a boxer. Like the pain is part of what's fun about this.

50:24Um, and so, and so with the collaboration, there was a lot of times early on, we were trying to make books together. We tried a bunch before we ever ended up publishing anything. So like for years, and she's always kind of been involved in different ways. Like we're always throwing ideas around talking. Um, but there was a lot of it, like the, one of the things that put us off and it's not to say that it's right for everybody, but I like to tell the story because I didn't know, like just because it's hard, just because you're fighting doesn't mean it's not right. Um, and the same goes for when you're working with yourself, just because it's hard, just because you're fighting yourself doesn't mean this isn't the project.

50:58It's not all supposed to be easy. Um, and so, uh, yeah, so there's a lot of like, honestly, we've gotten a lot better as we've known our roles. We have a better workflow. It doesn't get as personal as it used to get. It used to get much more personal. But we still annoy each other a lot about it because you're fighting. But you realize, then you realize like, oh, this is what makes it work is that I'm fighting for this thing that matters to me. And this is what I think about, I have to imagine. Again, I'm not comparing myself to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, okay? These are the examples we have and they're great examples but if you have you think like paul mccartney cares about the pop that's what he cares about john lennon cares about the art they are going to fight and what's going to be awesome is they're going to have pop art it's going to work and so for me and sophie it's like i care about the idea of the story and like the heart of it in the in the big picture how this like the three act uh joke kind of equation to it that's the most that's mostly what I care about.

52:04She cares about all the details and all of that, like making it come to life with all the realness and the word choice and all that. And I, we're, you know, for the longest time, we're just like, no, that's not what it's about. But then you have to realize like, oh, if we're both, um, you know, mindful about these two areas, they'll both work and it'll be better. Um, and so yeah, we learned that and I've learned like, Oh, I'm a real like generator of stuff. Um, she does generate stuff, but she's more of a like problem solver. And so that also is a thing where we might have a conversation that leads to me like writing a bunch of stuff, which leads to me passing it to her and her like ripping it to shreds and then you know it's difficult it's difficult um but if you can't if you're with someone that you can argue with you're less likely to get that like just fun feature kind of collab and more yeah yeah deeper kind of deeper connection yeah and and better work and i definitely agree and because uh i do uh type design on one side and it's kind kind of mostly my work and mostly only me working on that.

53:23But every now and then my husband, because he's in the creative industry as well and does design and everything, when it comes to, you know, the preview images and everything, he jumps in. And even though I kind of, you know, this is my work and I kind of feel resistance towards, you know, accepting things. But when you actually think about things that he's suggesting, they always improve the work. And it's not because, you know, he wants to be the main thing or whatever, but he really, really, really does it so well. And yesterday we finished the project and that's about to be published today later.

54:01And so it's really good. And we do fight. I mean, it's, it's, but you have to learn how to fight when it's about business and then stop when it's, you know, personal life and everything else. So I absolutely love that. um one other thing i wanted to well two more things yeah sorry uh there's one thing that you wrote last year about perfectionism on your sub stack and i definitely love that part it's a really nice piece you wrote about the to-do lists and everything and like doing perfect illustrations perfect books perfect everything that you are actually trying to write imperfectly in front of those things um how much did that i don't know trying to be perfect cost you in your creative career cost me so much in my art and in my life and it's a lesson i have to learn over and over again for all kinds of reasons.

55:07I think, you know, part of it is if you're ADHD and you're in deep in the ADHD, uh, neurodivergent social media, short form video thing space, you've heard about this rejection sensitivity dysphoria. So I have this deep sensitivity to rejection. Um, and so I find that that's what drives my perfectionism because I don't want to be criticized. I don't want to be called out. Um, speaking of fighting, that's where a lot of that fighting comes from, from my side where I'm just so, I'm so defensive about my stuff because I don't want to be per, I don't want to perceive, perceive being criticized. Um, and so I had to be mindful of that.

55:46Uh, and so what that ends up looking like is, um, I will try to build my life really small so that I can do everything perfectly. So I can do like five things this week and I'll do them all perfectly so that I can, you know, pass with flying colors. But the problem with that is, again, I'm ADHD. I require loads of stimulation in my life. I need to have tons of stuff. Or when I do successfully get things down to doing five things a week, I am so miserable and so lonely and so depressed because I need so much more action than that. And I realized this came That episode came from watching my 17-year-old daughter.

56:33She was doing all this theater at school and then doing school, and she was doing so much that she was just doing a messy job of everything. And I was like – I was tempted to be like, all right, let's shut down theater and let's focus on what matters. And I was like, well, if she does that, she might actually do worse at school because she's unhappy. happy uh and so i thought you know what i think the answer is doing both imperfectly and then i realized like oh this has been the thing i've been working on for myself for years for years i was like how do i do less how do i do less how do i gotta pair all this back because i'm messing up and i realized like no no no if i do less because i have had moments of that i mess up because i'm depressed because i'm struggling you know all that um and so and perfect's boring anyway we will This is the amazing thing about AI.

57:28We are never going to love perfect ever again. It's so good. I love it. I'm so messy and so chaotic. It's just like I feel like I'm going to enter my heyday because it's a time for the messy chaos and the humanity and the imperfection. And so I've realized like, oh, when I do my to-do list, I have to remember that I have to remember not to write in invisible ink perfectly, do the dishes, perfectly, do the sub stack post perfectly because I realize, oh, I'm always implying that to myself. and so yeah that was a huge shift and it actually cost me a lot in that because I would make my world so small I would end up becoming less more socially anxious because I would do less and I would have I'd be you know stuck in my room just working all the time and I need the vibrancy of lots of stuff and the only way to do that is to accept like I'm not going to do it perfectly if I mess up and it affects somebody else I'm going to to apologize and I'm going to try to make it right.

58:33It's not an excuse just to phone in everything, but I do think that that's something that I've had to accept. And I think it's, and the great news is that it's never been better to be flawed and human. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. That's such a good thing that AI made. It is. it's it's amazing you know and we are now even trying and i've seen so on instagram again you see so many big companies actually showing behind the scenes of their work to show that it's not the ai yeah apple and nike and everyone and it's such a good thing you know yeah so i mean being imperfect is a really good thing now and if we mess up that's that's good yeah i genuinely think just as an aside, I genuinely think it's interesting.

59:27It's, I mean, it's exciting to me to watch. Not only are we having, we're going to have new underground, new counterculture, new, you know, new lo-fi, new DIY. We're going to have all that new stuff. We're also seeing an uptick. It seems like to me, I've seen signs of it. I've heard them speak to it. An uptick of some of the like bands that were huge in indie scene 20 years ago, people showing renewed interest in them. And I think it is because of this. I think we're just like, dude, enough with the shiny stuff. Like I'm done with it. Yeah, yeah. Nothing needs to be so polished anymore. And that's, I mean, I really like that.

1:00:14And in type design, you can be really perfect and it can be really like, because a lot of the type is geometric shapes and everything. So it's kind of perfect. But I love the thing that it's becoming more and more popular this year and last year. Like, let's make fonts that are not like you. There was a font called Sriracha. Yeah. And it was someone really made it with the sauce. Oh, really? And it was an absolutely cool thing because you don't really get that. And AI will never be able to make those things. I mean, maybe in like five, 10 years. It could replicate it. It could replicate it for sure.

1:00:59Yeah. Yeah. But, and what was interesting, as you said, replicated, the illustrator Luis Mendo from the last episode, he said the AI really just gives you like the average thing. You know, it collects all the similar things on the internet and gives you the average. And it tries to make it perfect, like perfect sentences, perfect everything. But it's just not that good in the end. So when we try to make things, as you said, like the subculture and lo-fi and everything, that will be a lot, lot better. So I love that part as well. Can I just want to say one other thing? One thing that clicked for me, I think we keep saying this, well, AI won't be able to do that.

1:01:47The interesting thing, I think we're all about to understand something that we didn't under, I think most people haven't understood, I didn't understand, which was this aspect of like modern art or postmodern art where you go into the gallery and you see a painting and people always have this reaction of like, Like I could have done that. And then the people that behind it are like, yeah, but you didn't, you didn't do it. And it's not just that, oh, I did it and you didn't, I got to it first. It's not even that. It's what's interesting is why did that human do that? And so we're, I think we're all, we will intuitively all fully understand that in 10 years because we'll realize, oh, the interesting thing isn't that AI couldn't make Sriracha font.

1:02:34It's only interesting if the human did it and had a good reason. That's the only reason it's interesting. And so to me, it's like I think we even need to move past this idea of like, well, AI won't be able to do that. Like, no, it will. It will be able to do anything, anything you can imagine. But it will be like my favorite like critique of AI is I heard someone say on Twitter. I don't know who it was, but it was that pianos – we've had pianos that could play themselves since like the early 1900s. It's not interesting. It's not interesting. thing they can play like there's something interesting about why did that person do that what and that's what's fun and interesting about it um yeah so i just think that's that's something that's such a good metaphor and i love it and especially the painting relates because my husband is painting and it's modern art and uh and you know we go to the exhibitions and all those fairs and everything.

1:03:36And there's so many people, as you said, that say, oh, I could have done that. Like, it's just kind of a splash of color. But what you said, you didn't. You didn't. No, that's the point. And why did this artist do it? Why? Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. Because the why is the soul of it. And yeah, I think we're going to get... The cool part about that is watching these kids... Again, I just want to really quick... I know we don't have a lot of time, but really quick. saying i'm not 100 anti-ai i'm not interested in ai art my only i like i said i i told you some of the reasons why i'm a little bit nervous being 100 anti-ai um but another part of it is it feels i haven't been able to articulate this well yet but it feels a little bit like how we got anti-science in areas like food.

1:04:34So in food in America, 20 years ago or something, 30 years ago, the left, the liberal people became really skeptical of GMOs and non-organic and like all these things. And it somehow turned into anti-science. And that to me is one of the worst things. anti-science anti-intellectualism is one of the and we could talk for a million years about why that's such a huge when you don't when you don't believe in science don't believe in education you are easy to control because you're uneducated right so there's so many reasons why so there's part of me that i know people with phds in computer science and ai and i love those people they are cool interesting smart people uh and so there's part of me that's like i don't want to jump to screw this entire thing because it was created by brilliant people.

1:05:31Some of which most of probably the people that created it even, I don't, I would just guess are probably interesting people. A lot of the people that are in charge of owning it and deploying it. Yeah. I can't speak to those people. Yeah. But anyway, I just, it's an interest. I I'm putting it out there because it's such a hot topic in in creative world and i understand why we feel we need to go hard and in some ways we do need to go hard because it needs to be um you know it needs to be put in a box and it needs it needs regulation but at the same time like let's not slip into hating scientists like don't do that don't hate scientists we need scientists they are not responsible for the things the bosses do so yeah right absolutely um again there's so many things i've prepared to ask you but uh and we are all well now an hour talking already so i will just go with one more okay it's a bit more personal it's not about ai it's about the well short podcast you did about the relationship you had with your mom and with everything that you went through.

1:06:48And it's the right side out. And I absolutely loved it. The episode five is maybe one of the most emotional things I've heard online and read and everything. And I really loved it. Yeah. Because when you grow up like that, having also not having actually like that safety at every part of your childhood, I understand that. But what I actually liked is that you wrote, and this is from your website, that you didn't really do the podcast, that part of the podcast to, you know, talk about yourself and talk about your mom and the relationship, but to actually help people who are in the similar situations and to do it so that they can find themselves.

1:07:55And what I, like, there's such a good sentence over here. You can't find yourself if you don't like yourself enough to look. And that was, that's really, really, I mean, when you look at it, I even, you know, if I say it's really strong, it kind of sounds a bit too shallow for such a big sentence to say. But I really want to, first of all, thank you for that because not everyone is actually pushing the personal stories and pushing like the struggles. We see, as we said so many times during the conversation, we see so many shiny things. We see so many polished things. But that thing we have inside us, it's not always the polished one.

1:08:48And a lot of people struggle, especially with mental health. And I definitely love, love this part. If I may ask, like the last question, how long did it take you to actually start liking yourself the way you are? uh i think it i think that it's again similar to previous answers it's a thing that i have to constantly return to and refresh um and remember i think that i it wasn't until but i have made huge strides in that area so i think when i was probably about 25 i started to realized that I probably have ADHD. That introduced me to then at first I was like, just kind of devastated. Cause I was like, Oh, I can't hustle my way out of this.

1:09:52There is no like, yes, there's medicine, there's different things, but I, this is who I am. This is like, this is in my core kind of wiring. And so at first I was really kind of in grief about it. And then not too long after I discovered what I realized now is kind of the neurodivergent lens and the neurodivergent lens in my understanding is sort of aligned with the positive psychology movement, which speaking of design and branding needs a rebrand because when I say positive psychology, people think they assume that's positive thinking, um, which it's not positive psychology is just, It was just a realization that we as humans had built this entire industry and school of thought with psychology through the lens of our negativity bias, which was our Bible of psychology was the DSM.

1:10:54It was literally like, here's what's wrong with everybody. And so we could literally have taken as much time and resources and figured out like what's great about people and what can we cultivate about people. And so when I got the neurodivergent lens, I think a big part of it is brains are different, not necessarily worse or better. They perform differently in different contexts. and that's when I started to realize like oh like maybe I'm not broken but in this society this is a disability and so it's so I started to get really into trying to cultivate myself rather than overcome myself which is a big it's a big different kind of way of living And it's similar to – and that shift is key, I think, for artists in that you – Joseph Campbell said, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

1:12:04A lot of people take that and think, oh, I got to do the thing I'm most afraid of. I don't actually think that's true. I don't think – that's not really what that's about, I don't think. What I think it's about is the cave you fear to enter within yourself. What are the things within yourself that you're afraid to face? I want to just say real quick, I'm not talking about reliving trauma. I'm not saying that. That's not you. That's stuff that happened to you. I'm talking about parts of yourself that you have disconnected from. And most of your dysfunction, I think, is coming from repressing those things.

1:12:34So yeah, you probably do do things that are bad, do things that are unhelpful, do things that are not productive. But I think a lot of those, not all, but a lot of those probably come from repressing elements of yourself. Now, just a caveat, there are people that are actually sociopaths. We should, you know, that does exist. But apart from that, I think starting with a play, and maybe, hey, maybe those people would even be better off if they had started with the foundation of, I'm foundationally good. I can't speak to that. But I do think that as an artist, the other way I've phrased that sentence is more related to art and I've said that you're never going to love your art if you hate yourself because art is self-expression.

1:13:19You can't love self-expression if you hate the thing it's an expression of, which is you. And so I think you have to have a curiosity about yourself. How can you expect people to be interested in your self-expression if you're not interested in yourself enough to look at it and be curious about it? And so I think the current – like one of the reasons why we have evolved to have neurodivergence is because the climate and the scenario changes. That's why animals mutate is that everything changes and something that wasn't adaptive then is more adaptive now. And so we want variation in case some comet hits and all of a sudden the entire landscape is different and we need different types of genes around.

1:14:12So right now, the context we've built through the economic system that we have and the political system and all that and the industrial revolution, all that is not super conducive to a lot of neurodivergent people. and so that's what makes me hate myself when I do is that I'm like I can't I can't sit in a chair for eight hours I can't just you know I can't keep on top of all of the different bills and forms and like all of that stuff and that does when you're constantly going against the grain you're going to get tired of it and you're going to get tired of yourself. So loving myself is a, is a continual battle, but I know at least that my values and my core beliefs are right.

1:15:07They're in the right place to help me return to that and be like, Oh, this all works better. If you work with yourself instead of against it. I love that. Thanks. Well, I mean, it was a really really inspiring conversation and i really want to thank you for that and thank you for everything you publish because it's so inspiring and sometimes people you know might see might see your public name as and say oh this is just fun and the branding is fun and everything but it touches so many so many difficult things we all face nowadays and it's as i said before or it's not a beautiful world we live in, like globally.

1:15:53We can create our own beautiful worlds. That's absolutely true. But generally, it's not the most beautiful thing to, you know, to grow up. It can be hostile. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Even in the safe countries, it's, you know, you have the teenagers who are not so nice, and you have kids who can be mean. And that happens even when we grow older, as you said. There's a lot of people who hate science and then hate everyone else who maybe like science and everything. So it kind of really goes in a lot of different ways to actually try to exist and be happy in this world. So as I said, I love the conversation.

1:16:43I really want to have you back. Like, you need to promise that we are keeping this. Yeah, I would love to chat again. Absolutely. Yeah, I loved it. And honestly, I didn't expect it to be this deep. So really, thank you for that. And this is why I do the podcast. And we started with the food and, you know, just talking about stuff. But then we touched on way harder things. So again, it was absolutely a pleasure. and I really cannot wait to publish this episode. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It was a blast. Yeah, I'm glad to hear that. And yeah, bye-bye everyone and hope you will enjoy this conversation.

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1:19:14Thank you.

1:19:44Thank you.