Creative Pep Talk
066 - REST PT 2 WITH JEREMY SLAGLE
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist, and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode or at least go back to around 300 and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hey everybody, it's the creative pep talk podcast with me, Andy J. Miller, commercial artist extraordinaire. The podcast is popping off. We're still number two on the design charts. I'm pumped out of my mind about it, so awesome. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you for being excited about the show and sharing it and loving it and sending me messages. You guys are so awesome. I'm pumped. Thank you. Today, we have a new show as if it could be an old one. It's a new one. We're interviewing Jeremy Slagle. We're gonna talk about that in a minute, but before we get into that, let's get into the nitty gritty. Okay, let's get on with the show. (upbeat music) Miro is a collaborative virtual workspace that syncs in real time for you and your team so that you can innovate an idea into an outcome seamlessly. We talk a lot on this show about the idea of how creative research shows that playing with the problem is essential to innovation. Now, when I think of play, I don't think of documents and email. So if your team is often working remote, you need something more dynamic and collaborative. I think that Miro's mind maps and flow charts where team members can edit and play in real time has a lot more capacity for innovation and playing with the problem than traditional ways of collaborating over the internet. Whether you work in innovation, product design, engineering, UX, agile or IT, bring your teams to Miro's revolutionary innovation workspace and be faster from idea to outcome. Go to Miro.com to find out how that's M-I-R-O.com. Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met. And we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture bookmakers, fine artists, musicians and folks that work in video and film as well. And we have people that are just starting out, people super established in their creative careers and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're gonna chat through our new Journey of the True fan series exploring questions and ways to apply these ideas to your own creative practice so that you can leave 2024 stronger than you came in with more visibility, connection with your audience and sales. Sign up to whichever suits you best at either patreon.com/creativepeptalk or antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. So today on the show, I interview a friend of mine, Jeremy Slagel, a new friend. He's a Columbus, Ohio native. He's a commercial artist, graphic designer, illustrator or whatever you wanna say. He makes fantastic work. You should go check it out, slageldesign.com. He has some fantastic work on there. My favorite is the Luna Burger packaging. Oh man, I saw that in store actually before I knew it was him and I just marveled over the tastiness of the package. I never actually tasted the burgers but I'm sure they're good too. So this is rest part two. We already did rest part one with Jeffrey Bowman and rest part three will be with Brandon Reich and that'll be out pretty soon. We talk about the importance of rest and because this is a creative career show, not because it's the most important thing but because it's about creativity, we talk about how rest can actually make your work better, can make you more productive. I heard a really interesting story told on the latest episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast and interview with Derek Sithers, who is the founder of CD Baby. And he said something that I think gets to the heart of this whole issue. He said that he used to do this bike ride in California. Took him 43 minutes and he would just go super hard, really intense, hated every second of it and like red face, sweating like crazy, just pouring his guts out and going all in and he would just do that ride. And it got to the point where he just couldn't stand to do it anymore, didn't want to do it. He ruined it. And so one day he decides that he's just gonna go take a leisurely ride, he's not gonna push it really hard and just kind of enjoy it and not worry too much because he was just sick of doing the hard race. He does this big ride, same path and everything and really enjoys it, looks around, just has a great time and just takes it all in. And when he's done, he looks at his watch and he realizes it took him 45 minutes, two minutes longer than the crazy intense version and he actually loved it. And I think this gets to the heart of what we're talking about is that you can grind and hustle and go crazy, but there's a certain point where all that extra effort that you're making isn't paying off, it's not helping you, it's not pushing the needle forward. In fact, I would argue there's a certain amount of hustle, there's a certain amount of being switched on too often that actually becomes anti-productive. It means that your best time, the time when you should be producing your best work, you're not full, you're not energized, you're not working from a place of being full. You're running on empty and therefore even your best moments aren't as good as they should be and we talk about that. So without further ado, let's get to the conversation with my man, Jeremy Slagel, fantastic designer, great person, had a great time talking with this guy. Thank you, Jeremy, here it is. What I wanna talk about, admittedly, I'm talking to a few different people about this and it's about rest and how that changes the way that you were creative and how successful you are in terms of being creative. And I admittedly am really bad at rest and that sounds like, are you an office fan, the office? Yes. So one of my favorite things is where Michael says, they ask him what his weaknesses are and he says that he works too hard and he cares too much. And then they're like, all of your strengths is like, well, actually, they're awesome, my strengths. So saying that I hate rest makes me sound like I'm an incredibly hard worker and I don't consider myself to be type A, incredibly hard worker. I do find myself to be mentally consumed by creativity. And so I had a friend that suggested I do an episode on rest and it's something that I'm always trying to get better at. And so this is less, some of the podcasts are like, here's what I've learned, but this one's more of a let's try to learn something about this and seeing the things that you've done, I'm just assuming that it's something that you've had to go through too. So when I say rest, what come in terms of work, what comes to mind for you? Well, so back in 1998, a good friend of mine and I started a small agency and, you know, both of us were newly married. He was, he had his first kid and we were both really trying to figure out how we were gonna be able to be, you know, dads and husbands and still be able to, you know, do good work, but the places we were working at the time were just, I mean, the hours were insane. You know, at the drop of a hat you could find out on Friday that you were gonna work the weekend and, you know, it wasn't uncommon for them to keep you there 'til really late. And, you know, we just, we really, that was kind of one of the big motivating factors for us is we really love what we do and we really wanna keep doing it. How do we do this? And so, you know, we both started out and is kind of a grand experiment to a certain extent, but it, you know, for 12 years we ran and towards, at some points, you know, especially during the summers, we would just basically say, you know, for us it's Fridays are optional. Everybody that worked for us knew Fridays were optional. And if you were still at the office at 5.30, we'd run you out the door. Like, you're not supposed to be here. You have family. - Yeah. - So, you know, we had a few employees and that was one of the things that we really stuck to over the years was unless you're, unless you're, you know, if you're keeping up and getting your work done and you're gonna be able to deliver quality work on time, don't live at the office because you are a creative battery and if you don't get recharged, you're gonna run dry and then you're useless. - Yes. - You know? - One of the ways that, one of the pictures that I kind of thought of, and I'm sure the first person to make this reference, but the way that I've seen it is it's not unlike restarting your computer and that you can grind it to the bone and you can think that restarting the computer is actually gonna waste your time, but in the long run, it works so much faster than that that you actually get a lot more done by having that rest built in. - Yeah. - Because, you know, it clears out the files and all that kind of stuff. - Yeah. - So, I definitely, that resonates with me. - Yeah. So, I mean, work hours, like, you know, I was on a panel a few years ago with the CSCA and they were asking about, you know, how do you draw, how do you create boundaries with your clients? - Mm-hmm. - And I basically said, I'm very upfront about the fact that I don't work past five. - Yep. - And I don't do weekends. - Yep. - And then the next panelist who works for a larger agency in town took the microphone and she said, "What's a weekend?" - Right, yes. - You know? - Absolutely, and actually for me, just on the, maybe a little bit, pushing it more towards the illustration side, a thing that I've noticed is in order, 'cause I work with a lot of agencies, a lot of ad agencies that are kind of the middlemen between me and the corporation. And often, the workflow that works really well for them is to pass it to me on Friday and get it back on Monday so they don't lose any time, but then I'm at my desk the whole time. And I try not to do that when it's possible. One of the ways that I've started to build boundaries that's helped me is I pretty much refuse to do work for hire, just in terms of, like, people paying me for a day rate because I found that if they, you know, a day rate's supposed to be an eight hour thing, but it's really, from the minute you get up to the minute you go to sleep, we'd like you to go to sleep at 3 AM. So, yeah, so I was basically, - That's right. - I'm not doing that. I'm not selling my time, if at all possible. I'll sell, you know, my ideas and my projects and my finished work, but yeah, that's not me. - Well, you mentioned something else and that is sleep. I mean, that's another thing that's been really big for us. I mean, my wife and I are usually, I mean, usually there's exceptions, obviously, but we're usually embedded 930 or 10 o'clock at night. Because, and I found that when I do that and I get up and I get the most valuable time of my day is from 7 AM to 10 AM. - Yeah. - I can get more done in those three hours than I could, if I, I can pretty much get 90% of what I need to get done in those three hours. - I'm actually exactly the same. And I know it's like a common misconception about creative people that are most prolific at night or whatever. - Mm-hmm. - That's obviously everybody's different, but for me, I've even found that when I've been up against a deadline in the past year, when it's 10 o'clock, rather than stay up till 4 AM or whatever, I actually go to sleep, get up at 4 AM. And that time, 4 AM to 10, I'm so productive. - Yep. - I get infinitely more done doing that. - Yep. - Then I would stay up all night. And so, I like that 'cause, and I like you saying that because I think you only develop that type of self-awareness and practice and learning your rhythms and all that. - Yeah. - And yeah. - That's one of the things I'm really focusing on for 2016 is, you know, I have some friends that are also small business owners and they encourage me last year to kind of start setting some boundaries as far as, I'll get to a point where I get through the end of a week and I would go, "I've had meetings all week. "I have not had time to actually work on a project." So, they have basically occurred. You take some days, just mark them off your counter and say, "I don't do meetings." So, this year, Mondays and Fridays have been my, I mean, if it's an existing client and it's helping me move that project forward, I will meet on Mondays and Fridays. But if it's, you know, someone just wants to shoot the breeze or it's something that has nothing to do with an existing project, I will not do it on Mondays and Fridays. And I'm actually gonna tailor my schedule more this year as I go into this year, is to start scheduling more of my meetings in the afternoons and less in the mornings. - That's great. - Because I totally... - Yeah, 'cause if I'm meeting my whole morning and then I come to the afternoon, I'm burnt out. I'm not, I can't be as productive. - I basically, and I've done the same thing, I don't have as many meetings per se, but I do try to keep that morning time kind of sacred of like, this is when I execute. - Yeah, yeah. - And I think, I totally support people trying to investigate themselves and notice those rhythms and that's massive part of like getting the right kind of rest. (upbeat music) Another thing that I've, I talked to my friend, the last person that was on the podcast, Jeff Bowman, we talked about how as you go further in your career that you realize that all parts of your life are deeply connected to your work. And so if you're healthy and you feel good and you're well rested and even sleep, that your work is so much better. Again, goes against common misconceptions about artists being kind of like tragic figures that drink in or all over the place and you know. So yeah, I think that that's a really good thing to perpetuate. Well, I mean, I think we were created to work. I mean, I think that's kind of our function. - Yeah, me too. - You know, and when I say that, it may sound like I'm saying that that's all we should do, but that's not the case. But that is our main role is to work. It's to express whatever gifts we have in a way that allow us to impact the world, to allow us to feed our families, to allow us to grow in our skills and do new things and create new opportunities. It's also to help our clients to be able to hire new people and open another location and do whatever needs to be done in order to promote their business and see that their welfare is taking care of as well. But in order for us to be really good at work, we have to be really good at not working so that when we work, we can be really good at it. - Yeah, and you're doing it from a place of being full and being, you know, high energy, not, you know, coming from a place that's empty. - Yep. - I think that that's totally accurate. Do you, have you ever struggled, or do you struggle leaving your work? I mean, you work at a home office that's built. It's super nice and we're sat in it. And, but, and so you're connected to your house, you're connected to your family in a way that someone that works away isn't. I also work at home even a little bit. I work separately, but not as separate as this. Do you find you have a difficult, difficulty leaving the work at the office per se? - Physically, no. - Yeah. - My, my kids are basically doing a 30 second countdown almost every day at five o'clock. And they're standing by my desk and they're waiting, they're watching the time on the top of my Mac to switch to five o'clock so they can pull me away. - Yes. - I really need that. And I love that about my kids and my wife is very, very protective of our family time. And I really appreciate it. - Mine too, don't I? - And I love that. - Yes. - Where I have a hard time is mentally, you know. - This is where I'm going. - Right, yeah, so like for me it's, it's more the ideas are still cranking in my head. I'm not sitting in front of my computer. I don't have my sketchbook out. I'm not looking through books for inspiration, but my mind is still thinking about that deadline tomorrow or it's, you know, thinking about, you know, whatever, whatever happens to be, you know, how am I gonna, how am I gonna bridge this conversation with my client tomorrow? Or do I have that PDF on my laptop yet because I have to present that to a group tomorrow? You know, it's those kinds of little things that go on. I, I, I do my best to not go there, but it's just, it pops up, especially when I'm not engaging with my kids. You know, when my mind kind of goes, that's my default setting. - Yeah. - So I'll whip out my cell phone a lot of times and I'll just send myself an email that says like, remember to put the PDF on your laptop in the morning. And once I hit send, I've cleared that thought from my mind and I know that it will be there later. - And that, that's great. 'Cause that, what I wanted to ask you was, if you've gotten better in how and what things do you do? Because for me, part of the reason I wanted to do this episode is I get, I'm so unhappy with the level of mentally being able to detach and be present outside of it. A lot of it comes from it being so hard to get the career off the ground, just having to invest so much time energy. Another part of it is probably that I do think that when you're at rest, sometimes you, sometimes that is the time to create something, like sometimes that's when a solution comes when you're not right in front of the computer. So that's good too. But then on the side note, how do you, have you learned any other things that keep you more in the moment outside of work? - Yeah, I mean, the other thing I do is three days a week, I have gym time scheduled. So from, you know, three days a week from like 11 to 130, I'm at the gym and I lift and then I hit the spin class for a little bit or whatever, it's great 'cause my wife actually joins me for that. So she'll crack the whip. It's so funny every once in a while. She'll just walk by. You're planning on being in spin class today, right? You know, yes, I will be there. But it's, but for me, even in the middle of the day, sometimes after I've gotten past that, like that really great solid work time in the morning to be able to sit and, you know, kind of clear my head a little bit, put some headphones on, do a spin class. The funny thing is, is it's kind of like, I have that problem where I'll have a word in it and I just, there's certain words that I just cannot get, they're at the tip of my tongue and it's, and it's, there's like a handful of words that I can never pull up. As soon as I stop thinking about the words, that's when I remember the word. And so I've found a lot of times where if I'm trying to come up with a concept for something and I've just been like, you know, I've been just concept, concept, concept and I just can't get the right thing, I'll get on a spin bike and all of a sudden, it'll just like, boom, it'll hit me. 'Cause my brain is now like focused on something completely different. - Yep. - And I, I mean, I actually, sorry, okay. - No, it's okay. - Just that, you know, I don't remember the exact place that I heard it, but I know scientifically that there is, there's real reason why cramming on trying to fix something is important, but then usually it's only when you're subconscious at that time with it. - Yeah. - That you actually have a breakthrough. - Yep, yep, yep. And that's, and so. - That's what rest is so important. - Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I mean, you only can get so much. I mean, I know a lot of folks that work at Agencies in town. - Yeah. - And they just, like, I don't know how they do it. I don't know how they work till eight o'clock every day. - I can't understand it. - And, and especially as a family man, but then also just generally, I just don't, I can't relate to that. My battery doesn't, my battery charge doesn't last that long. - Me neither. - I do feel like, and then maybe it's, and maybe it's a young, I mean, I hear a lot of speakers, like, you know, go to the Adobe conference. - Yeah. - I'm involved with the local CSCA. And you have a lot of these kind of the young gun designers and stuff like that. - Yep. - And they come in and they tend to preach this concept of never sleep. - Crazy hustle. - Yeah. Crazy hustle. - And I have to touch on this 'cause I really want to talk about that. - Yeah. And I think that maybe it's just, you know, I'm 41. There's a point in time, and I remember when I first started out, where, you know, for me to work late wasn't as big of a deal as it is. I didn't have a family, didn't have, and so I do think that there's, there's a time when maybe my battery was a lot more, you know, would hold a little more charge than it does today. And I think part of it is, is your priorities shift. You know, you have a family, your priorities shift. - Yep. - You know, last thing any dad wants to hear is that, you know, on his debt better, in his old age, is that you wish you would work less. - Yes. - You know, and that's one of those things where I really want to prioritize my family, but, you know. - And no one says I wish I would have worked more. - Right, nobody ever says that. But when I hear people come and speak at these things, it's like, you have to love what you do so much that you don't sleep, you know. You leave your job at the agency and then you go work on your personal projects and you hang out with your friends and you work on stuff till two o'clock in the morning. - Great, that's great for you. And I think, I just, I think there's a reality of it though, is that that sounds good for a time. - For a season. - For a season. But at some point in time, if your priorities get two out of whack, what good is working really well if your marriage is a shambles? What's, what good is working crazy hours and if your relationship with your kids is out of balance? 'Cause that just, that to me just screws up everything. - And I don't, so I don't think that ultimately the work is the most important. So I'm not saying that. - I agree. - I'm not saying that the fact, so they're all connected these things. - Right, yeah. - And so if your marriage is, you know, going down, it's going to hurt your creative work. And I don't say that because I think the creative works the most important, but because this is a creative podcast, I'm just saying that you can't ignore the rest of your life and just continue to make the best work. - Yeah. - So I totally agree with that. And I think... - And to answer the other thing about rest that came to my mind was, rest doesn't mean that you're not doing something, rest doesn't mean you're taking a nap. - True, that's really true. - Rest may mean, you know what? I'm going to go to, I'm going to take some painting classes or I'm going to, I want to further my skills, but it's not client work. It's something I want to do to further my creative skills. - Yes. - And it's something that's just like calming, it's relaxing, you know, it could be taking figure drawing classes, it could be whatever it is, taking photography class or gardening or cooking class or something like that. It doesn't mean you're not doing anything. I think a lot of people think rest means that... - Sitting still and moving and... - Yeah, that you're inactive. - Yeah, totally. And actually, I want to come back to that real quick, but I just wanted to mention that part of the reason I wanted to do this episode was to combat the hustle mentality, not because I went through that season. I did totally. And if I wasn't married with kids, I would be the type of person that would be hard to get away from my desk. And I have not seen any of that's good, but I wanted to combat the idea that that in order to be successful at art or creative things, that you need to be the same type of type A person that would be successful as an accountant because I'm not like that. A lot of people that are successful in creative careers are not those same types of workaholic people, just in terms of a lot of the productivity I have is messing around with pictures, which is not a work in energy. And so anyway, I wanted to combat that and kind of think harder on that because I don't think it's the full picture. Like I said, like you said, I think it is, there is a season where you do need to push really hard, break through on some areas. So I definitely love what you said about that. - Yeah, I've been really blessed to not, to not have to do a hustle. - Yes. - Starting my own agency was a real blessing to me just simply because the way that it worked was the agency that we had been running for 12 years, we closed. So I had all those clients to work with, which was really awesome. So I was able to literally hit the ground running with my own thing. And I can see that, some people would be like, "Oh yeah, Jeremy, you're not speaking from experience." And to a certain extent, if I had gone out and I had a non-compete agreement and I couldn't work with any of my clients, there would have been a time where I would have had to do a lot of serious hustle and setting up meetings. And I just, that's one thing that I was able to really be able to not have to worry about. - I do think that's another interesting thing. And I don't want to pinpoint it exactly as I don't know, but like there's a part of that, that has a degree of your patience or your personality in terms of, I always knew that I would struggle to do work in an office for someone else. And so there was a degree of that hustle that was necessary because I wasn't willing to go through a more, a slower channel. More a channel that I just knew I couldn't do that. And so I think there are just different things. I think if you can have the patience, there's a lot of value to doing it that way. But yeah, the other side of it is just what you said about rest not always being, you know, taking an app or being inactive. One of the things that I'm learning with my kids is, there's something about when I switch gears from work mode to family mode. There was a long time when I'm trying to force completely being a different person in family mode because that means I'm not working. Whereas, you know, if I paint a picture with my kids, then I'm really, then I'm feeling great about rest. Whereas if I'm trying to like, you know, let's go to football practice. I'm like, no, I don't have no interest in sports. Like I'm not, you know what I mean? So, and it's not me, so I do think like embracing your strengths and weaknesses in your rest is a good idea just in the same way. - Yeah, I mean, both my kids are makers. - Yeah. - I mean, it's what they do. - Yeah. - My son is right below us right now in my wood shop. - Yeah. - And every once in a while, I'm hearing him banging a hammer. He's down there making something. - That's awesome. - You know, my daughter is constantly crocheting or knitting or building a dollhouse or, you know, what have you, she's just, it's just in her. It's what she does. - Yes. - So, for me, it's been really fun. Recently, my son and I have been getting these really awesome downloadable Star Wars paper models that say 48 pages worth of stuff that we run off on the Color Laser Burn and then we cut 'em out and score 'em. The thing that's been really awesome for me is I love packaging and I love the idea of 3D foldable things. - Yeah. - And, you know, he's 13, he's just turned 14. But for the last few years, we've been doing those and I'm just thinking about, like, I can think that way. Like, I can look at a piece of paper and figure out how it would be cut and folded and this slot fits into this to make this like 3D object. But I didn't have the opportunity to do this stuff. He does, he's building these things. And I'm just thinking, like, if he wants to go in to design someday, if this is kind of a career path for him, he's learning this stuff way earlier than I ever would. - And that's awesome. - Yeah, so just helping create those, you know, those bridges in their own brains as they're developing. And, you know, I'm very fortunate to have two kids that love to, I don't know what I would do if my kids were, were just like, like you said, football players. They love, they both do sports, they love sports, but I don't see it as being like a career path. - Right, yeah. And they're not mutually exclusive. You can be a sports guy, but I'm not. But I think that, yeah, I think that that, well, and I think, you know, you're fortunate to a degree and then to another degree, you know, genetically they're 50% you. There's probably common ground that you can find it there. And yeah, so anyway, well, I think that's it unless you add any other things that you wanted to add. - No, I think that's it. I mean, I, you know, one of the things you did mention is that you're, you know, I love the fact that you spend time with students, you know, you don't know about that. - Yeah, yeah. - I love spending time with students. - Me too. - I love opportunities to do portfolio reviews. I speak to colleges all the time. And I do try to do my best to help kids kind of, yeah, have a little bit of balance about what their career is going to look like someday. And I think rest is a part of that. It's like, just be conscious, relax. A lot of kids have a lot of anxiety come here at college. It's just like, it's going to be fine. You're going to do well, work on personal projects and do a great, you know, do a killer job when you're portfolio. And to just kind of not that the anxiety, I think sometimes can just be overwhelming. So I think just working with students to help them do, you know, with their portfolio and just kind of set their expectations for what, and just do, be yourself, do your best work. - Something that came out of the conversation I had, the previous one on this topic that was the same thinking was just that I think you're under so much pressure when you're going through college and you're trying and it's so daunting to a creative career and the possibility of breaking into that, that you do have to cannonball into the industry and just immerse yourself with it. But the problem that happens somewhere along the way, you end up making illustration or design for designers about design and there's no real connect, there's no life to that because it's not real. It's not, you know, it's a very niched thing that two a bunch of people that don't have infinite cashflow to invest in what you're doing. So there's value in all that, but it's something I always try to say, my friend, who I talked to previously, realized that getting really connected to the outdoors and diving deep into that was an outlet for his work that made more sense with real usability, you know, real utility to the design he was making. And so there is a part of it that if you are this one dimensional, all I eat, sleep, drink, design and all of that, that your work will be one dimensional. - And that's in our world, in our career, whatever. That's an, that is not a popular statement to make. - No, I know that. - And I agree with you 100%. I think there's too much of this, like, you can be better, unless you're willing to work all night long and blah, blah, blah, it's just, I just don't, I don't work that way. There's probably people that do, it doesn't work for me. - Yes, and like I said, yeah, there was a season where I was a lot more intensely, you know, dedicated into this zone. But at the end of the day, there's a point where there's more productivity and letting go of the reason, like, white knuckle, just busting through it. - Totally agree, totally agree. - Awesome, I really appreciated this. Thanks for letting me come in here and do this. - And I hope that we get to do that again. - Great, sounds good. - 23. - All right. (upbeat music) - Well, I wanna thank Jeremy Slagel for taking the time out of his day to do that. It was a great conversation. We got through so many really interesting points about how important it is to have a balance of work and rest and how they really work together in kind of a cyclical fashion. So thank you, Jeremy. You know, here's a guy who is just, you know, going about, quietly going about the business, making tons of great work, you know, really passionate about the work and does great things. So go check out that work, it's fantastic. Thanks, Jeremy, really, really appreciate it. Okay, so that's the podcast for this week. I hope it was a real treat, a real gift for you. I hope that, especially as we're going into the holiday season, you know, I guess it's kind of appropriate to be talking about rest. I hope that you get some time where you get to really step away from creativity and be with family. Thanks for having these conversations with me. Thank you for allowing me to do this by backing the Patreon. That's a big part of why I can spend so much time on this. I hope that it is a gift for you and I hope that I can do it for a long time. So guys, do whatever it takes to stay pepped out of your minds about creativity and about your work so that you can keep at it, keep your head down, have the discipline to kick tons of booties. I will be back next week. Thank you guys, speak to you soon. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hey, y'all, one more quick thing. Earlier this year I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine and I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately and if you wanna check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you wanna test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself and when you're ready to launch use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. (upbeat music) - I'm Whit Missaldine, the creator of This Is Actually Happening, a podcast from Wondery that brings you extraordinary true stories of life changing events told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dooms his entire future family with one choice, to a woman that barely survived her roommate, we dive into what happened and hear their intimate first person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Follow This Is Actually Happening on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts Or listen ad-free by joining 1D+ in the Wondery app.