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Creative Pep Talk
039 - The Pencil in the Stone !SPECIAL EPISODE!
Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is 8 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 want to 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. the holidays are here, you gotta find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister, Cassieree and her kids, Jetson and Jettin, Jirfree and Jagab and another two Jay kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing, you gotta shop small, it just, it's a lot, but it doesn't have to be. Uncommon Goods makes all of this simple and straightforward, for real. The site is chock full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. My fam loves advent calendars. I think Sophie would like the Stitch-a-Day advent calendar and 12 days of hot sauce is definitely shouting my name, sorry that wasn't me, that was the 12 days of hot sauce calendar shouting. We had tons of fun browsing the site for ourselves and kids and family to get 15% off your next gift. Go to uncommongoods.com/peptalk, that's uncommongoods.com/peptalk for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer, uncommon goods, we're all out of the ordinary. Hey, you're listening to the Creative PEP Talk podcast with me, graphic illustrator Andy J. Miller. This show is about finding clarity and strategy so that you can maximize your creative career. You can find this show on iTunes or on my site Andy-J-Miller.com/podcast or on the illustration website illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Without further ado, let's get down to business, art business. I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want. The job you have and I have applied this to my creative practice too which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro and that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's fluid engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out Squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself and when you're ready to launch your site use promo code PEPTALK all one word all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. 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 going to 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 AndyJPizza.substack.com and I hope to see you at this month's meetup. Okay, hey everybody, it's me, Andy J. Miller. I'm here, ready to pump you up and I'm pretty excited about today's episode. It's called The Pencil in the Stone. If you follow me on social media, you might have noticed that I recently, earlier this week, wrote a long form blog post, it's quite lengthy, a big long form blog post about finding your focus as a creative person. It's kind of a step-by-step process or formula for narrowing down what it is you want to focus on, what desire you want to focus on in your creative career. And I'm like really super excited about it. It's kind of a jump-off from an earlier podcast episode, Finding Your Master Sword and I've been working on this idea for years in a lot of ways and then especially recently I've been spending a lot of time trying to kind of codify this very mysterious, mystical process of figuring out a path that you want to take and that you want to give everything to because I think that in life you can't achieve anything significant unless you give yourself fully to it. And I don't think that giving yourself to small things is worth your life. And so I've always, the truth is I've always struggled to get clarity. I've always struggled to have strategy. It's like, you know, it's the places where you struggle the most that you end up spending tons of time and energy trying to figure out. And so that's what all this time and energy that I've spent on my own career, that's kind of what has turned into this podcast, the things that I've struggled through. And so clarity has always been difficult for me because I love possibilities. I love open ended. I like to just think about tons of ideas and not do them so much. I don't like to commit or approach something in a disciplined way. But what I learned was early on was that if I didn't dedicate myself truly to a project it was going to suffer and it wasn't going to succeed in the ways that I wanted it to. And so over the years I've had to develop ways of trying to get as sure as I possibly could about a big goal and then committing for an extended period of time to completing that goal. And I haven't always completed the goal, but I've always tried to make a clear plan of action and kind of an understanding about how long and hard I'm going to pursue this thing. And it's really, really helped me. So this is my attempt to make sense of that. You know, I feel like you hear all the time this idea of doing what you love, follow your bliss, pursue your passion, all that jazz, right? And you know what? If you look online under my name you're going to find that I've done T-shirts and calendars and posters with this kind of sentiment out there. And you know what, I think that it's definitely true. I just think that it's part of a truth. It's not the whole story. It's just a component of a greater truth. And so I think at some point we end up getting really sick of this idea and I think there's a lot of really good reasons why. But I don't think it's because it's not true. I think it's because it's an incomplete truth. I feel like if you start talking about this idea of following your passion, the image that comes to mind and you know, is these people on American Idol who say that becoming a pop star is their passion and they've given it everything and they don't have any other thing that they can pursue. And they sing and it sounds like someone's running over an accordion. It sounds like the worst thing you've ever heard and you're like no, pursuing your passion does not work for you. And if you're like me and you're trying to find general principles that have truth to them, stuff like that really breaks down this idea really quickly. Like do what you love and less what you love, you're terrible at and there's no demand in the market for it. You know, it's got to be more of a balanced pursuit. And so that's what this episode is about. It's about the ways that I feel like I've found balanced to this equation and I wanted to share with you so that hopefully you can get the kind of clarity that I've been getting through these pursuits. And so that's what this is about. I think there are a lot of people out there that are more comfortable with the questions of what do I want to do or what do I make, what's my product, what is an easy question for a lot of people. And I think that's why you get people like Simon Sinek writing a book like Start With Why, which is this idea of you need to know why you're doing something before you know how you're going to do it or what you're actually going to do. However, I think for creative people, often those big, airy questions like why are actually easy and comfortable to sit in but the what, what are we going to actually do or what do I actually want is actually really difficult to nail down. You know, I work with senior level students at the Columbus College of Art and Design and I often find that that is their big struggle. I know why they want to make stuff. They just don't know what they want to make. They don't know what place they should market their work to. They don't know the direction they should go. They don't know what project is worth giving everything to. And so I think that that's an incredibly terrible problem and it's a problem that I've had myself and I've had incredible difficulty trying to get through it. And so I've been kind of obsessed with how do we solve this problem in a logical way that has tangible results? If you're not convinced that this question is important, let me just persuade you, let me try to persuade you a little bit. There's a fantastic quote by a guy called Napoleon Hill, he studied under Andrew Carnegie, I believe billionaire and he went around asking these rich people what it took to get where they got and he wrote a book called Think and Grow Rich. It's a really famous book and there's some really interesting stuff in there. Here's his quote, "There is one quality which one must possess to win and that is a definateness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to possess it." And I completely and utterly believe this. I believe one of the biggest things that holds you back in your creative career is just not really understanding what it is you want, where it is you're trying to go. And I think it is extremely detrimental. Now I could have called this episode confession, I freaking love Harry Potter and it's a little bit embarrassing. When I grew up, I started reading Harry Potter, I read the first four books in middle school. But then once I got to high school, my whole game plan changed. I had girls on the mind and I didn't think Harry was going to help me pick up the ladies. And so I quit reading it. And long story short, with or without Harry, I wasn't a ladies man. So I guess the lesson is just read Harry Potter were either way. But a few years back, my brother, as a kind of joke, gave every DVD of the Harry Potter series to my wife and he individually wrapped them, it was Christmas. And it was just, it took her forever to unwrap them and it just seemed ridiculous that her brother-in-law gave her eight presents. But we binge watched those movies over that holiday season and watching them so close together and like taking it all in at the same time. I just was like so hooked. And when it was over, I was really depressed because I was like, I wonder what Harry is going to be up to tomorrow. But there was no tomorrow for Harry. The series was over. And so I went to bed that night and to be perfectly honest, I was like kind of maybe overthinking it, but I was obsessed with this idea of like, why does this hit me so hard? You know, the Matrix, especially the original movie, that hit me really hard. You know, the Star Wars hits me really hard. These hero stories, these, you know, Jesus, the story hits me hard like why? What is it about this person, this hero that has this definite mission? Why does it hit me so hard? And so sitting in my bed thinking about what's so good about Harry Potter, I started to think that maybe there was something about this that was that goes beyond pop culture. Maybe there's something about this story that's bigger than just a good, good story. Just a good storytelling. Maybe there's something innately human and powerful within this story that's not just enjoyable, but important. And so I started to kind of research the topic, and I came across a guy you've probably heard of, Joseph Campbell, and then another guy who I'd already been a big fan of, which is Carl Jung, who is a psychologist and a general crazy guy, but very interesting. And they have so much to say on the subject. For instance, Carl Jung talks about how archetypes like the hero, this idea of the hero, are stuck in the part of our brain that we share, the part of our brain that is responsible for instinct, the things that every human has in their brain that the hero story is actually in there. And I would even take it maybe a step further, and I would say that Mariah was right, a hero lies in you. But okay, in all seriousness, I really believe, I think that she, Mariah Carey, hold on, let me switch gears, I'm ridiculous, that hero lies in you, that I really do believe, not just that this is some kind of evolutionary concept that we all kind of, for whatever reason, having our brains, I believe even further that there is something deeply profound, possibly even spiritual about this idea that everyone has this reason for being here, this reason for existing. And you know what? You don't have to believe that to get something from this idea or this podcast, because then the next thing I want to talk about is how I want to balance this magic idea with logic. And why that's so important to kind of finding the path that you want to take, the path that you can give everything you've got for. So I feel like every hero needs to have this thing that they're fighting for. Every hero has a sword in the stone or a pencil in the stone if you're a creative person. You know, Neo wants to free the minds of the world from the agents. Luke wants to defeat the empire. Harry Potter has to defeat Voldemort, Voldemort. I want to invent a zero calorie pepperoni goat's cheese pizza. I really do wish that existed, that's okay, it's joke. But that would be amazing. I feel like we have to go find our pencil in the stone, the thing that only we can do, the work that's waiting for us, that nobody else can come along and do. And I think that there's a real systematic way of starting to uncover this. It's not perfect. It's not going to give you a definite answer that's going to be 100% accurate, but I can almost guarantee and I definitely believe that if you do it, you're going to be much closer to finding it than if you don't. But before we go any further, I just want to talk about this idea that I'm kind of a fool. When it comes to the logic versus magic spectrum, I tend to fall hard on the magic side. You know, I like this idea of like hearing a voice in the wind and following it and just I'm a goofball, I'm a complete goofball and sometimes that's got me into trouble and it's caused me to want to balance these things out a bit. So let me tell you a story about a time when following that magical voice in my head got me into a bit of trouble. I was living in England, you know, I'd went to college over there. My dad got transferred right when I graduated high school and I had the option to either stay home and go to college in America or get a student visa and do my study over in England. And that we actually lived in this place called Thurstonland, which is a place in the Northern England countryside in Yorkshire and it's breathtaking. It is so beautiful. At the time, I didn't fully appreciate how beautiful it was because it was kind of such a culture shock. But it's like this place where there are these rolling green lush hills with livestock and these stone fences that segregate the land and at any one of these giant hills you can just see for miles and miles and it doesn't, it looks like it looked probably 50, 100 years ago, these old houses and old churches and stone fences and it just, it's completely and utterly breathtaking. It's nothing. There's, I've never seen anything in America like it. And so anyway, at the time I started to jog, I started to just go out and run for an extended period of time. And on one of these, I started off not knowing how many miles I could kind of jog every other day and I'd gotten up to like five or six miles every other day and I was kind of like stoked about this even though it's not maybe a big deal for most joggers. For me, I didn't even know if I could do that. And so one day, and I was feeling that confidence and I was looking maybe for a challenge and I go up and I come up to this big hill and then miles and miles into the distance. I see this giant tower and it's got a flaming eye at the top. I'm just kidding. This isn't Lord of the Rings, but there's this giant tower. It's like a radio tower way off in the distance on a different hill and there are towns and churches and hills in between us. And I just thought, you know what, I'm going to head toward, I'm going to go to that tower. And I was a brilliant idea, foolproof really. And so I start running, I start running towards the tower and I'm running along. And I remember there was a pasture of sheep, one of them chased along the fence with me like he was my coach and I'm running through and I'm running through towns. And every so often, I have to look up and see where the tower is and kind of readjust my course. But after hours and hours, I make it to the tower. And it was an awesome feeling to get there, not knowing if I could. But having this giant thing out in the distance meant I didn't even need a map. I could get there by just focusing on this thing way out in the distance. And it was awesome. It was totally awesome. And as I'm standing there, I'm thinking, wow man, that's a pretty cool tower. Guess I've got to go home. Oh no, how am I going to get home? I turn and look the other direction and my house doesn't stand out in any way over the miles and towns and all that. I can't even find what town it's in. I can't distinguish at all where it is in relationship to the tower. It's just a vague kind of blip on the horizon. I have no idea where it is. And I think that this is such a good metaphor for knowing a definite purpose. Like that tower in the distance was my true north. And it meant that no matter where I went, I knew where to go next. I knew what step to take next. Even if I took a few wrong steps, it was obvious and easy to figure out how to rechart my path. And I believe that's so much like having this definite purpose, this definite direction that you're really confident about, that you're really committed to. And if you think that I'm wrong, the next part of the story really kind of hits this home. So I'm thinking, okay, how am I going to get back? And I thought the only thing I can think of is retracing my footsteps. Now that sounds like a decent idea. However, like I said, the English countryside is quite beautiful and it's got old houses, old churches, old stone fences and rolling hills and not a lot more. Now the thing about those things is that they all look the same. And so I would head down a road and I would think, you know, I would think, okay, this looks familiar. I would go down this little path, but it wasn't the right path. And then I would think, oh, I kind of remember that. I'm going to go that way. And I didn't, it wasn't helping nothing, you know, everything looked the same. And so here I was on a dark road that initially looked familiar, but now looks completely unfamiliar. There's no street lights. It took me so long to get to the tower that it's now middle of the night, pitch black on a back road. I don't have a phone. I don't even know any phone numbers. There's no one around. There's no houses around. It's raining. I've got blisters and my legs are killing me. And I really believe that this is like not knowing where you're headed. And when you don't know where you're headed and you don't have a true north and you don't have a tower to push towards, I believe so often it's really easy to end up in this spot. I feel like that life is kind of a battle between the physical realm and the invisible realm. That it's like a battle or it's a place where you have to hold intention, logic versus magic. And I think when you think of this idea like follow your passion, that's the magic side talking. And I believe that it's part of the truth, but I feel like if you go too far to that way, you're going to, you might not, but I think you hear these stories of these people that followed their passion and it works out amazing. But the truth is we only hear the stories of the people whose path worked out because now they have a giant platform and that's how that story reached you, right? We don't hear about the people that followed their passion and followed the magical voice and ended up on a back road with blisters in the dead of night without any where to go. Like we don't hear about that. Now, I don't want to tell you don't follow your passion. I just feel like we need to even it out. And I think you get a lot of people out there that are saying, I don't follow my passion. I think that's stupid advice and I don't think that Martin Luther said human reason is like a drunken man on horseback, set it up on one side and it tumbles over the other. And the idea is that instead of having the nuance of wisdom when we approach ideas, we think in extremes and extremes are what make dictatorships. Those are detrimental to life. And I think we want to say either logic is right or magic is right, but we don't feel comfortable holding them in tension together. But I believe that that is where the truth lies. That idea is that we find that pursuing your passion isn't completely 100% the answer. So we get back on the horse with such gusto that we fall off the other side. So we're never straddling it evenly with tension. And my challenge to you is to take the tension of these two things and try to find that sweet spot in between this. You know, when you talk about finding your sweet spot or finding your place in the world, finding a direction even within your career or creative career. There's an idea that's been floating around. There's a guy called Dan Miller. He talks about it. He's an author. There's a Scott Belsky, who's the founder of 99U and Behance. He talks about it. And it's this idea that you can find the meeting place, the overlap between your passions, skill and a demand in the market. And if you think about it like three circles, it's where these three circles overlap in a kind of Venn diagram thing. Now I've always loved this idea. However, when I racked my brain on this idea, it always kind of felt like it was missing something. And I almost feel like it leans too far towards the logic side because I think if you think of skills, which are these hard and fast things that you can nail down and a demand in the market, which is like economics, they're both like very logical. And then the only room for the magic is the passion side. And that doesn't sit right with me being someone who's more comfortable in the magic side. And so I just kind of racked my brain like, what is wrong with this equation? Like what? Okay. We've got skills versus passion. And then we've got demand versus blank. I don't, I don't, I couldn't figure out what is it that we can balance the force with, with this equation, got logic versus magic, skills versus passion, demand versus what? And so I started thinking, okay, skills are your, what you have that are the hard and fast, undeniable things that you're good at versus passion, which is the things that you love. And that's kind of like the thinking versus feeling, and that's a good balance. But demand is like looking out into the world, looking at other people and what they're buying and what the market says is viable as a career. But we don't have something on the inside. We've got, we're looking at the outside, but we're not looking at the inside. And I think on the inside, this is when I kind of had the Eureka moment of the idea that we can balance the demand in the market with is calling. And I believe in this idea of calling and you can, you know what? If you don't believe in the magic of life, you don't have to call it calling, call it your subconscious or call it listening to your gut. Either way, it's this idea of looking inwardly and saying, what is the thing that I feel compelled to do? And so we balance that with the thing out in the world that says there's a path out there. There's a career out there to do this. And we don't just let money in the demand in the market lead us because if we do that, we're going to not find interesting places. We're not going to find our pencil in the stone. We're not going to find the thing that only we can do because it's, it's, it's not out there. It's inside. It's yet to be out there because we haven't lived it yet. And so I had this idea, we'll do skills versus passion, demand versus calling. Now this podcast is kind of a reiteration of the blog post in, in spoken form. And for those of you that kind of learn that way and on my blog, I have an actual process for taking these ideas and putting them down onto paper and finding some tangible results because I don't want to do the magic thing that just says, go be magical. Listen to the voice that's out there. You'll hear it. I don't want to do that. I want to say, how do we nail this logic and magic down on the paper and actually come up with some tangible results and make some real decisions and some real commitments for the next season of our life to explore? So I'm going to give you a brief overview on what this process looks like, but it's better if you go see it written down because it's going to make a little bit more sense. The idea that I had was you take five to ten possible paths. I think often it's not that we can't think of any path, it's that we think of 50 paths and we don't know which one to do. And so this is just a way of like codifying and explaining how to narrow down to the one or two things that you're going to give your all to in the next season of your life. So you make a list. For me, it was kids books, editorial illustration, logo design, animated shorts, comics, character design, storyboarding, branding, gallery art, one through nine, I listed all those down. We call them the pits, which is a terrible acronym for pencil in the stone. It's possible pits, which I think is terrible and funny. So find your pits, and then we're going to grade on two spectrums. Skill versus passion, demand versus calling, okay. So you make a line in the middle, you draw a perpendicular line and put zero there. Those are the balance between skill versus passion. And then you number out to the left, starting it from the middle one, two, three, four, five, and then starting from the middle to the right one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five on the left towards skill one, two, three, four, five to the right passion. And then you do the same for demand on the left and calling on the right. And now, this might be confusing. Like I said, go to my blog, Andy-J-Miller.com/blog, and you can find this, and it'll make a lot more sense when you can actually see my version of that. So you're going to grade each one of your pits, and then you're going to go down and make a chart, and actually I'm going to probably figure out a way of getting this resource out to the pep talk listeners in some way. You make a chart with a line that goes from the top to the bottom that's skill versus passion at the bottom, skill at the top, and then one that goes from the left to the right, which is demand versus calling, and then you make yourself a little grid that goes out from the middle, zero to five on the right, zero to five on the left, zero from to the bottom to the top, from the middle to the top, and then from the middle to the bottom one through five. And then you plot these points out. You plot what grade you gave them, and then the ones that fall tightly to the middle center point is what I call the inner circle of higher truth. That's totally bogus thing to say, but it's just this is the stuff you should do. This is the stuff that balances, the stuff that falls in that closest to the zero to the middle. That's the stuff that you want to pursue. That's the stuff that encompasses what you're good at, but also what you're passionate about. Because sometimes you're good at stuff that you don't like to do. Sometimes you love to do something that you don't have any skills in, and so this balances that out, and then we then we take the balance of the demand versus the calling because you you don't want to be like, I know I just have to be a pop singer. Well, there's not a great demand in the market for that. There's only a few people out there that can make a living doing pop music, and that means there's not a great demand in the market. That means it's not a smart decision to give everything to that pursuit. But I feel like if you just look out in the market and you say, where are the jobs? And you ignore the inside inner calling, then you're not going to end up in the right place. That's why it's important to balance the tension of these things. Okay, now I'm just going to give you a quick little cheat sheet rundown of what I mean by skills, passion, demand, and calling. So skills are things that you've learned how to do, things that you went to school for, things that you worked in a job and learned, or they can be directly connected to your talents, the things that you've developed over your whole life, like whether you've always drawn pictures or always made music or always drew logos or made branding or whatever. So it's the stuff that you have proven that you're better than other people at. And what I mean by other people is literally just anybody off the street. Things that you've developed more than other people. Those are your skills, passion. This is your interest, the things that you can get lost in, the things that when you spend time doing them, you lose sense of time. You can, you have a higher tolerance for doing these things because you're so obsessed with them. Like for me, I'm so obsessed with picture books that I can spend hours and hours and hours in a bookshop. And so that's how I know that that's one of my passions. I can spend way longer than almost anybody else in that circumstance. And demand is clear, clear place in the market where this is in demand. So for instance, like if you look at gallery artist, someone who can make a living doing gallery art, the demand on that is quite small, so you give it a low score. But for someone who makes art for kids, products and shows and books and all that, there's a pretty big demand for art for kids, like illustration for kids. So that's the way to look at that. And then calling, calling is connected to why you want to do this. It's connected to a deeper meaning, a deeper purpose, a deeper sense of why you're going this direction. Something is if you don't want to look at it in a spiritual or a big sense of the word, you can even just look at it as tapping into the resources of your subconscious, the things that your conscious mind might not be aware of, but your subconscious has already figured out some of these answers and trying to tap into that or trying to tap into your gut. What it says deep down that you just have a feeling that you should go that direction and it's good to balance that with, because there are people like Katy Perry out there that they balanced the dramatic sense of calling versus the low demand in the market. And I think this is a way to systematically kind of balance that out. And so the idea is that if you scored a, so on the spectrum from skill to passion, a zero on that spectrum would mean that you're perfectly balanced between it's a real skill and it's a real passion, like you're not more skilled than you are passionate, you're not more passionate than you are skilled. If you got a three towards passion, that means that you're a lot more passionate about it than you are skilled at it. If you got a five for skills, it means you're super good at it, but you hate doing it. And so that's kind of what that spectrum is. And then the demand versus calling demand, a five in demand means that people are throwing money at this industry, but you don't feel any nudge to go that direction or if you put a five on calling on the calling side of the spectrum means that you really desperately feel like you should do it, but there's just no demand in the market. And so it might be more of a hobby. That's that explanation. If you want to get deeper into that, go ahead and check out my blog. It makes a little bit more sense when you can see it in person. You know, I always felt like when I watched these movies or I listened to these hero stories, I thought, it's just not fair. It's not fair. You know, I wish that I had a prophecy that said, Andy, you are meant to be a blank type of illustrator or blank type of artist or you're meant to. You're going to. The prophecy says that you are the chosen one to do blank. And I always thought, I'm so mad that these, these characters get to have the assurance of all these people believing that they're the chosen one to do this very specific thing. They don't have to worry. Neo wasn't sitting around thinking, should I help the agents? Should I be one of the guys who runs the programming and the ship where they learn the karate? Do I need to be this type of guy? He wasn't worried about that. He had one definite purpose. He was the chosen one. He was the one that was going to bring the balance back to the universe and it was chosen for him and everybody believed in him. And I thought, man, that is so unfair. It's so unfair that they have that. And somewhere along the way, I just kind of realized that actually that you and I in so many ways are actually in the same boat. We have the same struggle because if you watch these movies or you think about the these ideas, you realize that the one thing that really trips them up is the same thing that can trip you up and that is failing to believe in yourself. If you listen to these movies and you watch these, you listen to these stories, you know that the places where Luke Skywalker and Neo and Harry Potter all start to trip up. They all start to quit the path. They all fumble when they quit believing that they are the person to do this. And I can tell you in my own path, the things that I feel like I'm supposed to go this direction. It's when I really don't believe that it's possible that I quit. And I've said this before. It's what Zig Ziglar says. He says, the kid that doesn't believe he can pass the test doesn't even try to study. And it's that same idea if you don't believe that there is something out there that you can achieve that you can achieve some kind of greatness that your life was purposed for some kind of bigger idea or or some just awesome contribution into the art world, then you're not going to put in the time and energy to run towards it. You have to trust Mariah, I can barely say that with a straight face. A hero really does lie in you. I can't stand that song. I'm sorry Mariah, if you're listening, I know you're trying to get your strategy worked out for your creative career, but you're gonna have to go elsewhere, I'm sorry, my fool. Here's my big kind of disclaimer that I think is really important and I think we're all already pursuing some things, pursuing some paths. And my idea is that you take the pencil in the stone chart and you graph these things out. And if you're going the wrong way and if you really believe that, you know, you're heading towards something that you think is going to make a bunch of money, but you don't feel called to do it or you're going towards something you're really passionate about, but you're not really that skilled at that you would not just keep swimming. You wouldn't take Dory's advice, the fish and just keep swimming because if you're heading in the wrong direction, every effort and every step you take is is not progress. It's regression, it's going, it's more time spent away from the direction that you're supposed to go. And we have all this information out there that says what it takes to do amazing things is true grit or never giving up, never taking no for an answer. And I do believe that is totally true as long as you're on the right path initially. And so I feel like one of the hardest things to do is to stop and say I'm going the wrong way. It's so scary, you know, you feel like I've gone too far, I can't turn back now. I've put so much time and energy into this. How could I give up now? And I think it's that feeling that keeps us on the wrong path. Now how my blog, what I said was luckily I believe the universe is a lot like my dad and I'm going to explain. All right, so I'm there on the back roads in the countryside of England. It's pitch black, it's probably midnight. I can't see a house for miles. I'm drenched in sweat and rain, I've got blisters and my eggs are killing me. My legs are killing me. I've got no plan, no clue, no idea what to do. And yeah, at that point, I wish that when there were houses around that I would have had the guts to stand up, knock on the door and say, I messed up, I took the wrong way. I give up, please give me some help. I wish that I hadn't just kept swimming. And why didn't I do that? Well, I was in a foreign country. So can you imagine a foreigner coming up to your doorstep, knocking on the door in a cut-off t-shirt and shorts, sweating, smelly and asking and saying, look, I can't even just use your phone. I'm going to need you to take me to Thurstonland, which I don't know where it is. And I need you to take me in your car there, please. Like I couldn't bear the shame of stopping and saying, look, I don't know where I'm going. I don't know where I'm heading. But I wish I had because now that I'm on this back road, it feels too late to even do that. I don't even have an option. I don't even, if I gave up, I don't even know what I would do, right? Then, all of a sudden, a car passes by, and as it's gone, I get this idea, I've given up, I'm going to wave a car down, I could, I could wave a car to the side of the road. And I wish I would have had that idea before the one car passed by. And so now I'm like, okay, I've given up, I'm ready to call it quits. I've admitted, I've done something stupid, but the car's gone. So I keep walking, and I keep pacing, and then up on the horizon, I see these headlines, and I'm like, yes, and so I start acting like a raving lunatic to try to get him to pull over. And I realize now, in retrospect, that's probably not the best idea, because if you're going down a pitch black alley, the guy that's acting like a raving lunatic, you go ahead and pass him up, but luckily, this guy had some compassion, and he stopped the car. Now he was a smart guy, because he wouldn't let me in his car, and I wouldn't let myself in my, and someone like that in my car at that time, but he said, I'll let you use the phone. Now, this is my moment, my leap of faith. I've admitted I was wrong, and I'm ready, I need to make a leap of faith. I don't know for sure any phone numbers. And so I just reach into my subconscious, and I come up with the only numbers. I do know some numbers, I could just put them together in a way that seems right and make a phone call. That's my only option, so I do it. And it's ringing, and my dad picks up. It was my home phone number that I somehow managed to cobble together. And you know, I thought that he would have the rational response of why did you do this? What are you doing? What were you thinking? Running to a tower, miles and miles out of town without a phone, without telling anybody. What were you doing? Are you a fool? And I didn't think that because my dad's a bad dad, he's an awesome dad. I did it because I thought that because that would have been rational, that would have been a rational response. And instead what I got was my dad on the other side of the phone worried almost in tears. He had called the police. He had no idea where I was and he was desperately worried. The guy in the car told me that there was a local pub nearby and we came up with a meeting place. And I started to walk towards the direction and towards that pub. And when I saw him as silly as it sounds, and maybe there wasn't really any danger, but it had been such a bad experience and my dad on the phone was so worried and it was just really an emotional time and when I saw him up ahead on the road, we actually ran to each other and he gave me a big hug and said that he had feared the worst. He had no idea where I was and he was just desperately worried. And I think the good news is that I think that the universe is a lot like my dad. I think instead of when you stop and say, "Hey, I think I'm going the wrong direction. I'm going to change gears." Instead of it slamming you in a face with what an idiot you are, I think it uses all of what you learn on the wrong path and you can apply it in ways to the true path that end up getting you to places that you could have never gone had you never been on the wrong path in the first place. And so I guess my challenge to you is turn around, go find your pencil on the stone. I know this sounds super epic and I actually think that it is pretty epic because I think that a wasted life doing the wrong sorts of things is a tragedy. And no matter where you are, what your options are, whether it's to be an amazing creative mom who does amazing things with her kids or to be a best-selling author, it doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is that you do your pencil in the stone, the one that's waiting for you and only you that you find that thing. And if you do that thing, I really believe that what you're doing is extremely important, extremely valuable. And there is no pencil in the stone that is not important or something to be excited about and celebrated. They are all created equally. They might not all seem the same, but I think take whatever you know, sometimes I feel like I actually have to fight myself from trying to go out there and do things that seem bigger and cooler than what I'm actually supposed to be spending my time on. I think Twitter and stuff really feeds that in me. And I think that it's important to know that there's no higher calling than doing what you were meant to do, even when you don't understand the value of it to others. I think it's important just to in faith just go the that direction, just head the direction that you feel is right for you. So that's it. That's my challenge. That's the big pep talk. This is a kind of a special episode. I put a lot of time and energy into this one, especially as well as just these principles are things that I've been working on for a long time and the result of a lot of like breakthrough moments for me. So I hope, I really hope that this makes a big difference for you. I hope that you love it. I hope you it helps you. I hope you share it with other people that you think could benefit from it. Go check out that blog post. It's got a little bit more details. It's pretty similar to this, but it has it's a little bit easier to understand on the more practical side and you can find that at Andy hyphen J hyphen Miller dot com slash blog. You can find this podcast at illustration age dot com slash creative pep talk. And you know what, thank you for all the added encouragement this week that I got from the emails and the tweets and the Instagram and Facebook and especially the iTunes reviews. I don't want to be the guy begging you to put iTunes reviews. That's not what I'm trying to do at all, but I get a lot of people reaching out asking how do they help support the podcast? Well, right now, I think the number one way that you can support the podcast is by going and rating and reviewing the show on iTunes because the more ratings and reviews that you get on there, the more visible the podcast is and the more people it will reach. And so if you think that this helps you and it's important to you and it's benefited you then by going on there and reviewing and rating it, then you're helping that reach other people and pass it on. And if that's not you, that's fine. You don't have to do it. And if you don't want to do that, that's fine. Just keep listening and enjoy. But if you are looking for ways to support the podcast and support creative pep talk, that's one of the best things you can do. So I really appreciate that. I appreciate your time and attention. Thanks for listening to me get passionate about these subjects. And I hope that this brought some strategy to your creative business as well as some clarity and until next week, find whatever it takes to keep you peped up. 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 want to check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out Andy J Pizzo.com. If you want to test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code pep talk for 10% off your first purchase. Thank Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. 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 live 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. So this is actually happening on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Or listen ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.