[MUSIC] >> Hey, you're listening to Creative Pet Talk, a weekly podcast companion for your creative journey. I'm your host, Andy J. Pizza. The New York Times bestselling author and illustrator in this show is everything I'm learning about building and maintaining a thriving creative practice. [MUSIC] So we had one of my favorite musicians of all time on the show recently, Yoni Wolf. It's also the guy whose music starts the show and he sings the intro in case you didn't know, and on his new album, there's a song called Brand New. And there's a lyric on that that really stood out to me and my wife, Sophie, who's also an artist and creative person. And the lyric is, tell me what the work is. [MUSIC] And tell me what the work is hit hard because creative people are divergent thinkers. We often don't struggle with coming up with new ideas. We almost always struggle more with knowing which ideas to pursue. Which ones should we act on? And then if we go to act on any of them, what order should we work on them in? How do we know how to access the part of ourselves that we need for the work that we're doing right now? How do we know what work deserves our attention? Tell us what the work is. It's such a poignant phrase if you're a creator. And if you're the type of person where right now you are stuck, just wishing you knew which work to put your attention to. If you're the type of person that is plagued by not knowing like, should I be learning new software? Should I be learning a new instrument? Or should I be developing a new song or album or story? Or should I be marketing the old thing that I already finished and completed and launched and didn't see the success that I wished it would have? Like, which of these things should I be putting my hands to? What is the work I should be focusing on? If that's you, this episode is for you and I hope that it helps you kind of narrow down and zone in on what you need to be focusing on in the short term. Today. And if you stick to the end, I'm going to bring you an exercise in our call to adventure, our CTA called Who's Waiting. It is a framework that will help you figure out whether you're in a hero's journey or a heroine's journey. Those things don't really have anything to do with gender whatsoever. It's just historically how we have talked about it and how other writers have thought about it. They're just two different journeys that we all need to go on at different times and I'm going to give you a tool for figuring out which of those you're stuck in right now and it'll help inform the work that you should be focusing on today. But first, let's get into why approaching your creative practice as a journey with stages is essential to unlocking what work you should be focusing on today. Let's go. Against all odds, I have become someone who has learned to love planning and dreaming and goal setting and journaling my thoughts and my to do list is really important to me, externalizing your inner world is really essential to getting out of vicious cycles of rumination and getting past those really difficult obstacles. Some people like to do this on paper. Some people like to type it up, but I also know a lot of you are iPad people. Zenia is a journaling app that is the best of both worlds and you can use your Apple pencil, write and draw, use digital washing tape, stickers, make it your own type, plan out your week, organize your to-dos. This hybrid digital journal is something I know a lot of you are going to be obsessed with. Go check it out, download Zenia on the app store today. That's Z-I-N-N-I-A on the app store. Use pep talk all one word for 20% off. Massive thanks to Squarespace, Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform that makes making a website easy peasy. For a moment, creative websites were kind of looking all the same and I really wanted to break out of the templity look. Then I heard that Squarespace has this new fluid engine and boy am I glad I checked it out because this thing is what I always dreamed making a website could be like for me. Drag and drop stuff and then drag it all over the place, text, images, videos, you can put it wherever you want. Layer it up, tear it up, everything I cooked up in my mind I could figure out how to do without any knowledge of coding. Got a lot of comments like, "Hey, who helped you build this?" And I was like, "Squarespace is fluid engine, baby." You can see it at antijpz.com and head to squarespace.com for a free trial and build your own site and when you're ready to launch you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with promo code pep talk all one word all caps. Okay, so we've been doing a hero's journey, a creative journey series and the reason we've been doing that is because creative journey has been at the heart of this show since the beginning and part of it is I wanted to go back to the basics and kind of recapture a little bit of what has always been true for this show and what it's all about. For me, this shows an expression of the fact that my primary philosophical framework for moving through life is through the lens of journey or through the lens of story. That story, both story structure and actual stories are probably the primary way that I understand my life and make meaning in my life and figure out how I want to move through the obstacles and opportunities in my life. And you know, I always make this joke and it's kind of a joke, but I actually think it's true that no matter what your religion is or whether you don't have a religion or not, whether you have whatever it is, whatever your religion is, your religion is story. Now you might be deeply convicted that the story that is your religion is a true story or based on a true story and who knows, I'm not here at all to make any judgments around that. That's not my job. This isn't a religious podcast or a spiritual podcast per se, but I do say that to highlight the fact that all of us inform our worldview, whether it is a worldview of theism or a worldview of nihilism through the lens of a narrative of a story about what we say this world is about. And that story might be that we are put in this universe at the center of the universe to make meaningful contributions to the fate of life itself. It might be something of that nature or your story might be we are a speck of dust. And we are meaningless and nothing we do matters. And we're nothing more than a series of dominoes determined by the start of the big bang and all of it will play out exactly as it's going to play out regardless of this illusion of free will. Okay, wherever you fall in between that, and it could be some other option that I don't even know, those things are a story and we can't really know which are true. We can't be for sure, but we can't have our own convictions and ideas. I personally think of story, the structure, the three act way that we think about meaning and events and frame our life through this narrative arc. You know, some people even think consciousness is nothing but neurons telling a story saying, oh, this, these thoughts you're having, these experiences that this bag of meat is having, that bag of meat is you. That's the, that it's them telling a story and that emergent phenomenon known as consciousness that is you walking around through the world and thinking you're a separate thing from your environment is nothing but a story. Now, that's all kind of abstract and big picture. And maybe it feels like it has nothing to do with your lived reality as a person and especially as a creative person just trying to make a thriving or surviving creative practice. Maybe that feels completely disconnected. But for me, learning to see my creative practice as a journey through the lens of story has been an utter game changer. And so we've been in this series for a few episodes and we've talked about how seeing your creative practice through the lens of story allows you to deal with conflict differently, to see it as something that is essential, that is teaching you, that is part of your becoming what you become. And then we've talked about how to, how seeing your creativity as a quest allows you to find that overlap between creativity and career in a way that means you don't lose your soul in the career side, which is so easy to do. This episode, I want to talk about how the creative journey and seeing it this way has allowed me to see that it's not a binary thing of either I'm living my dream or I'm failing completely. I'm reaching my potential and living into it or I'm squandering my creativity. That it's not pass or fail. And that fixed mindset, which says you've either got it, you've either got the goods, you got the talent or you suck and you'll never make it, that fixed mindset is so detrimental to you getting anywhere in your creative work. And if you can adopt a journey mindset, here's what it can do. It can say that maybe you're not at the end. I mean, hopefully you're not, you know, I don't know about you, but I can fall into this thing of like, oh, just one day, I'll have made it and I'll have this massive surplus of money and I won't have to think about that and I can just do whatever creative stuff I want to do all day, every day. And even though from the time I started this journey 18 years ago or so, up to now, I've had in the past probably five, six, seven years, I've had the most creative freedom I've ever had and I've mostly trended that way, I'm still not where I want to be where I can just, you know, realize any creative thing that I want into reality because I have infinite resources, right? And I also don't always feel like I've made it. Yes, I have a full time creative practice, but that feeling of whether you've made it or not is a very elusive one that's very hard to pin down like exactly what it means. And the reason why seeing my creative practice as a journey was so powerful to unlock that feeling of, oh, one day it'll be good. One day I'll have creative freedom and instead allowed me to own and take claim to the creative freedom that I want today. The reason it was so essential is because the journey is a process and it's not just a process. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. And in fact, you can even go look at it from different story structures. You can say, okay, act one, act two, act three, or you can go further and look at it through the lens of the hero's journey or Dan Harmon's story circle or the heroin's journey or, you know, there's almost infinite takes on what components make up, what stages make up a story. And there's also as many types of stories as there are stories themselves. There's just, it's one of the reasons why it's such a fascinating structure. It just applies in so many different ways. But breaking down my path into chunks meant that even if the conflict that I'm having right now isn't going to be the one that makes or breaks me. It is the one that I'm in right now and it is where my focus needs to be. And so if you think about it in terms of three acts, we'll just go through these real quick, just really loosely because we're going to apply it more specifically to the creative world in just a second and how this maybe plays out in your own creative practice. But just for a loose understanding, you probably are familiar with the three-act structure of storytelling, essentially it starts with a character that wants something. And that's act one that for some reason, the character wants something and wanting something means leaving the home, leaving the comfort zone. If you want something, you're not content with where you are, right? That's act one. The hero want something, act two, is something stops the hero from getting what they want, right? Like that's the conflict, it happens every single story. And then act three is kind of the answer, the result of the math of act one plus act two. The thesis, the antithesis have to come together in a surprising but inevitable way that is the synthesis, it is the climax, it's the result. And often, the most fascinating element to me is that the conflict gives the character something they need more than what they wanted. And the idea here is that the character going out into the world and trying and having to face reality, you know, Jungians say reality is medicine. Like what it really is out there and what happens when your potential meets reality, that's the medicine you need, that conflict, that thing that stops you from getting your wildest fantasies, that's the thing that's going to teach you what you actually need. And so even that alone, you can extrapolate all kinds of value in meeting. You can say like the thing that's stopping you, you know, the fact that when I was in college, I couldn't make screen printed band posters because nobody I found in the town that I lived in when I was in the UK knew how to do that or would do it the way that I was trying to do it. They all either screen printed on t-shirts or they painted on screens. No one could tell me the in between and I couldn't crack how to make the screen printed band posters that I went to school to make. And that obstacle taught me that it wasn't about the screen printing, it wasn't about the poster, it was about the creative connection and the inspiration of me and my relationship to the band. And I came up with this idea of the Andy Rock coloring book and it became my first published book. And so that conflict taught me what I needed to know. And so yes, the journey can change the way you relate to conflict. But it can also relate to, okay, in those three acts, which one am I stuck in? If you don't have any desires, if you don't have any inner spark and fire, then you might be in act one, you might be in a place where you're like, you know what? I need to get back in touch with what am I excited about? I have been in that zone when you get burnt out, which I have been this year, you get in that place where you're like, food has lost its flavor. Like the creative stuff that used to do it for me just isn't, I don't care. It doesn't matter. I don't, it's not interesting. I'm not, I don't have any spark. I don't have any desire and that's a scary place to be in. And if you're in that place, you are in act one and what that tells you is the kind of work that you need to be doing, you need to be searching inside, searching outside, finding the problem, finding like, what is it that's got me stagnant? Why is this world so boring and mundane and ordinary? And sometimes that means like just going on some random adventures. You know, Julia Cameron from the Artist's Way calls it art dates, like just saying yes to new things, traveling, like just traveling within your own city, in your own town, taking a different path home, like that literally those things can have an effect on you. So if you don't have any desire, you might be there. If you're in the midst of conflict, you know what you want, but you are stuck because there is a thing that is stopping you from actively getting it and you're currently in the process of just wrestling with it, trying something new, trying this again, that, then you're in act two and that's the work you need to be doing. If you have explored every single way that you possibly can get over this thing, you might be in act three and the work is to make the meaning of it. The work is to say, well, what did I get that I needed? What did I get? What did I, how did I change as a person? How can I find what I actually need instead of what I thought I wanted? How can you find a conclusion? How can you find a resolution after that project that may be failed in some ways and succeeded in some ways? And then you're act three. Okay. I'm going to go into more specific application of creativity in a minute, but another example of this, how it's played out in my life, how it's allowed me to embrace the challenge that was in front of me. Instead of seeing the challenge in front of me as an annoying thing that's in the way of getting to where I'm trying to go, but realizing every stage has a challenge that needs to be embraced was through the lens of the hero's journey. And so sometimes if I get stuck, I'll go through the 12 phases. There's the ordinary world called to adventure, the refusal of the call, the meeting of the mentor, the crossing the threshold, dah, dah, dah, dah, so and so forth. And sometimes when I get really stuck, I will go through that list and feel like, you know, where am I in this place? Like where, what, what things are happening in my outer world to me that resemble the test, the allies and the enemies or the approach, the inmost cave or the season, the sword. Why? Because it gives me that kind of distance to say, well, what does the hero in that journey need to be doing? What is the work? And so I might be on the road back and the road back is I've got the elixir. Now I got to do the busy work, the annoying work. I need to tap into the work ethic that gets me back home and gets this elixir to those people. And this brings me to the most important aspect of how senior life through the lens of story and senior practice through the lens of story can allow you to know not just the work you need to be doing, but how it needs to be done. And that comes to this notion of values. And what does that mean? Values are about how you go about doing something. Are you going to go about this thing in an open manner or a closed manner? Are you going to go about this thing with a maximalist aesthetic or a minimalist aesthetic? Are you going to go into this about with a thinking clever place or a feeling heartful place? What are your core values and the thing that's extremely tricky about life and creativity and making art is that one core value will not carry you all the way through every single stage. And the power of seeing it through the lens of story is that you can know not just the work you're supposed to be focused on, but how you should go about the work. And so if you're in act one, the core value that you might need at your ready is openness because you have to forget everything you used to know, you have to let go of the ordinary world and you have to open yourself up to a way of being that you've never been before. But guess what? When you are in act three, openness isn't going to help you. Once you have the elixir, you don't need to go on another journey. We've talked about this before. Here's the story of Beowulf, he goes and he's slaying dragons and then they make him king and then in some versions of the story that I've heard about, he's a king and he hears about some other monsters that need to be slayed and he goes out to slam and he gets killed because he was in a new journey. He needed to not be open to new paths. He needed to finish his path well. And so these processes can be cyclical, they go in and out, no process in creativity is neat and goes one, two, three, sometimes it's one, two, one, two, one, three, you know, it gets messy, but even just having a rubric for thinking about it can help you to figure out like what does one need when you are in this stage? And it's incredibly important because guess what? Because you go listen to other artists that don't have as dynamic of an understanding of creativity, they're going to just tell you one of two things. They're either going to tell you what value they're in the midst of embracing right now in real time, the one that's top of mind or they're going to tell you the one that comes most easy to them because let's for a minute, let's go into how I think about these three acts in creativity. I've talked about this a few times on the show and it's something that we'll probably always return to and it's the mine refine shine. That's how I think of the three acts mine is exploring, you're going into the mine for the gyms, you're not being super discerning, you're being super open about collecting any rock that possibly has a glimmer of hope. And this is you just strumming on the guitar, letting the song write itself. This is you just going to the page and just doodling whatever comes out. This is you being open to new mediums, open to new directions and just throwing stuff on the page. The second phase is you take those rocks that you found the mine and you refine them. You put them into the rock polisher and you see how shiny they get, right? Some of them are duds, some of them are not. These are the artists that write 100 songs for a 10 song album or 50 songs or 30 songs. Most of your favorite albums probably had a lot of songs left on the cutting room floor. Not a lot of you have favorite albums that are the triple album release, right? Like rarely is more, more when it comes to the refining act two stage. So if you're in that stage, you've got to have a totally different value. And this is super helpful because guess what? You've heard before, creativity is all about openness. Creativity is about being open to all possibilities at all times. But it is about all possibilities, but not at all times. It's at all possibilities at the start of the process. But if you're embracing all possibilities when you're at the end of act two, you might not ever move into act three. You might be the type of person who never finishes a project because you're not able to dynamically switch your values as you move through the process and as you move on your path. You know, when I taught at the art school locally here, I taught a couple of classes about 10 years ago, and you definitely always have these kids in illustration that just never moved past the sketch phase. They were perpetually sketching and sketching and sketching. Never wanted to finish anything. Never wanted to put anything into digital or into print. They never wanted to move it beyond that sketch phase. And in a minute at the end, when we get to the CTA, we'll talk about how, you know, sometimes that is indicative of something about that person that is their strengths, that they need to embrace in the long run, but in the short term, moving all the way through the process is incredibly valuable. Stuart Murdoch of the band, Bell and Sebastian says that he learned the hard way that with the band, they're every song that they really start, they want to finish at least to the demo level because you just can't fully know what kind of rocks you got from the mind until you get them through the polisher. And sometimes if you're a comedian, if you're a stand up comedian, you're not even going to know if those things are as shiny as you think they are until you get them in front of other people. And Mike Berbiglia talks about how he thinks comedy is, stand up comedy is the Venn diagram of what the comic thinks is funny and what the audience also thinks is funny. And it's that sliver in between those and you're not going to know what those things are until you get to the shine portion, the portion where you take those gems and you put them on display and you see which cell and which don't. And that actually getting those through all the way through the process is really, really essential to you moving your way closer and closer to unlocking your creative potential and realizing some of it in your real life. And this is why I think so many creators to their own detriment throw off learning from anybody else because it went once you swim into the waters of artists talking about the work, it can get really dicey really quick and really confusing because you've got these artists that say, oh, it's about all possibilities, all time, always staying open to the moment and never shutting out all critics and just being open to what happens and that's what creativity is all about. And then you have people on the other side that say, you need to be laser focused on your vision, don't compromise it for anything and bring it all the way to fruition. Those two things are at odds at each other unless it's not black or white and it's more of a triab dynamic of act one, act two, act three or stage one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 in the hero's journey or however you want to think about it, all the different structures, so many good structures that can help you and that speak to different types of creators at different times because I think the best creators are the ones that at some points are open to all possibilities and then at other points, open to only the vision that they've had and that they've developed in the rock polisher, if you will. Okay, let's talk about the CTA, the call to adventure. Every episode we try to end with a creative call to adventure, creative call to action, a way to take these ideas and put them into action so that you're not just inspired, you actually make some progress with these things and so this week your creative call to adventure is called who's waiting and I'm going to talk about what that means and it's going to help you determine whether you're in a hero's journey or a heroine's journey currently in your practice and like I said at the beginning, gender has nothing to do with it, these are just two different frameworks that honestly, I think no matter what you think about your gender, you probably need to go on both of these journeys at different times, maybe even a couple times in your life and so one of the ways that you can figure out what work you need to be doing when you get stuck and you've got lost is to figure out whether you are in a hero's journey or a heroine's journey in your creative practice right now. Now, I'd like to just say that I've heard this quote, I love it, it's that all frameworks are a lie but some are useful and I think that's really helpful, it's true so you don't get in your head about, am I really in a heroine's journey right now, no, you're not okay, you're a person making art for Instagram, you're not, you're not in an adventure at all but thinking of it this way may be useful. And so here's what I mean by that and this is why it's useful is that one of the ways you can figure out what you need to be doing is figuring out who's waiting and when I say that I'm saying, are you waiting for opportunities? Are you waiting for people to see your potential? Are you waiting for somebody to let you do the creative work you want to do? If you are in that scenario, I would guess that you're in a hero's journey. If you are in a scenario where people are waiting on you, you're in a position where people are like, come on, do the thing, come on, we need this stuff, come on, we need those emails, come on, you know, you can't pump it out fast enough, my recommendation is to see yourself through the lens of the heroine's journey. And the reason why is because the hero's journey, this delineation, this kind of deconstruction of story comes from the book, The Heroin's Journey by Gail Carver. Be aware, there are two pretty popular books called The Heroin's Journey, one's older, I think it's Maureen Murdock, I've read that one as well. And there are some things in it that I like, there are some other things in it that are a bit dated in the way that it's overly gendered in a way that I don't fully subscribe to. But some interesting concepts in there, especially as a foil to Joseph Campbell's work that is even older around The Heroin's Journey, that's even more dated and, you know, has even more problematic stuff going on there in terms of gender. But the newer book by Gail Carver is more of a practical guide for storytelling. And she explores what she sees as the primary differences between The Heroin's Journey and The Heroin's Journey. And to me, the most memorable of it was the difference that The Hero's Journey often has to perform the act alone. And this is really about the development of the individual in the ego. It's the, it's the, of a healthy ego, an ego that says, I can do this, I can do hard things, I can make stuff happen. I have a gift in talent and resources and skills and I am capable of doing what an individual needs to do. That's essentially what The Heroin's Journey is. And often there's sacrifice necessary. Often there are friends that have to fall by the wayside and The Hero has to go it alone, truly. And they're the only one can do what needs to be done. Then there's a secondary journey and the way that Gail Carver talks about The Heroin's Journey, what she defines this way. And again, these are just two different terms. It's not really about gender. It's about just two different ways of two different kinds of story structure. And The Heroin's Journey is about belonging, learning not just to be yourself, but how you fit in within the community and how you are in relationship to them and also how you are in debt and in need of the things that they bring to the table. And one of the primary ones that she works through in the book is Harry Potter. And Harry Potter is often seen as we've talked about on the show as a type of hero's journey and in certain ways it does follow those tropes, but according to Gail Carver's framework, it's much more of a heroin's journey in that Harry is always at the need of Ron and Hermione and Dumbledore and Snape and that he is part of a community and he couldn't possibly do what needs to be done alone and that the journey he has to figure out is what part of this is mine to do and then what part of this do I need to delegate or outsource or humble myself before and own that I can't do this, the strength that comes from the vulnerability of saying I need help in this area. And so when I say figuring out which you're in through who's waiting, I think about the story of Paul McCartney when he's after the Beatles and he has the band Wings and he's got this studio space for a limited amount of time and he shows up and the band members don't show up. And so guess what? He doesn't wait, he gets to work and he plays every instrument himself. That's a hero's journey. That's look, nobody is giving me a book deal. Nobody is casting me in their movies. I'm going to have to write, direct and star in this thing before anybody sees my potential and before I understand my potential. And this is where I go back to the people that would only sketch things and never bring anything to fruition. Yes, maybe that's indicative of a strength. Like maybe you're going to be a concept artist that never really does leave the sketch world and that is like your ideal place to start but you might not ever know if that's where you stop. I think there are so many people, illustrators or actors who stay in that abstract, image-based creativity that doesn't have the cerebral element and it's fashionable and it's kind of surface in that way and they never write their own books. They never write their own articles and it's not about being good at that but they never even attempt it and they don't know what the substance is underneath. They're not connected to that. But then you have those actors that write the movies and star in them and it makes their career or at least typecast them in a way that they start getting roles and they never write another thing again and that doesn't matter because they're not a writer. They do sketch things and finish them off and they get the job and then they go back to sketching because that's where they're comfortable and that's where they play within the heroin journey, within the group. That's their role. But if you're in a situation where you are waiting, nobody is opening the door, nobody is giving you a chance. My recommendation is that you do every single part of the process even if it means you're doing part of the process bad. You're mining ideas, you're coming up with new things, you're refining them, editing them into what it's going to be. The first bit is just finding raw material that you're excited about. The second bit is saying what is it that I have, is this a podcast, is this a movie, is this a book and then actually refining it into the thing and the third bit is shining it and getting it out in the world. All of those different practices, I've found that I have strengths in one of those three parts of the process more than I do the others. About having to work through all three meant that I ended up being stronger in one of those than I realized or I ended up, my strength ended up being the first one when I thought my strength was the last one, which really happened to me and I didn't know that till I played all the instruments and I went on that particular hero's journey, but then there comes a time where you have to admit that you're not so good at every role. You have to lean in and really own a concentration and double down on something that you're really good at. If maybe you started out at a job, you started with a heroine's journey and then you moved into a more solo thing and you do a hero's journey or maybe you get to be the leader of the team and now you're the hero's journey or whatever it is. It doesn't have to go in any particular order. It doesn't really have anything to do with how you see yourself in terms of gender. It only has to do with if you're waiting for people, you have to assume no one's coming and it's your job to do every part of the process. If you're trying to make illustrations for newspapers and nobody will give you a job, you need to start your own newspaper and it's going to be a frickin pain in the ass but you need to do it and you might learn that you actually love the printing more than the drawing. Who knows? Stay open at that start or if nobody is getting your emails fast enough, if you're stuck at a lower level where you just can't break through, you've made a few things but they're just not as good as you need them to be, you might need to partner with some other people and humble yourself and find how this strength fits within the whole and focus more of your energy on one part of this journey and really own that. So I hope that this delineation between where the waiting is happening and who's waiting helps you to get an idea of how to take action and where you're stuck right now so that you can figure out what the work is that you need to be doing, how to do it and who to be doing it with. Creative PEPTALK is a weekly podcast designed to help you build a thriving creative practice but that's the thing and only works if it's an actual practice, it has to become a habit. We make this show every single week so that your creativity can go from being a thing that you do sometimes to a creative discipline to immerse you in a world of creatives that are doing the same where those kind of behaviors are normal. One way we help you stick to this is by sending you the new episodes via email to your inbox every single week so that you never miss a week and we often add bonus content like pictures and links and extra related stuff to the episode that you're not going to get just from the apps. Go to AndyJPizza.substack.com to sign up to the free email newsletter and I'll have the accountability to stay on the creative path and keep this street going and hopefully it will inspire you to do the same. And if you sign up right now you'll get immediate free access to our e-booklet, the creative career path. It's a step-by-step roadmap for creating a project that is designed to unlock your dream creative clients and opportunities. Sign up at AndyJPizza.substack.com and let's keep this creative habit together. Creative PepTalk is part of the PodGlamorit Network. You can learn more about PodGlamorit at www.podglamorit.com. This has been another episode of Creative PepTalk, a weekly podcast companion for your creative journey. Hey, it's dangerous to go along, take this podcast with you week in and week out by subscribing to the show to keep you company and keep the best creative practices top of mind so that little by little week in and week out you can make progress in your own creative practice. I'm your host, AndyJPizza, I'm a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator and I make this show not because I have it all figured out but because as a squishy creative artist type that's prone to big emotions it takes a whole lot of creativity to just get out of bed sometimes. So every week I put out the ideas that are helping me stay disciplined and stay excited and have helped me stay on this creative path for the past 15 years plus in hopes that it might help someone else or at the very least help them feel less alone on their own creative journey. Massive thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band Y for our theme music. Thanks to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for editing and sound design. Thanks to Sophie Miller for podcast assistance of all sorts and most importantly thanks to you for listening and until we speak again stay peped up. How did American politics and our economy become so corrupt? Hi I'm David Saroda, an investigative journalist at The Lever, former Bernie Sanders speechwriter and Oscar nominated writer on the film Don't Look Up. Join me on my new podcast Master Plan where we expose the secret scheme hatched in the 1970s that legalized corruption for the wealthy. 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