Andy J. Pizza (0:03)

On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost. But don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk. I don't know if it's just me, but in this moment in time, it hasn't been easy to find my creative spark. Making picture books, drawing pictures, telling stories, making art. It can feel a little bit hollow. In contrast to the very real problems and crises and. And madness and chaos that are happening outside of this door and throughout the world. That there are times when things get really tough, that making art can feel like such a luxury. It can feel like the first thing that needs to be cut from your life. Right? And when you feel that impulse, like, what am I even doing? Why am I wasting my time with this? It's hard to keep at it. It's hard to silence that voice long enough to get through making anything. Now, I have never been through times like we're experiencing at this moment, but I have been doing freelance illustration work since 2008, and the world has gone through all kinds of things in that time. The recession, the pandemic, a lot of personal ups and downs. And I can say for sure that the time that. That art making was most vital were the times when things were tough, when I figured out how to tap into that spark in the midst of the chaos, that those were where. Where the biggest opportunities were also just where art ended up meaning the most to me. And some of the work that I made there meant the most to others as well. And so my aim is that by the end of this episode, you will feel more excited and more passionate about making art, that you will want to double down because of the times we live in instead of the inverse. And if you stick around to the end, we're going to do. I'm going to share a tactic that is called hold the cheese. And the purpose of this is to help you to mine your life for deeper creative sparks, deeper creative work, and use your creativity to be more tapped into and more present in your life. And so stick around for that. But first, I got to tell you about a friend I had in high school that taught me every. A very vital lesson on this front. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I love Squarespace. I'm a longtime user. One of the things I love about Squarespace is I will use. It's so easy to use that I will use it to create pitches. If I'm pitching a book or I'm pitching something to a client, I will use a Squarespace page in my website. And I'll build the whole thing there. Then you don't have these clunky like document PDFs clogging up people's inboxes and it looks super slick. If you want to see one of those that I use all the time, I did one for my series right side out andyjpizza.com RSO and you can see how I create a little pitch summary of that project. 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That's Q U I N C E.com/pep talk, free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com pep talk so how do you find your spark in the tough times just before we get into how to do it? When I talk about this spark, I don't know about you, but for me I am this type of human neurodivergent folk who struggles with what they call object permanence. So if it's not in front of me, it doesn't exist. Out of sight, out of mind. That is really a problem for me. You know, people that I haven't seen a while, I can forget they exist and then see them. All of a sudden all these feelings come back and like, oh my gosh, I've been missing this and how did I let this slip away and all that. I really struggle with that. But it works on all kinds of levels. It work like I forget what my passions are. I forget what it feels like to be happy when I'm sad and what it feels forget what it feels like to be sad when I'm happy and all that. It's very. It makes life as a artist, father, husband, tricky at different times. And I've had to kind of overcompensate for that nature that I have. And so just in case any of you are in that boat, in that camp, let's just talk just for a second about that creative spark and what it feels like in case it's been a minute since you felt it. You know, for me, that creative spark can sometimes take the form of consuming a piece of art that just knocks my socks off. That just changes me. I can think of those moments going to the movie theater and seeing eternal sunshine as a high schooler and just walking out and thinking life is different than I thought it was. Or having that sick day in college, watching Spirited Away for the first time and just being like, this is like, I have been changed. Or reading the book the Little Prince and just feeling like nobody gets. I'm not the same person that I was. But I can also think about that feeling when I was on fire at school, going to the bookshop, hoping that the new design magazine called Graphic was out for that month, because every time I got it, I would just smell that bad baby hot off the presses and just feel so switched on. Or the times when we would go out after class and get a few drinks or I'd go get coffee in the morning as I was a few years into my career, and talk about the strategies and the ideas and the personal projects and my next hypothesis of how I was going to break into this or that sector of illustration and just fell on fire for this thing. One of the things that just helps me cultivate that off the top is hearing other people talk about that spark. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode and also one of the reasons why I wanted to start it with. Just remember. Just. Let's soak up for just a second. What's at stake. That feeling when you're like, oh, my gosh, like, all I want to do is play in this zone because it's rich. It's other. It feels, dare I say, transcendent. Okay, yeah, I'll throw it out there. If art in that form isn't transcendent, what is? Okay, like, that's. That's about as good as we've got as humans. So that's the thing that's at stake. That's what we're talking about. And when I think about tough times, rough times, times when I'm having a hard time Accessing that spark. I think there's a case to be made that in the particular lies the universal. Not all the time. That's the James Joyce quote. But I think maybe there might be something universal that we could pull from just some individual experiences of tough times. One of the most tough times that I ever went through was early in high school. So early in high school, one of the darkest couple years of my life. Part of it was that we moved to a different town, and I started high school freshman year, a couple months after everybody else had started school. And so I started with no friends. I was eating at the cafeteria table alone for several days, maybe a whole week, maybe longer than that. I don't know. But I was sat alone, just humiliated and so lonely and so embarrassed and so desperate for a connection of any kind that I couldn't be choosy. And so I was just trying to find a friend anywhere I could find them, and I had to not be picky. And so I ended up making friends with this guy who was on the track team. I did track my first year. And, you know, we'll call him Chris, because, you know, what are names? Anyway, it wasn't his name, but we'll call him Chris. And I didn't really like Chris. I didn't really think that we gelled, but I just needed anything, like any kind of conversation. I kind of clung to him. I started eating lunch at his table with his friends, and even to the point where I would order what he ordered at lunch. Okay, now listen, it wasn't just me being, like the best friend when you're in kindergarten, like, I'll have whatever. They're gonna eat it. It wasn't just that. What he got for lunch was actually delicious. Okay, I'm defending my honor here. I don't want to be completely humiliated on my own damn podcast. And it sounds gross, okay? But I'm telling you, it worked. What Chris would get is this thing called a Bosco stick. I don't know if you ever heard of that on its own. Even in theory, it's already disgusting, but it gets worse and also better because it was delicious. A Bosco stick, if you don't know, is like a hollow piece of bread. It's like a vessel, kind of like a breadstick, but it's full of liquid cheese. And now that wasn't enough for this guy. He had to also get the nacho cheese and a little cardboard little cup and pour all the nacho cheese in there and dunk the vessel full of liquid cheese. Into more cheese. And that's what he would get. A couple of those, and that would be his lunch. Now, I can't say for sure if I was just copying him, but at first. But I definitely got into it. Okay. It was disgusting and amazing all at the same time. Two things were true at the same time. And yeah, that was my lunch for probably all of freshman year was Bosco sticks dunked in cheese. Okay? Now, one time we're stood in line and I am blabbering. Cause, you know, like I said, I was desperate. I needed a friend. I needed to talk. I just needed some connection. I need some hype. I needed some dopamine. And so we're in line, and I am just going on and on and on about this track team that we have this year. I'm just hyping up. Like, we got Ryan. That guy can do sprints. We got the Kurt, he can do the long distance. We've got. We've got everything in this team. And I'm just trying to, like, get jazzed about any so that I don't feel depressed and any kind of spark. And so I'm just going on and on and on, excited about it. Like, this is a really fun part about being about on team, is just hyping each other up. And then right before we get to our Bosco sticks, he's like, dude, quit talking about it and just do it. And the reason I tell you this story, first and foremost, is because it was such a traumatic, traumatic, traumatic experience that I'm still thinking about it years and years later. I was so devastated by being called out for just hyping. And yes, it hurt my feelings. Yes. I think there's something to be said for. Don't just talk about it, be about it. Do it. I think that there you can fall into a trap of talking about what you're going to do and then never doing it. I think that there. There's good even evidence to say talking a ton about your goals is actually going to make it harder to reach them because you're getting all this early dopamine release. But there is. I think there's a really great case for saying that talk, even if it can be empty without action, with action, it can be next level. If you're not using talk to just say what you're gonna do, but you're talking about what you've done or your strategy. It can be so additive. It can be the cohesion that brings a team together. Chris, and by the way, his name isn't Chris. I'm not gonna say his name, but I was kidding at the beginning when I said names don't matter. We know that names matter. If I say the name of your grandma, you're gonna feel something. If you're gonna. If. If you think about what the names of the people you love mean to you. Yeah, names are a vessel, but they're an important one. And you're not going to be able to hold that romantic, transcendent, cheesy. You will say part of life without it. And so even though I'm mad at Chris, we'll say almost said his real name for giving me crap about talking and in the line, I also have to be a little bit grateful for him because he taught me one of the most important lessons of my life is that the vessel, the hollow, can be the most incredible thing. It can be the thing that allows you to hold the cheese, and not just hold the cheese, but dunk it into more cheese. And so words may be empty, they may be hollow. Art might be hollow. But what if that's not a bad thing? What if that's exactly what makes it the thing that can allow you to pick up and hold that cheesy goodness in life? Those. The romantic, Romanticization of your experience. What if there's no other way to pick that up? And what if you're able to use words and art to hold that stuff in such a way where you can dunk into more of it? That has been my experience with art, is that, yeah, art for art's sake is hollow and it's in. That's not a great thing. But when it's able to capture the transient, ephemeral, slipping away nature of life in such a way where you can hold it and you can dive deeper into it, that hollow vessel becomes the most important thing when you are feeling more disconnected and more disgusted by life than you ever have. So are you really saying that art is a Bosco stick? You're damn right I'm saying it. In fact, I put it in writing. I mean it. So much art equals Bosco stick. And as empty as those words may be, or may have been before you heard this episode, my hope is that those words stick with you when you are feeling like, is this just meaningless? Why even make a picture? Why even tell a story? Why even show up to the studio or the desk or the page Today, I hope that you remember that art is hollow, but that hollow things are essential. Two things can be true at the same time. And that if we didn't have hollow things, we wouldn't be able to drink water. We wouldn't be able to be alive. And the same goes for if we didn't have art. If I didn't have art, I'll speak for myself. I'm not sure that I could taste life at its deepest levels. That for me, consuming art, creating art, as someone who is adhd, finds it very difficult to be present. Art is the thing that allows me to hold a moment. It is hollow enough that it can carry life.