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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. All right, so this is a different type of episode. I wanted to start doing some episodes that are just a few kind of quick hits of things that could help your creative life get better. Really quick things that have had a big impact on me. But they were just little shifts. And it's kind of like when you need a creative boost, you need to get those creative juices flowing, but you don't know what you need. And so you come to the Dr. Pizza to get a prescription for what you didn't know you needed. So I don't know what to call these episodes yet. If you have ideas, put them in the comments on YouTube or send them to me on Instagramiza. I would love to hear what you think. What should these episodes be called? But it's just going to be some really quick rapid fire things that. Or just like this episode's three different little buckets of things that made a big difference in my creative life. And soaking in them also just peps me up. And hopefully peps you up by proxy by osmosis. And you just trust me to be your navigational guide on this journey. So that's what these episodes are. That's what this episode is. If you just need a boost, but you don't even know what you need. I got you, man. This is for you. So let's get into three things. Three small things that made my creative life surprisingly better when I discovered them. Let's get into it. 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, go to squarespace.com pep talk. Get building for free and trying it out and testing it. And then when you're ready to launch, use promo code pep talk. All one word for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks. Squarespace fall is coming. That means more fabrics are coming at you. Layers. It can be a good thing if the textures and sensations are right and the fit and the look feels good. Well, Quints has you covered on both fronts. Now I have a European linen short sleeve shirt from Quint and when I put that thing on, I'm telling you, I feel so classic and sharp and somehow also everyday man, that I feel like I'm someone who writes novels now. It's elevated my whole sense of self. Best part is the price is so much more affordable than comparable brands with similar quality and ethical standards. So I'm a huge fan of that. Keep it classic and cool this fall with long lasting staples from quince. Go to quince.com/pep talk for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E.com/pep talk, free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Pep Talk. Okay, got them right here. Number one, know your attention aperture. Okay, what is this all about? Knowing your attention aperture. So I can't remember where I first heard this, but it made such a difference for me. And it was an explanation of adhd. But this is applicable to every human that I know. But you have to tailor it to you. So if you don't know aperture. And this is just the way that I think about this, aperture is a camera term and it's something about like how much light the lens of the camera is letting in. I'm not a photographer, so I don't fully get it, but it's kind of similar to your eye. Your eye has a kind of aperture with either, you know, letting a little bit of light in or letting tons of light in. I'm assuming that it's bigger when it's dark. I don't know, I'm not an eye guy doctor, but I think that's how it works. But the idea here is that your attention has an aperture setting. Now if you are a neurotypical person, my guess is that you actually have an aperture that's similar to the eye. It kind of naturally lets in more when it needs to, you know, widens the attention, where it's paying attention to the whole scenario, the whole scene, wherever you are, take it in. You know, if it needs, if you need to have, if you need to have your head on a swivel kind of thing, you. You can do that. And then if you really need to go laser focus, you can do that. However, if you're adhd. My experience is my aperture is wide open, baby. I'm taking it all in at all times. And the thing that I heard it was in a short form video. If I could reference it, I would. If you know it, send it to me and I'll put it in the show notes. But I didn't know it was gonna have such an impact on me. Otherwise I would have saved it. But I've kept coming back to it and it's really impacted my everyday life because it's helped me to not feel shame and helped me take accommodations for the fact my aperture is wide open. She didn't say it like that, but what she said was, you have 100% of your attention available at all times. And there's no way to make it smaller. You can't make it 99%. You can't make it 2% because you're just filling in a form. You have it all available and you are feeling the energy expense, the cost to your psyche at all times. And so if I am in a low stimulation environment that only requires. That's only taking up 10% of my focus, that's gonna be a problem because 90% of my focus is just waiting there. It's like, put me in, coach. Come on, let's do it. What are we doing? And I'm like, very distracted because I'm like, okay, I don't know. There's nothing else to pay attention to. And so it's been very helpful for me to realize that I need to do activities that either fully engage me. You know, I've been really loving this video game. So if you're a longtime listener, you know, I'm super into open world games. Got really into Elden ring. I put 250 hours on that mostly. Cause I'm not that good at it. So I've really had to overpower, level up and grind. I'm like a 216Elden ring people. The five listeners that love Elden Ring are just freaking out right now. That's for you. But I love Elden Ring. They came out with this new game called Night Rain. Night Rain is this extremely intense. Like, I won't go into it, you know, into the details, but it's extremely intense. Takes your 100% focus. And so that is a really fun game for me because that's what I need when I'm doing a talk. That's really fun to me because it takes all of my attention to be on stage, be aware of what I'm doing tap into what the people in the audience are doing and really try to be fully present. Those activities are really fun for me. Then there's a lot of activities that don't take, you know, in my work, some things like when I'm doing sketchbook stuff, that takes about 80% of my focus. Cause I'm coming up with ideas and. But I realize that other 20%, I have to accommodate for it. I can't just shut it out. And that other 20% might be focused on the Altoids in my mouth. It might be focused on the three drinks that I have. It might be focused on the instrumental music. But as I move over to coloring the that illustration, then I'm only about 30% focused. And I can put 70% on a podcast or an audiobook that she didn't frame it like aperture. But that idea of like, I have to account for this a hundred percent. I have to limit the things that only take 30% of that focus but require me to do nothing else. So jobs that are like that were really, really difficult for me. That's why tax season is so difficult, or filling out forms or whatever. I have to try to limit that kind of stuff as much as possible because it's just not in my wheelhouse. Now, you might not be adhd. This is not a podcast specifically for ADHD people. However, I have found that lots of creative people tend to not be neurotypical. Although neurotypicals have the capacity. I think they have the exact same capacity for creativity. But that's just a guess. But my feeling is from the small amounts of time in my 38 years of being on Earth. 38, 39. I think I'm 39. 39 years of being on Earth. I only had a short span where I had medicine for adhd. And in that time, what I felt like was I could be as creative, but I felt less compelled to because being creative was so much harder than doing tasks when I had the ability to just do tasks. You know, having. Having the medicine. So I kind of wonder if sometimes neurotypical people just choose to be less creative because it is more challenging when doing tasks, you know, more. Less creative tasks is second nature to you. So anyway, whatever. My point is that whoever you are, wherever you are, you, I think it's extremely helpful. It will increase the quality of your life. If you have an awareness of your apert, is it fixed? Is it variable? If it's fixed, is it wide open like me as an ADHD person? And maybe you're adhd, and it works totally differently for you. It manifests in all kinds of different ways. Or maybe you're autistic or asd. I mean, they're the same thing. But maybe my experience, the friends that I have that have, that are autistic, their aperture is more like a laser focus. And so if there's too much stuff going on or that they can really go super deep in one direction for a long period of time really often, and then maybe need big spurts of time where they're completely off, but they have an awareness of like, they prefer this laser focus on something maybe even really detailed, whereas I don't have that capacity. But I think the key isn't this way or that way. The key is understanding what works for you and how your attention is built. And so I just. This metaphor of the aperture was helpful for me that I kind of came up with to explain that video I saw. And I think that if you can start thinking of your attention that way, you can direct it a little bit better. You're also going to be less ashamed. What I had to realize was I, I have this 100% attention at all time. You know, some people, some experts would say attention deficit disorder is actually a wrong term for what this is because it's the inability to direct it. I don't, I don't have the ability to, to focus in and laser it anywhere. I have to. I. Unless it's something all encompassing like night rain or doing a talk or, you know, painting is kind of like that for me, that I don't have the, the power to just let less in and focus on small things. And so what I've realized is that means that I need to bundle activities. So if my wife and I are going to have a conversation about something really practical that doesn't require my full depth of humanity to be there. You know, if my full depth of humanity is there and we're talking about serious stuff, I can. That's like 98% of my focus, baby. I like that kind of stuff. That's one of the reasons I struggle with small talk, is that it's a, you know, can be a 2% to 15% aperture. And I'm like, okay, what else are we doing, man? Like coffee, alcohol, like what? I need some Altoids, like I said, sunflower seeds, anything. I need something else going on there because those other focus guys in the back are like, hey, put me in, coach. So I've learned that if we're talking about something like schedule and stuff like that, I need to be putting the dishes away. I need to be, you know, tidy in this room. I need to be doing something else with my hands and occupying that extra space. But if you have the opposite, you might realize, like, okay, whatever I'm doing, I need to create a low stimulation environment where I can really zero in on one thing without it piling up on my other senses and kind of just distracting my focus. So number one is know your attention aperture. All right? Number two is diagno yourself. Okay, I'm not actually saying that you should be diagnosing yourself. There's a lot. If you're not aware, there's a lot of conversation on the Internet about whether a self diagnosis and being neurodivergent is valid. Now, I tend to think that it is, but I also, I'm just saying this is not medical advice and I am got no PhD other than in pizza. So I can't really fully speak to that. And it's not really the point isn't what you might think it is. Anyway, so for the longest time on this show, I have spoke about being ADHD since the early days. And I think 2014, 2015 is probably when I started talking about it. And it was before ADHD had really had a moment. And it was partially in reaction to the fact that I had seen a lot of depictions of autism show up in pop culture, TV and movies. Now, not all of them, I mean, most of them weren't very accurate, but there was a conversation happening around it, and I had hoped that that could happen for ADHD and that maybe ADHD would become more than just a joke about squirrels. By the way, have you ever, if you're adhd, have you ever been in a conversation and then got distracted by a squirrel, literally, and thought, damn it, ah, I'm just like feeding the stereotype. But it's definitely happened to me. Happens more with birds. But yeah, what was I talking about? Yeah, so I was talking about it. And actually, because it wasn't really a conversation that I was aware of that was happening online, it felt really scary to do because I didn't know how it would. How people would perceive me in the illustration industry, whether it would hurt my jobs or whether I would get discriminated against and, you know, people would kind of have assumptions about what it would be like to work with me, whatever. But I was so brave that I just did it anyway. I mean, part of it was, I do think a little bit of courage of just like feeling like I want to. I want this conversation to Happen I have such a extreme empathy and compassion for neurodivergent people. And so much of this project is about, you know, being, needing to carve your own life path creatively. So as much of as it was about like pursuing a creative practice or creative career, it was about carving out your own path, creating your own path as a person because you needed a different life than the one that you were born into or the systems that you're born into. And so I felt really compassionate about that. So yes, some of it was courage, some of it was just like this is something that I want to be known for talking about because it's something that matters to me and it's. And I love talking about it. So it's selfish in that way is that I just was my own little hyper focus too. Anyway, back to the diagno yourself. What I'm saying is it's not so much about a medical diagnosis as it is about knowing yourself. Last episode or in recent episodes, I don't know which one's going to come out next. In recent episodes I was talking about building a world that suits you, carving out that path. The only way you're going to be able to do that is if you love yourself, if you believe that you are ultimately on the, on the most base foundation of your being a good thing that deserves space. Unless you believe that you're not going to do what it takes, which will be a lot to build your world, to meet your needs. And so throughout the years of talking about adhd, I tried to be clear that what I'm talking about is knowing yourself, knowing and loving and accepting yourself. I think pretty often I was pretty open about not being medicated for most of the time that I did this show and that medication wasn't the reason why I thought you should seek self knowledge like diagnosis of, of. Of who you are and what you're like and what your brain is like, what your neurotype is like. But I just wanted to be clear again like that that's what I. And again, not a, not a doctor of anything but pizza. Don't know anything on that really. You know, officially I'm a deep believer and fan of science and scientists and, and educated people. I love, love them, would love to be one one day but, but. So I can't speak to whether you should have medicine. I know people who swear that medication has saved their lives and I believe them. For me, it doesn't really mix with my system that well and I've chosen a different way to kind of manage my symptoms. But what I mean by diagnose yourself is the reason figuring out I was ADHD before I ever even had an official diagnosis, the reason it was so, so much of a game changer was that it was a map of my brain. And when I say diagnose yourself, I'm saying through the lens of that previous episode about loving yourself, have a positive psychology lens on that diagnosis. You know, we live in a time where so much of the funding comes from the medicine community, and that means that we're looking at it through the lens of what's wrong with you so that we can supplement it, so that we can fix it. Right. And so. And so in some ways that's really great, but in other ways, it means that we don't have the funding to figure out what's right with you, because where's the money in that? Right. And so there was this hue, I spoke about this in more detail in episode, I think 520 too, about loving yourself, where they had this massive shift in the psychology space in the 90s where there was this big movement with Martin Seligman, who pioneered this positive psychology, which was not positive thinking. It's not toxic positivity. It's coming at the human. Like, let's start with what's great about you. Let's start about, instead of our Bible being the book of disorders, let's make our bible the strengths of humanity, of understanding the different neurotypes, getting the most of these different people. And it's at least as valid of a way of approaching psychology as a negative psychology. And for me, and from what I've read, you know, the efficacy of practices that lean on positive psychology, it might even be a better way to approach it. So what I'm saying is finding out that I was adhd, and yes, it started with, like, grief of what's wrong with me, but eventually it helped me find a neurodivergent community. And that neurodivergent idea is that what makes us different is what makes us great, is that neurodivergent means there are different types of brains. They're not necessarily broken or wrong just because they're less common or because our society, our current society is. Isn't set up for them. And so that was my gateway into learning about all the different types of brains and how different my brain is. And because we've had this long history of negative psychology and we have this medical community that is funding a lot of the studies, we don't have a huge DSM version of what's right with you. We don't have the positive diagnosis of hooray, you've got 100% aperture. It means you can do all this other stuff. We don't have that. So what you have to do is use the resources we have and then flip it into a positive lens when you can. And so this idea of, oh, you have a really hard time doing mundane things, that's the negative diagnosis. But the positive is you maximize meaningful experiences. And I do that better than anybody I know, baby. So in your face, whoever's on the other side of that. So that's what I mean. Diagnose yourself means find out everything you can about who you are. I used to say this story on the show every once in a while, this idea that if an alien came to you, popped out of a wormhole, gave you this device that looked really weird and bio engineered and it gave it to you and it said here, this is the most unique and powerful thing in the universe. Even supercomputers can't do what this thing can do. And then right before they could tell you what it did, another alien popped out of another wormhole and lasered them out of existence. And then now you're sat here holding this thing that you know is unique in all the universe, the most powerful thing in the universe. And if that was you, you would do whatever it took to figure out what this thing was, what this was capable of. And the fact of the matter is that is you. Except you're not holding it in your hand, you're holding it in this skull, that that is what you have here. And I think you should do everything you can to figure out what this unique version of this thing is and what it's capable of. And unfortunately a lot of the information we have is coming through the negative psychology lens. And so you can start there because there's just so much information. But you don't have to stay there, you can flip it and say, okay, well what does this make possible? One positive psychology lens that you can look into that I would recommend is there's a test called strengths finder. It's I think $13 highly recommend. That test told me some things about my strengths that I never would have saw in myself. My top strength was strategy. I never would have thought, you know, I took this probably a decade ago and so now it's been a part of my identity, but it's not something I ever would have thought of up to then. And the way that I, it's really help because I'VE realized, like, oh, the negative side of this is you could use that for bad. You could use that just for your own gain, being strategic and getting what you want. Or you can use it in your career and build a life that is well suited to you. You can use it. I think strategic thinking is exactly what great storytellers do because they can start with the end and work backwards and have this really surprising but inevitable thing happen at the end because they built it in reverse and it's something that natural to me. So diagnose yourself. You don't actually have to diagnose yourself. I'm not necessarily recommending that, per se. I don't have. That's above my pay grade. But I am saying find out what type of brain you have, find out what it's capable of and know as much about that as you can. So good. So good. So good. New fall arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores. Now get ready to save big with up to 60% off. Vince, Kurt, Geiger, London and more. How did I not know rack has Adidas? Cause there's always something new. Join the Nordy Club at Nordstrom Rack to unlock extra exclusive discounts on your favorite brands. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus get an extra 5% off every rack purchase with a Nordstrom credit card. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com all right, third and last one. Find your school. Okay? Find your school. So this is about school of thought. Now, I have a theory that we have all of these different schools of thought in philosophy. Stoics, epicurious, epicureans, I don't know, different religious schools of thought, all these different nihilist, whatever. I can name more, but I'm not going to. We have all these different schools of thought, different ways of seeing the world, moving through the world, different definitions of what the good life is, right? And historically, they've, they've kind of been seen as arguments against each other. Like, I think life is about this. No, I think life is about that. Da, da, da, da da. So on and so forth. And my theory is that these aren't one ring to rule them all. All. There is not one school of thought that works for everyone. That actually what we end up having is these different types of people that have different ways of needing to move through life and then arguing that theirs is superior or theirs is the one. And I think that that's just completely not true. And the other thing that ends up happening is if you hate yourself, then you will go try to adopt the most polar opposite way of living, the most polar opposite philosophical school of thought that completely defies your nature because you think you're bad, you think you're a problem, so you think, I need to become my opposite. I need to go find a school of thought that is the exact opposite of the way that I tend to naturally move through the world. And if you really hate yourself, then you might end up in a school of thought that is just completely detrimental to your nature. That happened to me. I was in that in my early, late teens, early 20s, and it wasn't all for. You know, I think there can be kind of positive things that come from that in small doses. But, you know, there can be this kind of throwing off of self, forgetting everything you think you know about yourself that can be kind of valuable for a short period of time. However, I much more recommend finding a school of thought through the lens of that episode 5:22 through the lens of you love yourself, you're more or less good at the deepest level, and if you work with it, if you cultivate it, you will become a better version of yourself. Instead of thinking, oh, I have to crush her or I have to overcome this way that I am. And so if you can find a school of thought that's really compatible with you, you will get the most of your nature. And so instead of thinking, are the Stoics right? Are the Epicureans right? Are the Nihilists right, Are the Zoroastrians right? Whatever it is. See, I told you I could name some other ones. Instead of thinking that, start looking for which one might really work for you. Now, for me, I actually tend to feel like the Epicurean way of living really works best for me as ADHD person or just the way a creative person, the way that I am. Epicurean philosophy is in modern times often seen as hedonism, but it is not hedonism. I am not a hedonist. I live pretty simply, which is pretty in line with Epicurean thought. So Epicurean thought, the reason why people think that it is hedonist is because it's about having kind of the most pleasant life possible, the most contented life possible. That the. That your main objective as you move through life should be the maximum level of contentedness. Now, that is deceptive. On the surface, that sounds like hedonism. You know, this idea that the whole. That life is all about as much pleasure as you can possibly have. That's not what it is. It's not about seeking as much, the maximum amount of pleasure. It's about the law of averages. It's about how can you make the most of your life the most pleasant, peaceful, contented version of life, which means not overdoing it with substances. It means not swinging back and forth and having these huge valleys and these huge peaks. For me, it's been about how do I smooth out the edges. Now, this worldview has really helped me because it's made it so that when I think about diet, when I think about exercise, when I think about substances, I don't think, what is the best for me, what's the most ideal for my health, for quantity of life. I think about it through level of quality of life, which also means that I'm not going to binge eat because it gives me 20 seconds of pleasure and several hours or even days or even a general feeling in my life that is negative and sluggish. Now, before I took on that school of thought, I was warring with myself of, oh, I gotta stop doing this, I gotta stop doing that. I gotta quit cigarettes. I gotta do, you know, all that stuff. I did quit cigarettes, but I did it through the lens of feeling as good as possible for as much of the time as possible. It's like a law of averages. As, yeah, when I was in college and smoking a pack a day, the times that I was smoking and the time that that nicotine kicked in, that was a period of time where I felt really good, but it made the rest of my life feel bad. And the same goes for exercise, running. Like, the reason I run is so much less about my heart, health, and so much more about how much it benefits my general mood. And when it comes to social responsibility, my responsibility as a dad, my. My relationship to my wife, all of those things. So much of that is about sleeping at night, being proud, the joy of giving and being there for other people. And, you know, this podcast, I, yeah, we have sponsors and there are ways that it benefits my career. All of that's true. That's part of the motivation. I'd be lying if that wasn't. If I didn't. Wasn't honest with that but the reason I can show up today and sit here and get excited, I can only do that if I sit for a minute and think about how would this help pass me. In fact, I'll be honest with you, today before I got in here, I was feeling a little bit like, man, I really don't want to sit in a room and talk to myself for a period of time. Just seems weird. I'm not into it today, whatever. And you know what I did? I came in and I recorded a video to myself 10 years in the past. Obviously past me is never going to hear it, but that's, that's the mindset I had to get in, I had to get into. What would I want to make an episode about that would that if I could transmit it back, what would it say? How would it feel? What would my heart feel if I could talk to that version of myself? And so that motivator that trumps every other personal gain that I might get from doing this show because it is essential to my contentedness that I realize I get. It's. You know, I've heard Hank Green talk about how there's dirty fuel and there's clean fuel. Dirty fuel is getting a pack of Doritos and monster energy drink. Like hey, sometimes it's what I need when I'm. If I'm having to do a long car drive, man, I got to do something. Okay, that's self love right there. Now if I'm doing that all the time, I'm going to be feeling terrible and it's going to really hurt my average. But what I've learned is that's the dirty fuel. Sometimes, you know, it's all you got. But the clean fuel, that's thing that it's renewable, it doesn't cost me anything. One of the cleanest fuels for my contentedness is loving other people, giving, sharing, helping, all of that stuff. It's so essential to me. And actually this has been on my mind a lot recently because I've been trying to work on a metaphor or a story that kind of illustrates this idea because I feel like we're in a really sad time where maybe this isn't true. I'm curious if you have an opinion. You've got this far in the episode. I'd love to hear in the comments on YouTube or Instagram or whatever, but it feels like people don't think you can help anybody anymore. You know, all types of help and care seem to be relegated or defined as co dependence or meddling in other people's affairs or, I don't know, just. I just get this sense that we have therapy speak our spoken our way to a place where we don't realize the positive ripples and the positive effect that we can have on people. And I'm so thankful that my 10th grade English teacher didn't think like that. I'm so grateful for that person that anonymously covered some bills when I was in my early 20s didn't think like that. I'm so grateful that the people that have written the books and done the podcasts that have completely changed my life didn't think like that. And I'm really happy that I have learned to think differently because it's one of the most positive fuels. Like sometimes if I have a friend that has a problem, I will just be. I'll find myself thinking of 10 ways that they could go about solving it. And I try to be really respectful because I don't have all the answers. None of those. I think, oh, this is what that person needs to do. But I'm happy to brainstorm with them. I'm happy to share my perspective. And I have found that that's one of the cleanest fuels that there are. So what I recommend is that you don't necessarily take on epicureanism because it might not suit your hardware, but you find the software that really is compatible and that if you love yourself, that's exactly what you do. My dad is a natural stoic. It is just the way that he moves through life. And reading and swimming in that school of thought has been super beneficial to him and edifying to his way of being in the world. So I recommend that you go on a search. You go on a hunt to find the school of thought that really suits your neurotype and that you lean into it and that you allow yourself to do life differently and respect and enjoy and embrace the fact that other people need to move through it in other ways. And that's the best possible scenario that we have. So we usually end each episode with a cta, a call to adventure. Something that you can do with this information other than just feel a little bit pepped in these episodes. We're going to do a cta, but it's going to be the call. No, the choose the adventure, not the call to adventure. I almost got. I just couldn't get out of the habit. Choose the adventure. And you know, I actually think I might end up calling these types of episodes. Choose your adventure episodes because they're going to be a few different things. A little smattering of choices and you choose which you focus on to kind of improve your creative well being or creative life or creative practice. And so this is your choose your adventure. To choose the adventure, three choices. Number one, we did know your attention aperture. Maybe this is one you need to think about. You need to kind of define how does your attention aperture work? Are you able to kind of focus in and out and change it? Maybe have a more neurotypical frontal lobe that allows you to do that? Or maybe you have to zoom into the details and you really don't have a choice. Or maybe you just see the big picture. You got a big spotlight aperture going on. Which one do you, you know, do you need to think about that second one? Diagnose yourself. Do you have you had a suspicion that you might have some unique stuff going up here in the noggin and you need to get to the bottom of it. You need to read about it, you need to find some maps of brains like yours. You need to go do some of those assessments, go do strengths finder, go do one of the, you know, some test, personality test or diagnostic test that you've been putting off. Do you need to take a little step further to getting to know what this very unique thing in your skull is capable of and what it's like? Or do you need to find your school of thought? Do you need to go on a little adventure to find a philosophy that works for your brain, for your way of creatively being in this world? Maybe, maybe that doesn't look like some giant adventure, but maybe just it means sitting back and thinking, you know what Schools of thought have really appealed to me. Like what feel like. Yeah, you know what, I could really jive with that and name it and understand it and maybe buy a book on it or buy, you know, listen to it on Audible or dive into YouTube on that topic. But find some philosophical schools of thought that really work with you and you don't need to become a student of the opposite one that doesn't work for you. That is a complete disaster for you. So that's your call to adventure. Your choose the adventure this week. One, two or three. Hope one of them at least really helps you. I hope all three of them did. They really helped me. I want to say real quick, thanks to our Patreon backers and our Substack supporters, this show would not exist without you. If you want this show to keep going, we could really use your help. You know, the podcasting industry has changed dramatically. We've lost Some support that we had from sponsors. It's not as strong as it used to be. And in order to keep showing up every single week and pay, you know, to do this show costs money, costs a lot of time. And the people that support the show, you are the lifeblood of it. You make it possible. If you want to see creative pep Talk continue, we would love your support at patreon.com creativepeptalk or andyjpizza.substack.com, whichever one you prefer. You can support the show either way, but we so appreciate it. And you know what I've been dreaming about? What would it look like if we had a bigger audience and more support? What could be possible for this show? I really love. I'm really inspired by some of the other interview shows. You know, we do about 50, 50 solo episodes and interview episodes and I'm really inspired by the interview episodes that have more in person episodes that have the ability to kind of host that. That have the ability to have a bigger editing budget and, you know. Yeah, just more bandwidth for the host to pour into it. If you want to see this show go from whatever it is now to the next level, if you want to help us dream about that. Every month we do a virtual meetup called our creative Pep rallies, where the last Monday of the month at alternating times, we get together for an hour and a half and we celebrate each other's creative careers. We help problem solve each other's creative practices. We talk about the episodes from the past month. It turns this show from a parasocial kind of relationship to a real dialogue. And it's been phenomenal. We've been doing it for over a year. It's been really amazing to see that community grow. I hope that you show up there. That's available to all the substack supporters and Patreon backers and I in this next one, I want to dream a little bit about what could the next level of creative pep talk look like if we get some real, you know, an increase of support. So that, that's the thing I've been dreaming about. Love to hear your input on it. Thank you to Sophie Miller for being an editor and producer on the show. Thanks to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for editing this thing so beautifully. The animations, the sound design, the just love and attention and fun that he pours into this stuff. Thank you to Yoni Wolf of the band Y for our theme music and soundtrack. Such a mega fan dream come true to have that music for, for this show and thanks to all of you for listening. Until we speak again, stay pepped up. It's hard to remember now, but the Internet used to be fun. I can't believe how easy it is to surf the Net. Surf's up. On Long Shadow Breaking the Internet, we'll trace how a tool that once fueled democracy, opposition activists organized the march on Facebook became a weapon aimed at the very heart of it. You're watching the unraveling of our democracy right now from Longlead and prx. This is Longshadow Breaking the Internet. Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Rick Rebeck. And I'm Roy S. Yudkoff. Welcome to our chart topping podcast from the Harvard Business School. Think Big, Buy Small. This series lets you in on a special way to become an entrepreneur. How to buy your own business, be your own boss, and get the financial benefits of your efforts. Entrepreneurship through acquisition involves searching for an existing, enduringly profitable smaller business and buying it, usually from a retiring founder back for a brand new season. 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