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Don't listen to this episode if you are already pepped out of your mind. If you're going into the new, you're like, I know exactly what I'm gonna do. I got the five year plan, I got the 10 year plan. I got the one year plan, I got the 12 week plan. I'm ready to go. I don't want you to listen to this episode if that's you, because I don't want you to overdose on pep because this thing is going to help you find your drive, your creative drive today. And also, jokes aside, this episode is not for you. If you are Already inspired for 2026, if you are already like, oh my gosh, I'm hitting the ground running, the possibilities are endless. Endless. I didn't feel like that going into the new year because we're living in a very weird time. And it reminds me. It's not the same, but it reminds me of goal setting. Back in 2009, we were in the middle of a global recession. I was trying to get my illustration career back on track and I just could not any energy to dream about five years from now because I couldn't even imagine where things would be. I didn't even know if there would be an illustration industry at that time. And I had to tap into the creative drive that I had right here and right now. And so if that's you, if you're struggling to get excited about this new year, this episode is for you. To help you find the drive here and now to create and to get excited about what you're doing now and what you can control and what you can make today. And so stick around for the end. I'm gonna come back for a creative call to adventure. It's called the driver's test. It's gonna be something that will. It's a little quiz to help you figure out where your drive is hiding today so you don't have to dream about or understand or predict the future five years from now to get started and to create and get excited about what you're doing, that's what we're gon. So let's get into it. 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. The cold is here. I used to hate the cold weather until I started to embrace it, dress for it, build a wardrobe of layers that were made for the season. And that is where quints comes in. They've got down jackets, wool coats, leather and suede outerwear that holds up to daily wear and still looks good. Quints uses premium materials and trusted factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. But because they cut out the middlemen, they can deliver the quality of luxury brands for a fraction of the price and bring you classic styles that that you'll love and will hold up year after year. Still loving my Quint's button down shirt. I feel very legitimate when I wear it. I have been eyeing their affordable cashmere collection for Sophie's birthday that's coming up. Don't tell her that. And we got Quince's European linen sheet set. And let me tell you, nearly every night when we go to bed, Sophie says, I love these sheets. It's like our new nighttime ritual. They're soft, cozy and the material just feels real and whole and homey. Very cozy for winter nights. Refresh your winter wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.compep talk for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com p e p T A L K free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Pep Talk Fiscally responsible Financial Geniuses Monetary Magicians these are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. So if you look at my sketchbooks now, you're going to see they are messy. I go through a lot of them. A lot of the stuff in there is just totally garbage. It's full of garbage, but also some cool stuff and it gets used. And I go through a lot of them. But early on in my creative journey, I would have said that I wasn't a quote unquote sketchbook guy. I just didn't keep a sketchbook. I was overwhelmed by the sketchbook. And you don't need to be a sketchbook person. No matter who you are, whether you're an illustrator, musician, filmmaker, whatever it is, you don't have to be a sketchbook person. I'm not telling you that you have to do that. But there is a problem in your creative work if you are treating it like this pristine sketchbook that you cannot mess up, that you have to make this thing perfect, it has to feel like an extension of your highest potential. If you are treating all of your creative output like that, it's going to be a problem. Now this is because for artists, we have to create. It's a way of life. It's how we move through our life. It's like therapist and creative coach Beth Pickens says. She says everyone's creative, but artists have to create. That's the distinction. If you're listening to this podcast, you're safe in assuming that you're one of those people that has to create. It is our one vehicle for moving through life emotionally, relationally, mentally. We need to be creating not because we want this perfect dream scenario five years from now, but because we need it in our everyday life to work through stuff. And if you treat your sketchbook like that, it's like treating your one vehicle like it's your project car. Like it's this thing in your garage that you're going to passively, preciously, tinker on. And maybe in five to 10 years you'll have this dream vehicle. But that's a huge problem if you've only got one vehicle. If you've only got one vehicle, you can't treat it like that. What you need is a frickin clunker that runs like a champ. And maybe, yeah, like my sketchbooks, it's full of garbage, Filet of fish boxes from McDonald's, maybe it's lined with those, I don't know. But you have to be able to use it because it's how you're going to get from where you are now to where you want to go today, tomorrow, and a month and a year from now. And so you have to have that kind of relationship with it. You have to see it not as this prized possession on this lift, looking at it like, oh, my ego is going to be so proud of this one day when it's all perfect. No, this is the crappy thing in your driveway that runs, baby. This is the thing that moves you. This is the thing that drives you. This is where you work stuff out. And I really resonate when I hear actors talk about like every single role that they get, it somehow is giving them something to work on and chew on in their real life, that they see this correlation that there's a relationship because their creativity is a vehicle. It's not just a thing to look at. It's not just a thing to passively tinker on. And so for me, in this new year season, I have been feeling honestly Moving like December winding down. I was feeling a lot of dread going into the new year because I could feel like, I don't feel like I'm in a safe place to dream right now. I don't know what it's like in your neck of the woods, but I'm guessing if you've got at least dial up Internet, you have a feeling that the world feels at least uncertain, if not unstable. And you're looking at that. You're not gonna start this year with like, unless you're just fully drunk off of cognitive dissonance. You're not gonna be, you're not gonna be thinking like, let's dream up. Oh, I know exactly what I'm gonna do and where I'm gonna be five, ten years from now. Like, that was just not inspiring me. And if that's you, more power to you, baby. I mean, you've got more faith and hope than I do now. I have not completely lost my hope. I haven't at all. I am scared of some of the things going on in the world for sure. And it has made it difficult to go into the new year with the kind of energy that I was going into the new year with in 2015. Right. But I wanted to share with you this little shift of don't. You don't need to think about. The only way to get excited about this vehicle is if it could be this head turner five years from now that's going to stop people in their tracks, like the cars in Greece. It doesn't have to be like that. That's not the only thing that's going to get you out of bed and get you moving and get you engaged in your creative work that you can find. You can tap into a more grounded thing, get those wheels on the ground. You can talk about what could I do right now? Where are, where's my creative drive in the here and now? And we're going to talk about like there are. If you can find your curiosity, if you can find how you want to clarify and communicate, if you can find how you want to connect with other people right here, right now, in 2026, in this month of January or February, whenever you're watching this, if you can find, if you can tap into those drives that are about what you're doing in your real life right now, then you will find that energy you need. Even if you can't predict where you're going to be in two to three, five years. That's what we're going to talk about. That's we're going to look into how do we get into that today. So let's talk about those. These three creative drives. They are curiosity, clarifying, and connection, and how to find those energies and see which of those really resonate for you right now so that you can reignite your creative fire today. Right Today, not tomorrow. I mean, tomorrow, too. Hopefully, this will work tomorrow, too. Anyway, let's do it. All right. Let's talk about the three creative drives. This is. Instead of getting your energy from, I think they're. Look, I'm not a brain scientist. I don't know if you've ever noticed that, but I have done a decent amount of reading around certain elements of the brain, especially motivation, because as you might know if you've heard more than 35 seconds of this show, I'm ADHD. And it's been really, really useful for me to get to know what kind of brain I have, because so much of the conventional wisdom doesn't work for me. It almost works against me if I try to be neurotypical. And so I've had to learn a lot about things like dopam because we have this dopamine deficiency. And a lot of people think that dopamine is like the pleasure chemical in your brain, but it's not that. It's this thing that has a lot to do with motivation and chasing things that you're after. And all of that is really important to understanding how I move through the world. And you might not be adhd, you might not consider yourself adhd, but no matter who you are and where you are, I think you have to have some sense of how does motivation work for me now, for the longest time, my motivation in my creative practice was wrapped up in dopamine. It was in this thing of I desperately want to get this type of job. I want to get advertising illustration jobs. I want to do public speaking. I want to have this many downloads on my podcast. Whatever it was, it was, I'm here, and I want to go over there, and I want to chase it. And that chase and that motivation, that's the dopamine thing. However, as I've gotten older and as I have achieved a lot of those things, luckily, you know, I'm very grateful to have done that. But as I've done that, it's been much harder to run on that kind of energy, on the future energy. And I've had to start to learn how do I get motivated not by where I might be in five years from now, but where I am today and what is that kind of motivation. And one of the things that's helped me is shifting how I think about motivation and pleasure away from only things that I'm like working towards this goal oriented thing, but more also enjoying where I'm going. And the funny thing is that's always been true for me. The reason I wanted to do illustration jobs and have public speaking opportunities and have a podcast and all that was because I enjoy doing this stuff. This is the stuff I want to be doing. But somewhere along the way of having to work towards getting those opportunities, I shifted how my motivation worked or how I thought about motivation. And I forgot that, like the reason I want to get there in a couple years is because that's where I want to be, not because I want to keep going. And I thought about it like this. I might make this into like a picture book or something someday where it's a character and he's got a map and it's got clues and then he finds this trail and there's like breadcrumbs and then there's. And that's clues and then there's an X that marks a spot and that's clues. And he's chasing and chasing and chasing. He digs and digs and finds this treasure chest and he opens it up and he sees all these coins and he picks it up and he's like, okay, what does this mean? Like, what's this clue? And he doesn't realize, like, no, you found the treasure. Like, you don't have to keep looking for clues. And that's the story of my creative life is that at some point I realized like, oh, it's not that I don't have goals or I don't have things to work for. I still need some of that energy. But I also had to tap deeper into enjoying the things that I was doing. The drive that I had here today of just because I want to do it. One of the things that has helped me conceptualize that came from this book, 4000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman and, and highly recommend it. It's kind of an anti productivity book and there's a lot of great things in there, including some interesting things about parenting and children and all kinds of things. But the reason I bring it up, what it has to do with what we're talking about is in that he introduces this concept that he got from somewhere else. But it's telic versus atelic experience. And it's really just like, it's a fun new way to think about this, new words. But really, it means goal oriented versus like enjoying the moment. Oriented. Telic is a play or it's like a development of the word telos, which is goal. I don't know if it's Greek or Latin or whatever, but it means like goal oriented. You're doing this thing not because you want to do this thing, but because you want to. What doing this thing affords you. You don't want to run, but you want to be fit. Right? Whereas he argues, like atelic, meaning not telic, not goal. Oriented is like you do a hike, not because you need to get somewhere, because usually hikes are a circle. You get back right where you were. It's because you want to go on the hike. You want to do it for the sake of doing it. And an art practice, I think, needs both of these things. I don't think one is better than the other. I think they work in tandem. They are ideal. If you can find those activities in which you love to do them for the sake of doing them and you like what it affords you, that's where the kind of career comes into it. And if you can marry those two things, it's really great. But if you are in a scenario where there's pressure or it's difficult to do what you're doing and to achieve what you're going to achieve achieve, it's going to be easy to forget to enjoy the hike that you're not just trying to get somewhere, you're trying to be here while you're making. That's why you want to do this, because supposedly you like this process. Okay, so let's talk about the three creative drives. Now, these drives are things that you probably have access to at any time. If you're not aware of them, you're not necessarily going to invest in them and get the fuel that they have that you will miss the creative engine that is available to you right now if you don't realize that these drives are a huge part of having a creative process, that it's not just about the drive to look cool because you got sweet clients and awards and whatnot. That's the ego drive. And that, yeah, maybe there's space for that, but there are some really pure fuel, pure drives that can get you moving today even if you don't know where it's going to take you tomorrow. So let's talk about those. And actually we're going to talk about these three pieces. They are things that you probably have in different areas of your creative practice right now or have access to Lean into these different places. But also they are kind of how a project progresses. So 1, 2, 3, these three drives, each project has different stages that correlate with these different drives. And so I thought, let's take a recent project of mine, Mysterious Things, a new book that Sophie Miller, my wife and I have coming out in July that we are so frickin excited about. And I thought I will use this project kind of to kind of show you how this process naturally evolves. And so the first creative drive is the curious drive. Okay. So we did a book in this world called Invisible Things that came out in 2023. It was a product of. It started with the daily drawing project I did in 2011. And then we worked on it and talked about it and tried things for a long time. It took us over a decade to get that into its first published form in the book Invisible Things. But when we put that out, even before we put it out, we knew there is so much more we want to do with this book. There are so many stories, stories there. There's so much stuff that we already have made that we want to put out into the world. And so as we thought about what do we want to do as a follow up, as a companion book, we had to get curious about what is the next thing that we are dying to say? What is the next question that we want to ask? And so we looked at the first book and we said, this is we, we love that. This is an introduction to the fact that our universe has 95% of it is invisible, is unseen. It was an introduction to the social, emotional component of that in a big way. It was. It touched on the sensory stuff, but it didn't get at one of the core elements of this project that I was initially curious about, which was how mysterious and weird and rich our universe is. Just in that core idea of like 95% of our universe versus invisible. It barely touched on the weirdness of that, the mystery of that. And I wanted to pull on this thread that started when I was 17 and I started reading this pop quantum physics stuff, this trippy stuff that was also real. And it got me so switched on to real life. And I thought, can we put that thread, can we switch that on in kids much earlier than 17, how can we show them that our universe is just absolutely chocked full of weird mystery and intrigue and that there's so much to engage with? And so that's what we got curious about. We started making lists of all of the things that and Sophie and I have different things that make us curious. For me, it's trippier stuff. It's stuff like, does time exist? Are there other universes? That sort of thing. And she gets really intrigued by, like, buried treasure and what's over a garden wall, that kind of stuff. And we wanted every single page of this book to give you that feeling of mystery. Like, oh, man, I really wanna see what's on the other side. I really wanna go deeper. I wanna engage. And so we got curious about, how do you create that in a kid? How do you create that in a person? And we got really obsessed with compiling the ways that our heroes had done that. People, you know, books like the Little Prince have these drawings that don't show you the inside of stuff. It's got a sheep within a box, and you're like, that's the perfect sheep in there. And there's a cobra that ate an elephant. And he has to show you a cross section of that drawing. And they're just like all of this way that you can create that intrigue through devices and illustration and through storytelling. And so we got really curious. We were researching, we were compiling, we were creating, we were writing and rewriting. And that's the curiosity drive. And so what are you curious about? What are the things that make you switch on? It might not be buried treasure, it might not be other dimensions, but what are the things not just in art, not just in your hero's art, but in the world. Because this is a vehicle for moving through life. That's what creativity is. It's not just for engaging in creative work. It's not the snake eating its tail thing. It's not just art for art and for artists. For artists, it's, you know, it's not just. You don't just have a car for car people to take it into the lot once a year at the car show, you have to use this thing. And so what are you curious about? And how can you create and research in that area with your sketchbook, with your art? Okay, the second one is the Clarify drive. Now, this could be called the craft drive as well. It's like crafting the thing. You in the curious stage, you found stuff that's, like, interesting. You know, it's juicy. You know, it's good stuff, but it's rough. And you have to go through the work of, like, engaging with this, and you have maybe early, really crappy drafts that don't really have what it's all about. You haven't really nailed the thing on its head. And you have to create to clarify what it is you have. And so we knew with mysterious things that we wanted to engage kids in the mystery of the universe and the richness of the universe, but we couldn't quite figure out what it was we were trying to say. And we did have a lot of conversation around it. We did have a lot of thinking and note taking around it. But. But more importantly, we had draft after draft after draft of this thing, and we kept going back to the drawing board and trying to figure out, like, what is this about? I was just listening to this episode of ScriptNotes, which is a podcast about writing scripts, and they were saying that they were saying the same thing that often a script starts with something that you're excited about, something that you're questioning, just a premise that you're like, ooh, there's something here that's cool and that gets you moving. Fine. To have that curiosity and then go, that's what you want to do. You don't need to know what the thing is about. But eventually you do. Eventually you have to have a sense of like, oh, what is engaging about this? Why do I want to write about this? What is the character learning? What. Why am I drawn to this based on my own experiences? And at some point in that creative process, you will start to clarify, what is this thing about? And for us, we realized that what we wanted to. There was a couple things, but they're all pointing back to the same thing, which was mystery is out there, that we live in maybe the most mysterious time to be alive. And it came down to this idea of the knowledge paradox, which I know don't switch off. It's not complicated. It's not hard to understand. I believe it comes from Einstein, and he just said that we're learning all of this stuff. 100 years ago, you had physicists say things like, we probably only have, like, 1% left to figure out. We figured out a lot of stuff, and then we discovered things like quantum physics. And we're like, oh, no, we barely know 1%. And it can feel like if you're going through school and you're reading all of this stuff that's been done and all this amazing discovery and all this, all these textbooks, I remember feeling like we figured it all out. Like, there is barely any mystery left in this book. We wanted to tease, like, is mystery extinct? We actually have a page in the book where there's, like, an endangered wanted poster of the character mystery. And it's like, are we about to lose mystery? Because We've had thousands and thousands of years of people just so curious that we've just answered all these questions. And that's such a scary thing for people like me that are so driven by curiosity. And so we wanted to introduce on the very next page this knowledge paradox, which, like I said, I believe comes from Einstein. It's this notion that the more that we know, the more we realize we don't know that the more we have learned, the weirder things are. And as we get to the ends of the universe, we might think, we might start to figure out that this might be only the first universe. There might be infinite universes. There might be. It's trippy, buddy. It's crazy. And I wanted to show that knowledge wasn't so that we would get rid of all the mystery, but so that we could engage in the mystery. And that really, like, that only came from draft after draft and drawing and drawing and painting and creating. And so the second thing you gotta do is ask yourself, okay, maybe if you're not in the curious phase, maybe, you know, like, oh, this is kind of the area that I want to explore. Now you can use that sketchbook, now you can use that artwork. Now you can use that creativity to clarify. Can I get to the heart of what this thing is and what this thing is about? So if you're already past the curious place, maybe you have the clarification drive where you know you've got something good and you would hate to see it go to waste, you'd hate for it not to be communicated with others, that you would not be able to transfer what you know is so cool about this into somebody else. And that requires the crafting and the making and the remaking. Okay, last one. The connection drive number three is the connection drive. It's the third part of the process, the third innate creative drive. And it is once you have been curious and then you've clarified what that curiosity and created something, you want to connect it with others. I have this strong intuition that says creativity is deeply connected to our fundamental existence as social animals. That, you know, we have this ego, we have this desire to take care of ourselves and become an individual. And all of that is also connected to our art, like the art, the art of individuation and being unique and being your own person. I think creativity has its place in that side of the things. But I also think that ultimately we are here to be part of a whole. I think that's just evolutionary biology. It's not even woo woo. But if you Want to go there? Go for it, man. We are driven to this oneness with others. And so I think that art is a big part of that. It's this thing that says, I don't know how to escape my own prison, of my own individuality unless I use my creativity as a vehicle to connect with you, to move to you and meet somewhere in the middle. And so there's this natural drive to create. And so in the book Mysterious Things, how this works. Now, where I'm at in this phase, it's about the marketing component, it's about the launch, it's about how do I get around, get this into people's hands, into the kids worlds who want the weird book, want the mysterious book, want to engage with that, how do we get those people around the same table? And so this is what's been on my mind a lot recently. Because after you've gone through the curious stage, after you've gone through the clarification phase, if you've done those things right, you should be on fire with just this white hot passion for what this thing is about, what it means and why you need to get it into other people's hands. And so that's a natural drive. And for me it's helped to be like, what is the purpose of this thing? You know, I look, I'm going to do it, I'm going to get a little bit grandiose because I actually feel like all of the artists that have deeply moved me have moved past their desire to remain uncringe. They have moved past their self consciousness of being nonchalant. They have said, look, I know it's embarrassing, but I feel like there is a purpose to the stuff that I'm doing. And maybe it's not a grand purpose, maybe it's a purpose in my everyday just to feel less lonely and make other people feel less lonely just a little bit. Just people like me, that's fine. But I feel like the, the artists that I love, they tend to have a sense of that. And it's one of those drives. And I think that drive, that purpose drive, is wrapped up in the connection piece. And so for me, there's kind of two different ways to think about the purpose of this project that I've helped clarify through as I've gone through it. The first one is I've realized that this Invisible Things project is about realizing it was this shift that I made in my own character journey. Up until when I was in my late teens, my way of getting through life was disassociation. And escapism and fantasy. I was imagining I was a superhero. I was playing with toys and all. That's good. That's great. That's part of it, man. I'm all about that. But the play even would get better if I had engaged a little bit more. Like, if you just. If I would have had some of this access to this weird thinking, my stories that I was telling with my toys, when I was playing with toys would have been better even. I'm all about the magical realism, baby. I like a little bit of both. But I wish that I had switched on to reality earlier, just somewhat, and I would have realized that the way to move through life isn't to escape it, but to go deeper into it. And that's what this book is an invitation to. And the other way I thought about it was I think it would have helped me move through school a little bit better if I would have had a sense of how mysterious and weird our universe is. Because for me, I felt like school was like, I'm learning chords on a guitar, but I've never heard music. Like, I don't know what this is for. I don't know what we're doing. I don't know why I should care. Whereas if I had had a song that I'd heard that I loved, that I wanted to play, now I'm engaged in the process. And so for me, digging into the mystery is why we learn. It's why we engage, it's why we're curious, is because there's cool stuff on the other side of that thread. And so I'm giving you examples of mine. I'm going deep into them, hoping that they will act as parallels for what you can do and how you can engage. For me, what's interesting about this is this is my creative work, deeply tied to my personal experience as a kid and then as a teen and then as a grownup, like, what lights me on fire. And it took me forever in my creative work to let that messiness into my sketchbook and onto the page and into this podcast and into my illustration career. And the more that you can make the content that you're wrestling with more present in the work, the more alive it becomes, of course, because more of your life is in it. And so. So those are my examples. But for you, maybe you have been clarifying, you've been curious, you've been clarifying, you've been working for a long time, but you haven't had that peace of getting it into other people's hands. Like you, there's nothing like, we've had some success with this book with Invisible Things. And I hope that Mysterious Things gets out there just as much because when we've been in school, you know, kids really like the project, but there's always a few weird kids like me that later come up to me and like, you don't understand. This book was made for me. Like, I love what it introduced. They don't use that language, but that's what they're saying. And there's just something about that that is a kind of drive, that is a finish line that feels like, okay, that that book is complete and now I can get curious about something else or some other aspect if it's a part of a series. And so that's. I encourage you if you've got, if you've been working for years, clarifying, getting clear and you know, like, this is the thing and I've worked on it and I've made it, then I suggest that you incorporate the connection into the creative journey that the, that the, the project isn't over until it's out in the world and in people's hands that it needs to get into. And so that drive to connect. Can you get in touch with what is it about this work that might have a positive impact on other people? And before you start thinking, I don't want to get grandiose, I don't, you know, whatever, think about the moments in your life when you saw a movie, you heard a song, you heard an album, you saw an artwork, you bought a book and it changed the trajectory of your life for the better. I feel like we want to downplay our contribution. And I get it. I'm self conscious about it. I feel silly about it. I don't want to be pretentious either, except for not only are you doing a disservice to your own art, you're doing a disservice to the people that need that art. And you're doing a disservice to art as a whole. We don't need to downplay the power of art. Society has got that covered. They are already devaluing and exploiting us at every turn. Don't contribute to that. Instead, when you have put in the work and got curious and clarified what you did and crafted this thing, do the extra work to get that out there in the world. And so our book comes out in seven months, in July of 2026. You can pre order it at invisiblethings.co I'm going to be doing the work I'm going to be campaigning. That's another C word. But it's wrapped up in the connection. Not to get confusing, but I'm going to be campaigning because I am passionate about this. And in the book, a huge component ends with curiosity. And I believe that we could use to be a more curious society. And so I want to do my little part there. All right, it's time for your creative call to adventure. Your cta, it's called Driver's test, and here's the idea. We're going to take a little three question quiz to figure out where your drive is, where your creative drive is. The first question is, what am I curious about today? Not even what was I curious about yesterday? What was I curious about 10 years when I started this creative journey? What am I curious about today? And the thing is, even if you're living in a chaotic place, in a creative. Creative in a chaotic world, here's the thing. Maybe you're curious about how do we create a better world? What can be done to change this chaotic world? It doesn't matter where you are, when you are, you can find something to be curious about. Maybe it's something novel, maybe it's something life or death. But you do have a curiosity. What are you curious about today? Number two is how can I clarify this with your creative work? How can you clarify it? What can you do? And it might look like getting into that sketchbook and working it out. It might be draft upon draft, but it doesn't look like keeping it in your head. It looks like using that creative vehicle to get somewhere new, to clarify it, to get to the point. And the third one is who. Who do I want to connect with with this work? Who do I want to connect with? All right, this is key because it's not everybody. I think what's really powerful is figuring out who this project is for. It was so clarifying to me to go out and take invisible things to school visits and realize like, and meet these kids in real life and see, like, I want to make the book that blows your mind. Who are those people? What do you want to give them? Why do you want to give them this? What does it have potential to do? Don't be afraid to get a little bit grandiose and pretentious. You know, sometimes when I'm out with friends and I hear my friend getting a little like, heady and pretentious and adventurous with how they're thinking about their work, I'm like, more power to you. That's what we, we need creatives that take their work seriously. And I love people that don't take themselves seriously, but take the work seriously. I'm all about that. All right. I hope this episode helped you tap into your innate creative drive. One of the things that I love about this podcast is that it helps me stay pepped, because I only can create an episode when I have found something that has pepped me up. Because if it hasn't, I know I don't have anything for you. And so I was entering the new year feeling pretty lousy in a lot of ways, feeling like even though I have tons to be grateful for, and I am very thankful for all of that in my life and in my career and all that, I was overwhelmed by the state of things. I was overwhelmed by the state of the creative industry. There's just. There was a lot weighing on me, and I was having a really hard time getting into that dream energy and getting excited about pushing and driving and moving. And for me, what really helped was quit thinking about five years from now. Start thinking about what will if you let yourself use your next creative session however you want. What are you curious about? What do you want to clarify? What do you want to connect with? Who do you want to connect with? And I, I was in a clarifying stage with a project we're working on behind the scenes, and it got me to spend the day doing this thing I've never done. I made this animatic to tell this part of a story, to bring it to life. I did all the voices for it. I set it to music, and it's probably not going to turn into anything in particular, but it was so fun and it lit me up and I found that drive. And so I hope the same thing happens to you real quick before I get out of here. I am so proud of this book. Mysterious things. And it is so hard to get a book to get momentum. If you are a fan of this show, if you're a fan of my work, I try not to ask much of you almost ever. I try to make it few and far between to ask anything of you. But I am asking you if you are a fan of that and you want our world to be more curious. You want kids to be curious and stay curious. I would ask you to go pre order this book at InvisibleThings Co and you can order from local book shops there. You can order from bigger retailers. But it means so much to the potential of this book, of getting out there. And even if you don't have kids in your life to give it to. This is a hand painted book. I made it with gouache and colored pencil. It's very minimal digital manipulation and we, Sophie and I, poured our hearts into this thing. And I think it's one of the best examples of my work. So if you've ever wanted to, if you like what I do and you want to own some of my work, this is one of the best examples of that work. It, I think it gets at the heart of so much of my work. So even if you don't give it to a kid or parents that you know and you just keep it for yourself, I feel like this is one of the most beautiful collections of the stuff that I do and I'm so proud of it. So go check it out. InvisibleThings co. I hope you order one for yourself and for people in your life that have kids too. And please help me get the word out because I believe this book has so much potential and I just, I like it. Okay, thank you to Sophie Miller, Speaking of Sophie, for being an editor and producer on the show. Thanks to Connor Jones of pinning Beautiful for the animations, the video editing, the sound editing, and everything else that he does. Thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band Y for our theme music and thanks to all of you for listening. I hope this thing has pepped you up for your new year and that you hit the ground running and get the rubber on the road and get moving today. And until we speak again, we're gonna. By the way, this might be a little bit of a series. I've got a couple other episodes in this vein to come at you and we're gonna get revved up all January. All right, I will see you soon. Until then, stay pepped up. Okay, the podcast is over, so I don't know why you're still listening, but I am glad that you enjoyed it enough to stick to the end. I have one more thing for you. If you're in a place where you're feeling a lack of clarity and you want to figure out your industry market and niche and find the perfect strategic side project to do next, go sign up to our newsletter@andyjpizza.substack.com and you will get a confirmation email that will give you the download of our creative career path handbooklet. And the whole process is in there. And you might also get a few bonuses in there depending on when you sign up. But again, thanks for listening. Glad you enjoyed the episode and stay pepped up, y'. All. Hello, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature Podcast. For the past 10 years, I've been talking to novelists, biographers and scholars about the greatest books in the history of the world and the men and women who wrote them. Like our recent episodes on Dante in Love, a starter pack of 10 Indian classics, the pop culture that influenced Sylvia Plath, and a talk with the scientist and novelist Alan Lightman about the wonders of nature. Join us at the History of Literature podcast wherever you get your podcasts.