The One You Feed - How to Manage the ADHD Brain to Unleash Creativity with Andy J. Pizza

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Andy J. Pizza is a creative genius who learned to not only accept the challenges of living with ADHD but to embrace the many wonderful qualities that come with it. With compassion and curiosity, Andy discovered how to navigate a path for his neurodivergent thinking to uncover and share his wonderful gifts with the world. In this conversation, Andy and Eric discuss how he learned to manage the ADHD brain to unleash his creativity as well as... Ways to use explore art and its inherent ability for self-expression and self-approval How our upbringing and surrounding environments affect our personal development journey Understanding the impact of ADHD on creativity and how it can open new realms of personal growth Learning to appreciate the critical role authenticity and taste play in nurturing creativity Recognizing that failure is a vital element in fostering a personal growth mindset To learn more, click here! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Art really is self-expression, and you're never going to love your work, you're never going to love that self-expression if you hate the thing that it's expressing, which is yourself. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers

to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Andy J. Pizza, an artist and designer creating work that is always evolving, but forever rooted in whimsical narrative and modern graphics. Andy is the creator of the Indie Rock Coloring Book and the Daily NOD Drawing Project, as well as a collaborator of Color Me Blank exhibition with Andrew Nyer. He's worked on projects for Sony, Google, Smart Car, Urban Outfitters, Wired Magazine, Starburst Candy, and the list goes on and on. This is a great conversation about Andy's work and also creativity in general. Hi, Andy. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Eric. I am excited to have you on. We are sitting here in your studio in Westerville, Ohio, which is right near Columbus, Ohio, a suburb. So we live near each other. So it's always fun to do these in person. I was out here a while ago and I was a guest on your show, Creative Pep Talk. But today we're going to be talking more about you and your path. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops,

they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent, and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, I think I have wrestled with that a lot. I think my whole upbringing, I feel like I would have had more clarity on it almost because I think I was raised in a world where everything seemed very dual.

And I think I had a clear sense of like, oh, this is what's right. This is what's wrong. And it's not that I don't feel that now. I do feel that way, but I've become interested in kind of poking at like what's behind the bad wolf. Like what's he after? I think for me, there was a evolution that happened where I shifted from, oh, I'm having these problems because I'm bad. these problems because I'm bad and more like I'm having these problems because I'm resisting who I am. And I think that getting curious about my addictions or my issues, instead of assuming like, this is something that's wrong with me, assuming like, maybe this is just a misdirected good thing. Maybe I'm after something positive really, but because I'm trying to ignore it, it's turning into something out of control. And so I think as I think about where I am in my life right now, that's the thing that comes up. I'm like, what's wrong with this wolf? Why is this, why is there a bad wolf in here? What does he need? What does he not understand?

Is there a bad wolf in here? What does he need? What does he not understand? I've been going on a big Jungian kick for the past few years. And I think it kind of gets at his perspective of the shadow. We're thinking about whatever the minotaur is in the labyrinth. That's the part of you that's got out of control and you got to go in there and face it. I don't know if that answers the question, but that's kind of where my head goes.

Yeah, I think it does. And as you were talking, I was thinking about, you talk to dog trainers often and you say to them, you know, I've got this dog who's really out of control. They'll often say, well, really what we've got here is a people problem. Meaning the environment you've got the dog in and the messages you're giving the dog and the signals that you're giving the dog are creating this problem. There's nothing wrong with a dog. When the dog is given the right environment, it will begin to be, quote unquote, a good dog. Now, humans are not that simple.

But I thought we could start there because you've talked recently about your mother. Yeah. about your mother and her struggles and your desire to try not to be like her and then maybe think that maybe you were like her. Maybe we could start there. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I would love to talk about that. It's a big part of my journey is growing up, being the creative weirdo qualities that I clearly got from my mom. And when I was really young, I was like stoked about that because she was the most creative, interesting person in my life. So being compared to her was great. But as I got older, I started to feel complicated about that. As I saw her life kind of devolve into chaos. And I noticed that people that told me that I was just like her

didn't actually have the highest opinion of her. You know, they would say, so I was like, ah, it's not a compliment. Like I thought it was, you know, they talk about how she can't stick to anything. She can't stick to a job. She's late to everything. She can't stick to an appointment. She can't stick to a marriage. Like, and I started to, as I got older, just feel like, I don't know how I feel about being just like her. And so I think by the time I was 17, I probably saw myself as a bad thing that needed to be overcome and conquered and repressed. And I wanted to be the opposite of her. wanted to be the opposite of her. And I spent, you know, a few years really grinding down who I was and desperately trying to shift these qualities and aspects of myself that I saw were coming from her. And I think that season wasn't for nothing. There were good things that came from that, but ultimately I couldn't escape who I was. And I think it wasn't until I came across

this talk about this adult with ADHD. And I started to recognize all of these qualities, you know, as he's going and talking about it and, and talking about not being able to make an appointment or stick to things and stick to jobs and the difficulties around that. And I started hearing my story, but also my mom's story. And I started reading all about ADHD. And the more that I read about it, the more I felt like I understood her and I saw her in a light that I'd never seen her in. And so what happened was I started to suspect that maybe she failed, not because of who she was, but because she was trying to be somebody that she wasn't. And I started to get more curious about what would it look like to quit trying to be the

opposite of her and the way that I always think of it is instead try to be more like her than she ever let herself be. And that has proved to be a much better policy for me. And the other thing that happened at that time, I think you were talking about environment. At that same time, so I'd tried to be an illustrator. I tried to make that work right out the gate of college. I studied that in college and then I got a few lucky breaks out the door, but ultimately it kind of all disappeared overnight for whatever reason. And I had to get a job at this youth shelter. So I was working at this youth shelter and it was kind of my worst nightmare actually,

because it was connected to a juvenile detention center, which I didn't understand when I got the job that I would be required to take shifts over there too. And so as someone with ADHD, I find like traditional employment to feel like a jail. And here I was like in traditional employment in an actual jail. It was my first shift. I mean, I was just having a panic attack, just going back into this lockdown facility without windows. But looking back, I've started to think about how much facing that fear was a very formative experience to me because the thing that everyone knows that works there is that the kids that are in the

shelter that are being taken care of because they currently don't have a home and the kids that end up in the juvenile detention center, they're almost all the same kids, literally. They just go back and forth from these two places. And the thing that I think really broke something open for me was that they could be in the exact same place, literally. And depending on how they think they got there completely changed their behavior. Because when they were on the shelter side and they were there because they deserve a roof over their heads, they acted pretty good. When they were on the juvenile detention side where they were there because they were bad, they acted pretty good when they were on the juvenile detention side where they were there because they were bad, they acted bad. And so I think that that worldview of, are you a bad thing to repress or are you a good thing to cultivate? Ultimately the seed of that I think was found in

that job. There's a lot of stuff in there that we could go into. And I want to start with going back to a little bit more about your mother, because it sounds like her problems were more than just she couldn't make appointments. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely true. So by the time I was about 17, she had left her second family, ended up with this guy that was physically abusive and kind of just a bad dude. And I got a phone call from her sister saying that she was in the hospital and that they'd found out that she had a brain tumor. She had this very hardcore drug addiction and, you know, they didn't know if she was going to make it. They had to do emergency brain surgery, which they did. And part of the thing I relate to with her is that I'm a talker.

That's why I have a podcast. So it was pretty devastating to watch her go through this because when they removed the tumor, it actually initially really destroyed her speaking ability because it was right in the center of like the vocabulary area of the brain. And so when she got out, she couldn't remember hardly any words. And so it was pretty devastating to watch her kind of lose her essence in a way. And so, yeah, it got pretty bad. You know, I remember seeing her after she got out of the hospital and being devastated to see her in that place, but also just completely burdened by the idea of like, I'm just like this person. Like, this is what's going to happen to me. And the fact of the matter is I was already doing drugs. I was already, you know, trying to avoid school and work if possible. And yeah, I could sense like, this is the path that I'm on. I think it's interesting to think about our parents because we are in reaction to our parents very often, whether that reaction is we are trying to be

like them because we admire them or because that's how they want us to be. And we want to please them or because we think the way they are isn't good and we're reacting against that. It's this dynamic where if we're not conscious about it, we can get spun around in really difficult ways. Like I worked really, really hard. I was certain that I would not be my father. My father was very angry. You know, everybody in the neighborhood was scared of him. I mean, he was just an angry person. And so that was the obvious sort of quote unquote, bad behavior in my house. It was the one that everybody remarked upon. And so I'm like, I'm not going to be like that. I'm not going to be like that. I'm not going to be like that.

And at the same time, there was sitting over on the other shore was my mother who her behavior seemed fine, but it's interesting in not becoming my father. I took on many of the worst qualities of my mother, which were depression, right? Because I was so determined not to be angry that that emotion could have no place in my life. And all I could have is like, shove it down, shove it down, shove it down, which we know leads to depression. And so then later on, I'm like, well, hang on a second. I guess I'm not a lot like my dad, but holy mackerel, I'm a lot like my mom. And I just find it interesting to think about how those dynamics really play out slightly differently for everybody, but everybody's doing that dance.

They might be doing it differently. Yeah, 100%. I totally relate. I have my own versions of that. I kind of feel like the journey is to become a third thing, to become a thing that isn't either of those people, you know? That's right. That's right. And it does take a certain degree of intentionality and awareness of that stuff. Otherwise, we tend to be shaped by what's around us unless we're intentional in shaping it. Yep. So the next thing I'd like to go into a little bit more is ADHD. I'd love to hear about what your journey with that looked like after you went, okay, maybe I've got this thing. You know,

I watched this talk, you know, you mentioned you then went on the internet and started doom scrolling for, you know, back before that was a word for ADHD, right. And learning all about it. So where did that lead you and how has that unspooled over the years? Yeah. I mean, it's been a massive revelation for me and it started actually before that. I kind of had suspected that I had ADHD all the way back when I was in kindergarten. I remember, I think it was kindergarten or first grade. And there was this kid named Jeremy who just would like run around the gym and we'd both just be absurd and

crazy. And then I remember one time in open gym, he stopped and he's like, Hey, I just got to go to the office real quick. And I was like, uh, why? And he's like, I gotta go get my medicine. I was like, are you sick? And he's like, no, I'm just hyper. And I thought, Oh, I didn't know you need medicine for that. I thought it was just being awesome. And then in high school, I had an experience where in my period where I was experimenting a lot with drugs. One time we got some Adderall from a friend who had ADHD, me and a buddy of mine, and we both took it and went home and we both did crazy things that night. My friend, Brian, he didn't sleep a wink, watched the sunrise, was completely wired. And I did something crazier than that, which was my homework and in an efficient manner. And I remember thinking like, well, I don't know

what this means. I can't really tell my parents this because I'm doing illegal behavior, but I was curious about it. And so I think, but I also just stuffed it because I just thought this is something wrong with me. I don't want to think about it. I'll just get past it. And so as an adult, once I started to open that door, I think that it did a lot of things. I feel like there's a lot of debate around, should you, or should you not seek out a diagnosis around the different things that you've got going on? And I feel like I'm, I'm somewhere in the middle in that. I feel like we have the DSM. We have so much information about what's wrong with people in terms of neuroscience and neurologically. Maybe it just doesn't pay to figure out what's right with you.

I don't know. You can do that a little bit, but it just doesn't seem as like there's not as much scientific rigor around what's the cool things about your brain. And so I think for me personally, I always encourage people like go figure out whatever they say is wrong with you. Um, because it will be a roadmap. And if you see it through a different lens, like the way I see it is ADHD is not an all good thing. It's not an all bad thing. But the more I understood what it was, the more I found ways to work with it. And then also have self-compassion for like, yeah, the world I find myself in isn't necessarily ideal for this. And I like to think of it like Waterworld, that Kevin Costner movie where some people have developed gills, other people haven't. I feel like I live in a water world and I didn't develop gills. So it's okay if I need a

snorkel and some scuba gear, like I need some extra help. Like, and seeking that diagnosis, I think helped me find that and also helped me lean into the strengths around it. Yeah. I think that question of diagnosis, of label, of what's the right response, of what is just normal sort of the range of human functioning and what is quote unquote a disorder. I mean, these are really complicated questions. I think we've come a long, long way as a society around mental health. And we have an extraordinarily long way to go because nobody really understands what is going on, you know, and, and the more you get into it, the more you start realizing like, well, I'm not saying this is you let's talk about Jeremy. Was that the kid? Jeremy. Jeremy had ADHD. And then

a little bit later, he was diagnosed with anxiety. And then a little bit later, he was diagnosed with perhaps bipolar. And you start looking at that and you go, well, boy, Jeremy is an extraordinarily unlucky guy to be diagnosed with like five or six different, what's wrong? Jeremy's really been dealt a bad hand, right? So you start to go, well, okay, there's something going on underneath these that there may be a commonality here, but we don't know what it is. And your ADHD looks different than Jeremy's ADHD. Again, I think we've made a ton of progress. And I think that we have ways of helping people who are suffering extraordinarily that we didn't have. And still our own journey through it is really, really complicated.

But I love that idea of the water world analogy because I feel the same way. Like for whatever reason, I have mood issues, depression related. And there have been times that I've needed snorkels and I've needed different things. And those have been extraordinarily helpful. And then there's been times I've needed to go like, well, it's okay that I don't even swim that well, like no big deal. Who cares about swimming? Like, so it's finding way through all that, that I think takes a lot of nuance. Yep. I agree completely. And I think shifting my thinking of like, oh, I need a snorkel because I'm bad is different than I need a snorkel because I'm bad is different

than I need a snorkel because I love myself and I don't need to grind through life just because these were the cards that I was dealt. We all know that genuine self-compassion and self-love are absolutely crucial in the quest for healing, transformation, and everyday growth. But what if we struggle to get there? One of the most powerful yet effortless ways to settle our nervous system and reconnect with our true selves is by spending quality time in nature. It's for this reason that this August, I'll be offering an in-person Awakening in the Outdoors retreat at the beautiful Kripalu Center this summer. I'll be co-teaching the retreat with Ralph De La Rosa, who's a three-time guest of the podcast, author, psychologist,

meditation teacher, and friend. During these five days together, we'll enjoy hikes, outdoor meditations, art, insightful workshops, and lively discussions. Our goal is for you to walk away feeling restored with a firm awareness of new resources and a new relationship with the gifts nature holds for us. To learn more about this special retreat and sign up, go to oneyoufeed.net slash nature. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way

to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

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app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you tweeze apart ADHD and creativity? Yeah. Because there's some crossover there in what you see. And so I'll give you my personal example of this, and I'd love you to reflect on it in your own case, which is on one hand, I have suffered from depression and there's times it's been really bad. And on the other hand, I think I have a slightly melancholy type temperament. And I think some of that is who I am. And so, you know, I don't want to be pathologizing very natural and good parts of myself. And yet to your point, I don't want to be suffering unnecessarily. So how have you thought through that? Yeah, I've given that a lot of thought because I don't think as a society,

we take the idea of the hero's journey or individuation seriously enough. I like to think of it like if an alien came through a portal and gave you a device and said, this thing is unique in all the universe and it's one of a kind. And then another evil alien comes through a different portal and killed him before he could tell you what it does,

you would be like, I got to figure out what this does. Like it's one of a kind, it's unique in all the universe. It's one of the most powerful devices in all the universe. That's your brain. That's your brain. Your brain is like no other brain, and it is the most powerful thing in the universe. Now, AI is coming up, but our brains at least work in a way that still is a mystery.

The way that they work is completely insane. And so I'm taking the long way route here to get to the answer, but I just feel as though it's really important to take seriously, like, how does this particular brain function and what are its strengths and weaknesses? That was one of my favorite things about learning about ADHD was I felt like it gave me a cheat sheet for how my brain was working so that I could kind of codify it in a way where it wasn't just happening on accident. and the way I like to think about it I don't know if this is scientifically accurate, but it's the way it feels to me is that I have friends whose brain It seems like you're in an attic

And it's like a little tiny spotlight almost like a laser and it laser focuses on one Little thing in that attic. It can just see this old mannequin or whatever. And it can really drill down and get the micro details of that thing. And my brain and my attention feels much more like this giant spotlight. And I'm seeing 10 things at the same time. And so I think that has really served my ability to do things like analogies and storytelling and metaphor, because every time I think of a thing, I don't think of that thing. I think of 10 things. I think of, oh, it's like that. And it's connected to this and connected to that,

you know? So my brain thinks in this very kind of abstract way. And the more that I've understood like, oh, that divergent way of thinking comes really naturally to me. The reason I highlight that is because I actually think creativity means a lot of different things. I think that there are people who approach creativity through the lens of like Ouija board creativity, where you're just like, well, I don't know what the paintbrush is going to do. So you start and you don't know what the end is. Whereas I think it's just as creative. And I probably lean towards more like puzzle solving or, you know, mystery book writing where you have to work in reverse where you're like,

that's where I'm going. Now I'm going to lay everything, all of the pieces in a giant puzzle. And so I think as I've understood how the ADHD brain typically works, I could start leaning towards creative opportunities that's really well suited for. Does that make sense? It does. So what sort of creative activities is the ADH brain well suited to? I'm just kind of curious. So you sort of mentioned the spotlight versus the laser, the laser. Yeah. Or the, you know, diffuse focus versus the detail focused, right? So that sounds like one big area. Are there others? I think there are others. I think that the thing that comes to mind is, I don't know if I've ever seen anybody say this, but I feel like I don't have the bottom level of the building. And that

level of the building is reality. It's like the way things actually are. If you said, how are you feeling? I couldn't say, this is how I'm feeling. I'd say, it's like the way things actually are. If you said, how are you feeling? I couldn't say, this is how I'm feeling. I'd say it's like this, it's all a metaphor. And so I think that, um, the way I've come to understand that is illustration. So illustration is it's usually the work of symbol and symbol is essentially analogy. And so I think that that's probably the main way, but then also the other way, I think that the bottom level of the building not existing, like whatever the basic obvious answer, I feel like I can't even grab that answer. almost like you're stuck in a room, there's a door and I'll do everything, but try the handle. So I'll find out 10 other ways to get out of this room that aren't opening the door with the handle. And so I do think it gives me a whole bunch of options, but it does often mean that I don't do the common sense option. And that is true, whether I'm making art or a podcast episode, or whether I'm just at the grocery store, just doing something weird. And someone comes along that works there and they're

like, do you need help? What are you doing? So yeah, I feel like it's, yeah, seeing the divergent, all these different ways of doing things. And then I think it's the illustration as symbol and analogy that comes really natural to me. Yeah. It's interesting as I look around and I look in your studio here at all of your art, right? It's pretty obvious you're not a detail focused guy. Your creatures don't have a lot of fine detail, you know, which I'm not in any way criticizing. Just as you were saying that, I was like, that tracks. That's my jam. And actually when I started really trying to develop my visual vernacular, I did this project where I did a new character every weekday for a year.

And really the challenge I knew for myself is that one of the reasons I did it was because my taste is so abstract, lack of detail. Even when I was growing up with superheroes, I liked the ones that had almost no detail. Like Spider-Man was very cool, but even like Black Panther was cooler than that for me because it's just a black suit, all curves, anything that was like too much stuff going on. I don't know, just not my taste. So I did these 260 characters because the challenge was how do you do very little, but evoke everything you want

to say and do it in a unique way? Because if your taste is that minimal, like in the world we live in, a lot has been done. So trying to find your voice within a circle with legs is not very easy. It comes down to the nuance. So those 260 characters were me just trying to figure out from doing very little, how can I do a ton? Now, did you give yourself specific constraints or your taste was the constraint? I knew just my taste. I mean, taste is a big thread through everything I do. It's a thing I talk about on my podcast all the time. I think taste does not get enough play.

I don't think it's everything in creativity, but I do think it's the starting block. You might've saw like 10 years ago, there was this clip of Ira Glass that went viral. Yeah, he talks about taste in that. The funny thing is though, everybody talks about that clip because it's like the gap, the gap between the taste that you have and the work that you're able to do. And your taste is saying this work that I'm able to do

isn't any good. Everybody talks about the gap of that, but I got hung up on an earlier part of that video where he said, everybody starts making stuff because they have great taste. And I heard that and I thought, I don't think that's a given. I've never heard anybody say that. I heard Gordon Ramsay say a similar thing. And I was like, what is this? Gordon Ramsay was asked, like, what do you look for in young chefs to know that they have talent? And I thought, you thought, cook a steak to perfection. I'm thinking skill-based things. And he said, great taste.

He's like, if they don't have a great palate that can pick up on nuance, they can't make good food. That's the thing that guides your creative process. And I think they were getting at the same thing. And so I've kind of dove deep into that world over the past eight years to try to figure that out. And then as you pull at that, you realize like I'm not super versed in philosophy,

but I know Immanuel Kant is pretty famous in that world. And he had a huge body of work around the idea of taste because he thought it was one of the only things that came built into your system a priori, like taste is something that you don't learn. And I think that's the building block. So yeah, when I was going into that project, I knew I'm not going to make stuff that I don't like. Like I'm going to have to stick within this taste, but then find the edges of it because it can't just be stuff that I like that's already

been done that I know that I like. I'm going to have to mess up and push it and all that, but that's going to be my guide. Wow. I'm going to have to ponder whether taste is built in. I tend to be a believer not much is built in and that it's all conditioned. I agree, actually. I would only say I would disagree with can't in this way, but only slightly. I think the interesting space is between guilty pleasure, which is, I wish I didn't like this, but that's really valuable because it's telling you something about your palate. Again, because it's hard to get past persona. It's hard to know, what do I like because I think it'll make me look good? Or what do I like because I just like it? And then there's that. And then

there's acquired tastes that I think are as, as interesting and valuable. Right. Right. It makes me start thinking like I used to just love three's company and that, you know, like that's the good stuff. I guess. But what's interesting is that if you look culturally, most people like the same things. The same things become very, very popular, which might say that our tastes run very similar. Yeah. Which then most artists will say, well, but a lot of that stuff is just lowest common denominator. Well, okay.

Is it? It's just fascinating questions. Yeah. It's interesting. What it makes me think of next is, I don't know if this crosses over into all the different types of tastes that you could have, but as I've been thinking about and exploring the idea of taste, one of the things that I came across is this idea of a super taster, which is a, have you heard that before? Yeah. So it's just somebody who has way more taste buds than your average person. Have you heard the, they might be giant song about super tasters. Oh,

it's on one of their children's records. You've got to, yeah, you'll have to go listen. That's awesome. I'm yeah. I, I, I, I have kind of like got obsessed with the idea of taste. Um, so I'm going to listen to that, but yeah, I've thought about it like that. Like I think leading with your super taste is a good idea as a creator, like leaning into the thing that you have in it, a unique receptivity to nuance. Cause when you have that, first of all, you're able to like reverse engineer a recipe. Like if you really are tuned into comedy, you can not just enjoy the comedy that you love, but you can listen to it with a fine

tooth comb kind of, and just figure out like, how are they achieving that? Because you're able to like put it on your palate and break it down. I think there's a lot of reason why there's that monoculture thing. Again, I think part of that's the persona. People just want to like what's acceptable. What they're exposed to. I mean, so many reasons, but I think as an artist, the best bet is to bet on the thing that is maybe the weird tastes that you have. Yeah. What's interesting about what you were just saying there about taking something that you love and sort of deconstructing, you know, it made me think of something else that you were talking about that I wanted to go into a little bit where you were talking about how at least early on everybody talks about art being creative expression.

Yeah, yeah. And that for you, it felt like art early on was creative excavation. It was using a shovel. Yeah. was using a shovel. And I'd love to talk a little bit about that because as I was thinking about that, I was also thinking about how personal growth happens or spiritual development or whatever you want, psychological development, shadow work, pick your term, right? Is that that happens by taking ideas and then really using those ideas to reflect upon yourself in a deep way.

It's one thing to read a book of, you're into Jung right now, to read a Jung book and be like, oh, those are all really interesting ideas. It's a whole different animal to stop and take those ideas and go, okay, well, what is my shadow? Or follow some of the exercises

that some of these books have and sit down and do that writing and do that excavation in the same way that you're saying that to create good art, you need to take what you like. And instead of just consuming it, actually deconstructing it or excavating it or excavating what about you is responding. It's moving from a consumer of these things to some form of deeper reflection upon these things. Yeah. I think the best term for it for me would be a young term, which is active imagination, active imagination. Anybody that's not super familiar with it. I'm not a Jungian analyst, so I can't speak to it expertly, but I can speak to it as an artist. Active imagination is kind of like dreaming while you're awake. It's kind of just like trying to find the symbols that are coming up naturally

and excavating those. That's what a lot of artists are doing, whether they realize it or not. You're just taking the things that are coming to you, the ideas that are coming to you, and you're trying to put them on the page or you're trying to put them into music. And the projects that I was doing early on that I would consider self-excavation, they were active imagination before I knew what that was. And I figured that out. That prompt came from one of my all-time creative heroes, which is Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts and Charlie Brown. And I had heard him say in an interview, like, so when I got stuck and I felt like, man, everything I'm making, this is like a couple of years out of college when everything just died

down. I just got stuck feeling like I'm just working in trends. I don't really feel like this is authentic to who I am. If I'm going to make a real go at this over my life, I'm going to have to go deeper than this. But really there weren't any podcasts about creativity that I knew of at the time. I struggled to find any direction. So what I just started doing was obsessively consuming everything that I could find that my creators had said about their process or about their work. And one of the things I came across was Charles Schultz. And he said that he would always be asked, is he Charlie Brown?

His name's Charles. Charlie Brown's the main character. It makes sense. You know, and Charlie Brown's a loser. So it's kind of a funny question to say, are you Charlie Brown? And he'd say, yeah, I am Charlie Brown, but I'm also Lucy.

Like Lucy's my sarcastic side and Snoopy's my cool side and Linus is my religious side. And all these characters are me. They're just different sides of myself. And so when I did that first daily drawing practice where I was doing a new character every weekday for a year, that's what I was thinking of. I was thinking, I'm going to put a different part of myself

onto the page as its own character. And I'm just going to do that over and over and over and try to find all these different facets of who I am. Only much later did I realize that that's actually exactly what active imagination is, which is instead of going out in your life and projecting your worst parts of you onto other people and subjecting the world to them, you can do that in your life and projecting your worst parts of you onto other people and subjecting the world to them, you can do that in your sketchbook. You can like project all those pieces out of yourself and onto a page and it can act as a kind of soul mirror. It can be a thing

where you can see the inside on the outside. So you can take a look at it and get to know it. And actually Carl Jung even thought that creative work was a great way to excavate the psyche, even beyond trying to make pretty things or a career of it. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts his stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk

about judging really that's the opening really no, no, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a totally different thing, but it's interesting in something called acceptance and commitment therapy, which is a type of therapy. They talk a lot about cognitive diffusion, being able to sort of not be your thoughts, but be able to look at your thoughts, be able to get a lot of distance. And one of the tools that they recommend

is slightly similar to what you were just saying, which is you give these thoughts, you know, particularly the ones that are coming up again and again are problematic. You give them a character, you know, like for me, it's not as creative as creating my own character. Right. But for me, my sort of low mood kind of guy is Eeyore. Oh yeah. That's great. This is such a bad day. My wife and I were just talking about how Winnie the Pooh applies to this perfectly. Yeah. Yeah. So when I do that, right, it just gives me a little bit of distance. It makes me smile, but you created 250 new characters. Yeah, it was 260. I guess that's how many weekdays there are in a year. That's good to know. I don't feel like I

have 260 parts of myself. So did they just come naturally to you or what was that excavation process like? I mean, I definitely took inspiration from other people in my life. That was true too. Okay. But for the most part, I think it was just nailing down a particular behavior or a particular desire or, and I think you'd be surprised if you start making a character every weekday, how much stuff you got going on in there and all these different kind of warring factions in your brain, it started out that way, but what ended up happening, and this is kind of why I recommend creators that are trying to find their, their style or the even better, the substance of

their work or the story of the work is that they would get it out and start working it out on the page. And I think at the same time, you're looking at those psychically charged images that come up when you're trying to pair these facets of yourself with symbols. And as I did that, I knew like I was really obsessed with, you know, in Dr. Seuss, if there was a page where there were eyes in a tree trunk at night and it's all dark,

like I knew I was obsessed with that. So I was really like paying attention to these symbols. And at first I just thought, and I think a lot of creators think this, well, why do you like that? I don't know. It's just cool. That's all there is to it. But if it resonates on a deeper level, I've come to feel that there is a reason behind that. There's something going on there of why that's resonating on a deeper level. And as you work through it, you start getting closer to the bottom of that. And so it started out as this project where I was just making characters. And then eventually I realized like all these characters that are like hiding, they're getting it kind of abstract forces. And it became this thing called invisible things,

which there's a poster right behind your head. We have a picture book me and my wife just made. It's coming out this year called invisible things. And it's all these characters that are personifying the invisible forces, the phenomenon, like dark matter and gravity, and then feelings like love and joy and all that. And then also the sensory things. And yeah, over time,

the more stuff I made, the more I had a sense of like what those images were doing in my head. And for me, I think it's just that as an illustrator, kind of maybe what's broken about me or maybe interesting is that I don't really like the visible world. I'm not really interested in the visible world, which is kind of weird when you're working in a visual medium. I'm really just fascinated by all the things we can't see and then come to find out,

you know, there's different figures depending where you look, but something like 95% of our universe is invisible. And so there's a lot of good stuff to go at. Yeah. I mean, there's all those different numbers like that, that blow your mind. The other one I love to think about is, you know, we look out and we're like, all right, I see what there is to see. I'm hearing what there is to hear, but no, we're not. Our senses pick up a very small range of all of these things that the frequencies that can be heard, we hear just a little bit of them. The rest of them are all around us. We just don't know it. The things to be seen, well, we're picking up a spectrum of what can be seen,

but the rest of it is all out there. And I just love to sometimes close my eyes and be like, what's actually out there? Yeah. Right. Which is like, God only knows. And I think it goes back to, since we've been releasing this picture book, I've been thinking a lot about this story that I wrote with my wife. It's actually got, I feel like the same point as another book that we just wrapped up that I haven't talked about publicly yet, not to be overly cryptic, but I realized like, oh, they have the same point. They're about how, you know, when I was growing up, all of the things I liked were about hidden universes. You know, when we were talking about

deconstructing your favorite things, when I was doing that project, that character project, I collected a bunch of my favorite stories. And the truth is, before you do that, it's not really obvious what they have in common. It took me a long time after the fact to start seeing that, you know, I collected Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz and Fraggle Rock and Spirited Away. And now as I say them all together, maybe people listening just see the obvious connection that they're all about hidden worlds. They're all about these hidden fantasy worlds, really. And so I've kind of lived in fantasy. I even played pretend way past when it's normal. Like I had a younger brother that was quite a bit younger than me. So I'll give myself a little bit of credit on that front.

But I was just living in a fantasy world, I know, I wasn't interested in the world that we find ourselves in. I wasn't engaged. I was kind of saying no to it actually on a energetic level. Like I don't want this. I don't like it. It's boring. It's not interesting. And I think a lot of that was ADHD. And then I had a friend he's also lives in Columbus now, but we're both from Columbus, Indiana, weirdly. He lives in Columbus, Ohio now. He gave me this printout of an article back in probably 2004 that was about like popular science kind of quantum physics stuff. And it was the first time I'd ever heard about string theory and the different dimensions

and multiple world theory, all these things. And I was like, whoa, this is the first time I've ever been interested in this universe or life. You know, our world is incredible. And I think it broke open this thing of, there's this scene in Truman Show where the kid is like in school and they say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he's like, I want to be an explorer. And the teacher's like,

well, sorry, we've already explored everything. And I think I felt like that until that moment when I was about 17. And so I think the picture books that I'm interested in making, they're less like fantasy hidden worlds and they're more like a magical actual realism where it's like, these are real hidden worlds. They look fantastical and yes, I made up the characters, but all of the stuff

you're seeing, this is how multifaceted and interesting our universe is and how much there is to lean into. I think that's what kind of compels me to make that stuff. And it's filters back to the ADHD thing too. I think that that was the thing I had to overcome is boredom, just boredom with being alive. And it's weird because not everybody relates to that, but yeah, I think that it took me until I was about 17 and that article along with a few other things, getting into music and stuff like that kind of switched me on to life. And I think that was the metaphoric say yes to the call to adventure that is being alive and being in pain. You know, why would you want to stick around and do that? I don't think I knew

until that time. I want to go back to very early in the conversation. It just sort of glossed over this piece. You didn't gloss over it. We were just on our way other places, but I wanted to pick it back up, which is you got out of college and you were deciding that what you were going to do is be an illustrator. And you got a couple of pretty early successes, right? Nickelodeon called you. Yeah. You were really into doing concert posters and you were offered a chance to illustrate a video for the band, The Decembrists, right? You had a lot of really early quick wins that then faded quickly.

I wonder if you could talk us through that time period, that process and finding your way. You sort of found yourself out of creativity and discouraged and back into it today. You're clearly a successful creator. Share a little bit more about that. Yeah. I think that when I was 17 and I was going through that with my mom and I kind of went through this period of time where I thought I want to be the opposite of her. I want to be the opposite of who I am. At the same time, I was going to college for illustration. And that's kind of a weird place to be in as an artist

where you are trying to run from yourself, but make art. That's a, you know, it's not going to work. And I remember going to school and talking to my teachers and being like, look, all my favorite artists, it seems important that they have a style. They've found a style and it's working for them. I think a lot of young creators that's attractive to them. They want to figure that out. And I told my teachers that this first year I'd like to focus on nailing the style. And they were, you know, they were rightfully so kind of like, okay, slow down, you know, they were rightfully so kind of like, okay, slow down, buddy. Like, that's not how it works. Like you can't just find a style, you know, a style finds you kind of thing, like kind of stoner Yoda, mystical thing that you get in creativity. But you know, I think that there's definitely something to that. And I was like, okay, no, but I've got

to figure this out because this is going to be my job. And they were pushing me to be like, yeah, your style emanates from who you are. Like, try to get in touch with yourself, find yourself and your style will kind of come from that. But I was literally trying to run from myself. I was afraid to look in the mirror, look at the shadow. I wanted to get away from that. And so I think discouraged by their advice, I decided like, I'm going to just adopt trends. I'm just going to be doing trendy work, which is, I think part of the process too. You know, I don't look down on anybody that goes through that or works that way. It's fine. Do you think that was a conscious choice? Like I'm going to choose trend or it was just,

that was what was there. And that's what you did. I wasn't conscious enough about what was going on. I think I just thought like, well, the people that are getting work are doing this. And I liked it. It wasn't that it was disingenuine or something, but there was just like this psychedelic kind of doodle movement going on. That was a kind of reinvention of like Peter Max, yellow submarine, that kind of stuff. I feel like that was happening pretty hardcore in the mid 2010s or 2000s, like 2005 to 2008-ish is that time.

And so I just started kind of like joining that movement, which is not a bad impulse. Like I said, I think there's a time for that. But the problem is if that's all you have, when that trend leaves, as soon as it came, you're kind of back at square one. And so I think some of those early jobs that I got in those lucky breaks were a lot just because I'm part of this movement doing something trendy. They know I'm one of the people doing that. And so they, they

turned to me. That was the same time I got the job at the juvenile detention center and worked at the youth shelter. This was after these early, early Nickelodeon, all that didn't work out essentially. You thought like, okay, I've hit it big. And then it turns out, no, you haven't. Yeah. I'll tell you what happened with that was a year out of school. I got an opportunity to illustrate this music video that was going to be on a Nickelodeon TV show. And it was with one of my favorite bands, which is the Decemberists. And I was like, dude, I've died and gone to heaven. I've beat the game. Like I'm, I just got started and like, I'm crushing it. And I remember just doing everything I could think of to make it great, but I didn't have a lot of resources.

Like I, I just started and I sent over my final illustrations and they replied pretty quick and they were like, rough draft looks okay. And I was like, um, I, and I was so, I had tried everything that I knew how to do to the point where I didn't know how to make it any better. Right. I literally didn't. And the only thing I could think to do was just write an email that was like, those are actually not the rough drafts. Those are the finals. And yeah, they weren't happy about that. It didn't go how I wanted it to.

And I felt like I kind of blew my once in a lifetime dream opportunity. And so after that, just slowly that trend dried up. The economy got bad. It was like 2008. And then, you know, for six months I didn't get any work and I ended up having to just get a job at the juvenile attention center. And honestly, I took down my website because I had tried so many different ways to pick it back up and it just, just nothing I was doing was working and it just kind of hurt to keep trying, you know? And so I, I gave up. And then I think what ended up happening was I met a guy who wanted me to do some of this work and do a collaborative show at his gallery in Cincinnati.

He's like, I'd done a coloring book. It was called the Indie Rock Coloring Book. And he's like, Hey, I saw that book. What if we did like a color in, like adult coloring thing, but in the walls of the gallery, like a huge coloring book. And this was like before adult coloring blew up. So it was like a thing at that point, or it wasn't. It was starting to be a thing. It was starting to be a thing. And so I was like, kind of scared to open that door again. But I begrudgingly just was like, okay, let's do it. You know, what could it hurt? And before I went there, he called me and he's like, hey, there's a problem with the show.

And I was like, here it goes again. Like, my dreams are crushed. And I was like, he's like, no, it's, I love the idea. I just feel like it's incomplete. His name's Andrew Nyer. He's like a product designer like, no, it's, it's, uh, I love the idea. I just feel like it's incomplete. His name's Andrew Nair. He's like a product designer and concept artist, conceptual artist. He was like, the show's great, but there's a problem with it because we're going to do this giant mural, but we can't have people come in color with regular sized markers.

The concept breaks. And he's like, we need giant markers. And I was like, okay, if you know, like Rick Moranis, who's got a reverse shrink ray can blow a few of those bad babies up. Like I'm game for that. And he's like, no, I'll make some. And there'll be there when you get there tomorrow. And I hung up the phone thinking they're definitely not going to be there. Like he's going to go try to make giant markers and realize you don't just whip up giant markers. And, uh, I went to his gallery the next day and it was in this cool part of Cincinnati that was up and coming at the time and like

exposed brick and this just gorgeous like gallery. And, uh, those giant markers were there. And I was just like, who is this guy? This guy's like a creative wizard. And we did the show and it was a big success. We've done the show a bunch of times since then. We've taken it to Stockholm and New York city, all kinds of places. But I think that that was the first part of a breakthrough where he's really different than me in a lot of ways, but I saw a bit of myself in him. And I also saw him owning that. And it made me feel like maybe I'm not all bad. It made me inspired to look into who I am and find out what parts of me aren't bad. And I started to just kind of binge watching talks from my favorite artists and reading interviews and all that kind of stuff. And I started to recognize all these ways that I had

things in common with them. And even people like there's a designer, Aaron Draplin, who's very popular online and has since kind of become a buddy of mine. And he's out in Portland now, but he's a proud Midwesterner. He's from Michigan and he wears it on his sleeve. And I remember just feeling like, oh, I never seen an artist be proud of being from the Midwest. Like, okay, maybe that part of me is not so bad. And then there was this artist, Kate Bingham and Bert, who did this whole project about her credit card debt. And, you know, she drew every one of her credit card statements. Like that's exactly what it sounds like. Like just hand copied them on a piece of paper and then did this massive show. And she did them until the credit card debt was paid. It was like this weird conceptual art

kind of thing. And I thought, okay, so maybe this part of me that's terrible with numbers, isn't something that I have to be ashamed of. And I think just slowly I started to get curious about myself and that ended up leading to the ADHD diagnosis, which was a big break for me. And the way I like to think about it now is art really is self-expression and you're never going to love your work. You're never going to love that self-expression if you hate the thing that it's expressing, which is yourself. You're going to have to at some point make peace with or make friends with or feel excited about something about yourself if you're ever going to feel any of those things about your work because it is an expression of you.

And so I think that that was the path to doing the character project, looking deeper into myself, and ultimately changing, seeing myself as something to repress and overcome as something to cultivate. And I think it led to a lot of the creative breakthroughs that helped me build what I have going on now. Awesome. Well, I think that is a great place to wrap up with this idea of you're not a bad thing. You're a good thing.

You're not something to be overcome. You're something to be cultivated. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your journey with us. And I've really had a great time talking with you. Absolutely. Thanks, Eric. These are great questions and ones that I don't always get to explore.

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show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app,

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