The One You Feed - When Your Brain Won’t Fit the World: Finding Your Creative Path with ADHD with Andy J. Pizza

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

In this episode, Andy J. Pizza joins Eric Zimmer for When Your Brain Won’t Fit the World: Finding Your Creative Path with ADHD, a conversation about creativity, identity, and what happens when you stop treating yourself as a problem to fix. Andy shares how discovering ADHD helped him reframe years of self-doubt, better understand his parents, and build a creative life that actually fits the way his mind works. Together, they explore self-acceptance, the role of labels, and how art can become a powerful way to excavate who we really are. Help us make the podcast better—share your input in a short survey:: ⁠oneyoufeed.net/survey. ⁠Thank You! Exciting News!!!Coming in March 2026, my new book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life is now available for pre-orders!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Key Takeaways ADHD as a form of neurodiversity rather than a personal deficit The connection between ADHD and creativity, imagination, and divergent thinking How self-compassion supports mental health and sustainable personal growth The role of diagnosis and language in understanding identity and behavior The influence of childhood and family dynamics on self-perception Moving from self-criticism to self-acceptance in creative and personal life Creativity as a tool for self-discovery, meaning, and emotional insight Designing habits and environments that support how your brain works For full show notes,⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!⁠ Connect with the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheOneYouFeedPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you enjoyed this conversation with Andy J. Pizza, check out these other episodes: Creativity as a Cure with Jacob Nordby Eric Tivers on ADHD in Adults By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed, and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! This episode is sponsored by: ⁠⁠⁠Aura Frames⁠⁠⁠: For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting ⁠⁠⁠AuraFrames.com /FEED ⁠⁠⁠to get $35 off Aura’s best-selling Carver Mat frames – named #1 by Wirecutter –  by using promo code FEED at checkout. This deal is exclusive to listeners, and frames sell out fast,  so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays! ⁠⁠⁠Uncommon Goods ⁠⁠⁠has something for everyone – you’ll find thousands of new gift ideas that you won’t find anywhere else, and you’ll be supporting artists and small, independent businesses. To get 15% off your next gift, go to ⁠⁠⁠UNCOMMONGOODS.com/FEED⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠: Post your job for free at ⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/oneyoufeed⁠⁠⁠⁠. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 you think. 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. What if you're not a problem to fix, but a person to cultivate? My guest today, illustrator and podcaster Andy J. Pizza, grew up being told he was just like his mom. Wildly creative, unable to stick to jobs or appointments, a life that eventually spiraled into addiction, abuse, and serious illness. And for a long time, Andy decided to start.

decided the safest thing was to become the opposite of her, and by extension, the opposite of himself. It wasn't until he began exploring ADHD, working in a juvenile detention center, and really looking at his own story that something shifted. He started to wonder, maybe his mom didn't fail because of who she was, but because she was never allowed to be who she was. We talk about art as self-expression, making peace with the parts of ourselves we'd rather exile, and what happens when we stop trying to repress our nature and start cultivating it instead? I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Are you thinking about senior living for yourself or a loved one? Choosing the right community is important. At Amica Unionville, we offer personalized care that

evolves with seniors' needs and 24-7 support and security for peace of mind. Plus, Amicahunville residents never need to worry about cooking or cleaning so they can focus on enjoying social activities and rediscovering passions. We're ready to welcome you. Don't spend your time on a wait list. Book a visit now at 905-947-990 or at amica.ca.ca.ca slash unionville.

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 and 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 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? What is there a bad wolf in here? What does he need? What does he not understand? I've been going on a big, young Ian 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 and the labyrinth.

Like, that's the part of you that's got out of control. 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, you know, quote unquote, a good dog. Now, you know, humans are not

that simple. But I thought we could start there because you've talked recently about your mother. Yeah. And, you know, her struggles and your sort of desire to try not to be like her and then maybe think that maybe you were like her. And 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 you know 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 the 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, oh, it's not a compliment. Like I thought it was, you know, they'd 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. 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. 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. 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 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 tried to be more like her than she ever let herself be. And that has proved to be a much better policy for me. And, you know, 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 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, you know, 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 remove 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. Yeah. And so that was the obvious sort of quote unquote bad behavior in my house. It was the one that everybody remarked upon. Yeah. 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, 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? Yeah. And learning all about it. So where did that lead you and how is 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 in 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, why?

And he's like, I got to 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 a legal 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 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 thing. 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 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. Seeking that diagnosis, I think, help me find that and also help me lean into the strength.

around it yeah i think that question of diagnosis of label yeah 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 yeah i mean these are really complicated questions very i think we've come a long long way as a society around mental health yeah And we have an extraordinarily long way to go because nobody really understands what is going on, you know, 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. Jeremy at 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, you know, 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 the 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 love myself and I don't need to grind through life just because these were the cards that I was dealt. When you run a small business, hiring is one of those things you need to do, but never actually have time for. For us, it always takes longer than we think, and another week slips by without the help we needed. And that's why LinkedIn job's new AI assistant is so valuable. You tell it what kind of person you're looking for and it filters through applicants for you. Surfacing only the best matches instead of a stack of resumes. It even suggests 25 strong candidates every day so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30% more likely to stay a year than those from the leading competitor.

Hire right the first time. Post your jobs for free at LinkedIn.com slash one you feed, then promote it to use LinkedIn jobs AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com slash one you feed to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Every year I tell myself I'm going to find the perfect gift, something personal, and then I overthink it. This year, I finally got it right.

I'm getting my mom an aura frame, and I really hope she's not listening. What I love is how thoughtful it feels. I've been adding the photos she keeps asking me to send, and now they actually show up in her house instead of dying in my camera roll. And because you can preload photos before it ships and keep adding from anywhere, the gift keeps unfolding throughout the year. It's a simple way to feel connected, even when you're not together. For a limited time, save by visitingoraframes.com to get $35 off ORA's best-selling Carver Matt Frames,

named number one by wirecutter with promo code feed. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code feed. This deal is exclusive to our listeners and frames sell-out fast. So order now to get it in time for the holidays and support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. 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, oh, it's like that and it's connected to this and connected to that. 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. We'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 activity? is the ADHD 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?

Yeah. 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 this. It's all metaphor. And so I think that 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. It's 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. 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.

Yeah, very true. 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. up 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 in that case? 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.

Like, 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 have 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 Ramsey say a similar thing. And I was like, what is this? Gordon Ramsey was asked, like, what do you look for in young chefs to know that they have talent? And I thought, you know, 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 Emmanuel 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, like, mess up and push it and all that. But that's going to be my guide. Before we dive back into the conversation,

let me ask you something. What's one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it's there. You've tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major saboteurs of self-control, things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism, that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's the good news.

You can outsmart them. And I've put together a free guide to help you spot. these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at one you feed.net slash ebook and take the first step towards getting back on track. 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 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 like what do I like because I think it'll make me look good or what do I like because I just like it yeah 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 And that, I'm just, you know, like... That's the good stuff. It's an interesting thing to us. 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. Sure. 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 that...

this crosses over into all the different types of taste 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 supertaster, which is a, have you heard of that before? Yeah. So it's just somebody who has way more taste buds than your average person. Have you heard that they might be giant song about supertasters? Oh, now I have to.

I have to hear this. You've got to, yeah, you'll have to go listen. That's awesome. I'm, yeah, I, uh, I have kind of a, I got obsessed with the idea of taste. Yeah, there you go. 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. Because 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? Yeah.

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 a persona. People just want to like what's acceptable. What they're exposed to. Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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. 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? Yeah. 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 Young right now, to read a Young 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? Yeah. You know, 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 youngian 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. So when I got stuck and I felt like, man, everything I'm making, this is like a couple 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 with 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 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. Yeah. 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 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. 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, being 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? Right. But for me, my sort of low mood kind of guy is Eeyore.

Oh, yeah. That's great. This is just 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 week days are in a year all right 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 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 this even better the substance of their work or the story of the work is that they would get it out 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 realize, 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 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. 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. Like 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, a lot. 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 Fragle 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 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 think. You 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 an 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 you know 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 seen this is how multifaceted and interesting our universes and how much there is to lean into i think that's what kind of compels me to make that stuff and it 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. Oh. 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? 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. You were really into doing concert posters and you were offered a chance to illustrate a video for the band, the December is 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. Right. And I told my teachers that this first year, I'd like to focus on nailing the style and they're, 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 there 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 the 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 um 2000s like 20005 to 2008 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

think some of those early jobs that I got and 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 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 Nickelode and 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 So 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 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, 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, you know.

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 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 in his gallery in Cincinnati. He's like, I'd done a coloring book. It was called the Indy 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. 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 I'm 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 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 they'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 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 own him. 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 Burt, 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 help me build what I have going on now. Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn't quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why I created the six saboteurs of self-control. It's a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them.

If you're ready to take back control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at one you feed.net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen starting today. One you feed.net slash ebook. 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, so I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend.

Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time.

Thank you for being part of the One You Feed community.