451 - Write Your Inner Monologue (Right Side Out 3 of 6)

[Music] Hey, you're listening to Creative Pet Talk, a weekly podcast companion for your creative journey. I'm your host, Danny J. Pizza, the New York Times bestselling author and illustrator in this show, is everything I'm learning about building and maintaining a thriving creative practice. [Music] Let's talk about how to write your inner monologue and how that's essential to finding your creative voice. This episode is for you if you struggle to find where the literal voices of others and the metaphorical creative voices of your heroes end and where you begin. Or if limitations were put on you by others that you have had a hard time shaking off or you need help finding a starting place to build off of in terms of building your creative identity and how you think of yourself as a creator. Stick to the end and I'll share an exercise for finding words that can act as initial building blocks for developing your own creative voice. But first we got to talk about why the first step to tuning into your creative voice might be tuning out of other critical voices from your past. Let's go. [Music] This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is an all-in-one online platform to help you stand out online. Get your domain, show off your best work, get paid all in one place. I've been working on a landing page for some offerings I haven't shared yet and I love the design options that they have now. I am more of an illustrator than a designer and this gave me a springboard to work with type and composition in a more elegant and unexpected way than I could have on my own. Plus it was just fun. 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Last night I made the curried chicken and roast sweet potato jumble and the sauce was so simple and so delicious. I love that I'm making something yummy and broadening my cooking skills and experience in general. Couple nights prior we had the Edamame stir fry with this amazing gochujang Aoli. It was vegetarian but super flavorful and filling and just I absolutely loved it. Nothing hits like home cooking. Go to hellofresh.com/peptalk10fm. That's hellofresh.com/peptalk10fm. Now to get 10 free meals plus a Nutra Bullet Ultra Plus 2N1 Compact Kitchen System. It's a $189.99 value on your third box. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. Disclaimer must order the third box by May 31st, 2026. So I saw this meme and I don't know if it's actually based on some kind of true story. You know like most memes are but in this meme there's a woman talking to a doctor and she's telling him that she hears voices in her head and he then diagnosis her with having thoughts. I don't know if this is something that has actually happened but what if it did happen? I can kind of relate to this idea or this experience. I can imagine it like her whole life she heard people joke and make comments about people having voices in their heads and then was too afraid to speak up with her own voice and externalizer experience enough to realize that the voice she was hearing in her head was quite a typical experience. It was just her version of having an intermonologue or what most of us know as thinking. Now yes there are people with the unfortunate burden of real quote-unquote voices in their head with diagnosable conditions and disorders and I personally don't suffer from any of those but I can relate to this woman because even though there's only one voice in my head and that voice sounds like me that voice sure does have a lot of extremely contradictory ideas and opinions and conflicting hopes and dreams. One second he wants to lose 10 pounds the next second he wants to eat 10 quarter pounder cheeseburgers. One minute he wants to be an artist and live open out there in the world in the next minute he wants to hide in a cave and never speak to or see another human being again. This is why I think most of us are so attracted to stories like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Fight Club or recently Marvel's Moon Night because even though we don't have this extreme of an outer experience of really feeling like multiple different people it's still illustrating something about what our inner world can feel like sometimes. Parsing out who this person inside of you really is is a trip all on its own so how in the world are we supposed to say yes to the even more seemingly impossible journey of crystallizing this into some sort of coherent creative voice. Even the smallest amount of progress requires you to do a ton of advanced sort of tuning in. To do that the first thing I think we have to do is tune out all those other voices from our lives and in our minds that are telling us to drown out ourselves and keep it all zipped. And as Messian is confusing as that journey might be I hope you choose to speak up and use your voice anyway. Just like that meme woman did when she finally had the courage to go talk to her doctor like her and like me when you do you're probably going to find out that some of the most strange concerns or ailments these very concerning weird parts of you are also just a part of the human experience. This is episode three of right side out the series that we're right in the middle of where we are exploring the difficult journey of trying to make authentic creative work that you love. Unlike almost every other series or episode of this podcast these episodes are not self-contained and works sequentially in order. So if you haven't heard episodes one and two of the series we suggest going back and starting there episode one is episode 449 of this show creative pep talk and episode two is episode 450 of creative pep talk. This episode has some very personal storytelling about things that happened in my own life that led to what I consider to be my biggest personal and creative breakthroughs. Now in the last episode I spoke about how much I adored my mom and how alike we were and I shared some of the stories of the good times. Now in today's episode we're briefly going to discuss what happened next and this is just a trigger warning that there are some really heavy themes that we are going to discuss in a general way including drugs, cancer and a mention of domestic abuse. We have attempted to handle every part of this with tact and care and there isn't anything overly explicit or disturbing that we discuss but the story gets pretty sad in this point and there are some themes that come up so it's not really recommended to listen when you have kids around. If I'm in your shoes I might be wondering like if it's that sad and that personal why are you telling these stories. Well for me these were the most formative moments, good and bad. And these events made me the person that I am, and they illustrate the constant internal game of push and pull that I've played ever since. This is my side of the story. It's not a tell-all. It's just me sharing the experiences that form me from my perspective. So in this episode, we are going to investigate those outer voices that can so easily get internalized and attempt to turn them right side out. But first, I have to tell you about the three words in my head that nearly tore me apart from the inside out. [MUSIC PLAYING] Last week, I told you that growing up in the '90s in Midwestern suburban America, the kids I knew seemed to fit pretty squarely into two different camps. They were the nice, clean, Disney kids, and the kids like me, weird, absurd, slime-enthusious, Nickelodeon kids. I can still draw, hey, Arnold, from memory, dog, even SpongeBob Squarepants. And I got my knack for drawing and all things weird from my mother. I was just like her. Or so my aunts and uncles and grandparents would always say. I live with my dad growing up. But on the rare occasions that I did get to see her, I saw this likeness and I cherished it. Just like her was something I carried around like a proud motto. It was like my middle name if I'd been named after her. I was Andy just like her Miller. I mean, pizza. These words had given me confidence. They had boosted me so I could go do the show and tell and crush it with my drawings and beat me out there in the world because I saw this person that I was just like and I thought she was incredible. That is until I got a little bit older. [MUSIC PLAYING] It wasn't until I was a teenager that I started to realize that the same folks that had told me I was just like her didn't actually seem to have the highest opinion of her. She's always late. She can't commit to any relationship. She treats employment like it's serving jail time. I mean, honestly, from where I was standing, I couldn't argue with them. I'd never know my mom to have a job. The only thing I saw her commit to was a packet A and a bath a day. Her lifelong commitment to soaking and smoking. And I also have lots of stories of my mom not just being late, but sometimes not showing up at all. Last week I shared a clip of my older brother, my only sibling with the same mom and dad talking about what it was like growing up with me as a kid. And he also in that conversation brought up a particular time where he and I were left waiting for a mom for a long time. [MUSIC PLAYING] I was sitting there looking out of the window waiting for her to show up and waiting. I remember sitting in that chair looking out that big window in Park Forest for two hours one time, waiting for her car to show up to take us to the anxiety. And she never came. We didn't get a phone call. We never-- nothing never sounded like it wasn't coming. There was just you never showed up. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] I have the same vivid memory of waiting by that window looking outside at the driveway and just trying to will her to show up to pull in to that driveway and pick us up and take us to that theme park, King's Island. Did she call that day? How did we end up knowing she wasn't coming at all? I don't know. I don't really remember a call. But I do remember waiting and waiting and waiting for her to show up. Another memory that comes to mind that's kind of in a similar vein was this one time I went to the bowling alley for this school field trip when I was probably about nine years old. And she lived about an hour and 15 minutes away. And she was supposed to come drive over and get me and take me back to her house for the weekend. But she just never showed up. And I know that nowadays we have protocols in schools to prevent this from happening. But every other kid was picked up. And I don't even remember any teachers waiting for me. I think the last one had to go somewhere. And I think she was like, your mom is coming, right? And I was like, yeah, yeah, she'll be here. And I called my mom. And I called her and I called her and I called her. And finally I got a hold of her and found out that she was still at home, that she hadn't left yet. And she'd forgotten that this was the weekend that I was supposed to stay over at her house. It must have just slipped her mind, I guess. And by it, I mean me. I think my dad and my stepmom were still at work. But eventually they came and got me. And I just ended up staying at my own house that weekend. In my teens, there were fewer and fewer visits from her, fewer letters, fewer calls. My mom's side of the family came into a small inheritance and the panic of having a small pot of money after living really frugally for years seemed to spark a season of recklessness. It was during that time that my mom left her second husband. She left her second set of kids, my other brother and sister. And ran off with a guy that none of us really knew much about. For years, communication was extremely sparse and we didn't always know what state she was in, like geographically speaking, like in the United States. But also physically or mentally, we didn't know what kind of state she was in. No one really knew what was going on with her. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) She turned around and climbed back down the diving board ladder. (upbeat music) And by high school, my mental state wasn't so good either. My family had moved around a lot and even though I'd been doing well in grade school and I was in the gifted class as school progressed and studying and organization and long-term planning became more and more essential and more of the focus. I started to fall through the cracks. I was missing assignments, forgetting homework, forgetting about tests, had tons of anxiety around it all. I really quit having any interest in any of it and was having social struggles and fell into a pretty severe depression. I started to slip pretty bad and I lost a handle on all of the trying and efforting that I was doing and I just started doing whatever thing sounded good to do next. I was partying, sneaking out a lot. Me and my friends would go to Denny's all night and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and just go home feeling absolutely awful. We'd also go hang out at this bowling alley that my friend's dad was the manager of and pound mountain dues and energy drinks and smoke cigarettes and other stuff. And it was at that bowling alley when I got a phone call. It was my aunt Sandy. It was the same Sandy that called me an episode one. She's my mom's fraternal twin sister. She's got blonde hair. My mom has dark hair and light glenda, the good witch in the eyes of my family at least. She is the good twin. I'll refrain from doing my goofy aunt Sandy voice here because considering the message that she delivered, it doesn't really feel appropriate. She told me that my mom was in the hospital. Here are the details that I remember her sharing in that phone call. So to know one of my family's knowledge, my mom had been having seizures and she had gone into this really intense seizure that she couldn't recover from and was rushed to the hospital. Apparently she had been prescribed meds by her doctor for reducing the seizures, but she hadn't been taking them because it was stopping her high. When I heard that I was like, what high? What are you talking about? And that's when I found out that my mom had developed a pretty significant addiction to street drug stimulants. For her dignity sake, I've just decided not to explicitly say more about that, but as far as my drug knowledge is concerned, it's about as serious as it gets, and I'll just leave it there. I asked my aunt Sandy like, "Where's her boyfriend that she's been with?" And found out that he had dropped her off there, but was now out of the picture, and it had come to light that he'd been physically abusive with her. As they treated the seizure, they found out that it was actually caused by a cancerous brain tumor that would require immediate surgery. I feel like it's unclear to me now, like, and maybe it was unclear to the doctors as well, what order of these things happened. Like did the addiction create the tumor? Was the tumor responsible for the seizures? Like did the physical abuse have anything to do with any of that? I don't really know, and it doesn't really matter, but it was really bad. And I felt like my head was spinning, and I just told my aunt Sandy like, "Hey, just keep me posted and tell me, let me know how the surgery goes." And I hung up the phone, and once again, found myself in a crowded, smoky bowling alley, worrying about my mom, and hoping that she hadn't left me. It all happened so fast that I didn't get to even see her at the hospital, but luckily she progressed and was discharged pretty quickly. First time I did see my mom after that all went down was at her mom's house, my grandma's house. It was the same place where she'd drawn that Wolverine Marvel superhero and Sharpie on my X-Men trading card binder, and the same room where she'd show me that big stack of papers with her picture book sketches and read me all those silly, twisty rhymes. This time though, she was sat at the coffee table when I came in, and she was sat in front of a different stack of papers. When I got closer, I got a look at what they were and kind of gathered that these were grade school level vocabulary worksheets. She didn't need to say much for me to understand why she was working through these. In fact, she couldn't really say much at all. Hey, she jumped up and she squeezed me the same way that she always has, and she was clearly still herself, but then she fumbled and she was stammering and she got frustrated because she couldn't find her words. And I remember her saying something like, "Yeah, I can't remember." Like, "Oh, dang it." Like those were the kinds of things that she was just kind of repeating over and over. My mom who has never shut up, has never stopped chatting or laughing, whose voice and words were so quintessential to who she is had lost her ability to say almost anything. The tumor had been safely removed, but so had almost all of the words that she knew in the process. It was really traumatic to see this person that I loved so much, lose their voice because chatty, blabber heads like that. It's their essence. It's who they are. And she kept saying words that she could remember. I remember she must have said, "I love you a hundred times," but even more than that, she just kept saying, "I'm sorry." As I left, I was shaken and really in shock by how dramatically her life had made a turn for the worse. And I was choking on three words myself, just like her. And the voice in my head added, "This is you. This is the road you're on. This is who you are. This is what the world has in store for people like you. It's all going to end in tragedy, just like her." I really had internalized the power of those words that other people had said to me. I'd built on them. I'd made them my identity. They'd become the definition of who I was and I had a really hard time separating myself from this middle name that followed me my whole childhood. And as I looked out into my future, every road seemed to lead to a place that was worse than the super dark place that I was already in. And honestly, I didn't want to live that out. [Music] Looking back, I can see that it was in these really low, really dark times that this new fiery determination started bubbling up within me. And I made a commitment to myself and I just decided somewhere along the way that I wasn't going to be like my mom anymore. And better yet, I was going to be the opposite of who she was. And I would show up. I would work hard. And I'd commit to things and I'd commit to people, even if it totally destroyed me. [Music] Beware, you are, beware. You are, beware. You are, beware. [Music] [Music] Warmer weather is here, time to break out those cooler clothes. But sometimes that's not so fun. You get out those shorts or pants you wore last year on vacation. You're just flooded with memories of sticky fabrics that don't breathe and your legs are hyperventilating. That's where Quince comes in. Quince has the pieces you'll love this year and love to break out next year and the years to come. My wife Sophie loves linen as it's lightweight and breathable and Quince has got a great range of linen pants and tops and classic styles which work for both casual and comfy everyday vibes that can easily be dressed up with a little bit of jewelry. No more sticky or clingy fabrics. Wicked that moisture with Quince's flonet active wear. That's moisture wicking, anti odor and soft enough that you'll actually want to wear it all day. The best part is their prices are 50 to 60% less than similar brands because Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you pay for quality, not brand markup. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/peptalk for free shipping in 365 day returns. Now available on Canada to qunc.com/peptalk for free shipping in 365 day returns. Quince.com/peptalk. As a neurodivergent creative, I am always trying to strike a better balance between creating versus just consuming. That's why Dr. Annelimpke's class dopamine take your brain back on master class, peaked my interest. She is such a compelling communicator and one of the things that really hit me fresh was this idea that you want to embrace more things that make you feel uncomfortable up front but great afterwards versus great instantly but bad afterwards. This insight really inspired me to action because this is exactly why I want to create more than I scroll. I am no creative prodigy or business genius but lifelong learning has been a game changer for me. Master class makes it possible to learn from the best in the world at any time with video and audio only mode and also master class is a great gift for family and friends with interest and business, writing, cooking, wellness, creativity. all kinds of different people all bases covered and with mothers day and Father's Day coming up, Masterclass could be an ideal option for a gift. Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/peptalk. That's 15% off masterclass.com/peptalk. Head to masterclass.com/peptalk to get the latest offer. I was obsessed with watching movies at the time, so I thought maybe I'll get a job at the movie theater. Turns out watching movies has nothing to do with it. I worked in this little box selling tickets. It was super claustrophobic and I felt locked in this small space and my legs were wiggly from trying to stand still all day and my brain was bouncing off the walls on my skull, but I stuck at it. I tried to focus on the math and the money, but when my boss counted the drawer down at the end of the day, I came up short. I somehow had lost a bunch of money. Even though I'd shown up and I kept it zipped up and I kept my button the chair, I still didn't measure up. This was the first time that happened, but it wasn't the last time. And eventually, they just mostly had me clean theaters after the movies let out. I'd been demoted from what felt like the most basic job going. How is it going to survive? I kept showing up, but I knew I couldn't do it forever. If I was going to be able to commit to this, just keep working, just keep swimming thing in the long run, I'd have to find something less traditional. You know those annoying people that are like, "This band changed my life, man?" Well, that's exactly the type of person that I am. One day before Spanish class started in high school, I walked into the room and music unlike anything I had ever heard was playing on the boom box. At first, it sounded weird and I wasn't even sure that I liked it, but it captured my attention. I bought the CD right after school and I just played it over and over and over again until it clicked and I got it. The lead singer Isaac Brock sings with this barky, kind of shouting voice that was initially a little bit jarring, but eventually it was this voice that made these songs so uniquely compelling. As my brain decoded this noise and found the melodies in there, a similar kind of decoding began happening in my life. I didn't play music, but all these bands had this wildly illustrated merch crafted by weird and already designers all with creative voices as unique as the singers themselves. I know now it was their tasteful use of negative space and visual gestalt principles at work, but at the time I was just like, "Whoa, man, this is so dope, it's like blow my mind!" And even more from what I could tell, this looked like some kind of job. It was as if for the first time I could hear my own creative voice calling me whispering from the future, back ining me forward, daring me to say yes, my first creative call to adventure. So I went to school for illustration and design, but when I got to school and told the teachers I wanted to use the time at school to find my style and hone my creative voice, I was kind of surprised to be met with this overly mystical creative philosophy like I was talking to some stoner Yoda. Find your voice, they'd say, "No, no, no, no, your voice finds you if you're lucky. You can't just find your style, you have to look inside, you have to find yourself." But what they didn't realize was I was actually trying to do the opposite. I wasn't trying to cultivate whatever this thing inside of me was, I was too scared of the potential consequences. I wasn't trying to find myself, I was trying to lose myself in the art and ultimately find a job. The hopeful creative whisper was getting drowned out again and the voices from my past were growing louder again. But then I heard a different sound from my past. So a lot of people think that the Midwest is just part of the Bible belt, but in my experience it's a lot more part of the pop culture belt. Like I said, I was raised by the Muppets. Yeah, it's great when it works. Jack Black. One, two, three mother f*** up. Nickelodeon. I'm ready. I thought to myself, "WWMD, what would Mario do?" You know, super Mario. What would he do if he got stuck like this? Well, I can tell you exactly what he would do in level one, three, and super Mario brothers three. He'd put on a fricking raccoon hat and fly up into the secret part of the screen and now one of the most important secret items in the game, the warp whistle. What's a warp whistle? You don't know. This is a secret item that allows you to skip levels when you get stuck. I needed the equivalent. I needed a creative warp whistle that would allow me to skip the waiting around and hoping that my voice would magically come and find me and go straight into having some sort of career. I started adopting a style that was trendy at the time. It was a kind of psychedelic, doodly style and I came up with this idea to make an indie rock coloring book for charity. It combined three things that I was genuinely into and I hoped that the project would allow me to skip some of the levels and start getting some work right away. Initially it worked like a charm. The coloring book was picked up by a charity and published shortly after I graduated and I started getting illustration work right then and there. Just a year at a college and I got an email asking me to do some illustrations to be animated for a music video for one of my favorite indie bands as part of a show on Nickelodeon. The freaking mothership was calling me home. It worked. I had warp whistleed myself all the way to the final boss. I was stood in front of Bowser and I barely started the game. This was it. I gave it everything I had, every trick in my book, every trick up my sleeve and I sent over my final illustrations and waited. I got to reply. And here's what the client said about my final illustrations. They said, "Rough drafts look okay. Looking forward to seeing how they shape up in the finals." Just in case you missed it. Those were the finals. In fact, like I said, I tried every trick up my sleeve. I literally didn't know any more tricks and Photoshop. I didn't know how to make it any better. I had nothing left. You know that trick where the magician has like thousands of tissues up their sleeve. It was like that. Except I just had one tissue at my sleeve. And that's not magic. That's just gross. I honestly couldn't even think of any way that I could improve what I had sent. And so the only thing I could think to do was to send a reply with a message that said, "Those are the finals." After this fiasco, all the hope and excitement of the warp whistle and the near success completely went up and smoke. The trend that I was a part of more or less dried up and I was stuck right back where I was when I got started. Back at square one, the same old me, a life sentence. But this time it was worse because it wasn't just me. By this point in the journey, I had got married and we had a kid and we had rent and bills and now I had no prospects, no other skills and I tried to figure out some kind of other warp whistles that could get me somewhere and just nothing was doing the trick. When the build collector started calling, I couldn't even find like a remotely creative adjacent job. And when I had just got to the point where I was embarrassed to even try anymore, I actually took my website down. I did put up like an under construction site kind of thing but I didn't have any intentions of actually constructing it over again. And I just looked for a job that I felt like I could stomach, that had some flexibility and I got a job, a buddy of mine got me a job at the local youth shelter where teens are housed and fed when they suddenly become homeless or their homes are unfit for one reason or another. And honestly, it kind of seemed like a good fit for me. I got to take them to the gas station and get polar pops and talk about life and feelings and all that kind of stuff. And that's just a lot more my speed than most regular jobs. It was flexible, people focused and really open. What I didn't realize though was that when I took that job, it meant that I was also obligated to pick up shifts on the other side of the building, which was a juvenile detention center. That job was rigid, protocol focused and literally locked down and closed off. I avoided picking up a shift every single way that I could think of, but eventually they were like, hey, if you don't pick up some shifts, you have to find a different job. I remember going to that first shift like it was yesterday. I opened that door, unlocked the wing that I was stationed in for the night and I really nearly had a panic attack. I was walking down that long corridor where there's all these locked doors where kids that are just a few years younger than I was at the time were living and spending their days. I was physically shaking as I walked towards the back office where I hoped that I could sit down and kind of gather myself before I got them out for the group time and rec time, etc. But when I sat down in that office, that voice in my head started again. How did this happen? How was it just a few months prior? I had almost pasted my full on dreams and I was now living my actual nightmare. I had done everything in my power since I was a teenager to avoid traditional employment because it felt like jail to now ending up in traditional employment in a real jail for teenagers. Sometimes after I would have a particularly rough night shift, I would just go home, lay straight face down on the living room floor and numb out, cry and sometimes just fall asleep. This job was really, really difficult for me and it really tested me while I was there. But looking back, I don't look at it as a total loss. It was there that my biggest personal breakthrough started to break in. You see, all of the youth workers that worked there, including myself, noticed the same thing. The kids in the shelter side of the building that understood that they were there to be taken care of because they deserved it because they were innately good and valuable. They behaved pretty well. They were the good kids and they acted like it. But the kids on the detention center side of the building, the understood that they deserved to be punished and kept away from society because of their innate flaws, they behaved very poorly. They were the bad kids and they totally acted the part. But here's the kicker. The good kids and the bad kids, they were the same kids. The shelter kids and the detention kids would go back and forth from side to side in and out depending on what their circumstances were at the time. And here's what I saw firsthand. You could be the exact same person and virtually be exact same place and live totally differently depending on whether the voice in your head thought you were or you were because you were good or because you were bad. [Music] The breakthrough shift in my own perspective that I'm referring to is what this podcast series is all moving towards. In the process of exploring these ideas, I discovered the work of psychologist Dr. Ken Benau and I recorded a conversation with him. I'll probably go on to share more of this conversation in the future but for now I want to just share something he said that relates to what we're exploring today. I also used to work with kids in what's called residential treatment. So these kids were sent away from home because they had for the most part really significant complex difficulties in all areas, neurologically, motorically, socially, emotionally, behaviorally. So many of these kids would get a label, actually they usually get a long list of labels in terms of diagnoses. A lot of people would be like, "Why would you want to work with kids like that?" As if this was like I'm doing this set of goodness in my heart or carrying the burden of kindness in the world. I did it because I realized way before that time actually the kids are kids and their unique way of being in the world is not about their quote-unquote disabilities or disorders. One of these kids that I really loved, if you looked at his behavior in his diagnosis, if you hadn't gotten to know him, you'd think, "Well that is one very disturbed child." Because apart from his learning and motoric, just sort of like difficulties, he was what's called psychotic. So he would have auditory hallucinations. Or maybe, well I think it was mostly auditory, maybe visual too. Anyway, he was constantly talking to someone I didn't see. And I did therapy with him. I wasn't yet trained, but I was under sort of training under a psychologist. He said, "Go ahead, work with him." So I did. And I would have times where I was in the office and all these toys on the floor. We could do plate therapy. And he was talking to himself. The toys were irrelevant and it looked like I was irrelevant a lot of the time. But I knew he had a lot of pain around loss, separation and abandonment. I think in part because his family, while they had him here, he never visited. So I think he felt abandonment. And I have a feeling that they felt ashamed of him. It would be my guess. So I didn't spend a lot of time with him, so I wouldn't know. Anyway, I would talk with him about how hard it is when people leave. But I was talking to him because he was talking to, whomever he was talking to in his mind. So I thought, "Well, I am absolutely useless." I was like, "I am playing like I'm a plate therapist, but I am not a plate therapist." Because he's an an alternate universe and I just happen to be in the room. In my mind, I'm in the room with him, but not in his. Anyway, so one of these sessions ended. He walks out and the actual psychologist was working with someone else. The someone else he was working with was sad about psychologists, his therapist's leaving. And he was crying. And my boy, who was actually a very kind person, who was playful and kind, right? So there's nothing to do with his quote-unquote asserts. He goes up to the kid, pats him on the back and he says, "It's hard when people are leaving." Which is the exact words I've been saying to him for weeks, but I thought had no effect. So it just kind of shows you many things. But it shows you one, he's just a person. But he's not just a person. He's uniquely himself. That gesture was uniquely him. It was his kindness and his caring. And whatever he took from me and my kindness and caring, it was available to him because it met something. So we've spoke a lot in this episode about the words that the voices in our heads say to us. And also a lot about jail. But man, maybe it's just my personal experience, but that sentence, it's hard when people leave, feels like it unlocked something in my life. We all have those voices of others that have become parts of ourselves and maybe even become like a personal prison. For me, it was just like her. And for a long time, those words continued to take my future away from me the more that I listened to them. But what if we chose different words to become our quote-unquote life sentence? What if like the kid in the story, we internalized the voices that built us up instead of those that bullied or criticized or boxed us in? Alright, it's time for the CTA. Every episode of this podcast, we try to leave you with actions where you can put some of these ideas to work in your creative practice right now instead of just thinking about them and thinking, "Hmm, that all sounds kind of interesting." So today, our CTA is "Choose your life sentence." So I think the story that I told today helps illustrate why it might be difficult to parse out those conflicting perspectives that we find on the inside and ultimately be able to channel them into some sort of cohesive or even compelling creative voice. But how about if we start not with our own voices, but the voices in our life that had the biggest positive impact on who we've become? We've all had people tell us something that stuck with us for good reasons. Those voices can be part of who we are. So if you get stuck trying to isolate who you are and what you want to say in your work, I've found it to be powerful and useful to own and incorporate the words of others into my creative practice. Bands like the Beatles became who they were because they started by playing cover songs, owning the parts of themselves that resonated with the words from somebody else. So pause for a moment and ask yourself, "What words do you choose as a life sentence, a life giving sentence? What is a sentence that you want to build your life around?" You've heard me do this for like 10 years on this show. When I don't know what I want to tell you, I tell you something that someone told me that helped me. Whether it's Dolly Parton saying, "Find who you are and do it on purpose," or the quote at the center of my invisible things project that comes from the book The Little Prince, it says, "It's only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." What's sentence was the project's guiding light and inspired the last lines of our book? In fact, I found out more recently that another much more legendary creator than me, a creator of Kids Media as well. Mr. Rogers was guided by the same words and even had that same line plastered up above his desk in his office. Many of you have even purchased one of these life sentences as a poster for my online shop. It's probably the quote that is most repeated back to me from my talks and from this podcast, but they're not my words, they're my dads. One of the most important sentences that anyone has ever said to me that unlocked a growth mindset and a well of resilience that doesn't really come natural to me was when my dad said to me, "Life is hard, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Hard and bad are not the same thing." My dear dad isn't a stoic goofball that prattles off stuff like this without even realizing it, but we have all had friends and family and teachers or counselors that say things to us that become our favorite parts of who we are. It's hard to keep those voices at the forefront of your mind, but filtering them into your creative work can really help. I know for me, I can say from personal experience that making literal posters with these phrases has helped me keep these things in front of my face and top of mind. Here's my challenge to you. Take a walk, journal it out, do some reflection, and do whatever it takes to remember those words that made you who you are for the better, and then make a life sentence piece of work inspired by that to start to get a sense of your creative voice because in so many ways, the things that are said to us become the voices in our head and those voices become who we are. Now, you don't have to put the literal words in the piece of work like I do with my lettering, but my hope is that this sentence can act as a kind of inspirational, creative prompt to help you find a more clear sense of your own creative voice. Okay, so if you're listening to this, you know that I didn't stay on that living room floor. This week I'm going to share how this internal battle of the good parts and the bad parts and the good voices and the bad voices all shook out and ultimately ended up in a future reality that I couldn't possibly have imagined back when I was looking into my future and that honestly I'm glad that I stuck around and kept fighting for. Oh, one more thing. I know in the dark times, if you ever experience them, it's incredibly hard to reach out to anybody else. Please, if you are in the middle of one of those times where you're looking into your future and you just can't imagine anything to stick it out for, don't keep that to yourself. Tell a friend, tell a family member, there's even now a national mental health crisis helpline at 988, you just call 988. Now I know that there are a lot of different opinions on whether these helplines are helpful or not, but I am going to link a link in the show notes to mpr.org where there's an article all about the 988 helpline, the pros and the cons, as well as a bunch of other resources if you find yourself in a place like that right now. Please take care of yourself and I'll be back next week. Huge thanks to my wife and co-producer and editor of this series, Sophie Mill. Thank you for watching. Huge debt of gratitude to Yoni Wolf and his band Y, whose music is our normal soundtrack and who provided new music from their album A.O.K. Ohio for this series. I discovered Yoni's music and his unique voice while I was in college and I have been such a massive superfan ever since that time and it is an absolute dream come true. I can't even explain to you what it's like to have this music for this series that is just so perfect and has elevated it. I'm just blown away. And of course, huge thanks to all of you for listening. It has been super meaningful to me and the whole team to read all your experiences with this series. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much and until we speak again, stay pepped up. Do you want the truth about the organic food on your plate? And check out the chart topping Real Organic Podcast. Recently named one of the best climate podcasts by earth.org, it's hosted by Dave Chapman and me, Lynley Dixon. Each week we feature eye opening interviews with farmers, scientists, authors and journalists to uncover the forces reshaping the food system from why corporate lobbying is redefining what organic means to how organic farmers are fighting back. So don't miss it. Follow and listen to the Real Organic Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Climate Rising, produced by Harvard Business School and hosted by me, Professor Mike Tauful. 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