The Time It Takes to See the Obvious

There was panic in the video shop. I’d not been at art college very long when I’d made a horrible spoof film poster using my embryonic Photoshop skills and stuck it up on the wall where my colleagues and customers would see it. It was black and white with a big slab sans serif font, probably ‘Impact ’. BORN: One Man’s Fall From Grace read the title. I’d added spoof rave reviews along the bottom. And there, smack in the middle, was a grainy photograph of a half man. This fell drunken creature, like a stricken curiosity from a 1950s horror film, lurched over, bright white arse bouncing the Max Spielmann disposable camera flash back at the mortified viewer. It wore only socks and loafers and had been expelled from a taxi while the innocent slept.

This abomination was my poor manager. His misfortune had handed me a story.

I was a reckless young idiot back then. I cared about people, but if the story was there to be had, I sunk my fangs in greedily without fear of consequence. In this case, the consequence was a near job loss because the area manager paid an unannounced visit to our Blockbuster branch, and nobody could remove the shameful poster from the wall in time. I’d known the risk and pulled the stunt anyway. I asked the question a lot around that time: ‘How much are you willing to give to get the story?’ Anyone would have thought I was a journalist, not an art student trying to work out what it all meant and where I belonged.

I’m not so kamikaze these days – probably down to the sheer overload and fatigue of parenthood and modern life – but I’ll still surrender any amount of time and dignity if it means I get to tell a tale on the other side. One close friend routinely tells me I lead a ‘cartoon life’, reminding me of my catalogue of unlikely experiences. I smile. He loves my stories and I love to share them. It was my biggest attraction when I set foot in the street on those turn-of-the-century nights out; the possibility that anything could happen. Where would we end up? Who would do what? Would there be bush jumping tonight and what shit nightclub would beckon us in, only to turn us away for the wrong shoes or wayward eyes? I made a crumby Geocities website to share the posters I made for each outing to Bradford, Halifax or Bingley. Nobody would see them other than those who were already coming, but I was a pro wrestling fan and loved to assign alter-egos to friends, weave narratives that were far more dramatic than the truth.

It would be around 20 years before I recognised that storytelling was what I lived for and underpins everything I love to do.

Why was this?

Well, first of all, I was in it, living it, so I never saw the wood for the trees. This is a constant for all of us. My ability to zoom out was limited when I was the lead character in my own play. Education was about learning to see, but I wasn’t consciously aware of that at the time; I was hitting the next deadline, doubting whether the work was any good. Then I was listening to visiting lecturers share industry stories and wondering whether I’d ever make it in. Then I was working full time and scraping together a dubious maiden portfolio. And so rarely did I stop to breathe. Once I was in, my chimp brain ran riot, so deadlines, income and the rest of life tied me to the back of the car and put a brick on the pedal. There were moments, of course. I always had half-decent self-awareness. I didn’t put crap in my portfolio that might attract work I didn’t love. I knew storytelling played a part in what I did, but I also didn’t see how my visual language might tally up with the way I spoke into a microphone or wrote a short story. Each such side quest would happen by chance, a response to opportunity. I’d gallop through the mud, after the new squeaky ball with my tongue out and worry about the bath when I got home.

As I hit my late 30s, I started to see the broader pattern and join more dots. That’s why coaching made sense, and the book writing for and with other artists, designers, founders and the like. It helped that I’d written eight of my own. But these new ventures always happened at pace and with a full schedule comprised of work with words, pictures and sound.

Last year I did some coaching training with the Paradiso Institute. I’d written co-founder Héctor Ayuso’s biography as a raw, dramatic short story, as if it were fiction to reflect the at times unbelievable nature of his life and begun working with Pablo Honey on In Between, his memoir. And that was it; I was now also working as a story coach. Part of the training, led by co-founder Marko Pfann, was about establishing frameworks and processes to help people understand our offer. I took my time after we finished up, sort of liking what I’d landed on, but something about it wasn’t me. It felt a little banal. I needed an overarching philosophy. So, I carved out some time to sit and introspect. I kept returning to something an old school friend had told me. He said he’d heard a local pisshead say that our hometown, Keighley, in West Yorkshire, was one giant Star Wars bar.

Since an early age, I’ve struggled to remember three items I needed from the supermarket, but will remember, word for word, something funny or silly someone said ages ago. My brain covets humour and absurdity, the unlikely and the magnificent and captures moments of this nature photographically. It’s why I remain obsessed with pro wrestling, still read Viz and see pure cinema in small-town hi-jinx that others will sigh and shake their heads at.

Hearing the stories of others in the creative industry is hedonistic to me. My lecturers would share offbeat tales from other illustrators and artists in the pub at lunchtime on lecture days and I’d go along with them and sit there, grinning and nodding and taking mental notes to make sure I pursued such misadventures of my own. I remember Steve Wilkin, our course leader, being on the verge of tears as he recounted another lecturer calling in to say he wouldn’t make it into work in Preston from the Lake District because badgers had eaten away the foundations of his driveway and it had collapsed. And truly, it was this, in the atmosphere of the studio environment, that drove me. I found the culture magnetic and mesmeric.

So it should be no surprise to me that I’ve found myself coaching people in revealing and shaping their stories. It took time, but of course I would move this way eventually. With almost two decades of interviewing experience under my belt, I’m well equipped, but honestly, that only goes so far. I’m still sticking that poster up on the wall despite the risk, cackling like a hyperactive chimp. It was always there. If it hadn’t been, I’d have settled for a less-demanding career path. That giant Star Wars bar, Keighley, churns out storytellers like few other places. Eccentrics and oddballs of all kinds. I heard of local myths and legends from my parents and other family members from the moment I could understand stories and the local pubs were swimming in them as I neared adulthood. It’s stamped onto my soul. So this part of my work might just be the most natural and well-suited of all.

I’ve called it The Cantina. The drunk man’s comment became my philosophy.

It can take an eternity to see what was always there. I’m thankful it was just 43-years for me. I’m curious about what might be staring you in the face. Can you see it yet?

Art With Open Arms

It was a promising day. With the calendar taken care of for the week, I had a relaxed morning sorting the studio and a bit of admin. Then it was time for a micro-adventure. Up to London and the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration – my debut visit – to chair a discussion panel to open The Big Draw Festival. (Hear about this on episode 316 of The Creative Condition podcast or in The Creativity Diary) The night before I felt that tingle of anticipation. I would be getting to spend a night in a room full of my people, talking creativity and its power in the world. The next morning, I felt displaced. In the way the threat response likes to ambush, there was no big reason for my sense of unease, the nervousness and sense of dread. It shadowed me on the dog walk and slunk around the edges of the studio as I used everything I’ve learned through anxiety to not make it the biggest thing in the room. This is my brain’s way of trying to protect me, just like a parent who can’t let their kid play out with friends without their watchful gaze because of the many media-fuelled what-ifs needling their subconscious. They, like the threat response, are trying to help, but ultimately they stifle growth. This understanding helps me to work through the morning anxiety most days, sometimes in the first half an hour. But on this Friday, it got its claws in, and I couldn’t prize them out.

Even this, I recognised, is not terminal, so I waited. I focused on my to-do list and tolerated the discomfort. I got my £1.89 coffee from Wetherspoons and enjoyed watching the blokes on the gambler, like I do, like non-anxious me would do. I made a phone call to a friend on the walk, and it was invigorating. But still, I felt tired and unsteady. On the train, I went over my notes for the discussion panel, then lost myself in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers audiobook. Even those gorgeous early scenes with Gollum in the 2nd half of the book couldn’t rid me of my low-level anxiety. So I blustered across London, on the tube and on foot until I arrived at the wonderful Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration. It’s a beauty – tucked away in Angel, via a little snicket and a couple of great pubs – with a café, library, outside area and three brilliant exhibitions. I found Murugiah in the middle of his astounding solo show, ‘Ever Feel Like…’, giving a personal tour to a friend. Murugiah and I were due to record a podcast before The Big Draw launch, and I’d been giddy to see his show, given we’d shared three deep chats on the podcast over the last decade, serving me a small bit-part role in his story and progression from competent commercial illustrator to great artist doing his own thing with flair. But by this time, in my fragile state, I’d been ambushed by a London Underground advert about the cruelty of factory farming, and I was now close to spiralling into something worse than slight unease. I was hanging by a thread when I jogged up the stairs and hugged Murugiah.

Then it happened.

I asked if I could piggyback on the personal tour, to which he readily agreed. He turned and began to walk slowly through the space, shaped like a half donut, taking us deep into his paintings, the struggles he too had faced in his life, how they fed the work with meaning, emotion and nuance. As I listened and experienced them up close and personal, studying the brushstrokes, the gigantic felt sculpture, the early digital pieces, seeking to understand the icons and deceptively cute character designs – who too, like the rest of us, could tell of both suffering and growth – the shadow parted. Almost in an instant. Again, in the way stress tends to do, it fucks off in the blink of an eye when purpose returns. I belonged, and here together, with others who use art to navigate a world that is anything you want to call it, everything was OK. It wouldn’t last – that’s the nature of life – but in this moment, it really was OK. Optimism and collective strength rushed through me.

By the time we headed off to record our podcast, my enthusiasm had returned, and it burned through the black cloud. I met Elisha, who had booked us for The Big Draw and we all smiled and laughed, sharing our varying levels of nerves about the event. I met Olivia and Brittany from the Quentin Blake Centre, and Murugiah and I were given a space in the back to record our fourth podcast chat, and it’s everything I’ve lived for since art school: my people, together, in a room. This too got deep, as it does, and I told him, there and then, in our interview, that his work had pulled me out of a hole. It had shone its masterful colour on my shithouse brain, cascading around the same old neural pathways, too silly to stop and see the opportunities, the causes for cautious optimism most days.

And this is what art does. It forces us to step off for a second and breathe.

All of it was compounded by meeting Joey Yu and Greg Bunbury, our other brilliant panel guests, and getting to be in a room full of hope, voiced fears and essential human creativity. I remembered – not that I ever truly forgot – that we need this. Not just the proverbial us – the professionals and creative industry people – but humans. We all need a time and space for play, a vehicle through which to grind the ugly bits of life, like Play-Doh, through art and expression that transcends mere logic and linear things. To gamify, to write, to ponder, to sketch, to act out, to sculpt, to strum, to strategise on a sparkling board littered with enchanting nerd cards and dice, to throw balls, to hum, to run. Whatever. The method is secondary. But the human condition demands art, whatever shape that takes for you. So fall into its arms in these days of doubt.

All of my People. Together. In a Room.

There were about 70 of us in the room at The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration for the launch of The Big Draw Festival, and many of them were laughing. Then they were pensive. Clapping rippled throughout the auditorium every so often, and before we knew it, it was over and we were in the pub, carrying on, sharing stories. A night like this, together with those with whom you share a passion, can fuel you for months.

I first encountered The Big Draw back in 2003, not long after starting my illustration degree course. They’re an arts education charity founded in 2000 who champion drawing as a powerful wellbeing tool. Back then, greener than frog shit and slowly finding my feet living alone as a full-time higher education student, I went about drawing my self-portrait with ink and brush on the giant roll of paper spread out across Preston’s Harris Museum floor. David Hughes, deservedly a big name in illustration at the time, paced the room, commenting and encouraging students as we went about the brief he’d set. As he hovered over my shoulder, he asked, ‘Is your nose really that bent?’

I chuckled – being from a working-class mill town, this was my kind of humour – rough and uncompromising, and my rugby league nose was no stranger to targeted digs – before turning to look up at Hughes, who barked, ‘Fucking hell, it is!’

I loved it. I trailed around, asking him questions about his career every time he was alone, trying to impress, but above all else, I was there, in a room, surrounded by my people.

23 years on, my nose still wonkier than a Quentin Blake chocolate factory sketch, I’d been asked to chair the ‘Making Your Mark’ discussion panel, curating a conversation between designer Greg Bunbury, illustrator Joey Yu and artist Muruguiah. I jump at these opportunities to immerse myself in lively rooms, where discourse that can feel overwhelming and fractious on the internet becomes an invigorating, wholesome dip into vital community.

One of the most commonly overlooked and underestimated foundations of healthy creativity is community and connection because creativity is a shared condition. It transcends language or lazy quick takes.

Greg and I had spoken prior to the event, and we lamented the lack of ‘third spaces’ for young people to access for free, where they can look another in the eye, debate, delight and have a good old ding dong with psychological safety. On the night, we picked up this thread and agreed that it’s important that art galleries and spaces like the Quentin Blake centre do their best to reach and welcome all people at affordable prices. In the absence of third spaces in our cities, towns, and privatised rural areas, where else can people come together and unite without paying £5 for a cup of coffee?

The topics were deep, our souls laid bare, our causes sounded to the audience, and then the questions came. The one-to-one natters afterwards, the new connections and the fortifying of the old. It was beautiful, a reminder that we all need to deny excessive solitude, digital overreliance, and the ills of our time.

Days after the event, I paced my garden studio, enlivened, still holding onto the magic from Friday night. We don’t need to be connecting at all times. One burst here and there can be enough. It might be all the introverted ones can handle. But we need some of that, and it’s important to build the self-awareness to know when your collective energy bank needs a recharge. Otherwise, loneliness and overthinking can savage creativity from the inside out in our remote, conflicted age.

Common mistakes of the creative professional

You have to start with your lived experience. I learned some time ago that you’re really not the outlier or the alien or the weirdo you think you are. I’ve made a whole alternate career from documenting and discussing the things I’ve gone through, sharing the observations I’ve made, and bleating the fears about what might be around the corner in public. It’s the lived experience that turns out to be shared, and it bonds people and groups. A big part of that alternate career is creativity and story coaching. I’ve been doing that for several years, and I’ve noticed common blocks and missed opportunities that harm flow and motivation. I’ve made each of these mistakes many times over.

Come Together

Almost every coaching client and every person I encounter in my creative industry career is, in some way, lacking in collective energy. Creativity is a shared condition, and no matter how introverted, extroverted, or busy we might be, if we isolate too much, something is lost. Overthinking creeps in; ideas cannot grow without being shared with others, and on a basic psychological level, we feel safer and heard around others. It’s insanely busy in this world. We’re all knackered. It’s expensive to rent workspace, but we have to be creative and intentional to ensure the right balance of solitude and connection.

Trust the Narrative

It’s incredibly easy to be a peripheral character in your own story, especially when the cost of living is insanely high and we pack our schedules to ensure those bills are paid. During a particularly rough spell of stress and financial panic, the noise in my head reached fever pitch, and I had more sleepless nights than I care to count. Each day was a blur of badly managed tasks, spilling over and over again through weeks and months. Eventually, I found the bravery to make time to sit down, vent, look in the mirror, and set a course forward that excited me. It was loose because it’s important that I can follow my curiosity and remain flexible, but thanks to a comment by coach Tina Rapp, I started to ask myself not what I wanted to do, but how I wanted to feel. I got organised to help clear my head, but leaned harder than ever into my interests, my humour and point of view, and my life experiences to project my way of seeing into the world. Slowly, the fiery determination to live the career I wanted that had shaped my formative years reignited; a refusal to remain reactive and a bullish, proactive way of creating the conditions for better-aligned opportunities to emerge. It’s scary and requires bravery to dance with the unknown, but entirely possible for each of us. And when in doubt, consider the arc of your story to now, knowing the next steps are for you to take.

Value the Silence

Rest is a problem for the vast majority of people in the creative industry I’ve worked with. There are so many reasons in today’s world that make it hard to switch off, but deep rest – not just rest to gain energy for the next task – is essential. Tala Schlossberg spoke of learning to rest for her artist practice on episode 263 of The Creative Condition podcast. It’s when we find joy in the small things again; it’s when we stare at a wall and let our shoulders slump. It’s when we realise things that are hidden in the chaos of the daily grind. Sensitivity is a foundational trait in people who lead their lives and careers with creativity – a huge asset – but also something that, if we don’t stop to nurture, can be our undoing. We burn out more easily than less-sensitive people, feel the pain and fear of the world as much as we benefit from the wonder of it all, so stop; know that sometimes your system simply needs a break in order to establish emotional balance. Find ways to frame it that work for you – one client who’d made himself sick by not letting up is a football fan, so we used the athlete lens to reframe it. I asked him if a manager would play his star player every minute of every game. And why not? Well, it seemed plainly obvious that the player would reach their limit very quickly and fail to deliver their best across a whole season. Suddenly, we had a brief!

Play more

As adults, the things that brought us pure, unconditional joy as children don’t deliver the same buzz. But play is just as essential as it was then. It’s how we access the unconscious, unwind, and maintain the presence of magic in our minds. Do you make time to read that 3-star crime fiction romp on the sofa? Do you kick a ball against a wall? What about painting a Warhammer figurine or playing Pokémon cards? Play can be interpreted in a million ways for everyone, but doing things simply to experience them as they are, with no agenda and for pleasure, is too easily forgotten. I help my clients re-prioritise play and curiosity because they often fall into the trap of believing that if a task isn’t productive or a justifiable use of time, it’s mere distraction, or something to feel guilty about. This simply isn’t true and an absence of play is extremely damaging to our forward motion and ability to know the right way forward!

The 168-hour week

Beyond the Couch author Allison Heiliczer told me on episode 274 of The Creative Condition podcast that she reminds her busiest clients that there are 168 hours in a week. So if they’re not finding one hour to dedicate to something important, then it’s not that there isn’t time, but more to do with the need to reprioritise the use of time. A busy life is a valid excuse for any of us, but how much do you truly want something? Is it worth digging into that and allocating the right time for something that you really do want?

Cleaning out My Creative Closet

A frantic and fun summer with the kids came to a close. I found myself wallowing in their absence, traipsing around the local park with the dog, reluctantly alone again. The sudden promise of dark nights on the horizon and the inability to hide from dull but necessary work tasks had cornered me, so finally, I ordered that posh tin of paint and committed to decorating the studio. If I’m condemned to workdays alone, I can at least make it look nicer than the predictably half-complete hidey hole at the bottom of the garden.

For too long, I’ve been referring to my studio as ‘glorified shed,’ and it isn’t untrue. This wasn’t to do with the building, though. While modest, it’s a nice workshop; insulated and big enough to get three desks into it: a messy art desk, an office desk for my coaching calls and on-screen tasks, and a sound corner for podcasting and media, complete with sound-absorbing foam panels. While I designed it to feature two metres of actual shed space, via a little door and dividing wall, the shedness I refer to is more a reflection of my chaotic brain.

On Sunday, with most of its contents on the grass in the garden and the biggest bits of furniture dragged into the middle of the space, I had to confront a skeleton I’ve been hiding in my closet for my entire adult and adolescent life; proof that I’ve been a total fucking shambles when it comes to crucial organisational foundations.

I was genuinely close to tears as the hurtful truth reared up like a frightened horse and hoofed me in the bollocks. Maybe this is to do with neurodivergence. I don’t know. I’ve never sought any diagnosis for the way I am. At the very least, I have a very hard time completing tasks that don’t energise me creatively. I always have, often resulting in unnecessary drains on my energy; little piles of letters, books, drawings and tax forms everywhere, adding to an already scattered brain. It’s why I spent my GCSE revision time playing Final Fantasy VII and floundered in my results as a direct result. I hadn’t yet found the right outlet for my imagination and curiosity. I digress, but the magazines, mounds of stationery, unused Lever arch files and physical storage systems were out in the open, scattered across the lawn and I hated what I saw. The back of the ready-for-the-tip wooden IKEA cupboard I keep them all in hung off, its contents ready to jump for freedom at any moment. My work desk was completely covered with shite I either don’t need or am unlikely to use ever again. It needed clearing so I could resume working on Monday morning, but there was nowhere for it to go. So, I staggered into the house and unleashed a rant full of self-loathing upon my wife. I hissed insults at myself, told her I wished I could part-exchange a percentage of my puppy brain for some pragmatism and natural order, but she countered, reminding me that this same silly brain was also the reason I can write books, host shows, chair panels, and sustain a career in the creative industry in the 21st century.

I slumped back and blew my tea. She wasn’t wrong, and when I thought about it, I don’t know how much of this way of being I would trade in, given the chance. Did I need to part with any of it? Probably not. What I needed was enough mindfulness to step aside from my cascading thoughts, wait for them to quieten, and allow myself the dedicated time to get organised, to recognise how it might be unsexy, but more importantly, a gateway to inner peace. To invest in some fit-for-purpose storage instead of rushing into whatever I could get for free or cheap, near my house via Facebook Marketplace just to get the dull job out of the way.

When I took a breath and returned to the embarrassing illustration of the inside of my skull at the bottom of the garden, I began to see it for what it was: a chance for change. That sounds like a Conservative political campaign, but at 43, I was staring at what could be – if I took the opportunity – a clean slate. The walls were now ¾ green, bare, and everything was out in the open. The closet had been cleaned out. No raging deadlines featured in next week’s calendar, so I slowed down and thought about the task at hand. I even visited the IKEA website to see what storage solutions they had. Chuck Palahniuk and his creation, Tyler Durden, scorched into my brain, reminding me I am not my Swedish furniture, but if this Swedish furniture helped me to shelter from the superstorm of constant chatter in my head, then I could live with its banality. The furniture does not define me, or reflect any aspect of my personality, but it has a very practical role to play in steering me away from some kind of collapse into constant overwhelm.

Beautiful things happened too. As magazines, books and other items carrying my words and pictures from over the years appeared, I felt good, dangerously proud that I’d managed to work as an illustrator, writer and coach for this long. I wondered if I might give them a visible home, on show in the studio, where they might remind me of my capabilities on the days when doubt kicks the door in.

I found photographs I hadn’t seen for decades and other personal items that stirred something real, making me want to tell more stories about the human condition.

By the end of the decorating process, I wondered how a simple lick of green paint had mutated into an extended look in the mirror. I thought about what else I’d hidden away, even from myself, and felt a rising desire to stop running, to come out of my hiding place and learn that not everything is about actively creating.

On some level, we’re all hiding something from ourselves and masking it in the outside world. I suppose the question is, to what end, and how might it be shaping our creativity, creating flow or blocking it completely?

An Overthinker’s Paradise

And just like that, it’s dark at 8pm. The kids are back to school and overthinking begins to seep back in. Then overthinking the overthinking sets off thankless, terminal rumination. Other days all of these seasonal changeovers conjure the anticipation of dark nights in the cave. On a bad day, I’ll find a way to spin that into guilt about the privilege of even having a cave, and here is a great illustration of living with a brain like mine.

The recovery from the anxiety of the last few years, this swollen mid-life crisis, is a long one and requires constant work, but not a constant spotlight. Anxiety mutates under the spotlight. The work must be about ensuring good habits are practised – socialising, maintaining meaningful relationships, creating, letting go, acknowledging where control ends, and switching off, playing, and so on. I struggle most when I let such foundations crumble, allowing my natural disorganisation to take over, giving too much time to creating and not enough to ensuring things are in their right place.

Each autumn I try to put together a podcast episode to help people through the dark nights, when it can be hard to hold onto optimism. There’s another good habit: cause. The purpose I feel in my creativity, in contributing my energy and knowledge to helping others elevate creativity on an individual and collective level, is important to me. Humans take a lot from the earth, from each other, in upholding this way of life we’ve built, and I’m far too sensitive to not put something back in. That would only bring on more of those bad nights and all kinds of deathbed anguish.

How do you feel about your creativity? I wonder about that and have many chance chats about it, even with those who don’t consider themselves in anatomical possession of a creative bone. Is it serving you? Is it giving you a voice in the world, an outlet for the insane quantities of information we’re expected to process and hold these days? Or is it buried under tasks that pay the bills, that you might even enjoy, but take you away from your inner artist, leaving you frustrated, questioning whether it’s even for you anymore?

During the summer, I get so into the kids being off school, the silly fun, the trips and the idle play, that it’s incredibly hard to find the motivation to work in the pockets in between the childcare. I never thought I’d encounter that. Back in 2008, when I took the plunge, 16-hour days weren’t uncommon because this was everything to me, my entire identity and reason for getting out of bed in the morning. 18-years in, it still represents a significant chunk of my being, but I’ve habituated to the fact this is my job. I’ve sustained a creative industry career for 18-years, which doesn’t strip away gratitude; it doesn’t make me complacent either, but it feels more like work than it used to. So, it takes bravery and curiosity to access the wonder it used to bring. I have to initiate that, because as grateful and happy as I am for the client work, I’m divided in my causes. I have two small humans and a small dog to care for, and as the years go by, their worlds merge with mine. This plays a part in the rising anxiety that gets me because my scratch disks are full a lot of the time. And while I’ve never missed a deadline and actively enjoy the vast majority of my work, it’s the emotional creativity that clears the disk space, speeds up the operating system and grants me the capacity to think, to dream and exercise the silliness that is so fundamental to my happiness and ability to emotionally regulate.

This time of year is a return to full-time hours. The UK revenge-based weather system will ensure the drought panic of the summer is traded in for months of rain in a day or two as I sit in the garden, alone, asking myself big questions I can’t possibly start to answer, forgetting to catch up on my accounts or go out for a drink. So, how about we nudge each other this autumn and winter? An email here and there, or a message if we’re in direct contact? How did you get on with that thing you were on about? Have you heard from so-and-so? Did you find out what consciousness is yet? Let’s remember that the highlight reels are often digital white lies or distractions from the realities we share in an industry riddled with Olympian overthinkers.

The New Hairdresser

When we saw them painting the front of the shop that previously housed a pet salon, I had all kinds of thoughts. Another vape shop? Overpriced flat? Optimistically, when they revealed the old lettering on the glass which said ‘bakery’, I salivated and daydreamed of croissants on a weekend morning.

Then I saw the thick sinks, the barber chair and the young bloke with a decent haircut. I didn’t really feel anything. It was fine and it would save me the money the pastry trap would consume.

Then each day I passed. It was just him. A lone wolf. Some mornings I passed with the dog and saw him putting the kettle on, setting up for his first customer. Other days I was later and he’d be smiling, nattering to various customers. But always customers. An unanticipated happiness rose in my gut. He was busy. I rarely walk past and see nobody. I don’t know what his prices are or truly how many people pass through when I’m not around, but I found myself nibbling on the vicarious biscuit that I’d tasted back in my formative days, on those beautiful Fridays when I got to catch the train from Preston to go see my parents, and answer ‘yes, really busy, actually’ when asked about business.

His customers always seem to be grinning, so I imagine what they’re talking about. Not politics, not worrying things of any kind. I allow myself to believe it’s something hopeful, wonderfully banal, imaginative, or deliriously asinine. Their faces suggest it is.

Even when I walk the dog early and nobody’s there, I wonder who’s in today and what they’re having done on their heads.

And another layer to this unexpected source of motivation is that by the time I’ve walked the dog, made breakfast, dropped the kids at school, I feel ready to get into my little space and get creative. Maybe this is some distant echo of tribalism. His shop is literally a stone’s throw from my garden, and knowing there’s happiness happening, and he’s got work makes me feel good, some sense of belonging too.

Croissants would have been nice, but vicarious motivation, hairdresser style is the one for me.

Good for the Lad’s Brain

My son sits down at the piano after his breakfast. No pressure or suggestion from us, just a brain well suited to systems and mechanisms that loves working out the next tune his teacher assigns him.

I deny the urge to go and pick up my phone, irritated by the presence of the desire, and watch him with a smile on my face.

I wondered if it was too soon to book him some lessons at the age of five. It wasn’t. My wife and I merely followed the clues he gave us and wanted to give him the opportunity.

In a couple of hours, he’ll start whatever learning he’s doing at school today. I feed him the right foods to help here. Then the piano. Distraction free immersion in something that works the brain and takes him into flow. It’s beautiful to see, and I hope, conducive to decent concentration and focus when he studies.

Other than that, I try to step off and let him be bored to balance the active entertainment.

All of this reminds me of the things I can do to give myself the best chance of flow and optimal creativity.

I Miss Retail

It’s a strange yearning to walk past a shop and want to go work in it, perhaps one a little too rose-tinted, but I like to pay attention to these intuitive pulls, so let’s see.

Between 1999, starting with Netto, an arse-end Scandinavian supermarket, on £2.63 per hour, and 2007, ending with Waterstones booksellers for roughly twice that pay, I worked in many retail jobs.

During a period of heightened stress last year, I’d walk past the Everyman Cinema and fantasise about shutting down my email, pulling down the website, burning my personal projects, and going to serve popcorn in a low-lit cinema.

Firstly, that wouldn’t happen because I simply couldn’t get by and give my family the life we’ve built on a retail wage, but also, as my wife rightly points out, I’d lose my head inside a week. If I step out of the stress for a moment and allow myself to return to calm, quite quickly, I’m making plans for new creative ventures, connecting with other restless souls over creativity. So why the yearning?

You have to interpret these things not as a call to literal action, but as themes, intuitive sirens alerting us to needs.

Seeing people laughing behind a counter or restocking the drinks fridge revives muscle memories of the sense of connection and purpose those jobs brought me. Thrown together with stangers and given forced instructions, we had to adapt. Get along with or tolerate those with whom we might not have clicked. Make new friends we otherwise wouldn’t have. Co-operate so we could work and go to college, or out on the piss after work instead of working the late shift. It formed a micro-society and put us on the public front line. That brought stresses of its own, but it also gave me a tangible identity in the places I lived. In Keighley, I’d get pointed at or even hugged in takeaways at 1 am by people who knew me as the bloke who gave them their VHS films and bags of popcorn in Blockbuster Video. That felt good. In Max Spielmann, I’d develop photographs and laugh with people as they shrieked upon seeing their holiday photos, or realising I’d fucked up the order when they revealed 30 shots of a South Asian wedding instead of the stag do they’d come in for, dreading. We’d have to work it out, diffuse the situation, and find a solution. All of this meant that finishing a shift was exhilarating because we’d made it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Creativity is my life cause, a job I care deeply about. I don’t want to return to retail, because all of those shop jobs were, in part, characterised by this background fantasy of one day getting to draw, write, or paint, and not having to come to the shop to earn my keep. But now, 18 years into said fantasy, there are critical parts of it I’ve failed to maintain, and most of them can be found in retail jobs.

I sit in my garden studio most days – a luxury indeed – but alone. This leads to overthinking and demotivation sometimes. A lot of my work is self-initiated or longer-term, so the grind and triumph I would get by completing a shift and locking up are absent. Instead, days and weeks bleed into each other, as do all the projects, to-do lists and ideas.

There was a time when I’d have nightmares about being back in retail, and rejoice when I woke to remember I was an illustrator. These days, I see the value of that work. We can always learn from what we might, in black and white terms, deem undesirable. Creativity pulls from all places, and the fantasy is rarely true.

I Am An Artist

I am an artist. In every sense of the word. This isn’t a raging ego shriek, but a necessary realisation of something I’d momentarily forgotten while I was off in my midlife crisis anxiety spiral.

I was looking out there, at current affairs, at the edge of the universe, pinballing around a mind so untrained, it took me to the edge of despair.

Life is a long struggle with joy along the way. I heard a quote to that effect, so we have to get resilient if we’re to avoid losing authorship of our own story. If I’m not living as the artist I was born to be, then I’m asleep at the wheel, and bad things happen.

Again, not ego. Not artiste, or the artist formerly known as Ben Tallon, or anything like that. More surrendering to my natural state.

Every human has an inner artist. Some are fine letting them off the leash here and there, or merely for pleasure. For others, it’s a way of being, a way of coping with the world outside of ourselves. We question, prod, probe, interpret, ponder, process, procrastinate, and play with ideas that are more than science and logic. We believe in magic and speculate about something better, while quietly yearning for it.

And it’s not drawing, music, writing, or any other singular art form. It’s a way of life. Put us in a room with scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and fascinating collisions can happen. Isolate us for too long, and you might find us missing an ear or searching LinkedIn for jobs we’re not qualified to do.

When I don’t make time to get my head into something that lights up my soul, I’m more susceptible to mental health dips. I’ve felt it lately. Too much work work, as great as that is, and not enough play for an artist, is like light deprivation for a plant. It can fight and it can bounce back with a little, eventually, but leave it long enough and something dies. Then a new cycle must begin, from seed to bud to flower.

In this midlife crisis, I thought about death a lot. Full-blown inner turmoil trying to imagine what's next, if anything. When that happens, I have to tell stories, read stories, and engage with art and imaginings that transcend the physical and mortal.

Psychotherapist Phil Stutz calls this idea ‘higher forces’. When we create, as humans are supposed to, we connect to higher forces. To me, this isn’t God speak or anything loftier than the truth of the exhilaration and purpose I feel when I enter flow through my art. That feeling and the effects of it expressed in the world is proof of something magnificent, far beyond the capacity of my tiny mind to properly understand.

So, I serve it, and ride the wave, and put the work into the world, and then…surrender.

Because I’m an artist.

That’s enough. It’s an ecological act, when you think about it, and the ideas, actions and infinite ripple effect from living as the inner artist transcend death and the petty pissery of the silly shit we too easily allow ourselves to be caught up in.

I’ll keep on. Keep learning and remembering to live this most natural of ways, optimistic, ready, and open, staring off into space with a loaded smirk on my face and a pen in my hand.

Unafraid of Disorder

I’ve been helping a friend and peer write his book. It’s magnificent, and while proof reading one of his stories tonight, I adored the phrase, ‘unafraid of disorder’.

He used it to describe an agency who were just that – ready to permit mess in the pursuit of something interesting, something different and meaningful.

It feels like the whole creative industry could benefit from such fearlessness.

What we can’t be certain about, we fear and seek to neuter. That’s the human way.

But we’re shambolic creatures who need to walk wobbly lines to get anywhere worth going to.

Don’t we?

An Old Friend

I caught a train to Bath for the day. Needed to go somewhere out of town, and there are gorgeous bookshops all over Bath. I wasn’t feeling quite right – underlying anxiety – as I wandered the streets, peering into windows, going in and browsing comics, old volumes of science books.

I called a friend, and we talked for an hour as I hopped between varying pockets of mobile phone reception.

In a cafe, I fed off the ephemeral clinks and chatter to finalise a story I’ve helped a client write. Their story – part of the new coaching offer to hand people a compass and a set of values through narrative alignment.

Eventually, I felt a little calmer, and right before I made my way back to the station, I stumbled across another second-hand bookshop I hadn’t seen before, and in the window was an old friend. The black ink handprint and the eye painted in a thick brush, bridged by a stencilled ‘TO’.

Hand To Eye is a collection of contemporary illustration from 2002, edited by Angus Hyland and Roanne Bell, and it sat on the tables in our illustration degree course for three years between 2003 and 2006. I never owned it back then because my housemate had it, but it got thumbed into submission as we fawned over the beautiful work of people we saw as gods. These were those. Them. That lot – the people who had what we wanted more than anything else.

So I stepped inside, reached into the window display, snatched it up, and after two debit card rejections and a cash machine dash, handed over £6.50.

In the street, I bumped into people, holding not a smartphone but a big book, because, like my childhood self, who had to put the new Leeds United shirt on the moment it fell into my possession, I couldn’t wait. I thumbed it in public. I thumbed it on the station platform. I didn’t even have the dignity to go to the bathroom to do it. The magic returned. My earlier malaise, already in retreat, ran for the hills as Olivier Kugler, Lucinda Rogers, Tom Gauld, David Foldvari, Isabel Bostwick, and more swung their big, inky light sabers and wizard staffs inside my soul.

What was beautiful about this to me was the certainty I felt of my love for art, for illustration, for storytelling, for play, and for something bigger than us, which we all serve. When fear grips, as it loves to do in turbulent times, it’s so easy to forget how much this means, how fundamental it is for the human condition, how we all need to be connected to something that leads us forward, illuminated in the dark.

The AI Ignoramus

I might be setting myself up for a huge fall. It’s likely that I am. Like the guys who rejected computers, the internet, or Photoshop.

I’ve used ChatGPT about nine times. Each instance was considered and immensely helpful towards big mental and career challenges in my life. Not once have I generated a jokey image or a recipe suggestion.

The primary reason for my blanket and potentially catastrophic rejection of AI in my life and creative practice is ideological, specifically born of the environmental cost.

I’ve had to work through a lot of despair, anger and sadness that this powerful, resource hungry tech was released to everyone without a broader consultation. Not to mention the ready acceptance of it by many intelligent people.

I’ve interviewed scientists about breakthroughs in machine learning. This tier of the tech excites me. I’m not against AI. Positive News magazine ran a wonderful feature on uses including drones to help indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest track illegal logging in realtime. This is magnificent. Astounding progress. What’s not progress is someone editing their head because a rogue spotlight hit the glaring truth of a receding hairline, or kids being depicted naked by their antagonists for bullying purposes.

There were many discussions that morality suggested we should have had before this stuff was released. But greed, ego and vested interests ensured we didn’t.

As a father of two, I’ve found myself unable to ‘see what whichever large language model spits out’. Knowing of the intense strain on water resources stops that, and any other arbitrary, or even better use of the tech. Now the concern becomes about how far adrift I’ll be in a society that didn’t share my ideological standpoint and pressed on without me. A man with a fork in a world of soup, to quote Noel Gallagher’s assessment of Liam’s temperament.

A man with an ink pen, paper, and hand written client letters in a world of instant genius might seem laughable, but I’m sticking to my guns here. It might be that I’m obsolete in several years’ time, but I also believe its possible that the whole thing spirals out of control, the internet becomes the domain of the machines where we no longer know what’s real, and we all have to go analogue in little The Matrix style hideaways. If so, then I’m a visionary because I never left.

On a basic mental health level, I don’t want to be on screens any more than I have to, so I’ll take notes and take longer.

For now, I’ll get on drawing and monitor the water use situation.

The Mental Battery

The mental battery feels flat today. Zero sleep because the stress jug overflowed.

Two days ago I was back into a 40k word manuscript I wrote – a new short fiction collection called Madheads – and I felt optimal. The battery was charged.

It changes so fast, and so frequently in this 1000mph world.

This way of life we’ve all become victims of. All those demands on our time and attention wear us down. Leading with creativity requires a slower pace, some space for reflection, pondering and pottering aimlessly. But that space is precious and hard to find in a world in which patience is a dying art.

We have to be intentional about preserving our mental battery. I ask coaching clients if they’d just hammer their phone, draining the battery in the first few hours of a long day out without consideration for its limits. They tell me no, they’d need to make it last so they can get home and be available. So, why do we treat our minds differently, then? They have the same finite energy.

When my stress jug overflows, everything feels heavier. Simple tasks like replying to a message, or putting laundry away overwhelm me, causing cortisol floods and a racing heart. When I lived in London I wanted all of the bustling lifestyle and spent weeks at a time in that frayed, exhausted state, sat at my desk, staring at the wall, or dicking around on social media because I wasn’t managing the battery well enough. The tank was empty.

I’ve never let a client down, but to deliver, I have to work against my sorry self, hair askew, giant crack bags under my eyes, straddling my nose. My untrained puppy of a brain received little training until my late 30s when I began to suffer at the hands of a frenetic and action-packed existence.

I’ve never been very good at stress management, but I’m getting there.

A rising tide of anxiety over the last few years forced better organisation and deep inner work. But the thing is, even in making a decision like getting organised, sensitivity to information processing capacity must be applied. Some people love digital tools and planners, but my brain abhors a system. It must be 10-year-old friendly for me to commit. I’m happy to admit that.

Simple ruled notebook, one column for DO and another for REPLY, then distil it down into Google Calendar. Sometimes I neglect to write in the book, and sometimes I forget to check Google Calendar. But progress has been made.

Social media had to be whittled down to the lowest possible use to remain visible. That’s why I accepted the Do Radio invite to co-host I Am Not Creative with Danny Allison. It seemed like a form of marketing that wasn’t contrived, that filled my battery insted of depleting it.

Each of us owes ourselves such honesty. If it kills you every time you go onto whichever platform, then don’t.

I used to like Instagram. Now it assails me with content and adverts that bruise my happiness and scream at my inner peace. I’ve been sharing the radio show there, but I found more focus on LinkedIn served me well. I’m conflicted and still working it all out.

Danny is incredibly candid about his mental breakdown before he committed to his creativity and got well. For this alone, episode 2, ‘The Mental Battery’ is worth one hour of your time.

Today I have to put my head in battery-save mode. This means limiting my intake, ordering tasks in single file and giving each one all of my attention. Writing everything down in my embarrassing notebook. If I don’t, it’ll start running around my brain when my head hits the pillow.

I remember a time I spent sharing a workspace with Danny in Sydney, Australia. 40 degrees heat and a massive workload. Sleep deprivation and work stress brought on these terrifying lucid dreams, or waking nightmares, one of which involved a dribbling, vampiric possum at the end of the bed.

Too many creators are trapped in an exhausting loop of excessive information and sensory overload, leading us to a place where it is so testing to be optimistic and hard to sustain any kind of regular, healthy curiosity. When the battery is flat, we are marooned from great ideas, insights, and big steps forward become sideways shrieks voicing agitation and discontent. Then, thanks to the low processing power, we build damaging narratives about our creative desire, or our belonging in this industry, our ability to make great work.

It need not be this way, but only we can design it for ourselves.

Danny and I are getting into all of this on episode 2 of I Am Not Creative on https://thedoradio.com which airs three times daily all week. Each episode will be available on demand 3 weeks after release.

The Fly matrix

Long-time friend and creative industry collaborator Danny Allison and I have started recording a new series of radio shows. Details will follow, but it was during the second episode on the mental battery and taking care of our mental health in the information age, that he ambushed me with a horror story.

They’ve put a fly’s brain on a computer chip, and it’s doing fly things in the fly matrix.

Go on, read it twice. It’s true as well. The poor thing is puking on stuff, twitching, hopping around and everything, and it has no idea it is a part of the human ego parade.

I don’t think I can even get angry about it. Maybe dismay is a bit closer, but truth be told, I just blank out and withdraw even deeper into my analog hideaway.

My existential angst ridden brain doesn’t need this, or the fact that the same ‘they’ also have a petri dish full of human cells successfully playing 1990s video game classic, Doom.

But hang on a minute… if we’re up to Zoom already… how close are we to Final Fantasy VII? It was my escape from my GCSE revision, my creative universe for a good couple of years. Does this mean I can escape the big tech race to the bottom by actually being Cloud or Aeris or Sephiroth or Barrett or Red XIII? Would seeing out the rest of humanity in Midgar or Nibbelheim be so bad?

My mental battery has just bleeped to tell me it needs charging.

More on the radio show soon.

Overwhelm and creativity

The desperate need for space in a very full head and its role in the creative process

Most days, even when I know I’m more than up to the tasks at hand, I feel overwhelmed. The psychologists and psychotherapists speak of the stress jug overflowing, and a person becoming sensitised. That’s what happens to me. And before I know it, thousands of thoughts and concerns blast through my brain and activate my nervous system, my threat response called to arms.

It’s a symptom of our information age and a pillar of the mental health crisis.

So I’ve been making space.

It feels impossible, but it’s not.

When I slow down and take time to breathe, immediate guilt is upon me because I feel that my chances of earning what I need to earn are diminished. As a man with many responsibilities, there’s always something I could be doing to help the family, take the business forward, or keep myself occupied.

Yesterday I listened to a taoism podcast about overwhelm. I wondered if this was counterintuitive given my stretched mind, but it helped. It opened with a story about a potter asked by his apprentice about how he shaped the clay so beautifully. The potter smiled and explained that he was not shaping the clay, but creating the space inside.

It immediately hit home. If you head to the reading list, you’ll find the brilliant In Praise of Shadows on this very topic.

The human mind does not have the capacity to handle the amount of material we feed it in our times.

I recently made the silly mistake of clearing a few more tasks on my laptop on the train back from an intense coaching session I delivered in London. It cost me a full night of sleep because I couldn’t shut down the chatter in my head. The overspill of this is ongoing nervous exhaustion and overwhelm.

Since then, instead of using a free slot or evening for busy work, I try to consider the emptiness available. I don’t always need to watch TV, check my phone, read my book, or do anything at all. What if sitting still or looking out of the window is enough? I’ve been making conscious choices according to my energy, and how full my stress jug is.

My choice to expand my creativity into coaching, podcasting, and writing, while maintaining my career as an illustrator and artist, necessitates a certain amount of dedication and task elimination, but all too often, in the busy work headspace, I’ll veer into autopilot, continuing to do, when what would really help with inner calm and seeing clearly the best way forward, is space. Space to breathe, to simply be.

in The Creative Condition book, I wrote about the role of the unconscious, and its ability to hand us solutions we cannot crack with persistence and grind. The classic shower moment. We are conditioned to do more all of the time, and it keeps us trapped, disconnected from feeling the way forward. The inner compass.

I’m naturally disorganised. Or maybe lazy. Or both. So I have to work hard to stay organised in my day-to-day life. I don’t miss deadlines, but I’ll allow what could be a simple list of tasks ordered by urgency or importance to become a monstrous thought swarm that leaves me in this awful state of overwhelm. And the sleepless cycle begins again.

The podcast I mentioned also shares the story of a Zen master responding to a student’s thirst for knowledge and answers by continuing to pour his tea long after the cup is full.

And that applies here. For a long time, I’ve been pouring, and I’m up to my brain in it, struggling to breathe.

But now, I’ve pulled back, and I’m beginning to ladle out the tea until there’s some room, so I can calmly drink what’s inside.

A creativity and mental wellbeing checklist?

Why the tools to tackle anxiety double up as a list of creative health essentials

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I tracked back a few paces, the dog digging his heels into the pavement, resisting. I dropped his leash, and he relaxed, eyeing me quizically. This wasn't in the routine.

Some kids on the street had been drawing on the pavement and left two half pieces of chunky orange chalk behind, and I couldn't walk away. I'd tried, but I just couldn't.

I coloured in a solitary brick. I wasn't sure why, but as I walked away, I post-rationalised it. Maybe I just wanted to yank someone out of their thoughts. That was the vague idea I settled on.

During a trying run of anxiety, I wouldn't have done that. Anxious people tend to say no to things and hide away from the world, from their joy and curiosity.

On Sunday, I felt good. Sleep has been better, journaling is a wonderful tool, and perhaps, most importantly, I'm directing my attention to wonder and exploration again. Fewer psychology podcasts (which were vital in gaining an understanding of anxiety disorders), and more shows about creativity, sports, history, and the paranormal.

I return to my journal as a way of cementing my core beliefs about many things, and in it, I have a little list of the things that I need to maintain to be well. Much of this list is covered in sessions with my coaching clients. Creativity, being a core part of the human condition, not an arbitrary task for designers and artists, shares a lot with wellness.

Journaling, for example, is about self-awareness. Taking the time to reflect and introspect, so often out of reach in the creative industry, thanks to the frenzied pace of things, and the pressures in a changing economy, is essential if we're to be the authors of our own lives. Without this, we become passengers.

Talking about how I felt, what I wanted to feel, and how I could get there with trusted confidants and strangers alike helped massively. I believe creativity is a shared condition, contagious too, and the idolised individual is something of an illusion. Without input from others, no singular triumph or idea is possible. How those conversations take place must be determined according to the individual's personality and sensitivity, but happen they must.

Recognising the impermanence of things is veering into Buddhist territory, but it helped me to let go of some of my biggest fears around mortality (this anxiety was part of an actual mid-life crisis) and other tormentors beyond my control. Creativity never stands still.

Shining is how I came to define my purpose and a way of being that is natural to me. Not the Stephen King variety, but being mindful of how I carry myself in the world and how it impacts others around me. I've come to believe that something as simple as smiling at a person in the street instead of staring at a small screen can be transformative in ways we'll never know. Society is divided, and connections of all kinds are sorely needed. Who knows where a person is going, whom they will meet, what effect such a simple gesture might have on them, how they behave or feel? The ripple effect of all these things is unknowable, but to remind ourselves that possibilities are endless should be cause enough to act with presence and intention. It's easy to look at the big positive changes and feel we are irrelevant, but nobody is. This returned purpose and agency to my life, and reconnected me with my mission to elevate creativity. To do this, people must establish a baseline of optimism, and that starts with tiny steps.

Resting and slowing down is a hard habit to establish in today's world. It is fundamental to wellbeing and effective, conscious creativity. Yet it is a key challenge for every artist, designer, illustrator, writer, musician, and photographer I've coached. Since forcing myself to do so more, my stress cup has been less full.

Organisation can act as a sibling to rest and slow down. I'm not the best here, but the rudimentary steps I've taken to improve mine have paid off massively in terms of headspace and the quality of my thoughts and my work.

Simple joy is something I neglected in the worst times with heightened anxiety. The double-edged sword of my profession being part of my passion meant even the things I did enjoy were still filtered through some kind of work-related lens. Failing to seek unconditional pleasures, whatever they might look like for each of us, is damaging to creativity. Joy brings colour to our days and offsets the weight of adult life. In childhood it was a driver of pure creativity. We'll see the world with more colour and possibility this way, waking up and going to bed thinking the right kinds of thoughts.

This is by no means an extensive list, but I hope it gives you a sense of the inseparable nature of creativity and wellbeing.

The Daily Stoic

The need for accepting what we can control in our chaotic times

Creativity is a fundamental part of the human condition.

So, if we're routinely anxious, panicked, full of gloom, it's incredibly hard to access the wonder and joy that fires it.

This wonder is essential if we are to contribute our creativity to a better world.

Don't get me wrong, no emotions are wholly positive or negative, and those we lump in the negative sack are powerful, but harder to use effectively, especially when such prickly emotions are sustained.

But a baseline of optimism is crucial to making the work truest to who we are.

For this reason, when I coach clients, I ask them about their 'insurmountables.' The big 'orrible antagonists that are beyond our control, but blow raspberries at us from the rooftops as we try to enjoy the flight of birds.

I've helped clients tackle fears around misogyny, younger years misdemeanours, inescapable chores, and more, all in service of freeing them to make the magic only they can make.

Personally, through anxiety and at times despair over the ecological crisis, and in my worst times, my own mortality, I've felt empty, ruined by the kind of fear that makes me want to climb out of my own skin.

I've had to do deep internal reckoning to ease those, and easing they are. In part, this is thanks to the work of Ryan Holiday.

Ryan is a philosopher, and I stumbled across his important work while seeking to understand the ways of the brain. Stoicism's teachings have become a guiding light for me as I seek to maintain the many positives my high-sensitivity and curious brain have given me, while policing the overthinking downside. I also have Dan Kieran to thank for introducing me to 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius, which has also been incredibly helpful.

As I said, no emotions or even traits are wholly positive or negative.

I'll be adding 'The Daily Stoic' to The Creative Condition reading list.

Stoicism , at its core, is self-mastery, acknowledging what we can control in our lives and learning to manage the ills of what is beyond our direct influence.

It’s about making choices to enable us to contribute meaningfully to the world, with fulfilment and joy.

Say hello any time you wish at ben@bentallon.com or here in the DMs to just share ideas, tell me how you're feeling, or, if you're so inclined, we can talk about how my coaching might help.

And as ever, my weekly show, 'The Creative Condition podcast', is free for all. Hopefully, you'll find something that helps amongst the 300+ episodes.

Ryan is easily found - his podcast of the same title is brilliant for these times.

The first morning back

New year creativity reflections and the importance of self-awareness

An understated moment proved to be a big turning point last year. I'd done some live drawing at the DixonBaxi x Paradiso event in London and joined the teams for a drink after we'd wrapped up. Chat was fast and passionate. Despite a good relationship with Simon Dixon, this was the first post-work beer we'd shared, and we got into a lot. Somewhere in the chat, while explaining that I often found it challenging to effectively title myself professionally, he said, "You're not an illustrator, are you?" I looked him in the eye and nodded, knowing he'd hit upon something. Simon has been in the game much longer than I have, and our connection has been around something deeper than a mere skill or role. In all of our previous conversations, we'd explored themes, ideas, and truths that transcended limiting disciplines.

"You're a storyteller."

I just slurped my pint and stared back, before babbling something about this being on the money, but like all revelatory moments, it took time to disrobe itself, confronting me as something hard to look away from.

He wasn't talking about business card copy; this was about living as your inner artist. Every human has one. Some lead careers and lives with them, others sadly never access theirs. It was about essence. Since a very early age, I've adored storytelling in many forms, and now it has become my creativity compass. My passion and purpose, in fact. This is bigger than a profession for me.

2025 was the toughest mental health year I've had. A full-blown midlife crisis. Not sports cars or the likes, but a search for deeper meaning, rampant anxiety bursting pipes in every room of my inner sanctum as I tried to manage a hectic, expensive life as a parent, partner, and professional in a world that felt frenzied and maniacal.

I bent, but thanks to friends, family, and the belief that I could adapt, I didn't break and found the inner strength to do the required work.

I learned about the mind, about the nervous system, the thought habits I'd allowed myself to run me ragged, and recognised the need to slow down. The midlife crisis is incredibly common across a wide range of ages – from around 29 into the early 60s – I heard.

But from all of this, I've emerged with at least a finger on the wheel. I have tools now. And a plan that is sympathetic to my energy and mental capacity, and a plan that is built on storytelling, curiosity, and my desire to contribute to the elevation of creativity's role in our society.

I have Pit Stop coaching sessions lined up this January, which I am giddy about. In this session, I help people to work through their current position, their story to date, their fears and desires, and their opportunities and blocks before assessing all components of their creativity to ensure they get back to the place they need to be, to feel passionate, energised, and in control.

And now, I have a brand new coaching offer. Last year, I worked on two biographical stories for two prominent people in the creative industry. With both people I indulged in a magical 12+ hours of deep conversation, hearing all of their experiences, expertise, and points of view. Creative writing and book coaching came together to tell two brilliant stories.

Every human has one, though most don't believe it about themselves.

I found it unbelievably fulfilling, so I distilled a more accessible version for those who do not wish to write a full-on book, but could benefit from writing their story to serve as a compass for their creativity and purpose.

It's a 4-session story coaching programme that could benefit anyone who has become a passenger in their own life or career, as happens to so many of us in this breakneck-paced life. You can learn about both the book and the coaching offers here. I'd love to help you weave your narrative.

And of course, this will be my 19th year making commercial art. Telling visual stories across branding, advertising, editorial, sport, music, motion, and whatever else remains a core part of my work. I'd love to bring this to your projects.

I felt peace this morning that was lacking too often in 2025. The ominous first day back. It was frosty with a light dusting of snow here in Salisbury as the sun rose on the dog walk. A small ripple of anticipatory stress crept in, but, instead of last year's tendency to panic and attach all kinds of damaging meaning to it, I took a breath and accepted its inevitable presence, something that should pass by mid-morning if I remain organised.

Stress is a part of all our lives, but the role it plays in any one of our stories, and our creativity, is more in our hands than we realise. It's about becoming the author.

Rest and creativity

A reminder: Why rest is essential for optimal creativity and mental health

When it dawned on me that I’d done 18 years without a day off to rest, I could have punched myself in the face.

This time it wasn’t a day off with the flu, it was three days off to avoid what increasingly felt like it might lead to a fucking breakdown.

Anxiety, as any regular reader or listener of The Creative Condition will know by now, has been acute this year. Sleepless nights in double figures, and all kinds of jumping through hoops in a mental landscape resembling the upside down of Stranger Things on too many bad days with a racing heart.

Only when I felt like I couldn’t work thanks to the paralysing fear did I acknowledge that I could be burned out.

That’s when it dawned on me that any time off I’d taken in my freelance career – and I’d been generous enough – was to do something, go somewhere, or care for someone. Never just to stare at a wall and drink a hot beverage. Or to get in bed and watch wrestling. To play a game, go for a stroll, or visit the cinema.

The classic irony is, I give my creativity coaching clients tools and structures, reasons to do this, because I know what happens when you don’t rest. But practising what you preach is a fine art.

When I did it, it was a revelation. I could almost see my teenage self saunter in, flop on the bed, and pick up a video game remote. I watched the wrestling, napped, and called some friends whom I’d been meaning to catch up with.

It wasn’t an immediate fix, but it was no coincidence that I felt a renewed optimism and inner peace come the third day, and now, I’m trying to make every Friday a slower, more ponderous day, challenging myself to stay organised so I can fit my work into 4 focused days rather than stretching it over 5 semi-efficient ones. On Fridays I can go for a longer dog walk. Start later, finish early, make some art just for me, write a story, or, if I’m really brave, do absolutely nothing and stare at the ceiling, knowing that this is just as critical a part of creativity’s diet as making or idea generation. You can’t do either of those things well if you’re exhausted and anxious. That much I’ve learned in a challenging year, and I’m incredibly thankful I did.