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.

The joy of making art

What kind of creativity is best for you, and are you doing it enough?

I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m talking about zero-hours nights, screaming levels of panic in the small hours when my heart races and my thoughts are infinite, loud, and terrifying. Anxiety brings it on, and my mind just takes the baton and runs with it.

I’m doing the work, learning about the mind, talking to the right people for catharsis, but also to learn and grow my way out of a chronic loop of anxious thoughts brought on by overthinking. Progress has been made, and last week, thanks to the unlikely source that was my mother-in-law, I took an important step forward.

She’s heard from my wife that the night had once again wiped the floor with me, and she was a little worried, this being the 4th shocker in two weeks – an undeniable escalation.

“What are we going to do with you? I think your head is too full. Do you still make that big, bright art of yours? I might be talking rubbish, but I know with all your coaching and writing, that you’ve had your hands full.”

Initially, in a state of sleepless delirium, I replied and assured her I was going to be fine, and I acknowledged the validity of her question about my art, but I didn’t have the computing power to think any deeper about the matter. Things improved a little, and despite lingering anxiety, I found a moment to consider her question. My weeks are packed. I never take the time to rest unless we’re going away or I have parental duties. As joyous as these two things are, they are also demanding and full-throttle. To take a day off to rest, unless ill, has been a luxury beyond my grasp, and that’s foolish. I coach my clients about this and provide tools and structures to help them do it! So, after a chat with close friend and collaborator Dirty Freud, who suggested I mirror his model of one day a month off just to rest or play, I decided to go one better and attempt to protect Fridays for emotional creativity.

Emotional creativity is the act of creating for the sake of creating, because you want to.

I work well under pressure, and with too much time, I can fall into procrastination traps. So, my thinking is that if I organise my week well enough and apply enough pressure on myself to have to truly focus, I’ll get five days of less organised activity into four days, leaving one day where it’s not about tasks, but about being creative in the purest sense. Emotional creativity.

So Friday came. In the morning, with brass balls, I dared to roam into town with my wife, drink a fucking brew, and do a spot of Christmas shopping. My anxiety was low, and dissipated as we talked about non-work things and the things we’re excited about. At lunch, we returned home, and in the afternoon, after a dog walk, I made time to begin creating an artwork from the things I’d found beautiful in Lisbon. I put on some new music after asking for recommendations from friends, instead of algorithms, set up my art desk, and let rip. It felt amazing and reminded me I just haven’t done this.

Intellectual creativity tends to be client work, specific and focused acts of making, building, designing, and the like, but working to a brief set externally. This alone does not allow our inner artist to play unconditionally, and is what tends to lead too many artists and creators to frustration because of the lack of balance with emotional creativity.

The mother-in-law had hit upon something crucial with her simple but profound question. She cut through some of my crap as a great coach, mentor, or therapist can.

I drew with an abandon I hadn’t accessed of my own volition for too long, and as the ink dried on these drawings, inspired by the music, I didn’t go to make another brew, but switched on my mic, wrote down some swirling thoughts, and recorded them as spoken word and sent them to Dirty Freud for a long-discussed, but long neglected experimental collaboration using alter-egos we created over a decade ago.

Much other work has been done on the roots of my overthinking, but my sleep has improved, as has my mental health, and I am incredibly happy that I was reminded that no matter how much intellectual creativity I carry out in my job, it is essential for me to make like the artist we all have within us. Our sanity depends on it in this world.

The Wisdom Curfew

I left Manchester after my 2nd stretch of living in the city in 2021. When I left for London after my first five-year stint, the only building that touched the clouds was the Hilton hotel on Deansgate. After loading my car outside M One, a studio space I rented in a former cotton mill on Lower Ormond Street, I set off on a last melancholy stroll up Oxford Road to book-end this chapter; I was leaving for family reasons, with excitement, but also a heavy heart. I’d had nine of the best years of my life here, including the birth of my children and my brother living in the same city.

I’d anticipated something of a reflective walk, but instead, I found myself gawping up at what had once been sky above the old BBC HQ. No sky was visible, only the glass and metal of expensive new accommodation to house a new wave of city centre inhabitants. It was all documented in Manctopia, a BBC documentary about the billion pound property boom.

It felt alien to me, and I didn’t know how to feel about it, but what I feared, and on a deeper level knew, was that this mirrored the ugly side of gentrification I’d seen play out in Brixton a few years earlier. Many of those vibrant people buzzing around its lively streets, I’d been fascinated by in 2008 when I’d first brought my illustration portfolio to London had been driven out by the middle classes and regeneration. Personally, I’d preferred the pockets of degeneration because there were more stories to tell, and creativity could be smelled in the air along with the weed and the fried chicken.

Brixton had enough edge to thrill and a welcoming charm that made me return to the £ 11-a-night hostel many more times in my formative freelance years.

I found exactly the same crackle and warmth in Manchester when I moved there in 2009.

In 2025, it’s hard to ignore the rarity of this balance. It’s still fun, and it still feels safe, but the safety is now the dominant breed. The characters who made Manchester what it was have been pushed into stubborn strongholds that feel at risk of terminal refurbishment when leases end and money talks. The lush crops of independent musicians brimming with ambition that I immersed myself in when I co-founded Quenched Music with Dirty Freud in 2010 have been dredged like seagrass, replaced by a hip but orderly crowd. All of the new venues that have spread in every direction look wonderful, very eloquent and varnished with funky design, but I miss the fights, the funk, the fag bins, and the madheads who can teach you far more about the human condition and creativity than the more predictable crowd.

For that, you have to work harder and head out to the surrounding suburbs because you have to pay handsomely to play in central Manchester today, and while it’s still a great place to be, the chronic sameness of our generation has seeped in.

I catch the 84 bus on a Thursday afternoon. It goes to Oldham, and it’s worth keeping your head out of your smartphone for the duration.

The mix of people is absorbing.

I’m in a mindful moment, gazing out of the window, when a man of around 30 gets on the bus. I notice the electronic tag on his ankle, wrapped around smart trousers. This tag is the kind issued to those with a criminal conviction, and it comes with a court-ordered curfew that usually requires them to stay indoors outside of designated daytime hours. Legal vampires consigned to the shadows. I can’t help but think of how demeaning this is, an official grounding like a teenage wrongdoer. It would be far more interesting and effective to offer up a menu of compulsory dance, drama, sport, or art programmes in the way that the wonderful Dance United has proven to be an effective rehabilitation of marginalised people who have wandered from their better path.

He’s with his mother, and a minute or so later, is recognised by a friend who asks if he’s heard about ‘Skeggy’. Skeggy has been sent down, but I can’t quite hear what for, as I take a keen interest in this story. They discuss the electronic tags, how bored they get when they have them, before going on to discuss their video game crime sprees on Grand Theft Auto. I’m not fabricating this, and I have to catch my judgment before it takes fire at them. Characters like this are abundant in my hometown of Keighley, and I know that, despite the stereotypical characteristics of the chronically mischievous, like any pocket of humanity, there are layers.

Seconds pass in silence before the friend talks about not having his phone. Something has happened; it’s not a choice, but again, I don’t catch the reason. He then turns and starts to scan the bus before telling his tagged friend how liberating it has felt not to be scrolling on it all the time. They nod in unison, taking in the majority of passengers who have their necks craned, lost in the digital dystopia of our age, burning all that energy, losing all that lived experience. Missing the good stuff.

Finally, almost on a breath, he wraps up his realisation by saying that only since not having his phone has he realised how ‘locked in’ they have everyone.

One or two look up and meekly slide their devices away, but the rest present a disturbing illustration of this simple truth.

AI me?

I see this coach on LinkedIn. I can’t remember what they coach, but they keep going on about the need to have an AI version of yourself in this new world. The posts are riddled with that fear language, the do it or die by the side of the road type stuff.

The other day it really got to me. Bad day, vulnerable head, and I just quit the tab, put down my phone.

On reflection it was a slight overreaction, but my fury was real. I’d had a coaching call with one of my own clients. He came to me because he felt seen when we did a Pit Stop together. He knew I adored his story, recognised the traps he was falling into, and had a genuine desire to help.

During one of our calls, he told me about attending a big festival in the States, where too much was about sticking the collective tongue up the arse of AI, to the point where he felt unnerved by shoals of gawping designers and artists mindlessly prodding at the tech, getting it to ‘spit stuff out’. He called them out on it, asking what the point of all this would be if we fucked the planet by spunking all of its resources on this sort of vanity addled tech wanking. People just scoffed and shrugged and probably shoved it out of their minds. But I’m with him. I’ve used ChatGPT about eight times for questions around mental health and career direction, only when it felt reasonable enough to use such energy-intensive tools.

After calming down later that day, I reflected on the potential demise of my career. If it’s death by a thousand heads in the sand, then so be it. I never had a say about whether they should have opened Pandora’s box when they decided AI was going to be everywhere, harder to escape than access, and unpoliced, but I do have to look my kids in the eye when they’re old enough to want to cave my head in if the latest human frivolity is the straw that breaks the ecosystem’s back, and tell them my truth. And if things are that bad, and they do cave my head in when it all comes crashing down, at least that’ll be that, and they don’t have to deal with a virtual ghost haunting the wastelands.

Did I mess up?

It's hard to know where to spend your time when uncertainty is heightened.

I spent 2.5 years writing The Creative Condition around my illustration projects, but this came at a cost of marketing my illustration.

Depending on which day you ask me, I look back on this and question my wisdom, or celebrate the bravery. The truth is, it's impossible to know.

What drove me to write it was a sense of purpose I can't quite explain with logic. Serendipity, the need to evolve as a creative pro, and concern about a shifting illustration market were all a part of my psychology.

Beyond the launch, the book provided a foundational framework for my creativity coaching work, which wasn't in my mind while writing, and I suppose that's the point here. Things are always unfolding, so it's vital, if rarely easy, to move forward with passion, intentionality, and self-belief.

And like any coach, therapist, or mentor, I'm never fully sure when it comes to my time, but helping others to understand and lead with their story comes naturally to me.

Who can see their wood for their trees, after all?

Nobody can go back and fix things, and there are no guaranteed tomorrows, so how do you feel today? How far are you from the times you felt the most magic, and how did you get here? Maybe you needed the detour. You’re here, after all, so how can we make an interesting challenge of it and take the next steps?

On any given days, my head buzzes with these kinds of thoughts. It’s better that I put the outcomes to good use by helping someone!

Muppet Change of Key

We’re in services somewhere near Oxford on the Sunday after a knife attack on a passenger train. The big screens roll the constant news coverage and there’s a tangible gloom hanging in the air. People are short with their children and eye contact is scarce, wary when it does happen.

The kids are reasonably unaware, though I do believe in their perceptive skills if they’re exposed to fear too often.

I’m feeling it, being the emotional sponge that I am.

I lose myself in the moment and chew down on my spring rolls when a piece of music starts up.

I know it, though I can’t place it.

It’s a teenage girl on the communal piano. People turn to source the jolly interlude.

Then it comes to me.

The Muppets! It’s the theme from The Muppet Show.

We can’t stay miserable. We just can’t. My wife clocks it too. My son, a keen piano player takes a few steps towards her, and my daughter, a natural dancer, begins to kick her feet and sway.

And just like that, the mood is tipped upside down. Art, music, and the soul. This is it. Even in a dark moment, when we have work to do in our society, we can find islands of happiness like this.

Time Tension

There was a scene at the very end of Final Fantasy VII, a game that made a deep emotional mark on my soul back in 1998. After the parasitic powers of that Japanese RPG world had fallen, thanks to our party of rebel heroes, it set the fictional world on a new and better course. Then, before we transitioned to the end credits, this scene played out in its moreish ‘cut scene’ cinematic style. Red XIII, a fire-dog type character, is now old and follows his two cubs up some rocky terrain. As they reach the summit, the camera reveals their view, which is expansive, with rich forests and lakes as far as the eye can see.

Final Fantasy VII was a futuristic, almost dystopian departure from the game series’ more fantasy-based, slightly steampunk art style, and we spent most of the game’s story in industrial settings. It was cool, new, and helped to accentuate the glee this end scene brought about.

And strangely, recently, thanks to the way this formative experience tends to stay with us, that scene came to mind while trying to battle a bout of eco-anxiety. I tried to project my mind beyond my lifetime, to give me direction in my life here and now. What is it that I want to do with the remaining years of my life? This kind of thought process has been occurring more and more since turning 40 and entering twin-parenthood at 36. It’s no longer enough to strive for momentary wins in my career.

Often, I watch my kids as they do kid things, playing with an innocence that moves me, but also unnerves me on a bad day. My imagination will run with climate crisis stories and weave apocalyptic doom tapestries that paralyse me in my seat. It’s been a problem for a few years, something I’ve documented here as part of an ongoing effort to gain greater agency over my thoughts. Because whatever happens, we are mortal. Even without the news bombardment and damaging hyper-awareness, I’d find some threat to inflate. My nervous system is a defence mechanism designed to do that for my protection.

Intergenerational equity is a term I came across a few years ago, the idea that a society makes decisions with equal care for those who will live on after us, as we do for ourselves here and now. And that’s what I felt when I thought about this game scene. This idea that no matter what becomes of humanity, nature will find a way. After all, we belong to nature, and must play a better collective part than we have managed these last couple of hundred years.

As I allowed my mind to wander back to this scene, denying the urge to immediately take out my phone to see it, I felt a warm, hopeful something stir inside, and it helped to calm me down. This is at the core of things like the idea of ‘gratitude’ and meditation. Tools to direct our mind somewhere better than the rabble of subconscious chatter beneath the surface on a daily basis.

A friend of mine called a few days ago and asked if I’d noticed how troubled people appeared to be out in the towns and cities. I had. Being a keen observer, I had detected this social sickness, and having felt anxiety myself in recent years, I had sympathy and empathy towards their situation. When those thoughts take over, I imagine I look the same. Other observant friends notice and message me to check I’m OK.

But this scene is a reminder, both in the grandest sense depicted and in the smallest sense, that all storms will pass, and we must hold the rudders and think long-term, think big, and allow ourselves to dream of something that will benefit us all, especially those who must stay here longer than we will. It isn’t easy, and in this rabid, biting version of capitalism, there’s time tension because we all want meaning, purpose, and a role that contributes to a future we’d like to leave the next lot. So we must think short-term to pay the bills. I suppose the question is: how do we get by in this society while still leaving our minds and actions enough freedom to run up that rockface so we can peek at a lush scene on the horizon? That really is the challenge.