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.

The Impermanence Highway

We're in Keighley railway station with eight minutes to kill before the train arrives. There's an exhibition set up spanning four stationary carriages on platform 3, celebrating 200 years of rail travel. After our day trip, the kids, my parents, my wife and I put time aside to go and see it.

Just lately I've been reflecting on impermanence. Cycles of life, death, and renewal.

There are many reasons for this, landing somewhere between midlife crisis and external assaults on my inner peace; news cycles, fatherhood as a highly sensitive person, and the search for meaning. At 42 in an ever-turbulent world, impermanence helps gain perspective, recognising what I can and cannot control.

In his 'Meditations', Marcus Aurelius urges himself (the books were private diaries, journals, and trains of thought not intended for any kind of publication) to consider the expanse of time before him and the endless stretch that will unfold after he's gone, when seeking to remain balanced and present in life.

With this suggestion in mind, my sense of time has been distorted. 200 years used to feel ancient to me, but standing on the railway bridge, looking at the contemporary exhibition identity and the original train station signage, it suddenly feels difficult to comprehend that we've only had trains for that long. And how much longer we’ll have them if we don't get a handle on the biodiversity and climate crises, and our global economies, is a question worthy of deep consideration. In fact, it's these kinds of thoughts that tend to drag me into pits of despair and anxiety, thoughts that Aurelius' and Buddhist teachings have recently helped me to manage enough not to derail days at a time.

As we're standing there, my dad tells me how the advent of rail travel ultimately ended the reign of highwaymen. The rich, as ever, were early beneficiaries of this new transport system, which took them and their loot off the bumpy old roads they’d been forced to travel in horse-drawn carts, rendering them sitting ducks for road-robbers. It also probably saved them from future hemorrhoid unrest and a lot of time in the process.

The exhibition is splendid, displaying the first known drawing of a train by a child who watched the first passenger and freight steam traction train service set off on the Stockton & Darlington Railway. This is a surreal, magical experience as I stare at glee that shines out of this pencil sketch, spilling the boy’s wonder onto a page next to gorgeous, old-fashioned handwriting. But stepping out of the historic Keighley station on the iconic Worth Valley Railway depicted in The Railway Children, into a litter-addled street is sobering. I love my hometown. Its heritage, its people, its soul, but walking up a street on which I spent a good portion of my childhood calls upon the perspective of impermanence once more. Here, just a few decades ago, I spent many happy hours here, enjoying a gigantic toy shop, two dedicated art supplies stores, two video libraries, and an array of other assorted, independent boutiques. Today, like a tragic number of high streets in the UK, vape shops, takeaways, nail bars, and cash converters tell a story of an economic, political, and cultural robbery. There is not one bookstore in the town centre, unless we count The Works, or the corners of charity shops.

These newer businesses have every right to be here, and it’s preferred to derelict or empty units, but their intense consumerist purpose, casting their neon backlit brands into the mucky puddles on the pavement below, paints a stark picture in which the distinction between the highwaymen and the rich has disappeared completely. The town, like so many others without the spoils of middle-class money or authority investment, is infected with a tangible social sickness. Put simply, people don’t come here the way they used to. The hidden gems that can be found around the town – Grind and Groove Records, The Kindred Bizarre, and the tranquil, welcoming World Peace Café – are harmed indirectly as a succession of national chain stores close their Keighley branches, giving people less and less reasons to knock around town any longer than they have to. My mum reports these closures, lamenting the resultant loss of community. The lifeblood of small towns like these is in their people, their presence, and connection, face to face, as news is shared in person. But if towns are reduced to supermarkets and synthetic smoking appliances, that connection ceases, and the chatter seeps into insidious social media arenas where it grows thorns and points the finger of blame at others.

My creativity could never have taken the shape it did were it not for Keighley. Everything it gave and lacked. We all ran it down in conversations over beers in pubs, but if anyone else disparaged it, we kicked off and defended it because we loved it unconditionally. We adored its oddities and gritty ways. Those railways took me to places further afield where I began to see what else was possible, what could be, how other places did things, and yet every time we juddered back into the station, I felt a warm welcome home. But that spirit is desaturated in this moment. So, I think of impermanence. I think of the shifts over time, of generations long before mine who suffered in their own way, in their own version of scarcity, only for the sun to rise against the odds. It will rise again.

And as ever, as I stem the sadness brought on by the fear and uncertainty in the air, I conjure an image of what might yet come to pass, employing my imagination to restore balance to my thoughts. High streets nationwide are in crisis. The internet has shafted retail prospects from all angles, the economy is struggling to draw breath, division is the order of the day, while our elite claim ever-bigger dollops of cream from all of us. Nobody yet knows what comes next, or how to find out. But we’ve seen, time and again, how great ideas and art emerge when backs are against the wall, so I calm my racing mind and remember the cyclical nature of such beleaguered towns.

Days after the visit to Keighley, I begin drawing parallels with the creative industry. We’re weathering our own retail crisis, the same spiritual reckoning seen in troubled town centres across the country. Freelancers and agencies alike sigh and pace their metaphorical shop floors, peering into the street, hoping for something. Confidence is down, and when the door beeps, when people do come in, most leave again without so much as a courteous ‘thank you’ on the way out. So, fear and cynicism again. Become the most irresistible boutique, the swaggering corporate behemoth, or fuck off. OK, maybe not quite, but it’s bloody difficult for many as the squeeze tightens.

But… impermanence. Marcus Aurelius ruled Rome at a time when plagues and many wars could have rendered his life a waking nightmare. And yet he found it within himself to recognise the passing nature of all things. A little digging into the happenings of 1825, when the boy, full of wonder, drew that first train, teaches me that seventy banks in England failed in what has come to be known as ‘the financial panic’. And here we are, writing another chapter, a robotic revolution happening right here around us, in our fucking pockets without any kind of consent. All those big tech parasites feeding off us lot down here, in Keighley, in the creative industry, draining our rivers and our high streets and calling it progress. And what can we do about it? Until I can report back on that, I’ll just continue to create about it, and use the perspective of impermenance.

Optimism, my old friend

The difference this time is, I know anxiety will return, but I also know it will just be passing through. Two weeks into a couple of CBT workbooks and online programs, I can start to feel a little agency over my own thoughts again.

Sitting down at my desk yesterday, I felt something that’s been absent for too long: unfiltered optimism. I felt excited about my art and the possibilities it brings to my life. I felt cautiously confident in the growth of my coaching practice. I even bought a ‘personal life’ notebook to get myself better organised.

Getting organised, having failed to find a system for the last 17 years, has been a turning point. CBT has essentially been like employing a wardrobe-sized security professional, complete with earpiece, in whichever part of my brain the local riff raff come to party with no rules and cheap drink and drugs. The riff raff of course, are inflamed thoughts, the doorman, is the tools CBT give you to bring some sort of order to the party. This enables me to observe the thoughts, and crack down on the troublemakers before they even make it into a cubicle carrying a little plastic baggy with an alien face on it.

And while it’s a fragile rebuild, which will invariably throw up bad days and backwards steps, I’m at the wheel and it feels good.

So with that return of zest, I leaned in. A small commission fell into my inbox. A regular of mine. I did the job, but I also asked the client who I might contact to pitch a written column idea I’ve had, and feel would fit. I said hello to some friends/peers, approached a couple of founders about my coaching program, and remembered that it is this, the assertion of will, the expression of my desire to help people who I enjoy working for, and to whom know I can provide value. The hustle, if you will. In it to win it, in with a chance, taking the shot. Whatever your choice of description for this essential aspect of freelancing and growing as a creative professional, it must be done, and the knowledge it really, really could happen cannot just be a distant idea, but something pure, and deep within.

Where did all the good websites go?

"Where did all the good websites go?" That question was put to me.

After working with a long-term coaching client for over a year, we had a massive breakthrough last night.

Our groundwork to date has been about mindset, about overcoming some challenging personal trials, and getting him facing the right way with his values and passions at the heart of his practice. This takes time, but now, with the foundations set, he's taken a huge step forward in telling his story.

It feels better than any of my own successes.

As he revealed a beautiful first draft, I struggled to contain myself. It was alive, it had a set of bollocks, and it screamed everything I've come to love about him through our work together. Unapologetic in its arrangement, its daring scale and shattering of template style open goals.

As I gushed all this onto him. He laughed and began wondering where all the good websites were, which triggered a chat about early internet creativity. Those Flash sites that welcomed you in blew your mind a little bit. The bad ones and the good ones were curated by humans, and no matter how flawed, insane, or playful, the curiosity flooded out of them like a thousand pop-ups.

Of course, clarity, UX, and all that stuff matter. As visual communicators, we know this. But surely we have to push it to some limits, break some rules somewhere, to inject some attitude, some personal experience, and point of view? Things have become so instant and so guided, which helps in some ways, but it removes the jeopardy, boxes us into replicable layouts, and achingly dull, clean websites.

Don't get me wrong, I used Squarespace for The Creative Condition's official site. I'm no developer, and my budget didn't stretch to full blank canvas customisation with my web developer. But it didn't stop me from telling the story in every corner of the site, with my own hand-rendered textures, and an unapologetic tone of voice, which permeates everything I make.

Because it's mine.

What's yours?

Anyway, my client was right. It seems odd that the ambition and imagination that characterised those early websites have not risen with the capabilities of the latest tech.

That makes me slightly sad.

But all is not lost. He's taken everything we've worked on in his life this past year, his self-discovery journey, and found a way to choose the right tech to serve his ideas, his soul, and you all have a real treat coming soon.

Trends or the unknown?

My work creating illustrations for E4's 'Skins' TV show animated trailer was my first step into the world of motion, my first outside of editorial illustration, in fact.

My hand was very much held by the patient and brilliant Mike Moloney, for which I remain grateful.

And a story I often tell students and coaching clients about the need for humour, play, and unconditional experimentation is that the ridiculous 'Tyson v Thatcher' poster won me that job.

Tyson v Thatcher was a ludicrous climax to a personal project making a series of old fashioned boxing posters promoting various speculative and, frankly ridiculous pay-per-view scraps. It was edgy, silly, and comical.

The director came to a group show for which I'd made some art, and in conversation, he broke down laughing, asking me what it was all about. It had tickled him and his partner, who then invited me to dinner, where they couldn't let it go.

In the end, the essence of the line work, and the smash-mouth approach landed with the edgy tone of Skins.

This is exactly why we should all be making bold, brazen work in a way that reflects who we are, and what we've seen and felt in this world.

There's no making that poster with that opportunity in mind. Engineering of that kind doesn't happen that way when it comes to joining dots.

So, which way do you go? Run for the trends, or do it with full-blast glee and share it to see what the universe has for you?

The Business

There's a local group who run pubs, hotels and restaurants. Their brand is different. You can be more than, less than, or different from, and different is my sort of positioning.

Their tone of voice is warm, their visual identity eclectic and rich, but characterised by the humans who run it enough for it to make sense in an endearing way. They're a small group o people at its core who aren't afraid to try things, be playful, welcoming and humble, yet strong in their vision, and it makes a refreshing change to the sameness of bigger chains. So in the shadow of those nationwide high street names who are more than, they are not less than, but different from. And so they grow. It's welcome in this city which, like most in this economic climate, is in a fight for its soul as the wealth gap widens.

Walking back past one venue this afternoon, I thought about the daily affairs of the people running this group, and recognised something valuable about running a business with multiple manifestations. I imagined them moving from outpost to the next, ensuring things were good on the ground, then retreating to some base, taking care of another aspect, be it work on the website, contractor affairs, branding, overall long-term steer of the company, and so on.

That's when I realised that my houses are not in order. I've spread my focus too thin, and instead of taking care of each 'venue', I've been too hasty in opening new one after new one. Illustration, for example, would have been my first venue. That was the profession I studied. I became an illustrator and the place thrived with regulars and occassional clientele. Then when that frustrated me in quiet spells beyond my control, I began to write about the experience. And on the side I ran a music 'agency' for want of a better term for the creative vehicle through which I put on club nights and supported bands alongside Dirty Freud. So, a little less time went into illustration upkeep because by now I had a competent agent at my back. As these exploits grew – podcast, books, lecturing, fiction collections, art direction on films – I ran after the next thing, and the next thing. Not with total abandon, but with enough gusto that I failed to employ a manager for any of the new venues. I didn't go back often enough to make new signs or websites, to carry out the upkeep required to achieve the consistency I see in this local group's endeavours. And so dust settled and most people moved on, or walked past. Customers amble by and make impulsive purchases here and there, but no marketing strategy brings more to form a stream. People remember that you do that thing, but it's not a part of the world they inhabit with any regularly.

And so, only some of the venues serve the bigger beast. But here, in this new moment of clarity after a period of overwhelm, I'm carrying out an audit on my many practices, taking small steps to design a puzzle in which the pieces fit. Where one activity informs the next, and overall, when people see those manifestations of a bigger idea, they know it's mine, and it might just make them feel enough to go and tell a friend. I care about all of my artistic practices, but alone, I am unable to maximise the potential of them in isolation. It becomes a hollistic challenge to unify and make each a part of a tapestry I, and my audience, can understand.

Small steps, steady gains. 

Rose Tinters

This morning was gloomy when I set out on the dog walk. Light rain, carpets of yellow and brown leaves, hoods up all over the show, all lacquered with a coat of unrest. Well, at least the latter is what I detected.

Just lately, I’ve been spending time in my head with a friend I lost two years ago. Just in the sense that when I meditate, or turn to thoughts of gratitude, he comforts me. He was always the more bullish and pragmatic of the two of us.

At college, despite his path of GCSE exams direct to building site as a trainee bricklayer, we somehow ended up two sets of double doors away from each other. Keighley College’s art department was, at that time, a gigantic industrial site repurposed to house not just arts and design students, but also a smattering of trades in the neighbouring block. I loved it. It meant my friend was there, and I’ve always seen great value in a diverse range of people in close proximity. We’re severely lacking it in todays divided society.

Those two years were glorious, but it occurred to me on this Autumn morning that I have, in fact, been wearing the rose-tinted glasses as I seek solace in the past. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Our minds have a way of handing us a candy-floss wrapped version of our past when our present is laced with pain or discomfort. As I looked around the park, my dog shuffling along as if at gun point, I returned to these memories and in this version of it, 2001 was also murky, industrial, and a bit bleak.

In fact, just a month earlier sits a very clear memory owing to it’s sheer surreal qualities. My brother bursting in the front door in his secondary school uniform, going, “Quick, put the news on! Someone’s blown up The Empire State Building!” My mum and I thought he’d lost it, but he was a smart, level lad, so we did as he asked, and, tragically, while he’d heard the wrong building, none of us will struggle to recall how 9/11 made us feel. It felt like Armageddon. For some families it was. But the point is, there were tiny and giant fears and pain and discomfort and shitty weather and negative emotions back then. I had a date that night, a cinema trip to watch A Knight’s Tale. Then back in college the next day.

As I dwell in this memory, a clear recollection of how doomy it felt when harsh rain hit the skylight windows of the corrugated roof that hung over us, 50 or so feet high, especially when I stayed late and it was just me and the caretakers. Somehow though, we all made it through with smiles and gidd anticipation of various adventures to universities nationwide, and now, despite a challenging time of anxiety, I’m taking steps to manage these thoughts with CBT, newly reintroduced strenuous exercise, and more non-booze socialising. And one day, I know I’ll gaze back on this time with the rose-tinters on, and I want those memories to acknowledge this battle, while rejoicing because actually, it’s still pretty fucking good to be alive and able to create, to tell stories.

Beanstalks in General

There was a question, but I missed it because of the clinking crockery being palmed into the dishwasher. The answer was uncertain, my wife wondering in real time as she considered this.

‘Oh… I don’t… I dont know, actually… I wonder if all beanstalks go to the same giant’s castle.’

No more plates and bowls racket. Just silence as I pick up my cup and frown. You can’t drop things like that on a person at 6.50am! But she did, they did, and now the sky castles are multiplying, all those angry cloud stompers with all their stolen gold, fee-fi-foing around the heavens. It’s like an oversized 1980s first division football fan fight in a car park, little working class cow-salesmen bolting every which way as size 482 Adidas Sambas fly at their petrified little bodies.

In the end, I shake my head, laugh, and try to move on.

Brain Lube

Dan Kieran, a local friend and author among other things wrote this great piece about taking a moment before attempting to create, to loosen up the mind, to tap into a sense of wonder and inspiration.

The trouble with showing up with an unwieldy to-do list now, as we try to be many things just to survive, is that we have to firefight to not get overwhelmed. So, reflection, immersion, play, and opening up to possibilities become the disposable rituals we can shed to ensure we remain productive.

I’ve been trying to follow Dan’s lead. He spoke of picking up a book and reading a few pages to enter a different headspace, opening that little door to flow and forward motion. But like many times before, the kids serve up a pure lesson.

One is on the kitchen table drawing Paw Patrol’s Marshall, the other up at the kitchen island drawing Miles Morales’ Spider-Man. They are silent, deep in flow states as my wife and I buzz around carrying out hundreds of tiny tasks to get them ready, everyone fed, and all of us out of the door on time.

TV is not an option on weekday mornings. Some days the huff and puff and ask us what they should do and we point to the wealth of puzzles, games, pens, paper, books, and toys on the shelves and say, ‘I don’t know, whatever you want.’ Eventually after admitting defeat, they’ll choose something and commit.

I quietly watch with a smile on my face, whether it’s Lego, My First Engineer set, art, or a board game because that little door opens. Sometimes they play together, other times alone, but the difference in the way they show up at school, ready to absorb the sensory experience, is stark to the odd weekend day when they are allowed an episode or two of whatever TV show they’re into. On those days it takes a little longer to get them out of their sluggish groaning. That’s fine – they’re human and it’s the weekend – but I apply this to my own creative upkeep. If I arrive and lunge straight for a screen or a pen and paper, I’m undermining my brain’s need for immersion and attunement.

The days that start with a page or two of a book that inspires or a good, deep chat on the dog walk tend to be the ones on which I find flow, and make better decisions.

This is no revelation or profound piece of wisdom. It’s common sense and bloody obvious, but the screens have been woven into every aspect of our being, that we don’t question the nature of their presence enough. As far as the kids go, whatever your point of view, go read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.

Floundering, now

A friend of mine posted about AI agents. I heard Steven Bartlett talking about these. Fucking horrifying. I couldn’t tell you a great deal about them, other than the fact they’re another dollop of terrifyingly powerful technology that can do all kinds of things. He mentioned ‘cold outreach’, answering emails, all kinds of stuff.

Now, I’m an organisational shit show. I pay my tax, my bills, and I’ve never missed a deadline, but I could do with an assistant to crack the whip and handle some of the boring-but-all-important business stuff that helps keep things from caving in on our sensitive heads.

But to date – and I’m not saying I can’t learn – I’ve typed one thing into ChatGPT, about what other jobs there might be for my skillset and experiences, during an acute lean spell. Part laziness, part ignorance, part ideological opposition to the resource uses at a time we can ill-afford to push the climate any further. If it comes down to having a habitable planet or sorting my admin, then even I will happily get my act together and boot up a few new spreadsheets.

So, I thought about this on a short walk, and it occurred to me that while the future is now, and I’m still woefully trapped in a parallel dimension – the archaic present that is still here in front of my eyes in the physical world, but run increasingly by Minority Report technology – I’m also locked out of an important past I might soon have to lean into, a nomadic, survival-driven one.

I’m slowly but surely ‘prepping’ – buying Swiss Army knives, torches, and water-purification tablets, reading guides on making fires, eyeing up courses in the woods run by ex-army experts.

What a confusing time to be alive! I’m doing the prep stuff to help with my eco anxiety, which is far from unfounded, but needs addressing before it torches my creativity and peace of mind altogether.

Now that I think of it, is there even a future where I have a survival assistant? Where the present as we know it is spunked away in an astonishingly stubborn display of human greed, arrogance, and denial, but the bots stick around to… oh fuck this, I need a lie down.

Newspaper Paul

Paul was a mate of my old man, when they both went onto Elland Road regularly to watch Leeds United.

At 14-years-old, that football club was the biggest slice of identity I had. The paper round had started to add smaller bits of social armour to the outside of that big yellow, white, and blue underbelly, ripe for being gutted by any failing of the team on a matchday. As a paper boy I started to engage in small talk with the elderly folk in the flats I delivered to.

Paul was the caretaker, and after sitting in the stairwells, sifting through the sports pages of the full spectrum; from tabloids to broadsheets, even Financial Times, I’d accidentally-on-purpose seek him out as he sorted the bins or the mail on the groundfloor. He’d get all the transfer rumours, team news, and any other tenuous gossip surrounding the club. I had to work for it. This was 1997 and we weren’t online yet. At least not down in our working class world. So we made a bond and I felt like an adult, like I had some social worth at a time when, as a 14-year-old, it was incredibly easy to feel the complete opposite.

I looked forward to this, and for the same reasons, I seek out and take every opportunity to expose my kids to such relationships with local adults outside of their home and school. It brings on belonging and a sense of psychological safety, maybe even validation for something.

Back then I’d sit in my room on the evenings and sometimes feel a nameless melancholy in my stomach, especially during the autumn and winter months. My sensitivity was coming to bear, and I had no way of understanding it, no idea how to talk to other people about feelings or the more expansive thoughts I was starting to have.

It wasn’t as if Paul was going to answer them, but somehow, that passing interaction, built on something as trivial as sport, mattered. I’d made it out of bed far earlier than I’d liked, done my job, earned my £1 daily fee, and spoken to people, one of which knew something about me and the things I cared about.

Sometimes that’s enough, and I’d put that in any list of commandments to hand to anyone looking to lead a career and life with creativity.

Get out, do things, say hello, share something real.

It’s incredible how it can set things on a better course.

Ref Cam

It felt more dystopian and psychologically intrusive than most of the shite I’ve tried under the ‘horror’ category on Netflix. The way my screen jostled and swung from side to side, raking our faces with upsetting snatches of Premier League football superstars gesticulating, all sweaty and outraged, uncomfortably close to us, hands cupped together like Oliver Twist begging for sustenance. It didn’t linger on any of them long enough for our brains to comprehend what we were seeing, expertly yet unintentionally employing the genius of The Blair Witch Project’s ‘what was that?’ handheld camera filmmaking technique.

Welcome to ‘ref cam’ – a squirming, sodden, utterly evil demon child birthed into the already sick world of top-flight football.

The only consolation, as I watched Newcastle United and Liverpool on Sky Sports Monday Night Football, was the hilarious mask of revulsion on my 70-year-old dad’s face. We were still trying to get over the poor referee’s new performative responsibility of shouting out the VAR decision through a microphone to the live audience.

We weren’t prepared for this. I can’t stop thinking about it.

To make matters worse, I’m reading Matt Dickinson’s gorgeous 99: Manchester United, the Treble, and All That. I’ve learned so much about coaching, team spirit, work ethic, roots, and sheer desire to master a craft from the story of one of sport’s all-time greatest teams and its rightly revered manager. Don’t get me wrong, even back in 1998-99, the money was out of control, but the turn of the century now feels like the last time fans and players were tethered in any way, before the sport became big business.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, as ever, I joined some dots.

My beloved creative industry, while far from awash with dirty money and entitlement, is becoming increasingly performative as workpools shrink. They’re shrinking because of a perfect storm of technological advances, greed, world events, shaky economies, risk aversion, and increasingly ready acceptance of affordable mediocrity.

Social media hijacked a large part of what used to be much more about faces, places, and connections than it was about shouting for attention. This isn’t entirely bad. How could it be? I landed my dream client, WWE, thanks to the accessibility of creative directors otherwise beyond my reach. I shouted for their attention and got it from the comfort of my spare room. But it happened because, despite the Atlantic Ocean between us, we built a relationship upon shared values and the love of great design and creativity.

What I really adored about my early trips to London, paying peanuts to sleep in an 8-bed dorm in a Brixton hostel, was walking into a 3D, real-life environment, never to look back. With every guest pass to a posh HQ, I was connected, face-to-face, in real life, and felt all-important belonging. And it wasn’t just the person I’d arranged to meet whom I met. They’d walk me around the studio or the design department, introducing me to other designers, editors, art directors, and whoever else might one day want to buy my artistic wares. It worked in the same way social media does, just with sore feet and a few beers at lunch time or after the work day tacked on. You know what they smell like. A beer or a coffee ensured the person would remember you, not lose you in their bookmark tab forever. They’d stick their neck out to push for a superior to commission you because you were real and they’d seen you were professional.

As I watched my dad’s face scrunch into itself and almost disappear, I sniggered, but I understood and shared his horror, infusing the guffaw with sick desperation. You have to remember, he grew up in an era of professional football when it wasn’t uncommon to see your heroes in the pub or the chippy after the match. I’m not saying this was better than the ultra-athlete/celebrity incarnation of today’s game, but it, like those days of just a generation ago in the creative industry, was built on a connection between fan and player, and the vast majority of it was live and in living colour, not on Twitter. Commonality, respect, admiration, togetherness.

Today, most of us in the creative industry forego that hard work. The half day of work and overpriced train ticket fare sacrifice required to make a meeting happen could be saved during a cost-of-living crisis, and we can send out 100s of emails or create several posts, spinning thought leadership and portfolio posts like digital webs in the hope of catching new clients. Everyone is on there, at the tips of our fingers via keyboards and screens. So we all go there. Every fucking one of us. But it means we have to shout louder to be heard, following the flock in apeing techniques to up our volume. Even then, we’re scared of algorithms kidnapping our content. Before we know it, we’re on our knees, hands cupped over our chins, begging and pleading to be seen and heard, and in the heat of the moment, when things are tight and cash flow is dicked sideways, we’re no different from the footballers on the ref cam, because that bond, the one that characterised bygone days of football and the creative industry, while not obsolete, is on the red list. It’s endangered, and what we’re left with is a bleached creative coral reef, retaining the shape and the likeness of what we adore, only without colour or life.

The ref cam comparison might be fanciful, given the fact the footballers are loaded and we’re skint, but you see my point – there’s only one ref on that pitch, strapped up like the Terminator with lasers and microphones, time travel gadgets and cameras to force drama where it is least needed. The official carries great responsibility and power, the keys to the kingdom, and so gets swarmed like art directors asking for an illustrator recommendation online, despite only being able to appease one.

Comfort

It’s the golden hour. At least that’s what my photographer friend used to call it. That sun-going-down perfect light when beauty is easier to come by. A group of eight blokes play cricket on the park at the bottom of my street and you only have to watch them for 30 seconds or so to see that it matters.

The shouts, the ferocity of the bowls, the celebrations and commiserations.

I stroll around the edge with the dog and give them all my attention. I’m running on low battery after a taxing day working at the bottom of the garden. A podcast interview, a coaching session, an illustration deadline, and admin things squeezed in between. There’s mid-level stress at play in my gut, so I sit while I let the dog sniff around in the long, dried-out grass at the top.

It feels good watching the game. I don’t root for anyone, I don’t know the score, and I don’t want to join in either – I never really gave cricket much of a go, so the pull just isn’t there.

What I adore is the community. The tribe. The boys. Doing their thing, coming together through shared passion. I’m still working at finding more of that.

We all need a little more of that. Leading with creativity necessitates connection. Those Zoom calls, the podcast and the coaching session were invigorating on an inspiration level, but screens are a bit like those prison visits you see on TV dramas, aren’t they?

A few days later I get my act together and meet Lewis, a friend and local designer. We sit on a bench by the cathedral and talk about many things. Him with his son me with the dog. Half an hour or so. Then we walk back through town and carry on. I’m glad I did.

Lewis and I started ‘Friday Drinks’ here in Salisbury for this reason. Too many shed and spare room dwellers going out of their minds alone in a cut-throat market, with more to offer. I see more of it happening, in all those fringe towns and villages.

Gallows Humour

I got talking with a friend about humour in creativity. A very specific type of humour: gallows humour.

Merriam-Webster defines the term as; ‘Humour that makes fun of a life-threatening, disastrous, or terrifying situation.’

A firefighter friend told me how essential this is for mental well-being in horrific situations in his professional life on a podcast.

In my first short fiction story, All Things Nice, it entered my creativity as I wove a narrative to deal with the turmoil I felt over my fears of a friend being made homeless.

I suppose that’s the point: this world is upside down and still trying, desperately, to work itself out. We, as self-aware creatures, are tuned into a social, collective psychology, and there’s paranoia out there, rage, fear, and a longing for something better.

Creativity can serve all of this, but the paradox is that creativity doesn’t come easily when that turmoil is constant.

That’s why our industry is in flux, too.

Writing is healthy. I’d recommend writing to anyone. For yourself, to vent, to let it all out.

I recommend it to most coaching clients. It might surprise you how useul it is to understanding or releasing what’s going on in there.

PJ Richardson told me that he makes art that aspires to a near-utopian, unashamed level of happiness. Even if – like most of the time – he isn’t feeling it. I found that quite profound. Without glorifying the struggling artist stereotype, which we should not so easily accept as a given, a lot of this is indeed about aspiration. Aspirational work through acts of emotional creativity can play a part in getting us, if not to Arcadia, to somewhere better.