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How a Backhanded Compliment Shaped Hyatt Moore's Life as a Writer · I Don't Know You

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Matt, and welcome to my recorded conversations for I Don't Know You.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: My search in learning from leaders about their stories and applying their lessons
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: to my own journey as I seek to better understand myself.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you enjoy what you hear or have a guest you'd like me to ask on, I'd love to hear from you.
• 0:19
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• 0:21
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• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: share it with a friend, and follow me for more of this kind of content.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm joined by my friend Hyatt Moore
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: once again for a conversation
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: about his upcoming book that he's releasing chapter by chapter
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: on Substack called How to Get Anything Done.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about left brain,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: right brain creativity and share stories of how writing has showed up in his life.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I love talking to this guy.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's just a wealth of wisdom and fun stories.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious to get into...
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of that reflection and thinking about that specifically through the lens
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: of writing because you mentioned it earlier,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: you have both of those arts and creativities and disciplines.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there is a lot of the logic side.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're activating both sides of the brain when you're writing and when you're painting.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that you identify with as being both of those things.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: The left brain tends to not trust the right brain.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so we doubt ourselves.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We get an idea and say, no, I won't do that.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why not?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because it's my idea.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's part of the beauty of community, right?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you say, well, if somebody else has the idea, it might be good, but I doubt myself.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what I'm kind of coaching these people.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, don't do that.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let it come out.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do yourself too quick.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well I'm sure you're learning new things through that,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: but I say all that to kind of frame this conversation because you're now
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: in this new project of releasing this book that you've been working on for years.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, a year.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: A year?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I started at the beginning this year.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Part of the prolificness of your discipline and creativity meeting
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: and putting work out into the world.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm curious how you started writing.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Was that something that you always had?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or was that something that someone in your life cultivated from an early age?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Or was there a certain point where you were like,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: man, I got to write this down and then it just never stopped?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think in mid-life somewhere I decided, yeah, I'd like to be a writer.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now that didn't stop happening in a moment in time.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember exactly how it did, but I began to realize that I could.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I was working at Wycliffe at the time and from time
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: to time I would write small articles for the in-house publication and go out
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: and I'd get affirmation on it.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was fun and I did have something to say and people said good things.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so it kind of grew from there.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was another writer around who, well,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: my boss who wrote a lot and a great storyteller,
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: he was the director of the whole thing, he wrote every month for the constituency.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Found out that he wasn't writing them at all.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: They were his stories.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But he had a best friend who was a writer.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a known writer with many books.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he called it his ministry to help my friend.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he was writing in his voice.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they were very good.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, later, and so he became kind of a role model, the writer, a little bit.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, he seemed to do it very easily.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that was that,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: and then later,
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: a series of circumstances and the years went by,
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I became the director, the president of the whole thing.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And part of my work, a very small part of my work, was to write these
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: articles every month.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I said, I'm not going to get a—the guy asked, he said, you want me to help?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: You'd like to help?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he even said, I'd probably screw it up for you.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because I wanted to write it myself.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Then I definitely want you to
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: do it.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I got lots of affirmation for that.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the people that had known the other guy had a ghostwriter and you don't,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: all of that affirmed me.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then I read a couple of books on it that kind of showed this is
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: the way to do it well.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I decided I wanted to be a writer.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be a writer.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now it was on the side because I had other things to do, but I was writing it that way.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I wrote a book.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: The book wasn't my book.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's my book in that I wrote it, but it was somebody else's story.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't ghostwritten.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Both of our names are on the title.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But he would talk to me, and I'd write it in his voice as if he was to
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: write it.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a book.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, you've got a book.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then you think, OK, I guess I am a writer.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: But the way you ask the question, how long?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: When did you have that?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: The questions we asked in our previous cohort.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, what is burning in you that was probably there as a child?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you can identify that.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's very telling.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, that is who I am.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's been there the whole time.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I can see where, even as a child, I was doing it.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: How did that work itself out in your childhood?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I can only remember one instance.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was probably eight, and I decided I wanted to do a little newspaper.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, all I had was a piece of typing paper,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: which I pulled it in half, and that made it four pages.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I probably had a little typewriter and handwriting,
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: and it was kind of graphics, too,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: which is another thing,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: because I'm a graphic designer,
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: and a publication designer, and there it was, a little publication.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so little drawings and pictures, whatever I did.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I made a little layout.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I had one copy.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: There were no photocopiers in those days.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had one copy.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I said, what do I do with this?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to sell it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Who do I sell it to?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's gone.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote up there, five cents a read.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I passed it around to my family, and they got a kick out of it.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Especially my uncle.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Five cents a read?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: How many words?
• 6:25
  I don't know.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not a big deal, and not even a thing to remember particularly.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: But in the context of asking myself this question, What was in me very early?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's an example.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how were you wired?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I became a publication designer.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I became an editor.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I became a book designer.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I became a writer.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: All those things.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Painting came later.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a painter now, but I saw all these other things.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Did you – so it sounds like the love of writing really got cultivated
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: when you became the president of Wycliffe and you were –
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not yet.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's why there was another outlet for it.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: This book that I wrote was before that.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, okay.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when that love got cultivated.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, even before that.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be a writer,
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: and this friend of mine who I spend time with every day,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: we were living in Papua New Guinea.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was a Bible translator.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: He lived out in the boonies.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: But part of the time, he lived there on the center where I lived, and he sought me out.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted a friend.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's a great guy.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're friends today, although he lives a long ways away.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we would spend time together every day, go for a walk, pray.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And during one of those sessions, I'd say, hey, Neil, you're a storyteller.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And your story only goes as far as your given audience.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: You speak here, you speak there, you're a good speaker.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next time, you've got another story.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So they don't go very far.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: They should be known to the world.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You should write a book, I said.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: He said, yeah, I'm going to write a book.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like I have nothing else to do besides he's not an aspiring writer.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'll write it.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll write that book.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: You tell me the stories, I'll write them, and you will have a book.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Am I answering the question you asked?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot what it was.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's how that started.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's how that started.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that was the point I was making.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I already wanted to be a writer and was doing writing,
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: but nobody was considering me a writer.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: One time I wrote a great thing for somebody that needed it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: She lost her husband in a terrible accident, and I wrote the letter for her.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great letter.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And people saw it, they saw that, gee, she's a writer.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then they realized, oh, actually, but still.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: She is a ghost writer.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So my boss at that time thanked me for it, and he found out, because I wasn't advertising it.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: But his compliment was left-handed, I thought.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: He said, oh, you're a good writer, especially since you're not a writer.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, okay.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: of an insult.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what he was saying is that wasn't my identity.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was there doing another job.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that was my job.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So he was just using that.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was a left brain right then.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was a PhD in linguistics.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a left brain?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, he was a smart guy.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: But that was his compliment.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're a good writer even though you're not a writer.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, when are you a writer?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, this was another thing that goes along with it.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was a linguistics organization.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people were linguists.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was supportive.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: But you got all levels of them, too.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: You got the smart ones.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: You got the ones that are doing it because it's part of the work.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that they want to do it, but you got to do it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so they are self-doubting sometimes, and they get help from the smart ones.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: They have a whole system for that, and it's a very good system, by the way.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the chief ones, the architect of the whole thing, would give these pep talks.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: He says, look, what does a linguist do?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: You think you're not a linguist, not a real linguist?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: What does a linguist do?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: He does language stuff.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what are you doing?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're a linguist.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Quit dodging it.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I take the same thing in other things.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I say the same thing with the writer.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: What does the writer do?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's a writer.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not your job.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing other things.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's true.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm doing this.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: That means I'm doing it.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in time, that could grow and might grow.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on how much you put into it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this particular book, It came out of the same group.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: At the beginning of the year, I challenged this all.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do a one-year goal, everybody.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Write it down, whatever it is.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote, because I have to answer these questions myself.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like I pre-think it.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: I pre-think the question, but I don't think I pre-think the answer.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm doing the same thing everybody's doing.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Write it down.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Think of something.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: OK. Write it down.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, well, I should be writing again.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: I write now and then, but it doesn't go anywhere.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not serious about it.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Get serious.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Write a book.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm going to write a book.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be this year.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started thinking, well, on what?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know it.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I tried a few things.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote a few articles.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: This could fit with something.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it was too diffused.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't under a certain topic.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a through line.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was just random inspiration.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I can do that.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they're there in my computer and stashed away.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Lots like that.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then I thought,
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: then I came up with this notion,
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: how to get anything done,
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: which is kind of a good one in an easy way, because we're all dealing with it.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll start writing on that.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I did,
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: and I would write an article a day,
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: in the morning, first thing, or almost first thing.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd come up here or wherever and get my computer and I'd have a title.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had a list of titles because I could just one day or as I get ideas I put in
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: the list.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll get to that one.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Which one I want today, I think I'll take that one.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I started writing them.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're short.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I could do them in fifteen minutes or thirty.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, first draft.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Later on somebody proofread them for me and found the errors.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't that many and then I fixed those.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I started putting it into a book form,
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: which I'm doing now, and releasing a chapter which you've helped me with.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, early on I thought, now who is my audience for this?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sort of it's everybody, but that's broad.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the audience of this same group.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like as if it's these same people who are self-starters and trying
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: to get something done on their own.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you have a job and you know what you have to do because you've got to do it.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you have a boss.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a sailor, you don't think about how to get something done.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You get your job done and don't think about it, and that's how it is for a lot of people.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So this book is more for the creative that don't have to do it but would like
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: to do it, and there's lots against it.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of malaise, lots of excuses, lots of other things to get in the way, all that stuff.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm dealing with all that.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the hope is to cut through that with these.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they're kind of written as little devotionals as it were.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: You read it, oh yeah, okay, now I know.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Get with it.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Get to work.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they're written kind of cleverly, you know, meant to be.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: No,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think even the ones that I've read so far have been helpful in the season that I'm
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: in around thinking through whether it's inspiration or experience.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because it seems like the main inspiration for a lot of the titles and meditations
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: that you've been writing are directly derived from the experience that you've had
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: in life.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now listen to this.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: It came this morning on a text.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Pill.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Who is a very fine artist.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he's showing at the Laguna Festival of Arts, as Ann is.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a jury process.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And at a certain point, they try to clear it out.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: They take about 40% out so that other people can come in.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's their process.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you get kicked out, you kind of think, eh, that's not my work.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So he writes to me today.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he says...
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Christina.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: The festival wished me luck on my next endeavors.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I ranked 108.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Puzzling since I thought I'd showed my best work.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a mystery.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: But your writing, Untacking, encouraged me last night.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's on the blog list or whatever, you know, the subset.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's the piece that I was thinking of too.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Untacking, and that one is about using the sailing metaphor.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: When you're sailing into the wind, you can't sail into the wind.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your goal is there, but you can't get there if the wind is coming away.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: You go this way, you go this way.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's tacky.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you're getting there, but it doesn't look like you're getting there.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're just zigzagging there.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he read that article,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: and it helped him in this context when he realized,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: oh, my goal is there, and I can't get this straight.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I was blessed by that.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think, I mean,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: obviously,
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of the human experience, we do things because we want feedback on them.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's great to get feedback that is constructive and encouraging.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: But this is the kind of thing that's in the book.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anything can discourage you.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, especially for people that are self-starters and doing their own thing.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then you don't do it unless you can somehow get beyond it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, painting and writing, I was thinking about this as I was preparing for this conversation.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: and I'd be curious to get your thoughts on if you agree with this,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: but like painting and writing to me are ways of seeing.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like to your point,
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: you were talking about writing as being something linear that you kind
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: of put down one word at a time.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's one brushstroke, but maybe it's not as linear.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think writing can be that's different than painting?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're both storytelling.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: People kind of said, how can you have two gifts that are so different?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, I don't think they're that different.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're just different skills.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: But their mentality is similar.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And one is spatial, one is linear.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's right brain, left brain.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because spatial, you can see it right away.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: There it is, there it is.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I saw it.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you didn't see it very well.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's good, it's worth looking at longer.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the longer you look at it, if it really is good, then you're going to see more.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that too.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, it begins in space.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: In space, we see it immediately.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Linear takes longer.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's line upon line, thought upon thought.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's easier to find Customers for the visual because it's so easy.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: The other one, you have to invest in it a little bit.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: You have to stay with it.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have to see where it is.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: How's this story going to be?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it going to be worth my reading?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is it going to be long?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: If it looks like it's long, I may not even start.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: All those things we deal with.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because somebody on Facebook would say, I hope you have time to read my long post on this.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, I don't.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he warned me.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: He had to stay with it for a little while.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I might get back to it because he's a friend of mine.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's got things to say.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm just saying it takes more commitment on the, quote, client to write something.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it better be good.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it better start good.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you hook them.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: All those kind of things.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the skill.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them require skills.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're just this different set, better skills.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Another question in the same vein,
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think painting and writing is just as much about what you don't say
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: as what you do say with the brushstrokes that you're doing or the words
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: that you're not saying.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can overpaint.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a problem.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you can overwrite.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're explaining too much,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: you're talking too much,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: you're not respecting the reader's intelligence to fill in the parts.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Same with our painting, both of them.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: If the reader or looker can be also using his own mind to kind of fill it in,
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: they like it better.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: We like it better.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're engaged.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: How do you find the tension in building a project like How to get anything done with
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: that idea in mind of being strategic in not saying things.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I can answer that question.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a teacher.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: If I was, I might have that thought through.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's more like you know it when you see it.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's a gut instinctual.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: You've gone too far.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're telling a joke and then explaining it.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you explain it, you screw it up.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you expect the person to get it, if they say they don't get it, they'll explain it.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if you say right away explain it, you've ruined it.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've overdone it.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the answer that I was thinking through was also like in editing
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: where good writing is just as much about and sometimes even more about editing
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: than it is about writing the first draft too
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: where it's like you end up clarifying things more by taking things out.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: An old boss of mine would always say simple is hard.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: That idea of just clarifying again and again and again and refining.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I like that answer that you had too.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: It makes sense with painting because when you see it, you know it.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know you've done enough when you put that last stroke on and you think,
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, okay, that's it.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it different for you?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, it should be that.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it should be.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people ask, when do you know you're finished?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: My old joke about it was, when I've completely screwed it up,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: then I know I've overdone it.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you learn as you go not to do that.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it's true.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I start putting strokes in that aren't helpful anymore, okay, this is not helping.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's sort
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: of my signal.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Does your writing surprise you?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, sometimes you don't know what you think until you write it.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, a lot of it was true in these articles for this book.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had a concept, but as I wrote, other things would come.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And endings would be clever that I didn't see when I started.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it does sometimes.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's a delight of it.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, a famous fiction writer, Christian, what's her name?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: But she wrote, she said that about her writing.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: She said, how do I know what I think until I write it?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like my process with writing is oftentimes like a waterfall of words or word vomit.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then like a big piece of the process is editing it down
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: to something that's actually digestible.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in this process, it's...
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have these three or four questions.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: After I give them a little talk, this time it was brain hemispheres.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Last time it was something else.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's always something.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then I go and do these questions.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they're ready now.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: They got their book or their 3x5 card, their pencil, their pen, and they're ready.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: I said, here's the question.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now don't think.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Don't think.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Just start writing.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: No writer's block here.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: No scratching your head.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they understand that now.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right away, go at it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the process, the thoughts will come to you.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you would define writer's block as thinking too much?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so, yeah.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I give writer's block right at the first sentence.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the first sentence is the
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: hardest.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like staring at the blank page is crippling and you can just become complacent?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because a blank page...
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like a maze where it goes that way or else you go back and go this way.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's more like a blank.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can go any direction you want.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's too hard.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: You have to narrow it down.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I haven't had it in a long time because I figured out how to get beyond it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I know how it can be.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't allow it.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because the first sentence you're editing like crazy.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it this way and you can do it this way.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're right.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, I can't do it.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, do something.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you just start and maybe the good stuff won't come to page two
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: and you'll throw page one away.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: But that's how you got there though.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Totally, yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: The process and the journey of arriving at some sort of answer,
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: like you have to go through the messiness of,
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I feel like there's so many parallels between art.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so many ways to get there.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, GPS is a great example.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I use it as an example of God's guidance also in that.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: GPS, you tell them where you want to go and it says, here's your best route.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you get off somehow.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: You run an errand, you get lost, somehow you're over there now.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be over here.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: It just reprograms from there.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, okay, we'll go there.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go there from here.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of how it is in writing.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: You start and you'll get there another way.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So trust that, is all I'm saying.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's garbage and you got another way, okay.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's if you have kind of a direction that you're going.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: But even if you don't have a direction, you're saying like, Starting is a direction.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think you need to have a direction.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: You sort of stop and ask yourself, what is exactly what I want to say?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, give myself a theme in one sentence.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll remember, oh yeah, that's what I was doing.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Before I have all these other thoughts were distracting like crazy.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And for this project, it's how to get anything done.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then pulling from stories of your life, basically, to get there.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I'm doing that, and it's fun.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And now I've stopped doing it because I finished it.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: I did 100 articles, and I thought, I mean, where am I going to stop?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And a book can't be.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I stopped, although I still have 50 more titles
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: that I could go back to if I want to.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to make a book out of it that you can hold.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm publishing it.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: One chapter at a time on Substack,
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: just to get it out there,
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: for which I'm very grateful to have an audience that's now reading it a little bit
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: at a time.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: But if I do the whole book that way, it'd be 100 weeks.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: By that time, we'll have other ideas, lots of other ideas.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to publish it in hard copy and maybe in hardback.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: For Christmas, I'm telling myself now.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's a quick timeline.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Which really means for Thanksgiving because you've got to publish it and
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: then advertise it so that people can buy it for Christmas.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: When did you make that decision?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, about last week.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I got so many other projects to work on.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have Boku commissions right now, not Boku, but I have a number of them.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Any number is a big deal.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to be busy.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then I have a bunch of trips,
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: like I have a bunch,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: a big one next week, and then I'm back for two weeks, then I'm gone for two weeks.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Has writing ever repaired something between you and someone else?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes and no.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can think of one example.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was the chairman of a board of a church that was struggling.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was many years ago.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was struggling because the pastor was a new pastor and he wasn't a good fit.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And yet he was too—we just got him and realized, oh, this was probably a mistake.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, not everybody saw it that way.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So now you had a church that was sort of divided among it.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime the church was weakening and I was the chairman.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now as chairman I would lead the meeting that means I had to be neutral.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't take a side as chairman.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I had a side.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be careful about it.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a major dilemma for me and it went on for a long time.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I found The few people I could talk to—well,
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I could talk to people that agree with me—but we had no solution
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: to what we were going to do with this dilemma.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: I found that writing helped me.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: I would begin to journal it.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I called it a journal,
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: but I'd write down what's going on and my thoughts, and I would do this ongoingly.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't show that to anybody.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't for anybody.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So to answer your question, It helped me.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it helped me with that other person and persons.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: But they never saw it.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: A way to clarify.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Writing clarifies.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Writing clarifies.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a saying, writing makes an exact man.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then you write it down, you know, it clarifies your thoughts.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well that's been my journey with writing.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: It forces you to qualify the random thoughts that are swimming around all the time.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I encourage the group, every time I remind them, keep your journal.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And none of them do I do it.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not a journal of daily,
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have that too,
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: it's small, just a couple lines, but I did that day, but that's a different journal.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is more like, what am I thinking about?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: What's the progress I'm on?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, something to check in with.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and if nobody else is asking me that, but I want to keep track of it.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Is that me?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's you.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: You're a popular guy.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not usually.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Only when there's a reason not to.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: We just see if it's urgent.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're all good.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a new phone?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's old.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number eight.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: I like it because it's so thin.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's nice.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: As someone, what would you tell someone in the middle of life who says they'll write eventually?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Would you give them an argument one way or another?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: I have a number of people that write now.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Who have great things to say, I say, you should be writing that.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's at least two,
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can think of my name this moment,
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: it seems like there's a third one too, that I have challenged.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not just said it once, but ask them again, are you doing it?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Can I see your table of contents?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that kind of thing.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they appreciate it.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: And they're moving it forward, they're doing it?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: One I know is,
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: she's been hesitant to come back to me,
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: because I think she's
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why, but I can suspect why.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: The challenger.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the other one, I don't think he started.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's very busy with other things, but he knows he has the stuff in him to say.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I will stay with him.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the answer is yes.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I know the struggle, because once you have it written, how do you get it out there?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: I got a number of books that don't go anywhere.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, it's so beautiful, you can self-publish it, but then what?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not that it's easy.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the whole thing, just to write it.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: The other part is to get it out there.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And because that's there,
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: and because I've experienced that enough times,
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: not successfully, that undermines my desire to write.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: I say, well, my father's not going to go anywhere, so don't do it.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's almost two different projects.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: The writing is its own thing,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: and the selling the writing,
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: whether you're actually selling it for money or distributing it in some way,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: that's a different project.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about it.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm an artist.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's the main thing right there among us.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: We paint like crazy.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do with it?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if you tell them what to do, and they
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: say, yeah, but I don't want to do that.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's not being an artist.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we struggle with that a lot.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think more, that's more in that field, actually.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, that's the, like,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: for lack of a better way of saying it,
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: the bastardization of, like, Oh, this pure art thing that I'm doing.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now I need to like figure out how to like,
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: if I want to keep doing it professionally or whatever,
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: or start doing it professionally,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: then I'm like also a business and business and art and creativity oftentimes are
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: at conflict with each other where it's like,
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: how do you,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: how do you find the through line of I'm passionate about telling this story
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: on this canvas or these words on this page,
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: but then like, I don't care about the outcome.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I want people to read it or to look at it and see it and appreciate it.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: But then if you're tying metrics like, well,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I have to pay for my mortgage as well for it, then that's a different conversation.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Every episode,
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: I try and get the last person that was on to ask a question for the next person
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: that was on.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Next person that's going to be on?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: So the last guest had this question for you.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Did they know it
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: was going to be me?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that's part of the joy of this is it's usually a very,
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes it's a completely random question and then sometimes it's Something
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: that they're working through and trying to wrestle through on their own.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: But their question is,
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: what is a constant mindset or way of working through your life that has been either
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: a superpower or a hindrance to you in kind of your growth as a person?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Superpower.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: My superpower.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a word we never used until recently.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: What did you use to use?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: What's your strength?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Superfire comes from the comic books.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think it's communication.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a communicator.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I have to defend that when I talk too much to my wife who's trying
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: to do something else and I want to talk to her.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: What level of editing are you doing in the moment?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all,
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say that all of our gifts and all of our strengths and all of us,
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: everything about us, comes with God first.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have anything that he doesn't also have first.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: How else could it be?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's with everything.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're made in his image, right?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole world and the whole universe that's true.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Cam, Cam, Skyler, Cam.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: When you see it like that, it's hard to call him a him
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: because it's too big.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Him is limited.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: But there it is.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're created in his image,
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: which really, by his telling us, this is what you're made of.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're like me.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: You want to know what I'm like of yourself without the sin.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't have all that he has.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: We have some sliver.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And other people have another sliver.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I say, okay, I'm a communicator, and I write, I paint, and I speak.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those are my strengths.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now speaking was not always a strength.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was a major weakness, but I overcame it.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't speak anymore because nobody asks me anymore.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I can, and people give me good grades for it.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: So those are my three things, and they're all communication as his base.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: You have a breadth of different skills,
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: but you've gone deep in those things because you're wired that way.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a communicator, and God is a communicator.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: You see, that's my part of him.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: That we trace back to the source because God is a communicator.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: He wants us to know certain things, and he's told us in different ways.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's telling us as we go.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: In different ways.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's not all that he is, but that is what he is as well.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I say I have good resource, good source of that.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do it as well, okay?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that comes from him.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now what holds me back?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, sin, of course.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's certain months that kind of get in the way too often.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: They don't seem to go away easily.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't have to go further because everybody knows what I'm talking about in their context.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have that.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that screws us up.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Especially if it gets out of control and takes over.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, even from a communication standpoint, I think that can be a strength and a weakness, too.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Where it's like, even in communicating...
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: How are we communicating in a way that,
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: and of course, over time, I think you learn and you grow and you mature in that.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're first testing those muscles out,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's more stumbling and more challenge.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, Satan wants to screw everything up.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if he sees the strength, let's go work on that one.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make that a weakness.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's out there.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have our own lust, our own heart.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as James says, it comes from ourselves.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: So all that is there.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to go into it much deeper because I don't need to.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I just confess it.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: That screws it up.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it screws it up in everybody's life in as much as it's let to be.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one thing.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get off of that and turn the page.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing is self-doubt.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: You don't do it because of 10 reasons.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred reasons.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: This would be in my book too.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Probably in a number of places because it comes out in different ways.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: You don't believe yourself.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're not good at it.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: You always got bad grades.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: How can you be smart now?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: All that.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're narratives you tell yourself throughout your life.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a few fail.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: You failed last time.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can't forget that one.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you think you're going to fail again.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: You don't try it.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: All these things screw it up.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you won't even start.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you start, you get discouraged pretty early.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's two now.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Another third would be just energy, which we take for granted when we have it, but we don't.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing happens.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the time I'm an energetic person.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the few times, a few periods I should say, when it has been sapped.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: For example, two or three summers ago I was hit with AFib.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: I never had that or heard of it.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: But your heart is irregular.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been adjusted since and I'm back on track.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: But during that time I was on the couch for a month.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't get up.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd get up, walk to the bathroom, come back down and take another nap.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when I wake up from the nap, I was just as tired as I went down.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: I had no energy.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: But not only did I have no energy physically, I had no energy mentally.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: They go together.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when you don't have energy in the physical,
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: you're also creative, you don't want to do it, you have no interest.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: So keeping the energy up, somehow.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's basic.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: You realize, oh, that's what life is.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's energy.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what you say about a person.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Look at that person that doesn't do anything.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's dead.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: He's watching TV all day.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's just dead.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we say about a person or about ourselves.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, but when we're up and doing things, that's when we're alive.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're meant to be doing something.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's life.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's a lively person.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's a lively person.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's into it.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's the beauty of something like that.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: So having your energy, and I'm generally energetic,
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: but I also know that at that time, I'm getting older, and you slow down.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you slow down.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really want to, but it comes over you.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's how life is.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: So sin...
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Self-confidence, keeping that up, and keeping your energy up, those are enough for now.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's more than enough.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you're slowing down.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like,
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: even from what you were just saying,
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: the rest of the year is going to be pretty wild.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's another thing.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I set due dates for myself.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: I used to work at a magazine, and we had due dates.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: We had to get that thing out on time, and I was good at it.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Better at it than anybody else, so I kept them on time, too.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because I became sort of the managing editor by default, even though I was the art director.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because of that strength of communication.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I had, like,
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: get your article to give me on time,
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: because I've got to be on time, and I can't do it until you do yours.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I kept everybody going, and they appreciated it.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: But if nobody was there to do that, it got sloppy.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm late again.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me about your excuses.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just give it to me.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I do that to myself.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can't take on a project and say, when will I have this done by?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and then it's done and then you can move on to the next thing.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's one of the reasons.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: I consider myself, you know, I like to get ideas, which means, and ideas bring energy with them.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Which is pretty interesting.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Which means you want to do it.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm a do it now type personality.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Which means I better have my slate clear.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I have too much stuff have to get done, I won't get to do the new thing.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm always doing what I'm thinking.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: I love closed projects for that reason.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Then you tie a nice bow on it and then it's done and then you can move on.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: I resonate with that as being an idea person who's excited about the next thing
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: and wants to get to the next thing,
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: but also realizes I'm in the middle of the thing right now.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a question for our next guest?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: I will in a minute, but I just want to say one more thing to that.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: The question that I asked the group last Saturday was,
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: given that you're a right brain and left brain person,
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: What will you do?
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little bit more defined than that.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember how it was.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: But then I had to write it to myself.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: So how would I answer that?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, I know what I'm going to do.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take five minutes every morning with a blank slate,
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: blank piece of paper,
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: my notebook,
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: and come up with an idea in any area
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: just to exercise my creative mind.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily a problem-solving for that moment, although that can qualify.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: But just think.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been doing that all this week.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a hard time limiting it to five minutes
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: because I start thinking.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: The five minutes, that's the blank page thinking before you start writing something.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: And new things come out.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe they get done and maybe they don't because there's too many.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Life is still limited in how much time you have.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to...
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Expand my imaginative mind.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: Has there been an idea this week that you can share that you've been surprised by
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: and excited by?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, about five or six because that's how many days I've done it.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every single day, there's just an epiphany.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then somebody else challenged me and said, ah, you should do some mixed media pieces.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, okay, well, that's an idea.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been doing that all of a sudden.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like the one you showed me outside.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, completely different.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, anyway,
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: I just mentioned it as a thing to do rather than my particular solutions
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: because I keep on doing this.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: For the next guy,
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think I would ask him,
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: this is an easy one, well, an easy question, maybe not an easy answer.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: What will your life look like ten years from now?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a big one.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is a big one.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: If it's five years, I can say five years too, it's almost easier.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Ten years is really far, but in ten years it could be really different.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Five years you think it's going to be pretty much like the same but better.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is the question what do you think it's going to look like or what do you hope it's like?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we can answer it either way once, he or she.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to leave it at that.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to say what I was about to say about the five years.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think the five-year plan is almost doable.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can always say, well, I'm making this much income now.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: I can make that much income in five years.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this much production.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've got one book behind me.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can do two books in five years.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost doable by saying I'll do more of what I'm doing.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Ten years, who knows?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: There could have been changes you don't see coming.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: But then what changes, what might you like to see come?
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: That are not even on your track right now.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: That could be in the 10 years.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because then it takes it out far enough that you don't see the limitations.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Five years, you think, yeah, I can't do two more books in five years.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: I could do maybe one.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you're thinking that way.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: You take the 10 years, that is off.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: So ask that person that
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: and tell me what they answer.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll send it to you.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to hear what they say.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's always the joy of,
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: this experiment to me is about recording these conversations so that in
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: the future I can look at them and be like, oh,
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm remembering the little moments and details of my life because so much
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: of life I think is kind of brushed over in broad strokes when you think about
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: the important moments and you kind of solidify those in your memory a bit more
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: but there's so much that you forget about.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to remember those little details or at least have a way to remember them.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I find these conversations so valuable.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very grateful for the time that you and I have spent together and just
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: the generosity and availability that you've given to Pour into me and to have
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: that conversation ongoing.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't take it lightly and I realize that it's something that is super valuable in
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: a very different way than I think a lot of the world sees value.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm grateful for that.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I appreciate it.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad we've come to know each other in the last year or two.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: We came to know each other through the group that we're talking about.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: You became a member of it and you still are.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've got a very full schedule now with a new child,
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: and you've helped me a couple of times, a couple of intervals.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them wanted to help me on my art,
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: which I didn't need that kind of help as it turned up,
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: but we talked about it for a while and it was very useful.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw during that period, because you asked me questions.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: That I needed to respond to so that you could understand where I was going better.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well I thought the questions were very insightful.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very impressed.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I was happy to answer them because who asks you those questions?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that way too.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a number of email exchanges.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was off on a painting trip.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: I remember I was up north beside the point.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean we weren't doing it face to face.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: We were doing it on email exchanges.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was impressed with your astuteness.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: That even though you didn't know my field exactly, you had very insightful questions.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I see that now too.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that was good.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next go around, but I didn't need Substack.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't see how Substack could help my art business.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that then went away.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: But then later on,
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: I put my writing up top and I started thinking,
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think Substack could help me on this side.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I looked it up and said, oh yeah, Substack is for writers.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then I thought, who do I know that no subsides?
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that earlier conversations,
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: and I gave you a call,
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: and then you came over,
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: and we had a couple of meetings, and then a couple of regular meetings.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: We met every week for a couple hours a week, and you got me started.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: I got me to the point where now I'm started,
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: and you pushed me off from the shore, and I'm sailing.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not using you that way now.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: But all of that, It was very useful to me, not to mention enjoyable.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what you're doing,
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: you have the right questions, you have a good knowledge, you have good insights.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to affirm that.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you show up on time.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not everybody does, but if I say 8.15, you're going to be at 8.15.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah,
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the reasons that I resonate with your story and you've been so giving
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: and kind of sharing a lot of your story is that,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, I like to be a no-nonsense person.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: You are also like that, which I think is unique for a creative.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think when I stereotypically think of creatives,
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think of people that are sort of head in the clouds, wonder kind of.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: Absent-minded professory types and not a lot of creatives.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the things that's most inspiring about you as a person in general is
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: the amount of stuff that you've gotten done.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's why this project that you're working on now is aptly named.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also inspiring to be around someone like that that is,
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: they practice what they preach and they are willing to kind of step into
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: the experiment of doing the hard work to make it happen or to learn from
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: the experience.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Years ago I had a boss that said,
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: he's the only artist that I know that doesn't have an artistic temperament.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he meant it as a compliment.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought, well, it's probably because I'm not really an artist.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I took it.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: You told yourself that.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's saying that.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that is my strength, to not have an artistic temperament, because I'm not an artist.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I was an art director at that time.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was a graphic designer, and I took that seriously as an art form.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was big on design and all that.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitely an art form.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then later on, now I complete.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I do.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a painter.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I say that.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: But that was one of the lectures to the group, too, a couple of times ago.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say, okay, we're a Christian cohort, Christian creative.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's emphasize the Christian part.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Be a man of your word.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the Bible said, let your yes be yes and your no be no.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: When you take on a project, do it.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: When you say you're going to have it done by that time, have it done by that time.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't make excuses.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if it's legitimate excuses, that's different.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's a habit, Or you're hiding by, oh, I'm an artist.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, don't do that.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, the simplicity of yes and no is,
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: that I think in its own way is a very huge strength that a lot of people don't live
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: into.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then miscommunications and expectations fall through and fracture and all
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: that kind of stuff.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I'm grateful for this time.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm grateful for you and our friendship.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you for being on.