“But your work is so valuable,” people say. “It would be a shame not to find a way to publish it.”
Valuable to whom? To whom would the value of my labor accrue? And not to be too petty, but if it were so valuable, then why wouldn’t anyone pay me a stable living wage to do it?”
If it’s so valuable (or, “if I’m so smart”) then why can’t I pay rent with the knowledge/ wisdom/experience? If I had a week’s salary every time I asked this question after failing to land yet another job, well, I’d be pretty well off.
For each automated rejection email in my inbox, or every time I don’t even get an interview, or I’m told “oh, we’re not hiring for that position anymore” (after being told the company wants to fly me to their office for a few days), well… I just double down on my personal projects (like Skull Toaster) and go for a run.
Often I’m asked about people’s ideas, and this is what I usually say:
Don’t ask, just start.
Do it often, make your mistakes, and keep learning. You need to be child-like in your zeal for the idea that you have.
Make 10 instances of your “thing,” then get some feedback. Send it to people who might enjoy it, and see if they share it. If they don’t, DON’T ASK THEM WHY. Make another thing. And then another. Make them until they’re so good your friends are finally asking, “WHEN IS THE NEXT ONE?!”
But don’t seek approval before you even start. Just start it. Make it, stay busy with it, and refine it. Solicit opinions from people you trust, but don’t spend a lot of time monitoring comments sections or writing emails or having mega long conversations. That’s time you could be spending working on your thing.
Remember, you’re just starting something. You need a thing before you can really have conversations about your project!
So get busy working on your thing.
Wait, how?
Guess what – that’s for you to decide! Do you buy a domain name, then secure the 14 social media networks with that name first? Publish weekly? Release something every month? That’s up to you!
Make 10 of your things. From there you’ll be nailing down your process. The busy work, the technical parts, the images that you’ll use, tone, maybe working with other people – there are so many moving parts! Figure all of that out behind the scenes, quietly, before you’re bumbling and stumbling around in front of 1,000 people a day. Oops.
But work on it everyday, and get something out there as often as you can. It’ll force you to trim the fat from your process, and you’ll learn that quicker by a putting out a lot of stuff, rather than sitting on something until it’s “perfect.” You don’t want your production to be so arduous that it takes you weeks or months or years. That much time between releases, at least to start, and you’ll miss out on learning valuable lessons.
At this stage in the game you need those lessons. Those lessons add up. And while this thing you’re working on now might not work out, you’ve learned a bunch, so it was never a waste of time. Just take those lessons now and apply them to your next idea. Go!
This piece originally posted on Patreon on April 3, 2016.
In 2013 I was in Nashville, TN and hanging out with a photographer friend. He was helping a friend who needed photos so I tagged along, just to see how these sorts of things worked.
Not being a photographer, and only loosely understanding megapixels and such, I was shocked to see some of his cameras. I would think it’d just be super expensive digital cameras, but then I saw cheap 35mm point-and-click cameras.
Wait, what?
Turns out that you don’t always need fancy gear to make great things.
It reminds me of a time visiting a guitar shop, and this kid was sitting there riffing quite loudly (and annoyingly), all the while talking about GEAR. The “best” pickups, and the “worst guitars.”
Sure.
There’s this progression: as a beginner you covet the new gear. If you have the new, the fancy, the shiny, and high-end, well then you’ll sound better, or make better photographs.
But after many years, with enough skill, you find you don’t need expensive gear. There’s more to making beautiful things than how much you’re able to pay for the tools to make them.
This piece originally posted on Patreon on March 28, 2016.
On a visit to Seth Meyer’s show a year ago (the video clip is no longer available for some reason), Meyer’s explains that he and his fellow SNL friends watched Billy’s videos back in the day. Billy had no idea, but found out many years later.
Creating and publishing something for years without knowing if anyone is really paying attention is difficult. It’s easy to look at the standard metrics like pageviews, plays, or RTs, and base your success on that. For validation. But please, you are so much more than that!
Never lose sight of the real people behind those metrics, and then never refer to them as metrics, or eyeballs, or traffic. Ever. They are lovely people, and some of them have just never emailed you yet telling you how amazing you are.
Hard work isn’t a guaranteed ticket to stardom and appearing on late night TV shows, but you spend the time and do it the right way. Treat every video, every song, every appearance as if Amy Pohler might watching.
This post appeared on my Patreon on March 12, 2016, but I’m posting it here because I’m deleting those old posts. It also had this note saying “This post originally posted on Jul 21, 2015, but had been modified for Patreon.”
I remember December 29th, 2009. I was checking email around 12:30am while laying down to sleep when I got the news that Avenged Sevenfold Drummer James’The Rev’ Sullivan passed away. A few emails later we had a post up at 1:15am.
This year, on Christmas Eve, I saw some Tweets that Netflix was down. That meant some editors and bloggers had to mobilize. A post had to be written! Hurry!
The same happens with my celeb / pop writer friends during the holidays, hoping that no movie stars get caught kissing someone that ain’t their significant other.
In 2009 this worked. It works today, late in 2012. But it can’t continue. There’s too much. When everything is a story, nothing is a story.
Over time, our digital footprints add up and create a cyber world that starts to take on some of that very same messiness. Change a font or a layout or where something is, and it bothers us. You can take advantage of that need for comfort by making your digital work a little less sterile, a bit less squared off. Seth Godin
“I’ve stumbled upon Lain Sellar and Zoe Veness and find their work amazing. It’s something about hand drawn, black and white, stuff that gets me.”
That’s the logic behind the design of this blog. It’s not quite hand-drawn (like this piece by Zoe), but it’s not glossy by any means. There are plenty of web designers out there that can do slick. I want to do more “less squared off.”
I was interviewed by Tim Harcourt-Powell, for his blog Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.
Sure, I’ll be 36 soon and should really “get my act together” and “get a real job,” but for all I know I could die at 37, and now, at least I have a bunch of cool robots that I drew, new friends I’ve made in different cities, and seen more of America than many of my peers. And I’m cool with that.
You know, I’ve wondered if I should write about my personal life here, as I try to use this site as a way to showcase my services as a web professional.
What would potential clients think?
Then I thought, well, I’d rather not work for a bureaucratic workplace, sitting in meetings all day with a dated dress-code and a time clock in the break room. And I’d rather work with clients who feel the same way. I like working with clients who appreciate sweat and grime with their project. People who’ve become who they are through hard work and doing their best to color outside the lines.
I quit my job back in February with about $7000 in my savings account, the most I’ve ever had. It’s easier to do that when drawing a salary from an internet company based in NYC and you’re not paying rent, cable bills, etc.
Now it’s seven months later and my savings aren’t quite yet depleted, but some credit card debt has piled up (NY city taxes, dental work, bike, travel) and my income is nowhere near the “good ole days” of running Noisecreep.
But it’ll work out. I might be broke, but I’m happy.
UPDATE 2/4/2024: Taken by my pal Bill Meis, at a restaurant in Manhattan somewhere. I’m guessing that one on 14th street, which was near the office at Alisha worked at.
