From The Archives: From Day Job to Creative Fulfillment

You can have a thousand good ideas and still feel stuck if you don’t trust yourself enough to finish one. 

I’m James Victore, and this week I answer a listener question from Dan that hits a nerve for almost every creative: why do we start personal projects with fire and then quietly abandon them?

This is fresh from the archives, where we bring back episodes from the past and let them shine once again. Enjoy! 

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Transcript

Paid for Doing What You Love

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, let's do this thing. Cue the fake music? Well, hot damn howdy, hello, and how are you doing? I'm James Victoria, and this is The Right Questions. This is The Right Questions, the weekly podcast dedicated to help you get paid to do what you love. And stay as sane as possible in the process. I say as sane as possible because you gotta be a little crazy to be creative, right? And that's kind of what we're talking about today, this idea of how crazy do you have to be to be creative? Because you know, you're we're all born wildly creative. That's the first line of fact perfection, right? We're born wildly creative. And then we want to get paid for that shit. And my man Dan had some really great questions that he's forwarded to me. So, Dan, thank you so much for sending in the questions. And by the way, dude, I am overjoyed, first of all, to see you here, but to see your progress since we've met and since we started working together. I am super proud of you, dude. Keep it going. So Dan sends in a multiple question question, a multiple part question, an ABCD of questions, a one, two, three, four, quite frankly, of questions. And it goes a little like this. He says, I have started and stopped many personal projects over time. Very few have reached the finish line. I hear that, brother. I hear that. So here are the four parts of his questions. One, is this some sort of creative ADD, fear of the unknown? Or straight up boredom? Right? So that's the question of why. Number two, how do I measure which projects I should follow through on? Question three, a doozy, how do I keep momentum? And question four, another part he says and in question four he says another part of the live discussion today was about the imbalance of energy distribution between our work, you know, our day jobs, and personal projects. How do I convince myself that my work is just important, just as important as client work? Dan, excellent friggin' questions. And I'm gonna break them down like this. Here we go, let's break it down. So here's some answers. So number one, you said, is this some sort of creative ADD, fear of the unknown, or straight up boredom? These are good guesses, Dan. Great suggestions. And listen, we all, we all have our own reasons for holding our side hustle at arm's length. Right? We all have our own reason for not following through on our passion projects. And they are passion projects because we do not, our day job is not a passion project, right? So we all have our own reasons for, quite frankly, procrastinating. And procrastinating, remember, is the uh is the uh the evil twin of perfection. So you've got to be conscious of these things. Um we're not gonna go into this now, but the whole idea of being conscious, conscious of what stops us, right? Taking our subconscious thoughts, those pre-recorded voices in our heads, and making them conscious so we see them and go, I see why you're here. I don't have any need of you. Procrastination, I see what you're doing. You're you're you're putting all this distraction in my way. Or or you're putting all this research in my way, and I'm calling it work, but I'm not getting anything done. So you may go now, right? Super important. So your first your first notion was that it was some sort of creative ADD. Well, listen, quite frankly, ADD is a neurological condition, right? And the symptoms are inattention and distractability, right? Save that shit for your job. If you want to lose attention and be easily distracted, do it at work. Not for your passion project. For our personal projects, we should have a razor focus. And for our day jobs, we don't have that because it's an extended period, because it's a grace, because it's because it's quite frankly, um, because we're it's safe. We don't have that fire under our ass. And any of you who have a day job, especially if it pays well, I'm I I've got bad news for you. You've got a day job that pays well. You do not have that fire under your ass. If you were fired tomorrow, and I said, okay, well, you gotta make money doing what you love. Or go work at McDonald's, right? You would figure that shit out quickly. Right? So, but calling it creative ADD is like blaming yourself. And quite frankly, it's falling in love with your limitations, right? It's labeling them and falling in love with it, right? It's it's saying, I can't get my personal project done because I've got these other things going on, right? You're giving yourself excuses and and and and you're blaming yourself instead of following through with these things. You know? And there's a number of reasons that we do this. We do this because it's easier, right? You also say uh fear of the unknown. That's awesome. Yes, fear. It's always fear. That's the funny thing. The answer to all these things is it's always fear. But the right question, since that's the name of this show, the right question, one of many here, would be a fear of what? A fear of what, Dan? Is it fear of failure? Because fear of failure is actually the fear that those prerecorded voices in your head, remember your subconscious, they may be right. Right? You might you may be afraid of letting them down if you succeed. Or maybe they're right. Maybe you can't do it. Maybe you're not as talented. Maybe you should have become a lawyer. Or a doctor. We need a doctor in the family. Or maybe your fear is fear of success. Which is kind of like actually the fear of stepping up. Right? The fear of stepping up into your rightful role. That's why many of us think we have that fear of being on stage, is because we don't we don't think we deserve it. We don't deserve the adulation, we don't deserve the eyeballs. So fear of success is that, or fear of success is the fear of the critics that that you believe are going to come. Or possibly it's just the fear of doing the work. I mean, many of us deep inside just want to be lazy. Sorry, not sorry. But even that, even that is fear of confronting. You know, it's it's procrastinating, but fear of confronting doing the work. Oh, I gotta I gotta do this, and then I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta learn a new tool, and then I gotta go to the store and get supplies. You know, we give all ourselves a reason. It's not about being lazy. It's just our fear of confronting that. That's a fear of starting, right? Because starting is hard. So yes, you're right. Fear, but there are as many different fears as there are people listening right now. So the important thing is that we're able to really be a little self-r introspective, retrospective. Go and find these things about us. What is it that's holding us back? Right? And here's the big thing about this question altogether, Dan, and everybody else's. You know, you're asking, say if you're gonna put the pedal to the metal on your personal project, you're asking to get paid to do what you love. And that means putting it out into the forefront, right? Pushing it out into the world. But for many of us, who we are and what we love has no value to us. We hold it with little regard. Many of us don't respect our art or craft or skills. Or many times we don't even respect ourselves. Again, and that's just something that was given to us. I've got so many people I work with or coaching clients who are want to be um illustrators and artists and and want to work for themselves. And I talk to them, I say, well, tell me about your, tell me about your, you know, how'd you grow up? Why does that blah blah blah? Tell me about your parents, blah, blah, blah. And have a conversation and say, Oh, yeah, my parents always wanted me to be a lawyer. They pushed me for to be a lawyer, or, oh no, here's they would say, Oh, you're really good at drawing, you should be an architect. Right? So they're literally pulling out the boogeyman. And the boogeyman is the starving artist. Many of us grow up with that. Either no examples of artists in our lives, no examples of anybody who made a living creatively, or parents who are so afraid of us dying in a trailer, right, eating cat food on crackers, that they scared the shit out of us. They give us the boogeyman, which was the starving artist. Right? So now we have no, we don't hold our gift with any regard. We have no value to it, right? And that makes it weird for us because now we want to get paid for that. So the things that made us weird as a kid make us great today. We know that. That is a truth. So the things that make us weird as a kid is what we should be getting paid for. Not our ability to show up on time and punch a clock, not for our ability to fill out forms correctly. I mean, this list could go on, right? We should get paid, quite frankly, for being ourselves. And that is a rare privilege to get paid to do what you love because it takes work, it takes grit, it takes stamina, it takes a thick skin or even putting on a thick skin for a short time. It takes confidence or or or 20 seconds of confidence at times. It takes being yourself and practicing again and again. You know, I look back at what made me strong, strong enough to want to maintain my attitude of wanting to be an artist when I was reared in the military, and I've been labeled a rebel because of that. I wasn't a rebel. I just loved what I did. I just loved making and playing. And making goofy little drawings that people laughed at. And it takes grit and stamina and uh a strong constitution and consistency, which we'll talk about, to to do that as an adult. We do not have to follow the North Star. We are the fucking North Star. Right? But some of us, some of us forget that. So we take a job just to be near creativity, just to be close to it. Oh, I'm working in marketing. It's kind of creative. I'll tell you what, pretty near pretty near everybody, everybody wishes they were doing something else. I could walk through, I could walk through, uh, I could go through the grocery store and stop people. I could have a I'll put on a little a little silly suit and a microphone, right? And then I'll look look professional, maybe have somebody with a notepad next to me taking notes to make it look professional. And I'll stop, I should stop people and say, hey, I'm curious. My name is Jim Bob McGee, and I want to know what you do for a living, and then I'll write that down. I'm gonna be interested, and I'm gonna say, hey, what do you really want to do? If you could just, if you could do anything, what would you? Everybody, everybody, not not a single goddamn person would just repeat what they already said. Oh no, I'm selling used cars and I was made to sell used cars. I want to keep doing that. Or, you know, I work at the I work at the uh at the um the CVS pharmacy and I was born to do that. No one says that. Everybody wishes they were doing somebody something else, but nobody has the grit and stamina and fortitude like you. Like you to follow through with it. Because we're so afraid of ourselves. We're so afraid of the fact that somebody might not like it. I say do it. Do it, do it, do it. Just do it. You can always figure out how to get paid to do it. Just do it, just start. Imagine being surrounded your whole life by people who believed in you. By people who believed in themselves. Fuck it, that would be that that would be amazing. Shit, I wish one time my dad would look at my drawings and say, hey, these are really good. There are some pride there are probably some people who make money doing this. You should think about that. God damn, that would have changed my life completely, right? So we have to do that for ourselves. And you know what? It ain't that hard. It ain't that hard. We can stop looking around for someone else to love us and we can start some self-love. Because I mean, Christ, that's what the weird kid is. It's not about being weird and creative, it's self-love. It's coming from that, coming from that place. You know, and it really, if somebody caught you at the beginning of the beginning, if somebody caught you early at that time in your life when you were still open and wonderfully foolish, and pointed out that whatever you were doing, that gift you were capable of, that quite frankly made you weird, do that. And not in a backhanded way. Not said, not saying I l I heard this this morning. Yeah, I drew and I entertained my friends, and they would give me a nickel for a for a drawing. Guy was selling ten years old and he's selling art already for a nickel apiece, and his dad tells him he should be an architect. Fuck that shit. Fuck that shit. You know, anybody who does what they love or just doing what they did when they were kids, dollars to fucking donuts. From Jonathan Van Nesta, anything, any, any, any, any star athlete, any any any star musician. They're j they've just fought for their right to be unflinchingly themselves. And now they're getting paid for it. Some of them very well. And no, it's not boredom. It's not boredom, Dan. That's your third qu question or third guess. Um, it's lack of trust. It is lack of trust. It's lack of trust in yourself, and it's lack of trust in your audience that they will support you. We're focused so much on the critics and not the audience. That your audience is there, they will support you, and they will appear when you need them. And we just don't trust ourselves. And we don't love ourselves enough to believe. Brother, sisters, and the people in the choir. That's what I'm here to tell you. You are fucking awesome and worth it. Let's go. Okay, number two, you bring up

Balancing Needs and Creative Projects

SPEAKER_01 16:20

number two. How do I measure which projects I should follow through on? Dan, measure is a damn good word. A Dan good. Let's just call it Dan Good. Measure is the word. So, how do you measure which projects to follow through on? Okay, here's a simple rule. It's about needs and time. What do you need? How much time you got? Okay, list out all the potential projects that you want to follow through on. Some are probably short term, some are probably longer, right? Let's make one list of that. List another make another list of what your needs are. What do you need right now? And when do you need it? So your potential projects, let me see. Let's say you always wanted to write a children's book. Dang, let's write that one down. Uh you always wanted to start to write poems. Okay, let's write that down. Uh you want to quit your crappy job and get paid to be an artist or some type of uh one of those creative type people. Okay, so those are three let's say those are three things. Let's also make a list of what your needs are. What are your needs? Do you need money? That's a big one, right? Like if you want to quit your crappy job, you're gonna need money. Do you need money in the long term or money in the short term? So if you need money, so what you do now, you start taking those two lists and you try to put them together. If you need money and within the next month, I would suggest not writing a children's book, right? Right? That one's that one's gonna go low down on the list. That one's gonna take a long time, a year, basically. But if it's if it's really in your gut, it's gonna take a year and it's gonna take a lot of focus. And it's not gonna pay you for a long time, you see? Right? Um, if you wanted to just start to write poems because you wanted to, you just want to fucking feel creative. I just want to start, I just want to fucking feel creative, and you don't need any money from it. Well, that puts it way high on the list, doesn't it? That you can start right now. If you want to quit your crappy job and get paid to be an artist, that is a long-term project. And there's a balance between those two, right? Right now the job is paying you. We all need money. It's an uh it's a it's a thing. It's a thing. Money, money makes uh money makes options. Money gives you options. That's a good thing. So right now the job is giving you all those options, and the and the creativity isn't giving you any money. So you've got to start to to to to um devote some time to being creative outside of work. And we're gonna talk about that later. But what we have to slowly do is start turning down the volume on the job and turning up the volume on your creativity, on your side hustle, right? And at some point you're gonna turn the volume down so much that half of your income is from the job and your your your creative half is pulling in more because we're starting to focus on it more. And then at some point you'll be able to quit the job and turn the volume up all the way on the creative type person that you want to be, right? So how long does each project take time-wise versus how much money you need? A lot of us have, well, not me, but a lot of y'alls have jobs, day job, right? We need to start stealing from the day job. We need to start stealing time. We need to start investing in ourselves. We need to recalibrate our mindset and our priorities, right? And align your focus, right? That means that means taking priority away from the day job. I'm not saying quit or get fired, but you need to take a real honest look and figure out how much time you need to be there, how much energy that needs. And a lot of you are like, well, I do my creative stuff at the end of the day. Well, that is now you're you're you're spending all your good energy, all your voluminous energy on the job. And then you come home tired and you give it to your passion project. But that tells the universe that you don't care. So you've got to recalibrate our mindset and priorities and figure out how to start devoting more time and more energy to the passion project. Right? So again, you're adjusting the volume between those two things. So, what are your immediate needs and what is your time frame? Do you just need sexy portfolio work? You know, you have an agency, but you, you know, I wish we did, I wish we could show better work. Well, start focusing on that. Start focusing on that. Just because you do packaging for food doesn't mean you can't sell typefaces or sell your sell prints, right? But that you can do on your own. That you can do while you're at work. You don't need to take time away. You start on that. Your mornings should be, this is for me. This is for me. And you're telling the universe, I'm worth it, I'm important, and this is important to me. Right? You don't have to be all or nothing at all. So again, what are your needs and what is your time frame? So make a list of both those things. Um, and for all of these, you need to be organized and scheduled. So choose wisely and be consistent. Create a calendar. Mark the time each day to do something, to devote yourself somehow to this project. The calendar thing is. And creating a schedule and being organized speaks of discipline. And most creatives hate that word. We hate discipline. But discipline is freedom, right? Discipline is freedom. And the more you can devote yourself to that discipline, to that creative discipline, the more it will pay you. You know? And why a schedule? Because nothing gets done without a schedule. I mean, here's an example. They say writing is hard. But writing isn't hard. Sitting, sitting is hard. It's hard to sit for an hour. Even when I'm working on a newsletter or working on a script for a podcast, for example, it's the sitting that's hard and not getting distracted. But that gets easier through practice. So nothing gets done without a schedule, without some kind of discipline. You know, when I signed the contract to write the book Feck, Perfection, my best-selling Bible on creativity, I hope you got one. Amazon, go to your work is a gift.com and uh go to the shop and get a signed copy. But when I signed the contract, I immediately, the first thing I did was I had a year, and I knew I had about 80 chapters, and I knew about how long each was going to be. And then I put those 80 chapters on the calendar. And I was like, oh my God, I better get to work. And then I had to illustrate it, and then I had to design the cover. I was like, oh shit. So I started getting up at like, you know, five o'clock in the morning to write the book. So I can have that extra hour, hour and a half, to just be there and just write. So it's not about, it's not about finding the time to write, to create. It's creating the time. It's making the time to do the work. We can do that. We can create time, time in places we didn't have. Look at the amount of distractions you have in your work, in your day, and add them all up and get rid of them. Right? So schedule this shit. Schedule your day, schedule your week. Give yourself monthly goals and yearly goals. There's nothing better than me. I wake up in the morning, I've got a schedule that I did the night before. And there's nothing that makes me happier than just tick, tick, tick, marking things off the schedule. Those are little goals, and I celebrate those. They feel good. I'm like, yes, got that done. I also can't ex I cannot express how much better waking early is and working in the morning. I can't stress this enough. Because your energy is better. The silence is better. Chances are you can you'll make a nice routine for yourself with your coffee instead of staying up late at night and drinking, you know, which is what I used to do. Just it would just turn into beer or wine. I would I'd I would work until I was, you know, kind of blotto. And the silence is better. The focus and the concentration is better. Mornings, mornings are wiser than evenings. So, Dan's question number three: how do I keep momentum? Again, a perfect word, Dan. Thank you. Unlike inertia, inertia is something when it goes on its own power. Shit, I wish, I wish I had inertia, creative, creative business inertia. I wish my business would just run itself. It's just running itself, right? We have to constantly put energy into these things. That's the momentum. It's from the momentum is from the Latin movimentum or movere, which means to move. You know, it's a uh the definition is a force gained by motion or by a series of events. Aha, that's it. Now we're getting somewhere. Momentum is the perfect word because it's what we put into it. It's what we put into it. This shit ain't gonna run itself, right? We talked about this in the earlier question. We we keep movement because we put the energy in. It's maintenance. Again, through scheduling and organization. And here's the trick. Here's what makes it all work. Consistency. Consistency. You know, we are all capable of loving what we do. We are. We're all capable of paying attention to our jobs. Shit, we're all capable of loving a pet. And we're all capable of paying attention to it. You know, petting it, making sure it's happy sometimes, feeding it. But consistency, being consistent with that shit. That's how things grow. Oh, did I mention pets? Lucy saw a squirrel. Love, attention, and consistency. Love what you do. Love

Believe in Your Passion Projects

SPEAKER_01 27:14

what you do. This passion project, any passion project of yours is important. Again, we can figure out how to get paid. Ask me a question. Ask me that question, I'll answer it. We can figure out how to get paid. But love what you do. Pay attention to it. Focus. Turn your focus on to that, not to your distractions. Create some boundaries. Tell your family, I love you, but this next hour is me, you gotta go. Go work in your car if you have to. But the consistency, that's where everybody falls off. Follow through with that shit. Follow through. You put in your commitment and your concentration, and you will keep your momentum. And the last part of the question Dan writes, and he's talking about our conversation here, and he says, another part of the live discussion was about the imbalance of energy distribution between our work and personal projects. How do I convince myself that my work is just as important as client work? Hmm. I'm gonna tell you. How do I convince myself that my work is just as important as client work? I'm gonna tell you, Dan, it isn't. That's the point. Your client work is a placeholder. Your client work or your J-O-B is a weak facsimile of creativity. I knew this when I was doing predominantly um doing air quotes here, creative work in the commercial field. Right? And it's something most of us do because we can't trust ourselves. Really, really. We get a job. We get a job because we don't trust ourselves. Because no one said, hey, you should really just why are you getting a job? Why don't you just draw? Because that's really great. Why are you getting a job? Because you know, your ability to just put colors, those little color polka dots you put on paper, I know people who would pay money for that. Right? Figure out how to get paid for it, but just just do that. So most of us get a job because, you know, and that's how I started.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

I got jobs, hated them, but I was like, oh, I guess that's what you do. Everybody else is getting in that elevator, that cramped elevator, and going to the 32nd floor. I guess that's what I'm doing. Right? But your client work or your job is less important than you are.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

That's the crux. Than you are. Of course, there are instances where this is not 100% accurate, right? There are instant instances when your day job and you work with a bunch of people is quite frankly great. Sure, awesome. I love that idea. Hire me. But creatively, I'm a racehorse. And you are too. And what most commercial projects or clients want to do is find that amazing, beautiful, uh muscled racehorse with his coat shimmering in the sun, and they're like, that is a runner. Let's put an uh apple cart behind him. Let's make him pull an apple cart. Oh, and then put those blinders next to his next to his ears. Oh yeah, and then and then f yeah, then then let's like apples, let's if he's gonna be delivering apples, let's put milk in the cart too. Let's make him pull milk too. You know? So I'm a racehorse, you are too. Those side projects, maybe that's where you belong. That's where you belong. What you are all capable of is amazing. Think of it. Think of it like that. See it that way, believe it. I'm there. I'm getting I see it for you more than you see it for you. I see it in myself. So I I know dollars for donuts, you can name three to five people out there in the world doing what you want to do and getting paid well for it. And you know the only difference between you and them, the only difference between you and them is that they're doing it and you are not. That's it. They are just following the steps. They created a list, they're scheduled, they're hitting those points. They're not bots, they're not machines, they fail. Sure. They have bad days, everybody does. Everybody poops, but they keep going. They keep going. Listen, you've put in the time. You've put in the time on those side projects. I know it I know it, I know it like the back of my hand. You've put in the years. You've put in the 10,000 hours. You know that rule, right? That Malcolm Gladwell's um 10,000 hour rule. You know, he says that the the key to achieving expertise, you know, the key to being an expert in any field is uh uh a matter of uh practicing for 10,000 hours. I know I'm an expert in my field. A million times over, do you know why? My 10,000 hours, that clock, started when I was three or four years old. Yours did too. So, you know, Malcolm, put a pipe in it, right? You've put in the time. You're an expert. You don't need anybody to tell you. You don't need any rule. There ain't no rules. You gotta convince yourself. That was in the question. How do I convince myself? That's it. That's it. You don't have to convince yourself. You just have to believe. And you're never gonna see proof. No one's ever gonna show you, hey, look, you've been convincing yourself for 30 days straight. Here's your here's your plaque and here's your token. You know, at at 60 days, you're gonna get another plaque that you're on your way to convincing yourself. It's not gonna work that way. You just start. You just believe now that you're worthy, that those passion projects, that there's an audience for them. And that's it. It's the energy flow, it's where you're putting your best, most awake energies. Put it into those passion projects. Do not let them go, right? Question that fear. Measure, measure those projects to follow through on. Figure out the time and the needs, and you keep the momentum by consistency, baby. Consistency. And you don't have to convince yourself, you just gotta believe. You gotta believe in yourself that you are fucking awesome. And if you don't, then ask me, because I fucking believe in you. I'm

Creative Prompt Responses With James Victoria

SPEAKER_01 33:41

James Victoria. These are the right questions. God damn, this is good stuff. I will see you next week. You guys are awesome. Keep the questions coming in, because I'm do great by prompts. I want to hear from you. We got a question from Kathy coming up, we've got a question from Ray. I want to hear from you guys. Okay. I love you. I'll talk to you later. Ardios. Bye bye.