Getting Work To Work

I believe that conversations find us when we need them most. Tony Luna is a creative consultant, educator, author, and producer who helps emerging and mid-career creatives to discover and reinvigorate the work that ignites the flame of their soul. In our conversation, we touch on Tony’s lifelong study and pursuit of creativity. He shares numerous stories that touch on the beauty of failure, the importance of cross-discipline collaboration, why mistakes are necessary, and how we can keep our creativity alive throughout our entire creative journey. Regardless of where you find yourself in your career, it is my hope that Tony’s wisdom will build a bridge between where you are today and where you want to go tomorrow.

What do you do for fun? How does that connect to your own curiosity and search for inspiration? Recently, a coworker asked me what I do for fun and I didn’t like any of my answers. I think I cracked a joke about working all the time, but also said I enjoyed watching movies, listening to music, and watching the Cleveland Guardians. Pretty lame, I know, but it’s also a critical indicator of just how empty my tanks are when it comes to creativity and curiosity. So, in preparation for this episode, I decided to turn on some good music, cue up the latest mini doc from one of my favorite creators, and browse my bookshelves for some quick hits of inspiration. Thankfully, it worked. I’m going to share a few things I explored, but also a few tips if you find yourself in the same position as myself.

The question in the email was simple: “Are you interested in a podcast discussion on using rejection as a tool for success?” What a way to capture someone’s attention. Without a doubt, rejection is one of the biggest issues we face as creative entrepreneurs, and I was excited to talk with today’s guest about it and find ways to get better at accepting rejection in all its forms. Alice Draper is the founder of Hustling Writers, a “publicity business…on a mission to make publicity easy and accessible for underrepresented entrepreneurs.” In this conversation, we dive right into her current curiosity with the brain and neuroscience. From there, we get into all things rejection and how it serves us in every sphere of our lives. From setting rejection goals and building rejection resilience, a lot of the work is about depersonalizing the process and finding a community for support and encouragement.

What are you striving for in your life right now? Fortune and fame? Recognition from your peers, larger budgets, and dream clients? A story that you can turn into a 7-figure business? Peace, quiet, and a purposeful existence? The list of things we can strive for is endless. And yet, our energy and existence is not. We try to turn the dreams of our youth into the reality of our adulthood, hoping that nothing will change. But the older we get, the truth is that everything is constantly changing. Old stories that fueled our youthful striving no longer fit who we are today. Striving itself starts to look and feel differently as we discover a new path, a new story about who we are, what we are capable of, how and who we love, and why our relationship with striving reveals more about who we are becoming than we think.

If I were to type a prompt into AI to generate today’s episode for me, it would probably be this: “Insert amazing monologue here.” It’s generically specific. Yes, I want a monologue, but make it amazing. I’ll spend hours whittling down the responses, going back and forth with a computer. Until I find something passable, meets my deadline, and keeps me moving forward until real inspiration shows up. How often do we approach our creative journey with the same level of expectation and response. We pick a thing or a niche, attach a one or two word description of our expectations, and then go about our business. When things don’t work out, we change-up the words, and hope the results will change more in our favor. In today’s episode, I want to dive into what we want, because until we know what that is, what we do might not matter.

One of the things I often hear while interviewing people is, “Oh, I’m sorry, I went off on a tangent.” My common response is, “That’s okay, tangents are interesting.” Not only are tangents interesting, they are instructive and important. They teach us about how we learn, our curiosities, what motivates us to keep moving forward, and the very things that matter most to us. In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to explore a few tangents in my own life from the first car I ever bought, to my latest creative curiosities and experiments.

When I first saw Luke Preece’s work on Instagram for Metallica’s 30th anniversary of …And Justice For All, my mind was blown. Since then, I’ve followed his work seeing him continually produce stunning art for bands, video games, and movie studios. His bio says it best: “Luke Preece is a UK-based award winning Illustrator and Art Director. His work combines the visceral power of Heavy Metal iconography and the intricacy of 70s/80s science fiction, presented with a clear, compositionally-led design aesthetic.” In our conversation, we talk about his drive and need to create, how nostalgia fuels his work, and his creative journey from art college to working with iconic bands. We also talk about how imposter syndrome is a good thing, the reality that success takes time, how he works from rough thumbnail to finished product, and finding inspiration from his clients.

Ever since I started my creative journey, I feared being empty. Empty of ideas, thoughts, stories, projects, connections, business, ambition. What would become of me if no one wanted to work with me? Who would I be if I ran out of creative ideas? I associated emptiness with negative feelings: imposter syndrome, comparison, lack of self-worth, and low self-esteem. I didn’t want to invite those feelings into my life, so I built processes, systems, goals, fail-safe methods, and a good old-fashioned work ethic to fight the onslaught of emptiness. I wanted nothing to do with it. Every time I felt its pull, I pushed harder, until I couldn’t fight it any longer.

If you were to produce a film about your life, what would it say about the choices you made, the people you surrounded yourself with, and the impact you had on the world? Eriksen Dickens is today’s guest on the show, sharing his passion for storytelling and filmmaking in the form of legacy documentaries. Our conversation begins with his endless curiosity about big existential questions and how his schooling in philosophy and psychology translates to filmmaking. He talks about turning a childhood passion into a business, what it’s like collaborating with his brother, the seven storytelling pillars, keeping creative juices flowing on long-term projects, leadership, and balancing a long-term vision with the needs of today. Regardless of where you find yourself in the creative world, Eriksen brings a depth of introspection and drive that you can learn from and bring into your life and work.

Some monologues I have a pretty solid idea from start to finish, but others need time and reflection to make sure I’m not just ranting and railing against some invisible force. Today’s episode started with a few early morning rants that I captured in my notes app. As I went through the day, I realized I wanted to shape it into something else, but didn’t know what. So, I just wrote. I fought the urge to apologize for expressing my feelings, ate dinner, then deleted the apology. I’m not sorry, so why pretend? Because I got comfortable using code words to let people know what I was feeling without really saying what was going on. But, it’s time to let the code words go. I’ll still change the names to protect the guilty, but that’s just smart.