Part of this series of conversations I’ve been releasing in my podcast, as well as the regular weekday episodes have been about how we’re doing right now during this time. A career in the creative field right now is tenuous it seems, freelancing even more so.

Another reason for this series is meant to be for those of us who are really starting out or don’t have an idea of what to do, or people like me who have come to it later in life. We’re beginners. We need direction. We need encouragement. We need solidarity.

This is something that’s been stuck in my head in one form or another for a little while, and there’s a little bit of a thread here so I hope you’ll bear with me. Years ago I did a limited run podcast called The Peaceful Pirate, which led to a kind of manifesto, I guess you could call it. The gist of it was that you didn’t have to participate in the game everyone else is playing. You can opt out. You can try to live live on your own terms, doing what you love to do. For the most part, that’s still true. Look around you, the creative economy has — almost by necessity — risen up and may overtake the third economic age, The Information Age, within the next 20–25 years. That’s great, but in the rising popularity of the creative economy, there’s been a shift on the playing field. For cultural and political reasons the pirates have become the Navy, there are more new sailors than ever, which means we need to sail under a new covenant. We celebrate the beginners. We show them the ropes. We encourage them. We offer honesty but not cruelty. We stand with them. …

Today, I want to talk about freelancing. Not any particular line of work but the subject in general. Freelancing has enjoyed something of an uptrend lately; Lots of people were doing it before of course, but I suspect there are a lot more people doing it right now, partly out of necessity. For some, it may be how food gets on the table.

I’ve been fortunate to get a few gigs here and there, and things are working out. Did I wish I had a steady gig? Yeah. Do I wish I had, oh, I dunno, something with benefits? DUH. Am I just a little bit nervous that the Apocalypse is going to happen in a couple of weeks and it’s all going to hit the fan? OH YEAH, TRUST. But right now is right now, and that’s what I need to keep a focus on. I hit the job boards every day and fill out a gang of applications, and then I hit Upwork and submit some proposals. Upwork, for the uninitiated, is a freelance job board where people post what they need, and you can submit a proposal to fill that job. If they select you, you have the gig and you get to work. …

A question that is weighing on my mind lately is how much structure helps or hurts a creative. I was talking with a friend who by all accounts has mad organizational skills, and she runs a filmmaking business. There’s a lot of structure in her day that is taken up doing the administrative work that you need to do in order to run a business the right way, and she’s very good at that. …

I want to start this by suggesting each of us ask ourselves a question: Am I OK?

I know that might sound simple and you might think that’s ridiculous, but I’m dead serious. I want you to ask yourself if you’re OK, and I want you to be honest with yourself about the answer.

The reason I’m talking about this is pretty straightforward, I have had to ask myself this same question and my answer “I’m not sure”. I’m not OK, but I’m not in Dire Straits or anything like that. I can only describe myself in being in some weird limbo state that allows some things to pass, and other things stick and drag me down a little bit for a little while. I don’t know if anyone can relate to this, maybe you can. …

In the last episode of my podcast, my interview with Anna Tozzi-Barbay, she mentioned that her son had decided he wanted to be a filmmaker like she is. I found that fascinating, and I said that I have always wondered what it would be like to see the world from the POV of an autistic person. As the father of autistic children, I can see what it’s like to BE an autistic person, but when you stop to realize that they see and perceive the world very differently than we do…and that’s where I stopped.

The fact is, we all see and perceive the world differently, don’t we? It doesn’t matter if we have special needs or not, we all have in us different ingredients, and it’s these ingredients that inform the way each of us sees the world. So, when we see someone make a film, or hear a podcast or a song, or see a photograph, we are seeing an example of how that artist perceives the world around them. This is a person’s creative voice, and I use that term to differentiate it from a creative style. Style is just the sparkly wrapper on top of the package, like a choice to shoot in Black and White, or my occasional choice to leave out every color but the blue I’m wearing or my wife’s red hair. I think voice is the overall idea an artist tries to convey. …

So, I want to share with you how my brain gets ahead of me sometimes because I think I caught myself before it was too late. That said, I would love to know what you think. Here goes.

When it comes to podcasting, when it comes to most of my plans for world domination to be honest with you, I’m a mad scientist who sees a little bit of success and then starts adding bits and pieces to his monster until it’s unrecognizable, or it’s not sustainable. My podcast has gone through a lot of changes over the years, and one of the main reasons for that is I see my podcast as a reflection of where I am at a certain period of my life. There have been the funny voices, there’s been the point where I felt I wanted to document certain parts of my life as a testimonial to my kids, there’s been the kind of mourning process when my parents died. Presently, it’s dedicated to the creative. How we’re coping during this pandemic, to our individual processes, and the myriad ways we express ourselves. …

Last Saturday, I had the second in my series of talks with Matt Labarge. He’s going to be a recurring guest on my podcast for a few reasons, not the least of which is he’s a fun guy to talk with. During our conversation, I mentioned a character from my old podcast named Oliver Townes. Oliver came about because of the explosion of self-help and productivity books that has happened in recent years. For my part, I read all the books in this genre that I could for almost two years to research this character. And while there are a lot of cruel jokes and roasts I could make about all of those so-called experts, that’s not what this podcast is about. This podcast is about getting you set towards True North from a creative standpoint with the knowledge and wisdom that comes from practice, not theory. …

Over this summer I’ve been trying to build up some content my website and let people I know I’m open for business. I say I’ve been trying. I’m sure you well know that you can have good intentions to get things done and you get a good start, but then you poke your head out of your creative cubby hole and notice that there’s housework that needs to be done, and there’s errands to run, and then someone needs you to do something else, and so on. So you do all of that and get back to the cubby hole only to find it’s 9pm, and you wonder how in the hell did all that time get sucked away from you? So you wind down and try to get a good night’s sleep so you can get a good start again tomorrow, and you know what happens. …