_on 100 episodes of the Creative People Podcast_
What I have learned, and where does it go from here?
I just didn't want to fail, that was my main goal when I started the Creative People Podcast. Being one of those creatives with a trail of unfinished projects in his wake, I knew I didn't want this to be another. My other hope was to build a community and maybe make a little bit of money. Well, I haven't made any money but 2 out of 3 ain't half bad.
This week I published my 100th episode of the podcast, so I thought it would be good to reflect on the milestone a little.
Before I really knew anything about podcasting, the podcast began as a logo on my computer. It became a thing from there because it just nagged and nagged at me for about 6 months.
The inspiration came from other podcasts, namely WTF with Marc Maron and Armchair Expert with Dax. Episodes of those podcasts had helped me with my creativity in a couple of important ways. They made me feel less alone and weird, as well as giving me helpful insights into how creativity worked in their craft. I wanted to make something that doubled down on those aspects and opened the scope beyond just famous people who were making bank.
So in Jan 2020, a couple of months before the pandemic, I bought a Yeti mic and dove in. I knew that if I was going to get decent at it I was going to have to put in the hours and if Malcolm Gladwell's math was correct, I had better get rolling on my own 10,000 hours. Then the pandemic hit and it felt like I was in the right place at the right time. Everyone was home, no one knew what they were doing and the need for community became essential.
That first year I was publishing 2 podcasts a week, partially just because I wanted the podcast to be taken seriously. It was completely unsustainable work-wise, but all that hard work at the beginning is the main reason I'm at 100 today. It was a wave that I rode through burnouts and numerous hiatuses.
So what have a learned and where do I take the podcast now?
I learned about creativity and I let go of my frustrations with it.
Creative frustration was the fuel of the podcast. I wanted to get better and I didn't want to be a victim of my own creativity any longer. Before the podcast, "creativity" felt like a state I would magically get into some days, but it wasn't something I could count on. I had constant guilt that I wasn't "doing enough" and that I was wasting my gifts. Some of that hasn't fully gone away but the main frustration and confusion have resolved.
There are so many episodes along the way that shifted the way I looked at creativity. Here are two off the top of my head.
#94: Filmmaker: Kyle Sawyer: "Making Something of Value"
The way that kyle explained his method of knowing which ideas are good and worthy has fundamentally changed the way I approach ideas and creative work. Kyle said in our interview that he follows the things "that occur to him". His reasoning is simple, "if it occurred to me, then it can occur to your audience"
Kyle's "Ideas that occur" has become my guiding light now. This comes up most often when I write, I don't write anything that doesn't occur to me. What this simple change has done has essentially changed the way that I write because I'm not trying anymore. I get myself in a place where I can collect the things that occur to me, rather than trying to make it what I think it should be. For me, this way of thinking has put the burden of creativity on a different part of my brain and the quality of my work has risen.
#75: Musician: Densil McFarlane: "Different things coming out of my body"
One great thing about the podcast is all the different personalities and approaches I got to interact with. Densil of the OBGMs was one of the most intense people that has been on the podcast. His whole thing is that he wants to be creatively strong. Creativity is a muscle and you gotta get yourself in the creative gym every day.
Densil's goal of becoming "creativity strong" changed the way I saw my creativity. It went from a thing that happened to me if I was lucky, to something that I could play an active role in. It become something that I could nurture and take care of and in time something I could count on because I had put in the work to get strong.
I love the magic of creativity but these two simple and practical insights elevated my creativity and resolved a ton of my frustration. Over the course of 100 episodes, my love for the magic of creativity has remained but it's balanced now with a perspective based on a collage of experiences and insights from people putting in the work. That's something that I will forever be grateful for.
What now?
Going forward I expect the podcast and its scope to open up. The thing about creativity is that it's not really one part of our lives, it weaves through all of our life. I have spent most of the last 100 episodes focusing on getting stronger creatively, all my questions and every episode started from that objective. Moving forward I expect the themes, questions, and episodes to grow more organically. Shifting the focus more to the people and letting the rest unfold from there.
I'm excited to see how this change in focus will affect the podcast and curious to see where it leads and changes the show. Creativity and how we interact with it will weave through these conversations but my hope is that this change in focus will bring the podcast to new places, topics, and listeners.
For me, these 100 episodes represent my own personal "understanding creativity" journey and I'm proud of what I have learned. I made a bunch of wrong turns over the last two years, I learned a lot of stuff the hard way. I had misstseps and false starts but knowing what I know now, I know that those are just part of the process.
I'm thankful for all the support that the podcast has received and I'm excited to take it to new places, allowing it to grow as it needs to.
- Ryan Leacock