So: imagine you’re at a family reunion, trapped in conversation with your great aunt who consistently asks the cringiest of questions. Your heartbeat quickens. Your palms are getting a little more than clammy. As you’re scanning the room for an escape route you can’t help but wonder how long you will be able to avoid answering such personal and uncomfortable questions before someone inevitably asks them all over again, like a bombardment of anxiety and spotlight effect. I’m not sure if you can say the same, but that is how I used to feel every time someone asked me to explain my art.

As visual creatures, we take in so much new information each second of the day. So what happens to all of it? Some of that stored up data surfaces later as artistic inspiration and creativity, but most of this fizzles into the void. It’s not only how we store our inspiration that matters, but also how we use it. So after hours of scrolling through social media and interacting with other artists you’ve probably got a brain full of inspiration and a kick-ass attitude. So now what? No one likes a copycat and you’ll never be able to replicate someone exactly, so stop stressing about how to become your idols and learn what to do with all this pent up genius.

In almost every blog I’ve read about internet addiction writers have shown their concern for starting off the day doing exactly what we’re supposedly supposed to be cutting down. They use it as justification in their points about the world being addicted to social media, and claim that it destroys our first opportunity of the day for mindfulness and meditation. While the second may be true, jumping on my phone first thing in the morning really helps me throughout my day.

In a world where apathy is trendy, it can be hard to not feel a little guilty for appreciating yourself and your work out loud. The societal expectations of success are never ending, and it seems like you can’t get praise until you can prove you’re running yourself into the ground in attempts to meet your goals. It’s expected that we will get overwhelmed every now and again no matter how busy we are; But I mean, who can really live like that and function well?

While my background in web design and marketing allowed me to skim through some sections of the book, it still caused me to think of what I already know in a different way and I walked away with a new confidence in my artwork and the business it has become. Here’s the most important lessons I learned from the book (don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything!)

Thursday afternoons are rough, right? It’s so close to Friday, you can almost taste it, but it’s not quite close enough. What’s my solution you ask? Secretly jamming in my office to some tunes to pass the time. Here’s an upbeat playlist to get you through the rest of the day.

Remember in elementary school when a pack of crayons with a built in sharpener was the coolest thing you could own? Your art aresnal probably had pipe cleaners, sequins, and colored pencils for days. It seems like once we moved out of the eating glue phase (I never ate glue, I swear) we moved away from our unique tools, and even art itself.