Hey, this is Jules and welcome to the pool party. I have missed doing regular episodes so so so much.
I took a couple of weeks off of recording the podcast and there's a good reason for that.
I am relishing in the end of summer but before I really talk about that and what's been going on,
I wanted to give you a little bit of an outline for today's episode because it's actually super
relevant to what I've been up to, what I've been working on and what I want to talk about today.
If you're new to this podcast, my name is Jules and on the pool party, we talk about design
education, how to start a brand, basically bootstrapping and doing it yourself for
beginners. In the world of the internet, you can start a brand online, you can make a YouTube
channel, a TikTok and essentially market yourself by yourself. Now, I've been a brander, marketer
and content creator for many years now with a variety of experience in each of these sects
and what I've really determined is that I love helping other people and I think it's great if
you have an idea, you have the drive and consistency to get going. I'm here to help you with the
elements that are a little bit more in the hands or realm that you would leave to a professional.
I'm going to say that very lightly because there's a lot of great free information online these days
but what I'm doing is bringing my years of experience, my tactical mind and strategy and
then also all the hours I spend on the internet today and talking with people to give you basically
a brief, a very in the moment lay down of how things are going in the design industry, what I see
online and how things are going in the world of social media. This is relevant because many of the
jobs, formal jobs, I've done over the past four years since 2020 have been as a production artist
for social media agencies. If you have no idea what a social media agency is, they're essentially
most of the time these remote companies that are set up online, they function fully remote and they
work with client partners, companies, content creators and brands all in different capacities
to create content for social media channels from scratch and the goal is to keep audiences engaged.
It's to, for lack of a better phrasing, win the internet, to keep making content that keeps people
engaged, to understand audiences and mirror back to them what they believe themselves to be. I've
never actually phrased it that way before but that is what's working in the world of the internet
these days. People no longer want to see brands marketing in a traditional sense. It's gross,
it's tacky, it feels overdone. However, I don't necessarily think that's true for individual
content creators and sometimes people love to see the little guy win so if you're just starting out,
sometimes it helps to know some of these insights on branding, strategy, just to help give you a
leg up because let's be honest, starting anything by yourself in the beginning is challenging.
There's truly just a lot of mental work and thoughts, maybe even your own negativity bias
that you have to work against just to start a creative project, be consistent and keep on
going. It's one thing to show up and make a video for example one time but then to keep on doing it,
get better and then grow an audience is another task. That might be the case if you're taking on
the endeavor of becoming a content creator or making videos on YouTube for example but the same
thing applies if you're in the world of blogging, if you're making music, if you put on events,
not everything is the flow in the start. It takes mental work, mental fortitude and consistency
to keep on going. So what I'm doing here on this podcast is essentially serving as a cheerleader
to tell you to keep on going, absolutely keep on going and then I'm going to give you some insights.
I'm going to give you a little bit of a digest on what I see in the creative world, online,
freelancing, etc and that's what today's episode is going to be about. So today I'm going to talk
about passion projects, how I started designing through passion projects and I'm going to give
you some encouragement to start a passion project if that's what you want to do. The second thing is
to essentially talk about the pink elephant in the room which is the state of the design market
and the job market mostly in the United States but many people I know in their 20s, 30s have been
impacted negatively in some form or shape over the past four years by layoffs, culture shifts
and maybe you're a designer, you work in the design industry or the tech industry and you want
to keep on going. It's not always easy. I've heard of people who've gone through multiple rounds of
layoffs but I know that's an ugly word to use. The second part of this podcast is going to be
about how to deal with uncertainty, how to keep your motivation up and then piggybacking, yes,
off of that subject of passion projects in order to keep the good vibes going because that's a lot
of what this is about, building structure and so later on in this podcast we're going to talk about
building structure without truly killing your vibe in a 9 to 5 prison type of way and that's also
going to account for some factors that you might need to consider if you are starting a passion
project. So that's what today's episode is about. We're gonna dive in and before we start, I just
want to let you know that if you go to juliaespero.me, j-u-l-i-a-e-s-p-e-r-o.me, I offer
key art services for podcasters, musicians, writers and live events specialists. If you ever need help
with your key arts, you can hit me up. I'm offering a package on my website at the moment. You can go
to my website and look at services and if you've been looking for a designer to work with, if you
are specifically a musician, dj, podcaster, writer or live event specialist, please reach out. I would
love to work with you. If not, if you want to do this by yourself, by all means go ahead. I think
that's a fantastic idea and I've created this podcast to essentially help you on your journey.
So start from episode one. This is your big brand book and how to do it by yourself. Today, we're
getting away from that structure of discussing branding and how to bootstrap and we're going
more into the realm of okay, you've already started and now you need motivation to keep on going. I'm
so excited to dive in with you today on this episode of the pool party. Amazing. Now, as much
as I don't want to spend a ton of time talking about my personal design background, we're here
to talk about you. I want to start off this segment on passion projects by discussing a story about
how I got into making zines, which eventually led to my career in design. But the whole point of
my intro is to let you know that it's essentially discussed that passion projects are your creative
playground. I started making zines when I was in college and back in 2016, maybe even earlier,
I was traveling back and forth between San Francisco and Brooklyn and both of those cities
had an independent book fair that I love that I believe still happens today called Printed Matter.
And at the Printed Matter book fairs, a bunch of indie publishers and graphic designers would
print their own booklets, create posters, and then sell them to people. And these books were like
some of the coolest, most visually interesting works I had ever seen in my life. And it really
got me thinking about how I as an independent person, my approach making a zine or something
I could pass around as an art project. I later ended up taking a graphic design class at school,
but oddly, they didn't really teach graphic design at all in this class. A lot of the time,
the professor spent the class talking about his own design projects, a lot of theory,
and then this is my beef with a lot of classes at Stanford too. I know I roll whenever I say
Stanford, but I promise you the downside of going to a research institution with any curiosity of
making projects, especially projects that require like a skill set. Sometimes the downside is that
you don't really learn that trade or that specific skill in a really actionable, instructable way.
And sometimes professors love to just talk about themselves. And so in this graphic design class,
we would get assignments, but we would be told to use Photoshop or Illustrator, but we would be given
basically no information on how to use Photoshop or Illustrator. So at the time we had a library
where I would go to and study, but they would also loan out iPads and Apple pencils. And it was
during this class that I fell in love with Illustrator for Adobe on the iPad. And before
I even knew how to design using a lot of the Adobe Photoshop speed, like Illustrator, InDesign,
Photoshop, I was basically hand drawing a lot of my work directly onto a tablet using this program
that I just taught myself how to use. And it was super easy too, because if you've never used an
Apple pencil and iPad before, you're basically just drawing, you're drawing digitally and it's
very easy. That was great for me because I could then create my zine. So I took a format, just a
one page zine, the kind that they used to pass around like in the 1960s, a really easy format,
it's one page, and then you just cut a slit in the middle and fold it up a certain way. And it's like
a mini magazine, but using what I had seen at these printed matter book fairs that I went to
and using the tech that I basically got from the library, I was able to make my first graphic
design project without knowing really how to use any of the tools. And granted, I was a student at
the time, so I had resources that were available to me, but you really got to just use what you
have available to you, especially when you're just starting out and don't discount any free resource.
If you have a friend who will let you borrow an iPad or let you play around on like their
Canva subscription, try it out. There's a lot of free resources these days and that is like my whole
spiel with this story. You can use many different tools to create things and surprise, there's no
one right way to do it. If you have good taste, time, and some patience, you can make something
pretty amazing with a lot of free tools that you find. And if you really care about your craft and
the work you do, a lot of times subscriptions will cost you maybe $30 a month or something.
So give yourself some time, plan for that, and it's pretty easy to get off the ground with very
little investment. But consider everything you have at first. If you don't have money, then maybe have
paper and magazines. If you're a musician, use the tools that you have. You don't need to learn how to
produce when you're just starting out. Don't go for the hard thing, go for what you have and start
there. So the whole point of passion projects is that they're meant to be a creative playground.
They start from a point of passion where you're genuinely interested in what you decide to pick
up. And from there, there are really no rules. There's no one you need to impress but yourself.
And that's the magic of this. Dive into what excites you and don't worry about where it might lead.
It's all about the fun and the learning process. This is so important whether you're just starting
out or you've been going for many years working on your craft. Eventually, there will be a time
where you have to show up and you might not have a lot of excitement, but you might have a lot of work.
And this is why passion projects are so important. You have to find a way to cultivate that interest
and then remember why you started or why you are getting started in the first place. It all starts
from a place of inspiration and whatever you create with your artwork in your time is going
to inevitably inspire someone else to pursue their passion. That's the beauty of this. Creativity
and growth, it's for you. It 100% is. But consequently, you're going to end up inspiring
someone else to make something. And I think that's pretty beautiful. So again, when you're making your
passion project, there's no one to impress but you. And I think this is a great place to define
your passion project from because if you're working, you know, a lot of times if you have clients or a
boss, you need to impress them. And that is going to be the metric by which your work is defined.
That isn't always self-fulfilling, but when you decide for yourself to take up a project, even if
you're not getting paid, even if the only thing you have to invest is your time, you get to work
up the courage to do something that gives you confidence, that reminds you what it means to
have fun. And it doesn't really matter what anyone else says. Do you like what you're doing? And I
think one of the ways to truly go the distance with a passion project is to just show up for a time to
create for fun and commit to that time. I think what this does is it also trains your brain to
recognize that sometimes you won't be motivated even for your passions. Like sometimes it's scary
to create things, to have fun even. Like our brains are wired to protect us, but that wiring
sometimes prevents us from trying new things that might lead to exciting outcomes because we don't
even start. One thing I've been working on is saying to my brain, thank you brain for trying
to keep me safe. And then I do the thing anyways. This happens a lot when I sit down to do illustration.
I'm really hard on myself and I think just to give you some context of where I'm at, sometimes I have
a really easy time creating in certain mediums, whether that's like my podcasts or designing for
work. But then when it comes to like my fun projects and just having a giggle, I for some
reason lock up. What I'm working on though is reminding myself that my brain works like a muscle.
I've had fun before in the work I've done and I can find it again. But the best way for me to do
that is to really take off the pressure, like basically let no one else judge it but me and
keep on going on a project until I find that like I've had fun and then that's good enough for me.
And I'm going to encourage you to take up a passion project, especially if you're a creative
who's working and you've had a really tough time in this current job market. Shifting over to our
next segment, the economy sucks, but you don't have to. Okay, so let's take a little bit of time to
talk about the job market for designers and creatives now. I want to be so careful when I
say this, the economy sucks, but you don't have to. That whole part. Because this isn't some stop
being poor type of statement. Even if you have been trying really hard over the past four years,
many people who are so talented, hardworking, and just like exceptional people have had a hard go
of it. And I've explained a few times how I've been laid off over the past couple of years and
have basically found that my new jive is working part time for a few companies and doing design
freelancing. I know there are people out there who are still going through layoffs and I think what
I want to say is I know how that can hurt your confidence and essentially get in the way of your
flow, but it's really not about you. You could be literally the most talented, amazing person.
And if you're working for a company that just doesn't have their priorities straight,
or their values aligned, or they fail to plan for their, if they fail to forecast correctly,
that has nothing to do with you and you still might get laid off. So that's what I really mean
when I say the economy sucks, but you don't have to. It really has nothing to do with you. If you've
had a bad go at the job market and the creative industry over the past four years, especially
in a very traditional sense, don't be too hard on yourself. And it can be really scary and
frustrating, trust me, I know, but you might consider taking on something that's less hefty
than a full-time corporate job right now or even a full-time job at an agency and that doesn't say
anything about you, it's just what is working at the moment. And I might be preaching to the choir,
but I have a lot of friends, especially people in their 20s and 30s who have experienced multiple
layoffs over the past few years, have maybe been given job offers from companies who then decide
not to actually follow through with hiring them, or maybe they've been hired by some awesome new
company, but then said awesome new company falls apart in a few months. It happens all the time,
and realistically, sometimes it's actually a little bit more stable to take on less, take on
smaller bites, maybe even get a bridge job, like working part-time somewhere, and then building
something you care about on the side. There are definitely still opportunities out there, and I've
received contract opportunities even in this job market. I'm personally not even looking for
full-time roles in a corporate setting anymore because I got real with myself. I don't really
like working those types of jobs, and I'm not the only one in that sentiment, I know. I go onto
TikTok every single day, and I see recruiters who have been working in the industry for many years,
both tech and creative, and I think with the combination of things like the writer's strike
in LA, the delayed impact of COVID, a lot of things that were once stable staples are really
not that any longer. I follow some producers online, and what they're saying about Hollywood
and LA, for example, right now is that Hollywood is the new blockbuster, and basically what they
mean by that is blockbuster doesn't exist anymore. Everyone streams online, people go on TikTok, and
that's how they get their entertainment, and before we had things like Netflix, we used to go
to Blockbuster and get our VHS tapes and even our DVDs and Blu-rays, but obviously that's not a thing
anymore. So times are changing if you haven't noticed already, and sometimes the job market
responds a little bit delayed. A lot of things are going online, and it's probably no wonder that my
jobs as a professional designer have been in social media and online content creation over the
past four years. Hardly anyone hires me for print projects or posters anymore. I love those types of
projects, but oftentimes posters, print projects, those are like the indie projects that people
hold as their babies. Those are the projects you save up for just to sell fun because nobody,
genuinely, it's just not the type of environment or time anymore where these are the projects that
are in abundance. You let me know if I'm explaining that correctly, but what I'm trying to say is that
I know it can be a lot to accept over the course of four years that the industry totally changed,
especially if you haven't been in it or you've been on the periphery, but it truly has, and I think we
need to radically accept that things are the way that they are, and sure, we can mourn, but also
now that we know this, what do we want to do next? What do we want to do instead? Maybe you're not
feeling the pressure or you haven't been impacted by all this. In that case, consider yourself
lucky, but if not, hopefully this little snippet, this little touch base kind of gives you an insight
of what many ordinary people without connections are dealing with in today's job market. Even still,
I truly believe that it's cliche, but it's true. Persistence and continuous effort are the key to
finding opportunities, and you can put this same persistence and continuous effort into your
passion projects, and who knows? Your passion project might get you another job, or it could
potentially become your job. There have been many projects over the years that I've dedicated my time
to as if it's a part-time job, and if it didn't become another way of making revenue for me, it
became a very staple piece of my portfolio that I use to then get other jobs from different employers,
and that's why I recommend this, because it's a tried and true method, and I wouldn't really be
saying this for any other reason. Basically, as things are crumbling around you, like this old
economic system, this old way of doing things, find things that you like to do that you could handle
doing consistently and show up for yourself. Show up for that time, do what you have to do in order
to make your money, create that stability, and then carve out some time where you can play and
have fun, because that is essential. That is what dreams are made out of, and there's no way around
that. Genuinely ask yourself, if you are living your dreams, would you be doing stuff that you
don't like? Would you be doing things very quickly and rushing and doing them consistently? No, right?
So what I've found over the years is that the only way to make your dreams come true is to essentially
use the time that you have now, anytime, whether that's 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and investing that
towards something you love. And then over time, what happens is you allow that time to grow,
and before you know it, what was once a dream becomes your reality. It's simple, but it's not
easy. It really is that simple. This is especially true if maybe you're making a stable income from
something that is like a full-time job to you or a few part-time jobs, and you don't want to
disrupt your stability. I'm sure you still have 30 minutes here and there that you could train
yourself to use towards creating and doing something that you love. I think this takes mental effort
and discipline to build up to. I know, not fun sounding, but you can genuinely just remind
yourself of what kind of life you're wanting to live and what you want to build, and then remind
yourself of that as you go into your bubble of creation, and eventually that bubble, that time
slot you have for your creative fun time will grow. It's keeping that faith and knowing you can make
that for yourself. All right, up next we want to talk about building structure without killing the
vibe, and I think the perfect segue into discussing this topic is a TikTok I literally just saw,
where this Genzier says that she was explaining to her older sister how she just got a job,
and her older sister said to her, congratulations, but don't forget about your other goals.
Yeah, so that's how it feels sometimes, I think especially when you have a corporate job, and even
if you happen to get a job where you're lucky enough to use your creativity and your skills
in a way that builds some sort of creative identity, maybe not even for you, but for other
people, I don't mean to scare anyone, and I hate the phrase adulting. I left a therapist once because
they would not stop saying learning to adult because I just think that's ridiculous. I think
learning about how to deal with your finances and balance is one thing, but learning to adult is
just like one of those ridiculous phrases that means nothing. It's like a nothing phrase because
a lot of ways that people make money are basically made up, and reality is you can either handle it
and it jives with your working style and your brain and all the other things that you want to
achieve in life, or it doesn't. It doesn't work for everyone. Like I mentioned before, you might
already be working a job and then the way that you build your creative empire is, let's not call it
a creative empire, the way you build your creative bubble is on the side. I think if you ever did
extracurricular activities as a kid like ballet, sports, I was a dancer when I was growing up.
Tuesdays 8 p.m, Wednesdays 8 p.m, I would go to dance classes. Sometimes I would be in the studio
depending on how old I was for four hours in the evening just to dance. And for me, that was fun.
I wasn't doing it for money, but I set a goal for myself every single week to get better at that
skill just because I was enjoying it. And I think that's exactly the type of energy we need to be
tapping into when we're pursuing something we love. This is not like a side hustle, and I think if
you approach every passion project you have as a side hustle from the get-go, it's gonna drain you
and it's also gonna be really hard to feel passion from it. And I just have to say, as a person who
has made the mistake of turning a lot of passions into a side hustle and also sometimes seeing my
friends do that, it's draining. It's not fun to experience, it's not fun to be around, it has the
opposite effect. So rather than trying to do that right away, just start from a place of having fun
and know that if you truly want to stick with this and if you do, a way will be made. That's the
element of faith. Some people, myself included, even hire coaches for specific career paths they
want to forge. And you can do that eventually, but until you have the capital to work on that, to put
in the time, until you have the strong enough belief to know that it's going to happen, there's
no shame in setting even smaller goals, exploring part-time gigs, giving yourself like 30 minutes
every single day just to dream. Let's start there. I want to tell you a story about my dad who is
retired now and he does not have to worry about finances, but he has a ton of time on his hands
and also a really flourishing garden and he loves watching garden youtube. Recently, he's been on a
journey to create his own gardening youtube channel. I think he's a perfect example of someone who
just needs to get started and honestly, this is a bit of a side narrative, but if you have a retired
parent who has a lot of time, they're the perfect type of person to pursue a creative outlet. They
don't even have to monetize it, but something to think about, okay? I highly recommend it. Even now,
as a creative person who does this for my job, I freelance, I work part-time in-house or in
different capacities. I just, I do what feels good in the moment. I still pursue passion projects. I
take classes on how to improve my drawing and my design skills. Sometimes, I see new techniques
other people use and I want to learn how to do that. For me, that helps me maintain the beginner's
mindset. It helps me remember that not everything is easy at first and then sometimes it gets more
fun when you get further along the way. Passion projects can be fun and some people will have the
goal of eventually getting paid to do what they love. That might be you. Who doesn't want that?
But just keep in mind that not everything happens overnight. It really does take time to grow and
I've been hearing this a lot lately, but it really is true in that sometimes we can get such instant
gratification from swiping on our phones, getting the dopamine, but there is something about creating
that is a little bit more like going to the gym where sometimes it's not fun at first. Sometimes
it sucks. Maybe there's some thoughts in there. Wow, I should have gotten into the gym a while back
and it can be hard to break through that wall, but once you do, it's quite fun. It's motivating.
Seeing the progress itself is the motivator. That's something to consider. Next thing you
might want to think about is flexibility and keeping the creativity flowing. Balance is maybe
a myth or an abstraction and I think that there are ways that you can actively be working towards
goals and then actively resting. Everyone is different. I've known people who work in births
where maybe they're on tour for a month and a half because they're a dancer or five days out of the
week they're working at night because they're performers, they're musicians and then the rest
of the week they're sleeping in until 2 p.m. Balance might not always look like a 9 to 5 sort
of balance, but one thing that I found really helps me is getting real with what feels good in my body,
trying to create a repeat pattern that truly helps me feel good, rested, nourished,
and then taking care of my body on a daily basis but also finding cycles throughout the week and
the month where I can get appointments in like going to the doctor, going to the gym, maybe
interspersing that exercise and taking care of my body in ways that aren't super structured but
integrated into my life. And I think this is also another component of creativity and passion
projects that is really important. I've had moments in my life where genuinely I was probably going
through a manic episode where I worked really hard on passion projects to almost a detriment
where I wasn't taking care of myself or my body as much as I was taking care of my artwork.
And one of the things that I had to shift as someone who uses my brain a lot is that my body
and my health is like an art practice in itself and you might relate to this if you're a creative
person but I've noticed this sometimes that highly passionate individuals whether they're academics
or very driven sometimes people prioritize habits and routines around work and creating over
maintaining the body and certain necessary biological cycles. What does that mean? Most
women really need 10 hours of sleep a night. I'm sure you've heard that most men need around 8
hours of sleep a night. I genuinely feel that your body cannot really handle sleeping less than 6
hours a night for months on end and you will probably go through some period of, let me
phrase this, you will probably go through some period of having to recover if not face sickness
if you don't take care of your body. That's the simplest way I can describe it. And then dealing
with sickness is a whole other thing. I think just to get ahead of that as you pursue your creativity
also pursue a way of maintaining longevity and I don't really think that any creative project
comes at the cost of health. Something to think about. I want to tell you another story about my
senior year of college when I was about to graduate and I didn't have a job lined up yet but it was
about winter to spring maybe like February and at the time I was actually working at the art library
on campus and I love the art library because it was this beautiful building and had a lot of amazing
books on photographers, fashion designers, graphic designers and so my job was being an art librarian
where I would check people's books back in, reshelve the books and keep things orderly and
organized but in my free time or after I got off work I would get a bunch of books on different
topics and sometimes I would go through these like sleepless weekends of writing papers for other
classes and I would do it at the art library but basically what this did was impact my mental health
in a way. I wasn't really sleeping a ton or eating super well but I suppose you could say one of the
good parts of this little manic episode was that I would get library books at the time that were
only one type of color and you can call that whatever you want but would have these phases
of liking certain colors for example just to really tell you about like how deep this almost
obsessive compulsion towards colors went. I would go through seasons where I was really interested
in the color green and then I dyed my hair forest green. I'd take all these photos of things that
were green like plants and in the winter when it was colder then my hair would change to blue
and then I would continue this obsession with blue and then come spring my hair was like faded
and back to blonde but then I developed this obsession with the color orange and yellow and
so as I was going through the art library I would grab books that were only binded with this really
distinct sunflower yellow and I got two books at the time one about the canon of work from
Jean-Michel Basquiat and also Keith Haring and Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were two
notorious street artists who were really popular during the late 1980s to early 1990s in New York
City and they both died young for a variety of reasons sickness, AIDS in the case of Keith
Haring or drug overdose with Jean-Michel Basquiat and I don't really I don't romanticize early
deaths of brilliant artists but I think I was obsessed with this idea of what made them rise
to fame so quickly and then also meet an early demise and I do think there's a certain darkness
that comes with this romanticization of throwing your whole life into artwork and producing. For
example I am going to paraphrase but from what I remember about Jean-Michel Basquiat's life towards
the end he had a very wealthy sponsor I think who was an older white woman who essentially gave him
a space in SoHo to make his paintings and what he would do all day all night was make his paintings
and then also use drugs mostly like opioids and heroin. I think as an adult someone who is in my
late 20s what I know about Jean-Michel Basquiat is that he did not make it to an old age and it
honestly makes me really sad to hear about these stories of young artists of color queer artists
get taken advantage of by older people who essentially see an opportunity for this young
artist to make a lot of money and become a massive success overnight and then genuinely it costs these
young people their lives and I think the more I've learned about pop culture and arts not just in that
particular decade of the United States but even earlier like in the 1960s to 70s I read Just Kids
by Patti Smith that same senior year and there's a lot of romanticization I think that other people
project upon Patti's life and she was a woman who got pregnant at a really young age and then ended
up having to put up her baby for adoption and then moved to New York by herself but she fell in love
with a queer artist and then they lived life together essentially very poor and like always
on drugs in New York but they basically face major health problems and also just trying to live life
not really having stable income while being in New York and that was also a time where I feel like
you could probably have gotten an apartment for a hundred dollars or something that's like unheard
of in today's economic terms but if that life was hard I think sometimes what I worry about is that
there are a lot of young people who romanticize this idea of moving to New York and being young
broke artists and the stakes are actually way higher these days but it's not just New York it's
a lot of major cities around the US people work really hard to get in creative careers and even
the most talented people have a hard time at it sometimes and that's not to discourage you from
pursuing a creative career but it is to discourage you if you are a young person from romanticizing
this idea of being a young broke artist there is a reason why that is a trope and I think it's
because sometimes older wealthier people who know better truly exploit young and talented people
and this is why I always encourage people to pursue their passions on their own if they want
to have a creative career because this idea like sponsorship of sponsoring a young strappy talent
has been around basically forever and the fortunate thing about being in the year 2024 is that you can
in the safety of your own home or your hometown pursue your creative talents by just putting aside
some time and then consistently posting online in order to vet people who want to work with you
who might be able to help you and there's no rush there's truly no rush going the slow route
especially if you are a young person in your early 20s and there's only a lot of benefit to taking
the time to mature and develop and maybe even get like a part-time job in a few different industries
and I'm not saying you have to work restaurant jobs I think you know that's also another trope
that we saw in the early 2000s of artists moving to cities like New York or LA and then working in
restaurants while they were auditioning or trying to learn their craft and there's merit in that
sure but it's not necessarily that's the blueprint and that's what you have to do
that's why I think challenge yourself to be creative and find what works for you but in the
sense that you can do it with the most amount of ease for you and also consistency and discipline
because at the end of the day a lot of this is work when you're making money too we're talking
about contracts and deals we're talking about like legal agreements in exchange for money or
we're talking about informal trades and there's a cost-benefit analysis to be done between those
two things and I just want to throw that on your radar especially if you are a young person trying
to break into the industry because a lot of people will not put it that simply in those terms but
that's what it is. Alright folks so let's get back to the topic of passion projects and maybe I shared
an extreme example of what happens when people capitalize too hard on their art but I think this
all goes to say that this is why it's important to create from a place where you truly love what
you're doing and I think passion projects can help keep you on course and also remind you of why
it's fun to do the work that you're doing. Passion projects can be your secret weapon letting you
experiment make mistakes and figure out what you really love doing. You can learn new skills and
eventually get paid to do what you love and from there on it's essentially a never-ending cycle
of learning and growing. Remember to keep it flexible and light in order to keep your creativity
flowing. It's so important to stay flexible enough to follow new ideas and opportunities.
In this podcast, I talk a lot about exercises like mood boarding and staying connected with
other creatives in order to keep the inspiration coming from other sources that aren't just online.
It's important to take baby steps and then also recognize that this isn't the type of work that
you get done in a weekend and are just simply done with. This is life's work and I think that if
you're doing it correctly, you'll leave enough time to truly take in life outside of putting your
nose to the grindstone and just producing to produce. So in conclusion, I want to hear if you
started any passion projects that you love that have helped you learn a new skill, what they
entailed, and if they helped you get new work or if it's just a fun hobby that you do in your free time.
I personally love seeing and hearing about other people's passion projects and sometimes I'm more
inclined to listen and give them my attention just because I want to hold space for things that
people truly care about and not get bogged down by the type of content and work that is made just to
essentially fill a void. If you're experiencing the current job market for art and creativity or
design, keep on going. Perseverance is key and maybe also take a step back. Designing and creating
art for full-time living isn't everything. I know that might be hard to hear especially if you've
been looking for a full-time role but if things are going to change, if careers are restructuring
and the landscape is shifting, it's honestly, in my opinion, worth it to wait for things to settle a
bit and then jump in during a time where there's a bit more enthusiasm. I think one thing that people
fail to mention at times during hard times is that a job, while it's great and is a way of making
money, it can be just that and it doesn't have to really accomplish all the things for you and I
think that's why I wanted to talk so much about carving out space through the things that you
really love so that you can hone in on that purity of enjoyment and love and not ask a single position
to fulfill all your human needs. Anyways, thank you everyone for hanging out today and in the
next episode, I will be interviewing my friend Marlon who is a designer living in LA and he
started his career as a graphic designer during the pandemic. Previously, he was a product designer
and I'm going to ask him a bit about how he feels about being online these days and we're going to
chat about finding inspiration out in the world. So I hope to see you around next week for that
episode. Please subscribe and follow The Pool Party, read it wherever you listen to podcasts and if
it inspired you today, please share it with a friend. My name is Jules and you can find my work
at juliaspero.me, that's J-U-L-I-A-E-S-P-E-R-O.ME. I'll see you next time.