Adam Street's Blog
The spiritual and practical path to freedom to do your art

Enjoy the wine and not the label

You ever watch the show, Schitt’s Creek?  

It’s brilliant.  Like Seinfeld brilliant.  It’s a little zany, but it’s so good.  Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Dan Levy’s character David Rose.  He was explaining his sexual preferences to Stevie in season one. 

“I do drink red wine. But I also drink white wine. And I’ve been known to sample the occasional rosé. And a couple summers back I tried a merlot, that used to be a chardonnay. I like the wine, and not the label.” 

I legit LOL’d! 

When I watched the documentary  after the final season of Schitt’s Creek I learned that simple exchange did tremendous things for the LGBTQ community. 

Alexander Peartree from https://www.winemag.com said it best:

“As a gay man, I find it can be draining to constantly see myself reflected on screen in characters who are struggling as a result of their own sexuality…  It was so simple and nuanced, yet profound, uplifting and incredibly refreshing. The fact they did all with a wine-focused metaphor only broadens the scope to a wider audience.”

I think there’s a lot you can take from David’s wine analogy with your personal development.  Some people don’t get the info they need because they’re hung up on labels.

“That’s too spiritual”.

“He’s too religious”.

“I don’t like books, I only like video…”

Get the info that can propel you forward, and don’t worry about the label.

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam Street

What to do if you don’t feel ‘good enough’

I was at an event today and met a lady who was interested in drawing caricatures for a living.  I love helping people or pointing them in the right direction so I gave her my contact info.  Back in the days I hesitated doing this but after a while I realized I was safe.  

Why?  Because almost NO ONE did what they said they were going to do.   Most the artists I came across either knew better than I did—so they weren’t coachable.  They wanted immediate success or they found another shiny object to go after.

And some just wanted a “hook up”.  I met a kid who was 19 and after one meeting he just straight up asked for a job.  Nothing wrong with that but he didn’t have the skills.  I told him I’d point him to where he could work on his chops and suddenly meeting me was about as fun as shopping for a vasectomy.

A lot of people get scared of the work.  They want success like my buddy in high school wanted his women, fast and easy.  

But us unreasonable peeps in the Artist Paradigm know better.   We do our work because we enjoy it.  It’s our voice.  It’s a piece of who we are.  I love that Megan Macedo closes most of her emails with, “keep doing your work.”  Again, it shows that we need to run TO the work, not FROM it.

And the more work that you do the better you get at it.  So become SO skilled and SO good at what you do that no one can deny you.   And by ‘no one’ I mean YOU.  Doing the work is the first step in showing YOU that YOU can do it.  

So when your head trash speaks up and tells you that you’re not good enough or that you can’t do this.  You can answer back with confidence that…

“I got this.’

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

Creating your own irresistible offers

I used to dream about owning my own independent insurance agency.  I didn’t get very far though.

My favorite diss came curtesy of Country Companies.  The recruiter told me I passed my two interviews but I failed their standardized test.  Miserably.  He said I had one of the lowest test scores he had ever seen.  I laughed and kept looking.

When I did eventually get an insurance gig it was just a “sales job”.  It wasn’t owning an agency or anything.  I worked there nearly three years before I flew to Marvel.  

My first year of being a work-at-home artist, I was having a merry time.  Instead of questions about bodily injury limits and personal assets my question of the hour was, what shade of red to make Captain America’s shield. 

I didn’t miss insurance at all!  Until I received a call…

An agency owner I knew called me about an opportunity in Casa Grande, AZ (about 70 miles from me).   He said he needed someone to manage the office now but it would lead to owning the agency within a couple of years.  

There it was.  I got what Lisa Sasevich calls an irresistible offer.  I could stay on my current path or I could fulfill my dream of owning my own agency.

I deliberated back and fourth like I was a juror on the OJ Simpson trial.  I knew I  could make freelancing my side hustle again so it wasn’t necessarily about “leaving” Marvel to sell insurance.  The day before I told him I’d call back with my answer I realized something profound for me.

I never gave my art business 100% effort.  

When it came to working for others or my non-art businesses I could be a beast.  I’d kick in the door with guns-a-blazing!  But with art, I always played small.  Whenever I planted the seed I’d stop watering it the moment things got tough.  This was just another one of those times. 

I declined the agency offer.  

In the end it wasn’t about choosing jobs.  It was about getting rid of the decades of head trash and conditioning that grew silently in my mind like mold.  It wasn’t the people who told me I couldn’t make it, it was ME telling me I couldn’t make it.  

ME telling me I wasn’t good enough.

ME telling me that I was going “try this”.

I decided to make me an irresistible offer of my own.  I would play all-out and leave nothing on the table.  I would work just as hard FOR myself as I did for other people.  

Just because an offer can seem irresistible, that doesn’t mean there’s not an even better one out there for you.

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

Why Stan Lee is my role model

Most people think I admire Stan Lee because he created Spider-Man or The Avengers.  True, I definitely give him his super-hero props.  As a comic book reader I grew up seeing his name in comics and hearing his voice in Saturday morning cartoons.  

But that’s not why he’s one of my role models.  

What makes Lee special to me would hit me later in life.  It was when I learned he didn’t work for Marvel until his his 40’s!  

When I left my insurance job for Marvel Comics I was in my 30’s.  Even though I snagged my dream job, I still had a ton of head trash.  Why couldn’t I have done this earlier?  I should have went to art school.  Everyone is so much better than me!

The list goes on…

Once I learned Lee didn’t work his magic till his 40’s.  That helped me clean up all my negative self talk about what I should have done .  Or all those missed opportunities.  

And don’t think Lee didn’t have head trash too.

“I used to be embarrassed because I was just a comic-book writer while other people were building bridges or going on to medical careers. And then I began to realize: Entertainment is one of the most important things in people’s lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you’re able to entertain people, you’re doing a good thing.”

Let me tell ya, everything you have done to this point makes you uniquely placed to do something.  I don’t care what your age is.

Oprah Winfrey said, “The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.”

So suit-up like the X-men, and live YOUR adventure.  Head trash is like your mother-in-law.  It doesn’t go away but you ain’t gotta listen to it either.

Excelsior!

Adam