As an artist, do you ever feel like you’re playing truth or dare with your reputation and sanity? Did you really really sign up for this.
I’ve hit that moment more times than I want to admit. And talking with Justin reminded me that I’m not the only one.
The Struggling Artist Mindset
Justin said something that made me laugh because it was so familiar. That whole “I’m an artist, I need to suffer” thing. I’ve worn that badge before. Probably polished it a few times too. It feels noble. It feels like you’re proving something. But the longer I sit with it, the more it feels like a trap we build for ourselves.
Suffering doesn’t make you better. It just makes you tired. And tired creatives make strange choices. We’ve all been there. When you pour hours into something like a video audition, then find out no one even pressed play, you start wondering if you’re invisible or if you were never good enough to begin with. It’s worse than rejection.
And the thing is, you start shaping your whole identity around that feeling. You start thinking the pain is part of the process. Like if you’re not hurting, you’re not doing it right. Meanwhile, the people who aren’t buying into that mindset are quietly building careers while you’re over here trying to earn your suffering badge of honor. It’s wild how fast that belief can settle into your bones.
The people who shape you, for better or worse
Justin talked about teachers who didn’t help him grow. I’ve had a few of those. A bad teacher doesn’t just give bad notes. Sometimes they don’t even give you any notes at all.
And that silence can mess with you. You start filling in the blanks yourself, and the blanks are never kind. You start thinking, well, if they’re not saying anything, maybe I’m not worth saying anything about. Maybe I’m not worth the time. It’s strange how quickly you can internalize that. One vague comment from someone who barely knows you and suddenly you’re rewriting your whole creative identity around it.
Justin didn’t have some big Hollywood breakthrough where everything suddenly made sense. He started a podcast. He talked to people. He connected. He learned how to show up in a room without shrinking. He learned how to breathe when everything felt like it was falling apart.
That’s actually one of the things I really felt a kinship with. When I started my podcast and YouTube channel, I wanted it to be all me. But I found out that I couldn’t do it all alone. I got burned out and finding others like me, talking through their experiences, both the successes and failures, really helped me learn and grow and keep the dream alive.
And somewhere in all of that, you start realizing that the thing you thought you had to protect yourself from, the world, the industry, the rejection, whatever it is, isn’t actually the thing that breaks you. It’s the isolation. It’s the silence. It’s the belief that you have to figure it all out alone. Justin talked about how podcasting forced him to meet people. Forced him to talk. Forced him to be a human being again instead of a walking ball of ambition and anxiety. I get that more than I want to admit.
And that’s the thing I keep circling back to. He didn’t get better by hurting more. He got better by learning who he was and what he needed to stay in the game. He got better by being consistent. By being curious. By letting himself grow instead of collapse.
Where this leaves me
You need to survive long enough to make it. And survival looks a lot less dramatic than we pretend. It looks like stability. Let the dream be a dream again, not a dare. Letting it breathe a little. Do meditation if that helps. Find a tribe of like-minded friends to commiserate over and bolster with.
The dream doesn’t have to be this giant, fiery thing that consumes your whole life. It can be something you tend to little by little.
I used to watch a show called the Red Green Show. At the end of it, he always said, “I’m pulling for ya. We’re all in this together.”
Wise words.
And maybe that’s the real point here. Maybe the thing that keeps creatives broke isn’t the industry or the competition or the lack of opportunities. Maybe it’s the belief that we have to do it alone.
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