I get it all down. Every thought. Every word. Every idea.
Hemingway spoke of pace. I know nothing of the sort. I rise early in the morning and maul the page. It’s as if I’m starving and only art can feed me. I must have taken a bullet for my muse in a past life—because she overwhelms me with ideas in my sleep.
The other morning, I was shaken awake from a dream of a ballet dancer wearing a pair of 990s, balancing on her toes. I poured myself a cup of coffee, tucked a nicotine pouch beneath my lip—I’m trying to quit smoking—and got to work. The New Balance campaign didn’t receive the same attention as the campaign for Cheetos, The Met or Polaroid—but I try never to think about the applause or lack thereof.
I like that quote by Andy Warhol…
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
While folks decide whether or not the last thing I made is brilliant or shit, I’m already at work on the next thing—the next thing was Autodesk. After that, it was Lego. After that, it was Dolly. After that, it was Waffle House. And so on.
Most days, it’s a dead sprint until I’m dog tired. These days, I start panting around 4 p.m. I read somewhere—I can’t remember where—that you rest the way you work. If you work slowly, you rest slowly. If you work aggressively, you rest aggressively.
I tend to catch my breath in a sauna. I like it hot—so hot the cedar burns the soles of my feet. When the heat makes me stupid in the head, I hobble out and plunge into an ice bath. I try to do this twice a day. It keeps the demons at bay.
After the sauna, I crack open a book. Right now I’m reading Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. When I’m reading well—which is to say I’m reading often—I get through one, maybe two, books a week.
Occasionally, aspiring writers will ask me for advice. I always give the same answer: read often and write even more. Nobody ever seems to take the advice. But, that’s the secret. Every time I find myself in a creative drought, I look up to find I haven’t been reading and writing regularly.
Like a farmer, a writer must plow the fields and till the soil. Unlike a farmer, a writer must do this every day. Writing is a goddamn ruthless craft in this regard—the moment you stop writing every day, you forget how. You don’t forget how forever. But, it takes some time to wrestle back your rhythm again.
From my experience, I’ve found that writing leads to more writing. The same can be said for ideas. They compound like money.
Never worry that you will run out of them. Ideas are one of the few things in life that reward greed. You should spend your ideas recklessly. You should spend them like a trust fund kid with a bad coke addiction. Spend them all. Every last cent.
You will wake in the morning to find more ideas have taken their place. I can’t stress how important it is to be prolific. People talk about prolificness as if it’s a full head of hair, a voluptuous figure or a 40-inch vertical. It’s not. It’s a choice.
What I lack in talent—and I sure lack a lot of it—I make up for in pace. You don’t have to be good. You just have to be prolific. If you’re prolific, you will eventually get lucky.
None of the aforementioned brands have hired Honey to be their agency, yet. However, if you know me well, I’m not particularly fond of waiting in line. You shouldn’t be either. If you have a vision, force it into existence.
What do you think this is? Disneyland? You need not wait your turn. This idea that you must "put in your time" is a fallacy. It was invented by gatekeepers who aren't any smarter, sharper nor better equipped than you. Hop the fence. If they tackle you, they tackle you. Treat each escort out of the park as evidence your work is getting noticed.
Stand up. Brush the dust from your trousers. Bandage the scuffs on your elbows. Ice your knees. Have a good cry. Take a quick breather. Once you've gathered yourself, dart around back and try your luck there. I've been in this game for a decade. Opportunities have fallen in my lap. But, only after I've worked up a proper sweat shaking trees. Be tenacious. Be audacious. Be prolific. Be impossible to ignore.
You will get discouraged, of course. At times, you will want to hang it up. When I get discouraged, I remember where I came from. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. I’m standing on the shoulders of immigrants. I’m standing on the shoulders of people who broke their backs so I could “be creative” for a living.
When my grandmother immigrated to America from Japan, she was nineteen years old. She was broke. She trimmed the grass around headstones in a local cemetery to make enough money to eat.
As a child, I would fall asleep in her arms while she told me stories about her own childhood. She used to collect sparrow eggs from nests tucked into the thatched roof of her father’s church. She would cry as she told me the stories of her hunger.
She would say things like: “It will be different for you.”
My grandfather came here from Syria. He dealt with racism on a daily basis—as did my mother, her sister and her brothers. And he became a surgeon. I’m painfully aware that the life I get to live was purchased by the sacrifice of those who came before me.
This has brought about a sense of purpose—if not responsibility. But, what’s also needed is a sense of self-belief. You can’t fake self-belief. It must be earned.
I didn’t develop self-belief until I was twenty-nine years old. I was down bad. I was down so bad that lucifer sent me an invite to join his weekly poker game. I try to follow the advice of The Wood Brothers and not answer postcards from hell. But, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider it.
My business was belly-up. I had blown my savings on alcohol, drugs, women, flying first class (when I should have been flying coach) and pretending I was a rock star. I was in deep with the IRS. Everything was fucked.
One day, I collapsed. I folded. I fell flat to the shower floor. I reached up, turned off the faucet, crawled out of the tub stark naked, pressed my forehead against the linoleum floor and prayed. I’ve prayed every day since.
People are always surprised to discover how spiritual I am. But, I pray every day—many times multiple times a day. When I climb into the ice bath, I bow my head and I pray. I felt like a damn loon the first time I prayed. I didn’t know what to say. Now, it feels akin to phoning a friend.
I read somewhere—once again I can’t remember where—that Denzel Washington puts his slippers under the bed at night. It forces him to get down on his hands and knees to retrieve them. When he’s down there, feeling around, he’s reminded to pray.
This is part of the reason I force myself into the ice bath every day. The only way I can make it the three minutes is if I bow my head. Some days, I’ll find myself so pissed off at God, I’ll refuse to bow. Like the day when my uncle threw himself off his apartment building. I’ll sit there shivering—grinning and bearing it like some masochist.
Eventually, I’ll surrender. I’ll remember that gorgeous Buddhist line: If the knee does not bend, the leg will break. It’s like clockwork—about thirty seconds in, I’ll swallow my pride, bow my head and pray.
God, Allah, Buddha, the universe—whatever you want to call him, her or it—plays a part in all of this. That’s where self-belief comes from. Faith.
Nothing in life is certain. Nothing. We stumble around like a bunch of arrogant idiots attempting to create a false sense of control over our lives—so that we don’t have to deal with the deeply uncomfortable reality that we have no control whatsoever. Nobody knows what’s waiting for them around the corner. Nobody.
But, if you’ve walked through fire and you’ve come out the other side, you no longer need certainty. Do you understand? You no longer need certainty because you know that unless it’s God standing there with a Colt .45 ready to beckon you home, you can eat the damn thing’s shoulder off.
You can claw, fight and tear your way through whatever it is that’s waiting on you. That’s self-belief. It’s the belief that you don’t need to know to be okay. It’s the belief that you can get through just about anything—with a little help from a life force you can’t see or hear—but know is there. It’s the belief that you’re a hellhound. You’re a jaguar. You’re an angel in an Abrams tank. You’re a fucking problem.
You’re a child of God.