peaks, consistency, and an ever-evolving identity crisis.

July 29th, 2025

You arise in the corner of a 8x4’ shed - waking up from a night of questionable sleep on a dog-haired covered futon, tucked away in a corner of the room just slightly too small for it’s twin sized breadth. Each corner of this glorified pillow you call a bed is adorned with trash of varying importance - the road cases you were too lazy to put away after last nights show, a stack of amazon boxes you swear you were going to throw away yesterday morning, and a desk setup that has just been freshly redesigned for the sixth time this year. This space isn’t much, but within these four shoddily built plywood walls lies your entire life. Most days you’re perfectly fine with that reality, other days you’re ashamed of it.

Most days whatever shame you feel about your living situation fades away as long as the room keeps enabling the real reason you built it in the first place - to create. Being creative is all I’ve really ever wanted to be, and is something I’ve tried to (somewhat successfully) craft a life around. It’s never just about being creative though, is it? Anyone can be creative at any moment of any day - I yearn to be a successful creative. I want to be remembered, leave behind a body of work that long outlives me, something that really matters. A show that puts other bright eyed teenagers on the path in the same way my goats guided me. It’s a goal I’ve seen some success in, but one that I’ve yet to successfully achieve at the scale I want to - a goal that seems simultaneously so close and yet so, so far.

As time has gone on I’ve definitely become more successful in my career, hitting milestones I thought were years away, and building a client list that I thought was unobtainable a few years ago. It’s something I’ve been very lucky to experience, but as time has gone on I’ve had to come to terms with a different version of success - consistency. This year especially, I’ve been very lucky to have consistent work across a plethora of roles: Kaivon’s taken me on my first real tour, and Pizza Cake has given me some of the most consistent design work I’ve ever had, but creatively it’s all felt like slop. Pure slop.

I can’t in good faith say that these jobs push me further towards my goal, because all any of them are are contributions to the ever growing wasteland of digital trash, but I also can’t honestly say that they haven’t been beneficial. My case money has to come from somewhere after all, but at what point does the majority of my time and energy spent tip over towards being a mundane graphic designer instead of this grandiose creative director I dream myself to be? It’s a question that’s really been fucking with me this year.

Success is worthless if it can’t be replicated, and after a year of consistently hitting new peaks in 2024 I find myself incredibly dissatisfied with some aspects of my creative life in 2025. Financially I am almost definitely way more successful (not super sure as I didn’t really track my income in 2024), yet at the end of the day I can’t help but feel like a broke white boy who peaked with a music video for the guy from Fortnite. Not to say that I’m not proud of what I’ve achieved, and I’m grateful that I have a bit more stability and security this year, but I’d throw it all away in a heartbeat for a chance to climb another mountain.

As I cross the threshold into my late twenties I find myself filled with a different kind of motivation than the one that drove my immediate post grad. My early twenties were about proving that I was good for it - learning to VJ, playing EDC, The Forum, breaking into the industry, etc. It’s something I think I was moderately successful at. My late twenties come with a much more secure sense of motivation - I already know what I’m capable of, and I’ve seen what I can do when I truly maximize my potential.

Just gotta get back there.