Hey, what’s goin’ on? It’s me, it’s your guy. Yeah, welcome. Welcome to the place where I sit in my room and try to figure stuff out while staring at a screen instead of making eye contact with another human being. That’s healthy, right?

Look, we’re gonna talk about something today. I don’t know if it’s gonna work. I don’t know if I’m gonna work. But we’re here. I’ve had some thoughts, I’ve had some coffee, I’ve had that low-grade existential hum that starts around 2 PM and doesn’t quit until you finally admit you’re the problem. You know the one.

So put down your phone. Stop pretending you’re gonna answer that email. Let’s get into it.

Alright. Let’s talk shop.

I’ve been quiet. Not in a brooding, “I’m too deep for Instagram” way. More in a I’ve accidentally built a Jenga tower of creative obligations and I’m afraid to breathe way.

Because here’s what’s happening. I’m working on multiple written projects at once. And before you say it, no, it’s not cute. It’s not “Oh, Andy’s being prolific.” Prolific is what you call someone who finishes things and then takes a nap. This is different. This is compartmentalized thinking, and let me tell you, that phrase sounds professional, but it feels like having six tabs open in your brain and one of them is playing music you can’t find.

So. Project A. That’s the big one. The one that requires research, citations, the kind of focus where I have to put on my serious glasses and pretend I have a PhD in something. Project B. Smaller. More personal. The kind of writing where I stare at the wall for twenty minutes before admitting I’m scared of what I’m trying to say. And Project C. The fun one. The one that reminds me why I started doing any of this in the first place, before invoices and impostor syndrome moved in.

Now. You’d think working on three things at once would be chaos. And it is. But here’s the weird part I didn’t expect: sometimes, the only way forward is to stop.

Not stop forever. Stop strategically. Because here’s what happens. Project A is humming along. I’m in the zone. Coffee’s working. Sentences are actually sentence-ing. And then, thud. I hit a wall. I need more information. A source hasn’t gotten back to me. A fact needs verifying. Or worse, I just don’t know what comes next yet. The well’s dry. And my instinct, my lizard-brain, panic-driven, I’m a fraud instinct, is to sit there and torture myself. Stare at the blinking cursor. Refresh my email. Question all my life choices.

But I’ve learned something. Slowly. Painfully. Like learning that the squeaky noise in your car actually is serious.

I’ve learned to say: Okay. Project A is waiting. That’s fine. That’s not failure. That’s the process. Let me open Project B.

And here’s the magic. Project B, the personal one, has been sitting there like a dog waiting for a walk. And because I’m not forcing it, because I’m arriving after a break from Project A, my brain is actually… fresh? Different? I see the page differently. I solve a problem in Project B that I couldn’t see yesterday. And then, thud, Project B needs to settle. Needs space. Needs me to stop picking at it like a scab.

So I go to Project C. The fun one. And I tinker. I play. I remind myself why words are actually fun and not just a slow form of self-flagellation.

And somehow, in the background, like a dishwasher you forgot you started, everything is progressing. Not fast. Not heroically. Not in a way you’d put on a LinkedIn post. But steadily. Quietly. Compartment by compartment.

The trick, and I hate that there’s a trick, is trusting the wait. The downtime on one project isn’t dead time. It’s the soil. The information you needed for Project A? It shows up while you’re deep in Project C. The emotional distance you needed for Project B? It arrives while you’re fact-checking Project A. They feed each other. They breathe in shifts.

So if you’re out there juggling multiple creative projects and you feel like you’re failing because you’re not finishing one thing at a time? Stop. You’re not a assembly line. You’re a ecosystem. Let one project rest while another wakes up. Let the waiting be part of the work.

I’m still learning this. I still wake up some days convinced I’m just avoiding things. But then I look at the piles, notes, drafts, half-finished sentences, and I realize: Oh. That’s not a mess. That’s evidence.

Everything is moving. Just not on my preferred timeline. Which is, let’s be honest, immediately, with praise.

So yeah. Managing several writing projects at once is hard. But it’s also a conversation. And sometimes, the best thing you can do is shut up, switch tabs, and let the next project have its turn.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Project A just emailed me back. And Project B is giving me the look.

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I got this idea from Dan Sinker’s blog, where he posted his foundational text. I urge you to read his blog post (and subscribe to his mailing list, because it is an interesting blog). I thought that would be a good exercise for me so I could reflect and see what I had used as foundational texts, and see whether that had been a good thing. That foundational programming has the potential to influence you massively. Looking back I can see how influential these foundational texts can be, and I think they do require some reflection. I mean, are these foundational texts still relevant to you today? Have you changed in a way that these foundational texts are now contradictory to what you are now? I looked back…

In my youth, I’m struggling to even remember what I was reading back then. There was a lot of non-fiction, but I also read a lot of science fiction for a while. I evn read some Ron. L Hubbard, but steered clear of his output after a college lecturer explained just who the authour actually was. I mean, this was pre-internet days so information could be hard to come by, and equally easier to conceal. I can remember one book that really stood out to me at the time. When I was younger, the visit to the library was a weekly event. In fact in my later teens and early 20s, the library could be a place I check-in to daily. I was a voracious reader and due to being a frequent flyer, I managed to get an adult library card. Our library was obviously segregated in the sense that if you had a junior library card, you couldn’t take out books from the adult section. So at say 13/14 I had an adult library card.

One of the first books I checked out was The Blood and the Holy Grail. It was written by Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent, and Richard Leigh. I was raised a Catholic and went to Catholic schools, so irrespective of whether any of this was true, it taught to start questioning everything I was being told. Not just in terms of Catholicism, I had jettisoned that belief system a lot earlier, but in everything society was selling to me as “the truth”. For thse unaware, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a controversial nonfiction work that blends history, conspiracy theory, and a fair amount of religious speculation. Again, pre-internet days, cross-checking information was a highly time consuming affair.

The book proposes that the traditional story of the Holy Grail, as a sacred cup, is a misunderstanding. Instead, the authors argue that the Grail is actually a bloodline (“sang réal,” or “royal blood”) descending from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, whom they claim were married and had children.

According to the theory, this bloodline was preserved in secret through European history, particularly in France, and protected by a shadowy organization called the Priory of Sion. The book also connects this idea to the Knights Templar and various historical mysteries, suggesting a long-standing cover-up by the Church.

Now whether anything within the book is actually true, is not the point, the point is that it informed younger me that not everything was to be taken at face value, especially if someone was pushing that dialogue really hard.

I’ve read a lot of books over the years, and having to remember the foundational texts was quite easy as they are the ones that really stood out or hit hard. Behold a Pale Horse by William “Bill” Cooper did just that. This book is highly conspiratorial and many of the world’s greatest conspiracy theories owe something to this book. I’m not saying I believe anything in this book, but it was foundational for me in regard to viewing things not at face value. What’s the story, behind the story. How do events connect together? Who is set to gain by a societal agenda etc I’m due for a re-read so I may blog about that.

Money: love or hate it, it’s one of the things we have to grapple with. So until we figure out the replacement for Late-Stage Capitalism, we might to get better at dealing with money. There are so many good books on this, but I recomment Your Money Or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Vicki Robbin and Joe Dominguez. It was hugely informing for me, still is. It’s not a get rich quick book. It does what is says in the title. I understood and have a better relationship with money due to this book. I wish I had read this in my 20’s.

Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Approach by John C Parkin was one of the first, if not the first, of the self help books to have a very sweary title. So many have tried this approach that it has become cringey. This book really made a lot of changes in my life. Don’t be put off with the use of spiritual in the subtitle.

The more you try to fix, control, or “heal” everything, the more you suffer. The way out? Genuinely, radically say “fuck it.” Not as an avoidance move. Not as a tantrum. As a surrender.

Parkin’s whole deal is that we’re drowning in effort. We’ve got spiritual materialism coming out of our ears, meditation apps, crystals, twelve-step programs for our coffee habits. And it’s all just more noise. More pressure to be “better.” So he says: what if you just… stopped? What if you looked at your messy, anxious, failing human moment and instead of trying to transcend it, you just said, Fuck it. This is it.

Let me give you examples. Because I need examples. I’m a narrative guy.

Example 1 – The Yoga Mat Incident
Parkin talks about people in yoga class, grunting, sweating, trying to nail that perfect handstand. And they’re miserable. Their ego is on fire. Am I doing this right? Is she looking at me? Why can’t I levitate? Then someone says, “Fuck it. I’ll just do the child’s pose.” And suddenly, they’re breathing. They’re actually there. The release isn’t in the achievement. It’s in the giving up of the achievement. I did that the other day with a guitar riff I’ve been butchering for two weeks. I said, “Fuck it, I play like a carpenter.” And for the first time, it sounded okay. That’s not nothing.

Example 2 – The Family Dinner From Hell
You know the one. Your dad’s making passive-aggressive comments about your career. Your sister’s crying in the salad. And you’re trying to manage everyone’s emotions like a air traffic controller on cocaine. Parkin says: say fuck it to fixing them. Not in a cold way. In a I am not responsible for everyone’s inner weather way. You show up. You’re kind. But you stop carrying the psychic piano. I tried this with my mom last month. She started in on “you seem angry lately.” And instead of defending or explaining, I just thought, Fuck it. Let her think I’m angry. And the weird thing? The conversation got lighter. Because I stopped fighting the ghost.

Example 3 – The Diagnosis
Parkin gets real. He talks about health stuff, big scary life stuff. And he’s not saying “fuck it” like a nihilist teenager. He’s saying: Fuck it to the fear of the fear. You still go to the doctor. You still get the treatment. But you drop the constant what if movie playing in your head. The moment you say “fuck it” to needing certainty, you get a strange kind of peace. Not bliss. Just… room to breathe. I’ve been there. In the MRI machine. Thinking, This might be something. And then, somewhere deep down: Fuck it. Whatever it is, I’ll deal. And that split-second: that’s the spiritual part.

So here’s the takeaway, and I’m not selling you anything. I’m still a mess. I still overthink the overthink. But Parkin’s book is basically saying: the opposite of trying hard isn’t failing. It’s freedom.

You want enlightenment? Great. Meditate. Eat kale. Call your therapist. But also, when it all gets too heavy, and it will, just look at the chaos and whisper, Fuck it.

Not because you don’t care. Because you care enough to finally let go. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go say “fuck it” to this pile of laundry that’s been judging me since Tuesday.

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Here’s a Marc Maron–style sign-off, complete with the signature self-deprecation, a hint of weariness, and the plug.

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Alright. That’s where I’m at. Projects stacking up like dirty dishes, brain running on three different tracks, and somehow, somehow, stuff is actually getting done. Don’t ask me how. I don’t have a system. I have a pulse and a mild caffeine dependency.

But here’s the thing. If you’re a creative person, writer, painter, podcaster, person who stares at a blank page until it stares back, and you keep hearing that you need to “market yourself” and “build a funnel” and all that jargon that makes you want to crawl under a blanket fort… I get it. I really do. Which is why I started a blog, way back in the day. It’s called Digital Marketing for Creatives, and it’s about digital marketing for creatives. No suits. No buzzwords. No courses to buy. Just practical, human, slightly sarcastic help for people who’d rather make things than sell things, but still need to eat.

So if that’s what you need? Go check it out. If not? No worries. I’ll be here. Spinning plates. Saying “fuck it.” And occasionally finishing a sentence.

Talk soon. Or don’t. I’m not your manager.

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