Alright, let’s do this. Welcome back. Pull up a chair, get your coffee, whatever. I’m here, you’re here, let’s have a chat.
So I’ve been thinking about this whole “brand” thing. This idea that as a creative, you’re supposed to pick one lane and just… stay there. Forever. You’re a painter, so you paint. You’re a writer, so you write. You’re a podcaster, so you podcast. And if you dare to step outside that neatly defined box, everyone loses their minds. “But Andy, your brand! Your niche! Your audience expects…” Oh, fuck off with that noise. I’ve got three blogs running right now, I’m writing books, I’m doing art, I’m pondering on a YouTube channel, I’m tinkering with a screenplay that will probably never see the light of day. And you know what? I don’t apologize for any of it. Because the truth is, I genuinely don’t understand how any creative person with a pulse can just stay in one lane. It seems boring. It seems stifling. It seems like a slow death by self-imposed limitation.
Let me explain what I mean. Creativity isn’t a faucet that only flows in one direction. It’s more like this chaotic, tangled root system underground. You’ve got ideas branching off in every direction, feeding off each other, cross-pollinating in ways you never expected. The stuff I learn from writing a blog post about marketing informs the way I structure some collage. The discipline of writing a book teaches me something about pacing that I will apply to a video. The research I do for one project inevitably sparks an idea for another. If I’d listened to the “experts” who told me to stay in my lane, I’d be half the creative person I am today. I’d be bored out of my skull, and boredom is the enemy of good work. When you’re bored, you’re not creating; you’re just going through the motions. And nobody wants to see that.
I see it all the time. Creatives who’ve been told, by agents, by marketers, by their own anxious inner voice, that they need to “specialise.” That they need to be known for one thing. And they believe it. They put blinders on and start walking in a straight line, ignoring all the interesting detours and side paths. And then five years later, they’re miserable, creatively bankrupt, and wondering why they feel so trapped. Because you’re not a brand. You’re not a product. You’re a human being with a constantly evolving brain and a restless spirit. And that restlessness? That’s not a weakness. That’s your compass. That’s the thing telling you there’s more to explore, more to try, more to fail at and learn from.
So my advice, if you want it, is to stop asking for permission to be multi-faceted. Explore the avenues that interest you. Start that side project you’ve been thinking about, even if it has nothing to do with your “main” thing. Write that weird genre piece. Paint that abstract nonsense. Record that experimental audio project. Not everything you make has to be for public consumption, hell, most of it won’t be. But the act of exploring, of letting your curiosity drag you into unfamiliar territory, that’s what keeps you alive as an artist. That’s what prevents you from becoming a parody of yourself.
And yeah, maybe your audience gets confused sometimes. Maybe they came for the stand-up and now you’re talking about productivity books, and they’re like, “What the hell is this guy doing?” That’s fine. Let them be confused. The people who are actually interested in you, the whole messy, complicated, multi-hyphenate you, they’ll stick around. The rest were just passing through anyway. So open the floodgates. Chase the weird ideas. Start another blog. Pick up a new instrument. Learn a skill that terrifies you. Because at the end of the day, staying in one lane isn’t safe, it’s a prison. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got way too much stuff to make to be sitting in a cell I built for myself. Keep moving. Keep exploring. Keep creating. And don’t let anyone convince you that you have to choose.
And you know where I get to scratch that particular itch? Over on my other site, Oblique Signals. It’s a whole different world over there. Some blog posts, no marketing strategy, no carefully crafted paragraphs trying to make a point. Just chaos. Just scissors and glue and stacks of old magazines I’ve hoarded like some kind of feral paper dragon. It’s zines. It’s collage. It’s cutting up images and text and reassembling them into something that doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but me. And honestly? It’s the most liberating thing I do.
There’s something about getting away from the screen, away from the blinking cursor and the endless white page, and actually getting your hands dirty. Literally dirty, I’ve got glue stick residue on my fingers as I’m typing this. The physicality of it is almost therapeutic. You’re tearing pages, you’re slicing through images, you’re rearranging fragments of other people’s work into something entirely new. It’s not “writing” in the traditional sense, but it’s absolutely a form of storytelling. It’s visual poetry. It’s instinctual and messy and completely unburdened by the need to be coherent or clever or marketable. And that’s the whole point.
Sometimes I’ll spend hours on a single page, just moving pieces around, seeing what works, what doesn’t, what weird juxtaposition sparks something unexpected. And I’m not thinking about audience, or SEO, or whether this will resonate with anyone. I’m just… making. It’s play, pure and simple. The kind of play we all had as kids before someone told us we had to be good at something for it to count. And there’s no pressure over there because it’s not “my brand.” It’s just me, following an impulse that has no commercial value and no strategic purpose. It’s creativity for its own sake, and that’s become increasingly rare in a world that demands everything be optimized and repurposed and monetized.
I can’t deny those creative impulses anymore. I tried. I really did. I told myself, “Andy, you’re a writer. Stick to writing. That’s what you’re supposed to do.” But the collages kept calling. The stacks of vintage National Geographics kept staring at me from the corner of the room. The urge to cut and paste and create something tactile and imperfect just wouldn’t go away. So finally, I stopped fighting it. I gave myself permission to be a writer who also makes weird paper art. A writer who also tinkers with visual storytelling. A writer who also gets lost in the meditative act of arranging torn images on a page. We contain multitudes, right? Whitman said it, and he wasn’t wrong.
So if you’ve got some weird little impulse tugging at you, something that doesn’t fit neatly into your “professional” identity, I’d say lean into it. Start that side project. Make that zine. Build that thing that makes no sense for your career but makes perfect sense for your soul. Just give it space to exist. Because those off-ramps, those detours into the unknown, they’re not distractions from your real work. They’re feeding it. They’re keeping you curious. They’re reminding you that creativity isn’t a job, it’s a way of being alive. And if cutting up paper and sticking it back together is what keeps that flame burning, then pass me the scissors and let’s get to work.
