When I was a kid, I was bored. A lot. “Bored?!” My parents would say in horror. “How can you be bored?!” They’d reel off a list of all the options available to me, “Read a book, play with your brother, mow the lawn, take the dog for a walk, empty the dishwasher, draw something…” and so on. When we’re bored, the instinct is to assume that the one who is bored simply can’t think of the things to do.

No one teaches us what to do with boredom. We think it has to do with the list of things that we just can’t think of, but it’s more than that. Having the list isn’t the problem, it’s understanding how to pick off the list. The purpose of each possibility is the difficult thing.

If only someone would pay us to enjoy ourselves

Giving ourselves purpose is difficult, not only because we’ve not been taught to do it, but it requires us to truly believe that we’ve made the right choice for how we’re spending our precious ‘free-time’.

Whether it’s school, or work, the purpose is clear. If I don’t do schoolwork, I’ll get in trouble or fail. If I don’t work, I won’t get money to live. Easy. But, when we’re using our time for leisure, and payment is off the table, the choice for how to spend it can be overwhelming.

Should I read? Go for a walk? Plant or nurture a garden? Bake bread? Watch a movie? The choices are endless, but so too are the ways in which we’ll benefit. I love a good story, so reading or watching a movie has value. Exercise is important, so walking is good, too. Gardening helps my mind relax, and baking bread will give me food for days, not to mention make the house smell delicious.

Each and every leisure activity on ‘the list’ has different domains of value. None of them are the easy choice – money – that trumps them all.

The search for intrinsic value

Finding intrinsic value in any activity is hard. In fact, it’s so difficult that the easy way out is to try and fill our minds and time with any sort of distraction we can. Right now, the bite-sized pieces of social media interaction happen to be perfect for it. It means we can distract ourselves from ourselves.

Schools have trained us well. As a society, we value economics far more than any sort of immeasurable value we get when we do anything for ourselves. The sort of activities I mean are the ones that can be measured, objectively, by science. For example, exercise is easier to prioritise because we can measure it’s effect on our organs. Writing a novel or practicing meditation, less so. The activities that breed peace or contentment for some of us within our deepest selves are seen as a more ineffective use of time compared with creating measurable value in some way.

Intrinsic value is hard because we’re complex beings. We enjoy many different activities for many different reasons. Yes, that makes it hard to choose from ‘the list’, but it’s also something to be celebrated; that we can find so much richness and joy in so many different ways.

It begins with understanding ourselves

Before we can begin to prioritise the things in ‘the list’, we need to get to know ourselves – the things that truly bring us joy, peace, excitement, and sorrow. Once we know this, we can begin to use what’s on ‘the list’ in a way that gives us the most value for ourselves. There is no playbook. We can’t fall back on science or economics. No one can offer an ‘if-then-else’ decision tree for another’s intrinsic value because every single person is different.

For me, I know that when I’m feeling frazzled, like I have too much on, or ‘too many threads to keep-a-hold-of’ as I like to say, then meditation is the thing I pick out of the list. When it’s sunny and warm, the garden is the place I love to be. When I’m feeling joyous and energetic, taking to a canvas with paint gives me the most ‘bang-for-buck.’ What’s the bang? It’s difficult to define. I’m not measuring my heart rate, or calories, or bank balance when I’m doing this thing for myself. I could try, there’s probably an app for that, but sometimes living in the uncertainty is also part of the purpose.

No one will pay me to prune my garden, or meditate, or sling paint at a canvas, but being paid isn’t the point. It’s just a really nice way to spend the finite amount of time I have here on Earth, and I kind of don’t care if no one else can understand it. I’m definitely not bored.

Saying Yes is easy. Saying yes keeps people happy and keeps me busy. Saying yes to going to dinner, having a drink, going to a friends’ place, working on a book. Saying yes brings me a lot of joy.

But for two letters, No is a powerful word. In contrast to saying Yes, saying No is hard. Saying No disappoints people. “I can’t help with that right now.” “No, I can’t attend your event.” “No, I’m not interested in illustrating that book.” No is the hardest word for me to say because I generally derive most of my pleasure from pleasing people. But, in the long run, saying no has never led to a catastrophic mistake.

No unlocks things. No makes it about me, not them. No creates space to think, to breathe, and to observe. Saying ‘No’ helps me say yes to things that matter, when they matter most.

My favourite cuisine is Japanese. I like simple clothing – mainly jeans, t-shirts, and cardigans. I don’t like suits. I have a cat, but I prefer dogs. I like winter, but I prefer summer.

No one ever asks me how I came to these conclusions, or why. When it comes to food, clothes, or pets, no one thinks too hard about it. We like what we like, and don’t like what we don’t like. But when it comes to art, one of the most-asked questions seems to be, “how do I find my style?”

We seem to fret a lot about our art style. Will my style get me noticed? What styles are publishers looking for? Should I stick with one style or do I show all the styles I can do? And sure, while ‘style’ can be engineered, what can’t be is the authenticity behind it.

I can attend a job interview for a corporate accounting firm. I can wear the expensive suit, the nice shoes, the stylish tie. I can gel my hair, sport a leather briefcase, I can even open Microsft Excel and show some examples of how I crunch numbers. I can do all of this, maybe once, or twice, or even 20 times, but I can’t keep it up. If I get the job at the accounting firm, I have to pretend that suits and briefcases are my style, every day. Not only is that expensive (gee, think of the money I’d have to spend on suits), but it’s emotionally draining. It’s emotionally draining because, quite simply, it’s inauthentic.

Just ‘be authentic’

Whenever I hear advice that reads, ‘be authentic’, I cringe. Authenticity is precisely the opposite of curation and intention. It requires so little effort, but it’s also so difficult to attain. Why? Because authenticity requires courage.

Authenticity takes the courage to look inwards, to think about ourselves, without the influence of others, and determine what we genuinely like and dislike. To realise and be comfortable with the fact that we won’t fit in everywhere, but that there is a place for us, somewhere. It’s only until we unlock this within ourselves that the question of ‘what should my style be’ disappears because it’s replaced with a statement: this is who I am, this is the work that I make. If it’s the sort of work that a publisher decides to duplicate 10,000 times in a book, then that’s a bonus. If not, at least you’re making work that matters to you. After all, that’s what it means to be a true artist, and if it’s truly authentic, it’ll be one of the most rewarding ways you can spend some time.

Who won the 1976 Olympic Summer Games gold medal for trapshooting? Or the 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics. What about the 1999 Caldecott Medal? Don’t know? Neither do I. I’d hazard a guess that the only people who remember are the people that won them. Which makes me think, what are awards for?

Awards are everywhere. Every industry has them. You could be Real Estate Agent of the Year, Accountant of the Year, Plumber of the Year, Advertising Agency of the Year, Pinot Noir of the Year, the list goes on. It’s not that humans are fickle; we simply like feedback. We want to be noticed. To know that we matter. We invented awards because, well, we like to be seen.

But we don’t care if someone else is seen, especially when they aren’t ‘competition’. It’s probably why I don’t know who won the 2010 Australian Open Tennis, or the 1982 Academy Award for Best Film Score. All we care is that we’re seen, not someone else.

Social media uses likes and follows. They’re a type of award doled out by companies like Facebook to encourage you to keep going. To tell you that, “yes, you’re doing it right, you understand the algorithm.” What it really means is that “you’re helping us generate ad revenue. Thanks.”

But making art has to be different. Telling stories need an authenticity that isn’t driven by the judging panel’s criteria. It has to come from within. Recognition is nice, sure, but not at the cost of telling the best stories; of working out, for yourself, how you exist in this world.

Imagine being on a beach, alone, on a perfect evening. The sun is slowly sinking into the horizon, tinting the sky all shades of orange and rose. The sea in front of you is still – a vast mirror reflecting the beauty and glory of this moment—our tiny place in space and time. The salt hangs thick in the air. Occasionally, you hear the soft flap of a seagull’s wings as it flies overhead.

What if you couldn’t take a photo or a video of it? What if you couldn’t post it, location-tagged, to 7 billion people, live? In this highly connected world, every moment is now an opportunity to perform. A chance to ‘share the amazing experience we’re having with our loved ones.’

The desire to be seen

Humans perform all the time. We behave differently in different social situations depending on who we’re with and where we are. But it used to be constrained to that: different locations or different social groups. With social media, that scoping mechanism is gone. Now, if I try to make something new for dinner and nail it? It’s a chance to perform. If I travel to a remote place and find that beautiful sunset, it’s a chance to perform. Any experience I have could be ‘fuel for my feed’.

First, we make the social media,
then the social media makes us.

I have to wonder if this ‘chance’ is changing the way I behave. Did I try making that risky meal for dinner because it would give me something to post if I nailed it? Did I travel to the end of the earth so I could take and share that photo? Is my sketchbook filled with what sketchbooks should be filled with: ways to help me think? Or is my sketchbook now an artefact of heavily curated ‘final illustrations’ – page after page of other chances to perform? Am I using art in the way it is intended – to truly explore what I think and feel? Or am I being influenced to spend my time producing a social media moment that will get me a few more likes? I know some restaurants who are designing their menu to increase their chances of people taking photos of the food they serve and therefore growing patronage. If they’re doing it, why would a person be so different?

What drives art?

I consider myself lucky. I grew up in a time when connection was the exception, not the norm. I remember drawing because I wanted to; just because I felt like it. I know what it feels like to make something ‘just because’. Just for me. I know that when I get that feeling, I produce work that matters.

But not everyone grew up in that world, and it makes me wonder whether the opportunity to perform is taking precedence over the work we create. Instead of looking inwards and using art as art has always been used – to help us make sense of this crazy world and our tiny place in it – are we playing by the rules of the algorithm and letting it drive us to its goal – more eyeballs and higher-priced advertising.

People often tell me that it’s easy for me to prioritise my illustration work because I’m getting paid and published. If they were getting published or getting paid, they say, they’d be able to prioritise it, too.

But what people don’t realise is that I’m only getting paid now because I prioritised it before – when I wasn’t getting paid. I spent nights, on the couch after a really long day at work, sketching out weird characters like Eric (who turned into my first picture book and a CBCA Notable book). Those ‘thankless nights’ had to happen first. The period of time where friends and family were bewildered at what I was doing, “What’s the point of this drawing that you’re doing? No one is paying you. What a waste of time. Shouldn’t you be doing more useful things?”

And that’s the problem with things that give us, and us alone, pleasure. Things like meditation, or hobbies like flower-arranging or painting miniatures, have different intrinsic value to each of us. No one else can understand it, but they’re always happy to offer their not-so-helpful opinion.

Back then, messing around with watercolour was just an enjoyable way to spend my evening. I found a hobby I enjoyed. And if the publishing deals dried up today, it wouldn’t change a thing. I’d still be drawing, painting, and writing, just for me, like I did before.

If we don’t know where we’re going, how do we know when we’ve arrived? So often we set out with a vision of what an artwork is going to be. It’s the whole reason we start it. We begin with the end in mind, and we work towards it. But maybe that’s setting us up for disappointment. What if we don’t get there? Or worse, what if we *can’t* get there with the skills we’ve got right now? As artists, so often our expectations lay just out of reach of our ability. That’s what makes it an infinite game. And while, in some ways, that’s what makes our art a life-long pursuit, it can also be terrifying along the way.

Maybe there’s another way.

Maybe, sometimes, we need to fling something at a canvas with no intention or plan, just to see what happens; respond to what’s right in front us, instead of what’s in our mind’s eye.

It might not get us to where we thought we were going. It might be really uncomfortable to feel that we’re flying blind. But maybe ‘no destination’ is exactly what we need to take the pressure off. If not all the time, just once in a while.

On almost a weekly basis, I’m asked for advice from budding authors and illustrators on how to ‘get noticed’ by publishers. They often describe all the things that they’re doing which reads like a laundry list of someone who has read all the ‘advice’ from others about how to ‘break-in’ to publishing. They say they’re attending conferences, listening to other authors and illustrators on podcasts, researching publishers, understanding who’s who in the industry. What’s most curious about these lists that I often get is that ‘writing and drawing’ is always one of the last activities on it, if it’s there at all.

I don’t know if that’s just because it’s so obvious that people feel it’s not worth mentioning upfront, but my fear is that people are spending far too much time ‘getting noticed’ by doing all the things that aren’t making the work.

As someone who never set out to be a children’s author/illustrator (but it happened anyway), my only advice is this: write and draw. Every story you write and every picture you draw is another entry in the big publishing lottery. It’s another chance to learn who you are, what you’ve got to say, and how you want to say it. I’ve been to a few publishing conferences now and you know who I never see there? The people who I aspire to be: Bruce Whatley, Ann James, Jackie French, Shaun Tan, Stephen Michael King, Leigh Hobbes, Anna Walker, the list goes on.

What are they doing instead? They’re spending their time making art. Image after image, story after story. Followers don’t matter. Schmoozing doesn’t matter. All that matters is prioritising the work. If we spend more time prioritizing the work, the work gets better. If the work gets better, eventually it’ll be so good it can’t be ignored.

In Denmark, they don’t need a law that says you must wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle. Everyone in Denmark knows this so they give cyclists a bit of extra room. Drivers slow down to pass a cyclist when they see one. They know what’s needed to keep people safe and continue letting the culture thrive so laws don’t have to.

When everyone knows the rules, it’s a culture. When it’s in the culture, you don’t need laws because it’s ‘just what everybody does’. The problem with ‘just what everybody does’ is that it’s hard to change because a lot of people need to agree. “Just what everybody does” is the sort of thing that kept slaves in slavery, women from voting, and poor people poor – it keeps things the same as they always were.

In art, artists are ‘supposed to struggle’ financially and emotionally, it’s the way things have always been. It’s just what all artists do.

Lawyers are the ones who change laws, but people, people can change culture. If artists are supposed to struggle, but don’t want to, we don’t need to convince lawmakers to make the change for us. All we need to do is change what’s normal. When enough of us are doing it, it becomes the culture.

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world – 163 floors, 800m tall. Setting out to build the tallest building in the world sounds hard. There’s so much that could go wrong because it’s never been done before.

But before the Burj Khalifa, there was Tapei 101 – 508 metres, 101 floors. At the time, that had also never been done before. And before Tapei 101 there was the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur with 88 floors, also uniquely innovative for its time.

If you go back far enough, you end up with a neolithic, underground single-story dwelling – the type found in the Orkney Islands in Scotland. There was a point in history when even that had never been done before. There was so much that could’ve gone wrong.

But bit-by-bit, time-after-time, there was a human who thought it should be done. That it could be done. And while it’s taken us about 12,000 years, we’ve gone from a sub-zero dwelling underground to the 163rd floor of the Burj Khalifa. Floor-by-floor, bit-by-bit, year-by-year.

Building the tallest building in the world sounds hard, but if all we need to do is add another floor – a 164th one – perhaps that’s doable. Becoming an artist also sounds hard. Maybe you’ve never done it before. There’s so much that could go wrong. But bit-by-bit, drawing-by-drawing. Start a level 0, and work your way up. Just like we humans always have. Anything is possible.