Welcome to the Creative Switch, the podcast inspiring the sensibly successful to switch on their unexpressed creativity for a more fulfilled life. I'm so pleased to be back with my next full season. It's been a while since my Summer Author special. That is partly logistics and life getting in the way, but the 12 month gap was mostly intentional. After launching, recording and producing 24 episodes in my first 12 months, I wanted to take stock and work out how things had gone, and what I might do differently to reach the right people with even more helpful and relevant content. My guests do still represent the broadest range of creative disciplines, but as I learn more about my own creative practice and what creativity means to us all the conversations are evolving. Fundamentally, the question which sparked the idea for the podcast continues to drive my curiosity. "What makes some people pursue their creativity and others not?" My first guest of the season helps me kick things off in hot pursuit of the answer to that question.Trisha Duffy is a creative force who wears a lot of hats. Singer, songwriter, media consultant and founder of In 10 Years Time, a philosophy, a podcast and community, that empowers people to live more intentional, creatively balanced lives. And if you're looking to turn your creative inspiration into action, don't forget to listen right to the end of the episode and catch up with my Creative Adventures. This is the place in the podcast where I'll be sharing the challenges I encounter and how acting on the nuggets of wisdom I've learned from my guests and applying those learnings is helping me to move forward and in my own creative projects. If you have an idea for creative projects but can't decide whether you should invest your time and energy in it this week, I'll be sharing the perfect advice for you later on from Lorna Gibson. Before we get to that, do remember to head to my website nikkivalance.com which has had an overhaul since last season. So do go take a look and sign up to stay in the loop with all my latest updates, blogs, guides, everything else that's going on to help you with your own creative adventures. But first, it's time for some creative news in the Edge. As this episode is exploring songwriting as a creative pursuit, I thought I'd look for some relevant news that's been going on in that sector. And I found an article in NME about musician Thom Yorke and how it revealed that he's still struggling to write music in the wake of the pandemic, describing lockdown as eye opening and deeply therapeutic. In an interview with the Art newspaper the Radiohead Funtman found solace in in painting during that time, embracing a slower rhythm and uninterrupted creative flow. But as life resumed, he felt creatively paralyzed by the return of flashing lights and distractions. It's a sentiment that resonates with many artists navigating post pandemic shifts. And there are other shifts going on at the moment as well. The UK government has recently announced a label led agreement to improve streaming era compensation for music creators. Backed by Universal, Sony and Warner uk. The deal introduces renegotiation frameworks for legacy contracts, digitization of back catalogues and increased session fees. And contemporary songwriters will also benefit from per diem payments and expense coverage during label organised sessions. It's a step towards fairer pay, although many argue it's just a beginning. Head to the bottom of the show notes where all the links I've mentioned are listed under the Edge did the lockdowns reawaken your creativity? How have things changed for you since things have shifted to the post pandemic ways of living and working? Do share your thoughts via my website or on Instagram Nikki underscore Vallance and lean in to my next conversation where in this climate of creative recalibration and music industry reform, we turn to today's guest, a strategy consultant, podcaster and self described creative fairy godmother who took up songwriting later in life. Her story is a powerful reminder that creative balance isn't just possible, it's transformative and mostly it hinges on one thing, your mindset. This is Tricia Duffy. Hi Trisha, welcome to the Creative Switch.

It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

No problem at all. We've got so much in common and so much to talk about. But what I'd like to do, if you could, is for you to start with a little introduction about who you are and what you do.

So oh, who am I and what? Well, my name is Trisha, Trisha Duffy and I do a lot of things actually it's quite difficult to sort of distill. Somebody once described me as a polymath because I'm a songwriter. I'm also a media consultant and a podcaster and I'm very passionate about inspiring others to fulfill their creative destiny, even if that means starting later in life or in midlife. So yeah, I guess I come here as a podcaster and a songwriter. Those are probably the two things you're most interested in.

I'm interested in all of it. And just before we came on air you were talking about that issue that you have, and I have it too, with when you ask to introduce who you are, we're all many things. I know that's one of your philosophies, is that we shouldn't be just labeled into one box and that's that. So I'm really curious to know a bit about what makes Trisha Trisha. And why did you, or do you feel that all those different aspects sort of satisfy you? What's going on? Why do we need all of those different things?

Well, I think that every single one of us, as you've alluded to, is many things, aren't they? And I think, if you're a parent, you're a mother, you might be a wife or a partner to somebody. If you are female, you are a friend. I mean, that's before you've even got into the professional kind of mastery that we might achieve. And I think in this day and age, it's very common for people to have more than one career, isn't it? So gone are the days where it's job for life. Start. Start down the mines at 14 and still there until you retire and then sit wondering what to do with yourself. We don't live in that kind of environment anymore. But counter to that, we also are very influenced by the attention economy that loves to put us in little boxes. I mean, even LinkedIn, has a word count on how you can describe your career and what you can use as a job title. And so kind of defying some of those things, I think is quite a brave thing to do. But it's also a human thing to do, isn't it? It's a profoundly human thing to be many things. And so for me, I was very creative as a child. I wrote a lot of poetry and I sang. And then as I grew older, I thought I wanted to be a singer or an actor. Those were the two things that I really saw myself would be the things that would satisfy me the most. But like a lot of people, I think in early age, depending on your generation and your upbringing, that wasn't seen by everybody around me as a viable kind of career choice, because those things should be hobbies, because you really have got to prioritize keeping the lights on and food on the table. And so I decided, well, I mean, I worked on cruise ships for four and a half years, which was fantastic and brilliant fun as an entertainer. But when I came back to the uk, I tried to find a job that I thought would satisfy me creatively. And I ended up getting a job in television. But the television industry was quite sexist, and it saw girls in business and administrative jobs and men in editorial jobs. And so I was forced down that kind of business route. And I think, like we've alluded to, although I was working in a creative industry, I wasn't doing a creative job. I was doing an administrative organizational job and a business job. And I guess, like anything, that my podcast is called in 10 years time, you can become good at anything if you do it long enough. So after a couple of decades of doing that, I was pretty good at it. But what I guess I've realized now is that that wasn't my heart's desire. And although I do get some nourishment from my consulting work and from the work that I do on the business side of the industry, and I definitely have some fantastic transferable skills which I've been able to use in my podcast. Just the ability to communicate, for example. I'm also very aware that that wasn't how I started and it wasn't the thing that really made me tick in my heart. And so coming back to songwriting now, later on in life, you take that poet singer as a child, it doesn't take a genius to work out that there's a songwriter in there somewhere. Really gives me a lot of nourishment. And I guess I, yeah, I get satisfaction from all three aspects of my kind of work life. Some pay better than others, and together they keep me in an equilibrium that works pretty well and they all nurture each other. So, yeah, I don't know. Does that answer your question?

Definitely. I think it's always good to have a little bit of. People are always curious, well, if you do that now, what on earth did you do before? That's a common question. I'm quite happy to share the fact that I've changed directions to many times. And I think actually if people felt more free to do that, I think more people would do that. And I'm like you. I'm trying to encourage people to recognize that the first step is not necessarily even thinking about career. It's about what gives you joy, what did you give up and can you fit it in? So, okay, so let's go to the point where, after building up a really successful career in the thing you'd kind of fallen into that wasn't necessarily your love, was there a moment of recognition where you thought, ugh, actually I need to be doing something else.

So there was a moment of recognition. But prior to that there was a slowly building, I guess, dissatisfaction, or even I could go so strong as to say resentment for what seemed on paper to be pretty perfect life. So how does somebody reconcile feeling dissatisfied and a little bit resentful when everything's fine? That's quite tricky. And I think that I'm not the first person to have experienced that. So that sort of whispers away at you, doesn't it? And it can be very damaging. I think particularly, I suspect that I was probably unconsciously dealing with that kind of sensation for a number of years, like a very, very long time. And it was actually the pandemic that helped me. And the pandemic was horrific for so many people and in so many ways for all of us. But it was also. There is a silver lining there, which is that when I was stepped away from my day job and the requirements to do all of the things that I thought I had to do, that I had this very sort of should kind of attitude to life and allowed myself a little bit of freedom. What I realized was that I got a huge amount of nourishment and joy from spending time writing songs, which I was more free to do because I didn't have the same level of obligation that I'd had before, even socially, let alone when it comes to traveling around for work. And that put a new idea in my head that went, it's a bit like having a low level infection in a. In your leg or something. That's not that bad, but it's just there all the time. It allowed me to give it a little bit more forefront and allowed it to become something that was a bit more positive to look towards rather than just being, I know something's wrong, but I don't know how to fix it. I saw that there was a possibility that was available to me in finding a route back into music that was more viable. And so I decided quite determinedly to see whether I could do more with songwriting. And I actually enrolled in music school and decided to do a master's in songwriting, which I didn't even know was a thing that you could do. Yeah, well, I mean, I had been writing a lot of songs and I'd released records as a hobby. But yeah, the. The thing that enabled me was, was education. And that really changed my life a number of ways. It obviously put me in a music school where I was surrounded by songwriters all day, every day, and musicians and music playing, all the time. But it Also allowed me to find a different kind of love in research and academia as well, which I hadn't had before. So I Left school at 16 with no qualifications and no prospects in, I don't know, not very kind of economically wonderful area on the south coast. And so to go to a proper university and do a degree in something that. Do a master's in something that I was fascinated in was a huge privilege for me because I'd never been afforded that opportunity. I had done a degree through Open University while I was working in economics and social science things because I thought that was a socially acceptable kind of a good feminist, does a business degree type thing. But again, these are all social narratives that were given to me that wasn't what my choice. I didn't love economics, I loved music. So it's interesting when I was given the opportunity to rethink what it is that I want. Well, what I want to study and master is songwriting. And I can because I have a, good enough portfolio that I was able to pass the audition and get a place. And that. Yeah, I mean, it completely changed my life in two ways. One, obviously the, as I mentioned, the surrounding, but also this academic point because that then in and of itself gave me the research tools which I'd never had before, to be able to launch my podcast. Because my podcast is a research based podcast rather than an interview based podcast.

Yeah.

So, yeah, there were so many things that were incredible from that experience. And it also allowed me a different way of framing how I spend my time. Because whilst it is difficult to explain to your friends and colleagues and people that you just want to work part time because you want to write songs, it's easier and more socially acceptable to say I'm doing a master's. Oh, well, that's seems like a jolly good reason to take some time and I went from working five days a week to working three days a week. So it gave me confidence and a sort of socially acceptable excuse, if that's the right word, which I'm ashamed that I needed. But I think that sometimes you do need something like that that people can accept and understand, get their heads around. Yeah, yeah. So that, that was, I guess, there's lots of epiphanies, aren't there, along the way, just overnight?

No, no, I think you spot them normally when you're looking backwards, you go, oh, that was the moment. That was another moment. And they've all added up to get me where I am. Brilliant. So I'm really curious, because actually, interestingly, I'm contemplating doing a Master's, but I don't know what in at this point. I know I've always wanted to do a second degree. Definitely has to be something that I want to do as opposed to should do. So I'm just exploring the idea of it at the moment and thinking, what would that be? Because I'm interested in so many different things. So what was it like to be going into sort of that depth with something that you're obviously passionate about? What was it like learning about that?

It was absolutely brilliant. I loved it. I loved it way more than I thought I was going to. I mean, what's been the most incredible things? I mean, by the way, definitely do a Master's in something you're fascinated by. You will absolutely love it. I've got a friend who's doing a second Masters who's on the Masters with me because she loves doing Masters so much. So one of the other profound takeaways of doing a Master's was to adopt a beginner's mindset. Because although you go into a Master's degree, which is mastery in something with a knowledge, you can't just do a Master's if you know nothing about songwriting. You have to have written some songs, but at the same time, you are required to really just let go of all your preconceptions and start and do deep research in things that have never been done before, ideally something unique, et cetera. So, in every Masters, there's a research project or research element of some sort, and really, as long as it's associated with the topic, there is a lot of freedom in a Master's as well about how you apply that research, as long as you work within academic frameworks and all of the things that are required and fulfill the learning outcomes. So, yeah, I mean, none of it felt like hard work and yet it was really hard work. So that's a sort of like a sort of hypocrisy within something like a Master's is that it's an incredible amount of work. I mean, quite often when I had extra things to do and I was working, I'd be at my desk very, very early in the morning because I'm very lark kind of individual. I do get the best out of myself at 6:30, and so I would put in those extra hours, but at no point did it feel hard. I never had a problem not going for drinks, missing a dinner because I had to study. I enjoyed. The reason not to have to do some things that I just felt were not going to serve me. So, yeah, I would highly recommend that anyone is even slightly contemplating doing masters. 100% do it. And yeah, enjoy every second of it because it is incredible. It's phenomenal opportunity. And as I say, because I hadn't gone to university, my degree was an in person degree. Even though I was only in university one, sometimes two days a week, it was just a joy to turn up and be around all of those people all interested in the same topic. It was fantastic.

Brilliant. Okay, so before we go into a bit more detail about the podcast, there's one question I like to ask my guests, which I just like having conversations about creativity, to be honest. That's one of the main reasons why I started the podcast. So we get a variety of answers to this from all the different people who've come on. But I'd like to know what creativity means to you specifically, what that word means, what it means in your life.

So for me, it's a. I guess I treat it as a bit of a verb. It's a way of living, isn't it? It's a way of being. I mean, I believe that everyone is creative and that it's both human to be creative and a human right to be creative. And so it's about kind of allowing yourself the opportunity on a daily basis to do things that require freedom of thought and expression in any way, shape or form. I mean, I do like dictionary definitions which say something along the lines of, any activity that creates something original that wasn't there before. I mean, that's broad enough for me to enjoy because I think that a creative act could be baking a cake, even if that's following a recipe. Likewise, it could be practicing an instrument. It could be, a ceramicist at the potter's wheel. It could be sketching, it could be writing. I mean, I write a stanza of lyrics every day. Sometimes they're terrible, but it doesn't matter. It's the act of creating that's the most important thing. That process. Part of it, actually, I was going to say another part of the master's experience. As I mentioned, this kind of beginner's mindset. That's something that I've really taken with me now into the future. And I enjoy very much the fact that I can. I call myself an apprentice songwriter, even though I'm in my 50s and I've been writing songs for a very long time. But because I've only really started to do this meaningfully and purposefully rather than just when it occurred to me in the last few years. And if I accept that it takes 10 years to master something, then I really am an apprentice. And having that kind of learner's outlook and beginner's mindset is very creative because it stops you. It allows you the opportunity to not self judge yourself if you do make something crap or at least have a conversation with yourself when you're self judging, which inevitably happens because of the power of the inner critic to say, that's okay because I'm on a journey, I'm an apprentice, so it's great that I tried it out, what can I learn from it? And just to have that self talk that's a little bit healthier for us, it's as creative individuals.

I love that and I love the crossover with a scientist mindset, which is similar to a researcher's mindset.

Yeah.

When people get stuck and they feel like they can't move forward because they're not good enough. And this whole thing about everyone thinks they're not good enough. And it's probably to do with the environment we live in now and social media and all the comparisonitis that's going on. I went to an event recently and I was chatting to someone, I said, the thing is, scientists often never see the outcome of their research because it takes years and years and years to get the answer to something and get a breakthrough. So many of them will never see a breakthrough, but everything they do will add up to something that's built on by someone else in the future. So first of all, they have a much longer term view of their activity that they're spending time on. But secondly, they don't go about it expecting an outcome or a result. They go into it with a hypothesis and they test it. And then one way or the other, the answer is the answer.

Yeah.

And then they think, well, how can we then build on that? So nothing is a failure. Even if it doesn't work, nothing is a failure. And I think we're so the way, particularly education is at the moment so focused on results and outcome and it paralyzes people. They can't fail because they feel they're going to be judged or want to judge themselves. And I just think if we could just take a little bit of the way the scientific community does things, I just think we'd all be a lot happier.

I totally agree. And I mean, I think it's everything I've ever done that's been a project that's been a longer term thing. I've started with a hypothesis, as you say, that if I do these things, this thing will happen. And it has never, ever, ever turned out the way I expected and for the better, it's just. I mean, I've got an EP coming out. Thank you very much. And that project started on an island called Johnson's island, which is an artist community in the. On a tiny, tiny landmass in the mouth of the of the River Brent and the Grand Union Canals just off the Thames. And I'd been invited to become songwriter in residence for a few days on the island. And I thought, well, I know how this will be. I'm in Brentford where there's so much change happening and there's so many artists there and I'm going to interview them and I'm going to tell their stories through songs. The first day I turned up, there's not a single artist there. They will keep their own hours. And I was like, what shall they do? And so I started to investigate my own relationship with the water. Why was I drawn to do this? Why did I think this island was a good place? What is it about this environment surrounded by water? And I ended up writing an entire song cycle of river stories. But if I'd have gone in thinking that I probably would have ended up writing about the artists or vice versa. But I could never have predicted how it unfolded. But I'm so happy with the result, I couldn't be more delighted with it.

Yeah. So it's back to that beginner's mindset. If you could go in not knowing. People find that a little bit scary, I think when you're in the middle of creative exploration. And I call myself a creative adventurer.

Yeah.

And it, it does mean I do have to explain to people what that means because they just have never heard it really before, although other people are using that term. It's not a common way of describing what you do.

I love it. It's fantastic.

And I also had to work quite long and hard about, well, what does bring everything I do together. And I settled on a strap line which is new, so that listeners to the previous episode of the podcast won't have heard this because it's happened in between the last season and this one. I did a lot of work on trying to work out all what am I doing and who not who am I, but how can I communicate that to people? And I settled on a strap line of living boldly and creating freely. And because it was so broad and one of the things I recognised in myself is I don't like to be limited by the societal boxes and labels. So how can I get away with that? And I didn't want it to be instructional. I didn't want it to be create boldly and live freely. Because I'm not here to try and tell people what to do. I'm just trying to do it my way. And if it inspires people to take their own creativity and do something with it, then that's fantastic. But what I then had to do is say, okay, well what does that actually mean? And what are the aspects of being bold and what are the aspects of creating freely? What does that actually mean? And pretty much every statement within my analysis of that is something that people find scary. So it's like doing things you don't know how to do. People hate doing that because they think, oh, I'm no good at it, and then they freeze and they don't want to do it. So I think I'd be really curious to know the people you've come across, the people you were on the Masters with, other creative people that you've interacted with. Have you found that there is a common way that people overcome that self judgment or the fear of not doing it? Well? Do you have anything that you do yourself to stop that from happening?

I mean, I think one of the ingredients of what you're talking about is imposter syndrome, isn't it? Is this idea that we don't belong here. And there are some truths in imposter syndrome which I think is important to acknowledge, which is that sometimes it's not imposter syndromes. It's actually a disadvantage. And for me, as a woman in my 50s the songwriting industry is made up of mainly men, and if it is a female, it's someone under 34. So sometimes I'm not suffering from imposter syndrome. I really am not welcome. I'm not the demographic that anyone wants in this industry. And yet here I am plowing on and trying to kind of forge career because I do want to do this as a career. So that aside, I think it's just important to acknowledge that sometimes when you are experiencing something that feels like imposter syndrome, you might actually be being discriminated against. And so it's just worth giving that a little bit of air time. I think it's quite legitimate. But that aside, yeah, I mean, it's scary every day, but it's also exciting. I mean, today I am trying something I have done before a couple of times, but not on my own, something called toplining EDM. So electronic dance music DJs send out tracks and I've got about 12 of them to choose from. And they're looking for vocal top lines over the top. So if you think about a good example would be Cyr and David Goethe's Titanium. So, the DJ creates the track and then there's a top line melody and lyric over the top. And that's the bit that I'm attempting to write. I've never done that on my own before. I've done it before with producers in the room, but I've never done it by myself before. And I'm really enjoying it. I absolutely love it.

And I've already accepted that this one would probably be rubbish and won't go anywhere, but I don't mind. Although, having said that, I think there is something in my brain, now I'm saying this out loud, that says there's hope. So maybe there is hope every time you're creating, particularly if you do have a mind for it to become a career, that maybe it might be okay, maybe you'll learn something, maybe there'll be some quality in there, or maybe I can reuse the lyric for another purpose or there'll be some residual good. So at the very least I'll have a learning experience. And at the most, there might be something that comes as an artifact out of this, if not for this brief, that I could use elsewhere, or I could just steal the words and use it in a more conventional songwriting environment. But, I think that that inertia that I described, that dissatisfaction was eating away at me because I wasn't trying. Because, well, I've left it too late. If it's not going to be a hit song, it's not worth writing all of those things and actually overcoming some of that thinking and allowing myself to kind of understand the benefit of the process. And, that addictive, magical flow state that all of us creatives actually are drug addicts for, it is rewarding enough of itself and compound interest in creativity, I think, is, to use a more scientific or economic term is also really useful because actually, when you try. When you put pen to paper, not only do you get the instant benefit of hopefully getting into that flow state or helping yourself to process something or reducing your adrenaline, helping your hormonal balance serve you. But you also get a little bit better because you learn what works and the next time you do it, you're a little bit better and a little bit better. And you can't be your 10 years time good overnight if with no effort. You've got to take little steps. And the steps are really brilliant. They're fascinating, they're fun, they're exciting, they're joyful, they're good for you, you. So there's benefit in the moment and there's benefit long term just by going through the process. And sometimes it's as simple as just saying, you know what, I'm not going to put any expectation on myself, I'm just going to play the guitar for one minute, set a timer, one minute. Because that's my compound interest, my little investment. Before you know it, 20 have gone by and you're in a flow state and you're maybe writing a song.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Great advice. So you've mentioned 10 years time a few times there. So let's get into talking about why the podcast and what it's all about.

Oh, good question. So why the podcast? I mentioned I'm a consultant and I work with creative organizations, so I specialise in strategy and complex change work within the media sector. So IP owners, broadcasters, production companies, content makers, digital content companies and platforms as well. And a device that I used in my day job in my strategy work would be long term planning. Because what I noticed in my most successful clients, the clients which were most robust, most flexible, most agile were the ones that had the longest term plans. So those are one year plans. Oh, found it very difficult when a curveball comes to react. Those that knew the direction of travel much, much further out, say five to 10 years, were ironically more able to deal with the ebbs and flows of life and things that were outside their control. Tended to have happier staff. People know why they're there, more alignment, a better relationship with their customers. So if I advise this all the time for my day job clients, what would happen if I applied this process to myself? So this is about three years ago, I just did my own 10 year plan and I worked out my own philosophy of how I was going to do that and I applied it to myself and I wrote a little article about it which I put on LinkedIn. And that article got a lot of interest from friends and colleagues of mine getting in touch saying, ooh, I noticed you've changed your job title to consultant slash songwriter. What the hell, I'm a photographer. I want to do that too. And it just sparked a lot of interest in people saying, how are you doing that? Because I've got this side hustle and you've had the confidence to actually change your job title. Say you do these two diverse, different things. So that gave me a little bit of confidence about it. But at the time I was just using it for myself. I had the idea that it could be a podcast probably a few months, maybe a year after that. And I recorded a couple of demo episodes and then I thought, oh, no, a little bit like you were describing about your kind of creative adventurer. I didn't have the strap line to be able to describe why this in 10 years was so important. Should it just be about living a creative life and I should Forget this whole 10 year thing? Then I put it down for a whole year, just kept on using it just for myself, experimenting with myself. And then the following year, this is the year two of the big experiment that became in 10 years time, I thought, no, I know what it is, jolly well, a book. It's not a podcast after all. And you can do these sort of schemes where they take you through a daily practice. So you write for 20 minutes a day and by the end of it you've got all your books structured. I did one of those and over six weeks I identified what the theme of the book was and I articulated the headings for every chapter and subsection. And then I thought, oh, books are long, aren't they? And so again, because I was doing the Masters by this stage, I put that to one side. And then it was another year went by and I suddenly woke up one day in January going, it's been a podcast all along. And those chapters are actually the headings of the podcast, for goodness sake. And now, obviously, in the meantime, I'd finished my master's and, well, I was just finishing my master's and I knew how to research and I had confidence about how you cite things and all the skills I hadn't had before. So the whole thing kind of fell together. And yeah, the podcast is called in 10 years time how to Live a Creative Life. And it's really designed for anyone who wants to change the creative balance of their life, whether that be factoring an hour a week of some sort of creativity, a dance class, or just some sketching, whatever that looks like to them. Right through to those who are career changes like I am. And I provide tools to help support people with all aspects of that journey. Right from deciding what that creativity is. There are tools on my website that help people do that to doing their 10 year plan, which I still think is a valuable exercise and things like imposter syndrome, et cetera, et cetera. And, and how you manage your relationships changing and your friendships and the communion and et cetera and the vulnerability and all of the things that we go through as creatives. And yeah, it's become, it's become very important to me actually. I love it. I love the conversation. I love the fact it brings me in touch with people like you. So many like minded people that I've, and the other podcasts that I can listen to as companions to it. It's super enriching and hopefully supports other people to be able to find that confidence and that kind of little bit of fearlessness you need just to take that tiny step towards your adventuring.

Yeah, absolutely brilliant. And it's funny, isn't it, when you think about doing a podcast like anything, whilst you're ignorant of what it is, you think, oh well, I can drive, so I'll be fine, everyone else drives, I'll be fine. And then you get in the car, go, oh, how do I do this? And it's the same thing, but I think you just have to trust that by doing you will learn, you'll make mistakes and you'll learn and you'll get to the point where you can do it well enough and then as you do more, you do it better and better and better. And I think the thing I love about podcasting is it's so accessible for people to find, but the expectation is that it won't be mega polished necessarily. And it is really a personal thing. Normally the person who's set out to launch it has something they want to say or something they want to explore, but it's normally very, very personal. It's a bit like writing or writing songs. I'm sure the start of something is always from you and you hope that other people will respond to it and it will serve a purpose to other people outside of you. But it's got to start with the spark inside. Yeah, and I think that's the podcast as well. That's absolutely what it's for. So people ask me who do I invite on. In fact, it's funny not because I'm trying to test people, but when I'm asking people onto the podcast, I like to know enough about them that we can tell it's going to work. There's going to be some kind of interesting conversation that's going to happen. And so you, like everybody else has been on the podcast, fill in a little, not survey, but a questionnaire type thing. And I start off by asking, which one of these three are you? Because most of my guests are either someone who has switched to a creative career.There are people who help people do that. So then the facilitators, the coaches, the teachers, and then there are people who understand how creativity works in our society, in ourselves, in our brains. And I call those the creativity experts. And you're not the first person to struggle to say which one of those am I?

Because I think I found it very difficult. I found that very, very difficult. I mean, I definitely am a switcher, for sure. That's easy. Last night I was running a workshop for creatives. It was update or create your ten year plan, which I run four times a year. And yeah, I had a group of amazing people all coming to really think about their future selves and put themselves in their own shoes in 2035 and look back over the decade, see what they would like to be true. So I guess that's the facilitation part of it. And then expert, that's a little bit more uncomfortable for me. Imposter syndrome creeping in. But I do a huge amount of research and I'm making myself learned, I guess, on the topic of creativity, because it's the thing that I find most interesting of all. And so I've got piles and piles and piles of books around me all the time. I've always got an audiobook in my ears about creativity. I'm reading an amazing book at the moment called the Brain on art, which really talks about the scientific link between what's happening, chemically and hormonally in ourselves when we create and what different types of creativity do for our brains. And that is just amazing. I mean, it's just such a gift. And I find it fascinating. None of the research I do for my podcast feels all hard work, a bit like my masters. It just. It's just so interesting and it really helps me understand myself better as well, obviously. So I get a huge amount of benefit from it. And then I guess the thing that I do, which I suppose is where I bring my expertise as a consultant, is I distill everything I've learned when I pour through all of These sort of scientific journals and PhDs by professors and doctorates and what have you, and distill it into something bite size for other people to listen to that they can then get some benefit from. That's really. I see myself as sort of like a middleman between the really brainy people and the rest of us.

You're the conduit through which their knowledge and expertise is funneled through. I think what I'm hearing you say is that the reason why the masters was so enriching for you and the reason why you get so much out of the research is that it's driven by your curiosity and your beginner's mindset and your wish to learn, which funnily enough is another fundamental need that humans have that many people neglect. And it brings us back around to balance. So before we finish, I'd love it if you could talk to me a little bit about how do you balance everything? Because when you're wearing lots of hats, that's a tricky thing to do.

Yeah, it is.

And useful for people to learn different ways of doing it. So how do you do that?

So it's easier sometimes than others. It's the truth. But I try to work towards a predetermined amount of time in terms of the work time. So I carve up work time, approximately 20% consulting work, which I still do because it pays better than the other things that I do. And it keeps the lights on and food on the table. And also I get some nourishment from it as well. I still really enjoy it. And then I spend equal amounts of the remaining 80% on the podcast in 10 years time. And on my songwriting. It's not like each week I go right. Mondays I do consulting work, Tuesdays and Wednesdays I do songwriting, and Thursdays and Fridays I do the podcast. It's not like that at all. But that's an approximation which I try to hold in check. Next week I'm actually on a songwriting camp all week, so I'll only be doing songwriting probably. I will answer some day job emails around the edges of that, but I won't be doing very much on in 10 years time because I won't have the brain capacity for that. But by holding that kind of approximation in my life, it helps serve me because I can do a sort of audit of my time if I think things are going askew. And it allows me to sort of journal on. Right, okay. Why does this feel a bit off? I can scratch my head and think, is there something going on that's underlying that? How? What have I not been doing? And sometimes it's simply that I have been ill disciplined, let's say, or procrastinating, getting on with things. And it's back to those tools about that. We set our 10 year plan and we say, right, okay, if being a good songwriter, being really confident in my songwriting is my ten year goal, then maybe I should write four lines of a verse. Because that seems like a good idea, doesn't it? It takes a few minutes to write a bad one. So, if you break it down to that smallest possible part, then actually you create a balance in itself, haven't you? Because you've actually chosen to do that rather than sit on your phone scrolling for an hour and a half. I mean, my screen time, like anybody's, can be absurd. I mean, absolutely extraordinary. I'm to the point where I think, how on earth is that even possible? I spent on all my devices together 14 hours of the day on a screen. I mean, was there a single moment when I didn't have it in my hand? I just can't be true. Then other days it seems more balanced, or if I'm going to a session, it seems more balanced. So it's really just about kind of examining yourself, isn't it? Those little audits, having a little conversation with yourself. I do morning pages pretty much every morning. Even if I've only got 10 minutes, I'll just write down, things I want to achieve. It's taking that time to have an external perspective on yourself. And you can do that for yourself through your journal, through your conversations, through listening to podcasts like this. You can actually enable yourself to just ask yourself challenging questions about whether or not that's entirely right. And then you can make a decision to do something different.

Yes, I think you've mentioned a few things. A loose structure, but a structure, or at least the target of how you want to balance things. Recognition of the signs that it is going off balance and a method to do that. Obviously one of the ways to do it is the morning pages. The journaling. There's another thing I'm obsessed with. It sounds a bit navel gazing. It's not. It's just I love to think about, where is the feeling? Why am I feeling unsettled? What's going on here? Yeah, because then, then it gives you the chance to identify what to do about it.

Exactly.

Whereas if you just sit in the thing, you just sit in the thing and you don't go anywhere.

Yeah. There's another thing that I do, actually, which is very, very helpful. And actually, for any writer out there of any kind of content, I highly recommend this. If you have a schedule. If those with young children, it might not work, but there's something called the London Writer's Salon, which runs writers hours every day. 8am, 1pm, this is UK time, 4pm and 9pm, they run an hour, which is simply a zoom call when nobody speaks. And I can't tell you, I mainly write all of my podcast episodes in the hour between eight and nine in writer's hour, because I make myself get to my desk, I switch on the zoom. There are 250 odd other people all writing all kinds of things, books, poems, PhDs, all sorts of things. And we all just sit there and rewrite. And so when you're faced with 250 other faces all writing, it's pretty hard not to hold yourself to account to actually write. So. And then nine times out of ten, nine o' clock comes, everybody switches off the call, and I'm in such a slow state that I want to carry on anyway. And so before you know it, you finished what you needed to do. So it's hugely powerful that. That communion of people kind of coming together, that can be incredibly powerful. And even there's some identity tricks as well. So just even describing yourself as a songwriter in a kind of social setting or a creative setting, something like saying you're a podcaster to make you go, oh, I better write that next episode. i just told everyone I'm a podcaster.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I remember the moment when I first put it on a form that I was filling in. I was in the hospital. I had to have an audiology checkup. It asked, what's your occupation? And I thought, oh, shall I do it? Yeah. So I did do the slash, slash, slash. I didn't just say I was a writer. And it felt amazing.

Yeah.

And then I asked other people, and I had a friend who was a published author. She. She'd written at that point, one novel, had another one commissioned, and she said even she didn't call herself a writer because she didn't feel that she could. And I was like, what? You're published. Crazy. It is a really powerful tool, both for accountability, but also, I think, as you say, for your identity. To allow yourself to be that during the day, you have to believe it. And you have to say it out loud, and you have to keep practicing that. Interesting. What I do now is when people ask what I do in a new setting where they don't know me. I don't talk about my jobs, I don't say I'm a podcaster, I say I write, I podcast, I create. I use the verbs because it's even more freeing not to have any of those labels. But people find it really hard because it's not what they're used to.

I avoid that. I would literally ask somebody, what's your creative passion?

Yeah, yeah.

And see what they have to say. But obviously that is harder for some than others, I think. And then, if they didn't have one, I would literally go into kind of encouraging mode. What would it be? If it could be anything, what's your wish? Plant seeds.

Yes. Brilliant.

It is that curiosity that you're describing, though, that's really common about creatives, though, that we are both. I mean, I always say that this is about songwriting. The wonderful thing about being doing a master's, a bunch of songwriters is they're both interesting and interested. And so that kind of combination of having an interesting kind of tone of voice, a story to tell, but also being really fascinated by other people's interesting tone of voice and story to tell, it's kind of what makes this so satisfying because I just don't care about some sort of businessy things that other people care about. It's just boring to me. I want to know about the stories, I want about know about the emotions, I want to know about the feelings, I want to know about what happened next.

Yeah, it's really fascinating. You just sparked something else in me there before we finish. When I was in recruitment for many years, people used to say to me, you're not the same as all the other recruiters I've ever been to see. And I said, why is that? I don't know. And I ended up training to be a coach. So I obviously had a different kind of way of thinking. But the people I was helping were all looking for interim or temporary work. So they weren't looking for long term, 10 year plan-y type career things. But I kind of worked out that the technical stuff they could do was a given pretty much. I mean, I could test it by asking questions. Yeah, okay, so you do that. That's your specialism. But why, why are you looking for something temporary? And I was always looking for the story. And I used to match the story of the person to the story of the company who wanted the person to fulfill a role. So for example, if someone said, well, the thing is, I don't want permanent work because I'm planning in six months time to go traveling and I need to earn the money to do that and I've got this skill and I want to commit to a six month month project. And then you get the employer saying, well, I keep having these people start and then two weeks later they take a permanent job and they never stay. And I go, well, don't worry, I've got the perfect person for you. On paper, they may not seem to be exactly what you would normally look for, but I know they can do the job and they absolutely will commit to finishing the job. And then we go. And it was literally, I was matching the stories of what somebody needed and what somebody was able to do and wanted to spend their time doing. So I think I've always been fascinated in the people, and I guess that's been the thread that's gone through the things I've done.

So yeah, absolutely.

Really interesting.

That's where the good stuff is.

Tell me what you are up to at the moment, what's next? You've obviously mentioned the EP, what's going on with that?

Yes. So EP, my music artist name is Little Lore L O R E Like like Small Story. So back to the kind of human story element of it. And it's a song cycle that's all based around rivers and water. So it's called River Stories. I have a lot of writing going on in the background and lots of different genres which hopefully, some of it will see the light of day, but it's a volume game, so we'll see. The next series of the podcast is coming out, so that's very exciting and that has a theme. Each of my podcast series is six episodes in each series of which has five that are research based, which are just me talking to you very intimately and one interview that that brings the whole kind of series together. The next series theme is communion and how we commune with other people, how we commune with our art itself, how we manage our friendships if they change when we start to live this creative life, perhaps sometimes we don't get the support that we perhaps might have expected. It was quite a difficult topic, like a hot take topic. I don't think that very many people have researched an interview with an amazing calligrapher called Laura Edralin, who is an incredible community builder who lives quite locally to me at the same time also I'm just finalising my PhD proposal because my addiction to research knows no end. I'm trying to find a university to take me on to carry on with PhD level research. So that will be a new adventure. A different kind, much longer than a Master's, but hopefully just as satisfying.

Okay, fantastic. We will make sure that we put links to all the things that you're putting out there in the show notes and also to the book you mentioned that you're reading now. The Brain on Art sounds amazing. There are lots of different ways of looking at the topic and there are lots of books out there, but some of them really stand out. So that sounds like a brilliant one. Thank you so much for your time. It's been fantastic. It won't be the only time we talk or I hope.

That would be nice, wouldn't it? Let's have a of cup of tea.

Let's sort that out soon. Thank you so much Tricia. It's been lovely having you.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Wow, wasn't that a great conversation? Trisha and I would definitely be staying in touch. Now it's creative adventures time and I promised to share some advice from the talented Lorna Gibson on creative inspiration. Throughout my ongoing creative projects and across all the episodes of the podcast, there are many creative challenges which crop up and threaten to derail us. A few seem to be more common and keep re emerging. So much so I often return to the same advice over and over. Last time, at the end of the last season, I talked about how the podcast itself had been brewing for a long time before it came into being. As Lorna says, ideas are a bit like having someone tugging at your coattails, and the one she focuses on will be the one that just keeps coming and coming. So when another idea for an exciting project surfaced at the end of last year, it was difficult to know if I should do anything with it. I knew it was a good idea and that it would sit really well with the podcast, but I just wasn't sure how I'd fit it in. I wanted to follow up the creative conversations in the episodes by exploring the concepts of creativity and creative living and then sharing my findings in longer, more in depth written articles. I put it to one side as the festive season took over and things got crazy busy. Then early this year, when I was planning out my activities for 2025, it pulled at my sleeve again. I knew the feeling. I recognized it. This was going to be my next project. The instinctive pull was telling me to bring it into the world once again. Just like with the podcast, the idea has risen to the surface, made a pest of itself and made the choice for me. I wasn't sure of all the details, but I did decide early on to investigate a platform called Substack. It's a bit like a combination of some other familiar social media platforms, but it has one difference. It's a place to host longer form content. It's a place to build a community around that content and an audience who might want to choose to support my work financially too. By following Lorna's intuitive approach again, I had the beginnings of a new adventure. Don't forget if a podcast is a creative adventure you'd like to begin, check out the links for added to my podcast recording and editing software and captivate my podcast hosting software. I really couldn't do any of this without those great, easy to use tools. Have you found you have too many ideas and find it hard to choose which to focus on? Or do you have a different way of working this out? Please share your experiences with me through my website or Instagram. I'd love to hear all about the ups and downs of your creative adventures. Thanks so much for listening to this episode as a creative switch. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review over on podchaser.com and if you've got any questions at all, please let me know on Instagram. Ickyvalence. I do hope you join me next time when I'll be sharing more updates on my progress with my new project and talking to jewellery designer Ruth Chipperfield about how a frighteningly serious illness became the key to unlocking her creative career. Keep creating and remember why survive when you can thrive.