Staying Motivated in These Difficult Times

0:00 Alex McKee says, "How can one while

0:06 living through difficult times and by difficult times,

0:10 they mean not only personal but global, how can one, they ask,

0:14 avoid losing motivation and still continue to create and grow and work?

0:21 How can one cope with this?" This is a marvelous question.

0:26 Um You're asking, you're saying create and grow and work.

0:31 And so, I'm going to take as axiomatic in your question that you are an artist.

0:39 As you are looking for motivation to create and grow,

0:42 which I think of as absolutely intrinsic to being an artist.

0:48 But you're losing motivation because times are difficult and I do too.

0:51 I am too.

0:52 Um There's a lot of suffering going on right now all over.

0:57 Here locally, here country-ly, here globally.

1:01 Um there's a lot of suffering and it's affecting all of us in different ways.

1:06 I for myself, I feel like it's this I keep

1:09 reminding myself that there's like this ground level of like 15%.

1:14 I'm 15% depressed about the world all the time.

1:17 Like just kind of really broken up about it.

1:21 Um And yeah, when you are looking at that kind of suffering

1:26 and you're looking at the privations and things going on in the world,

1:30 uh it can absolutely feel like wondering what

1:34 like cool camera rig should hold your phone

1:37 up while you're recording videos about the things

1:40 you replicate can feel kind of useless and pointless.

1:44 I really get that cuz it like yeah.

1:48 What am I What am I doing to make the world a better place?

1:51 Uh Look, I think the world needs artists.

1:57 We we we desperately need them.

2:01 We don't realize that we need them all the time.

2:04 But like during the Balkan War,

2:07 the story that I remembered the most coming out of Sarajevo was

2:12 the theater was still happening in a city that was being actively shelled.

2:18 And just like as a point of reference,

2:19 Sarajevo is very much like a San Francisco kind of kind of city.

2:23 It's got a terrain.

2:25 It's And just imagine as someone explained to me back then,

2:30 that the way life was in Sarajevo was

2:32 imagine a bunch of people with mortars set up

2:34 in in in the Marin Headlands and are

2:37 just constantly lobbing mortar mortar bombs into San Francisco.

2:42 That's what it was like in Sarajevo at the worst of it.

2:44 And yet theater and art still occurred.

2:48 There were still people responding aesthetically and temporally

2:52 to the world around them and sharing that with others.

2:55 And that's really important.

3:00 Because when you hear that story, I hope you find it as inspiring as I do

3:04 is that like the need to create isn't solely recreational.

3:13 It is important for survival.

3:17 Like I'm really clear when I hear about

3:19 theater happening in a city that is being shelled,

3:22 everybody in that audience and on that stage

3:25 is recognizing that there's some aspect of art and sharing of it that is

3:31 necessary for cultural and human beings survival.

3:34 I really believe that.

3:38 And when you are working on your art, when you are working on your art,

3:44 when you are working on the things that you can't stop working on, when

3:50 you are working on the things that really matter to you, um you are growing.

3:57 You are also growing.

3:59 And that is also a important task as a human being to grow.

4:03 And personally, times of difficulty can really give you great

4:10 perspective and I want to tell a story about COVID,

4:14 which was we were in the lockdown.

4:17 Remember how confusing it was?

4:18 Like there was like one day it was like we might

4:21 be locking down and the next day it was like we

4:23 are locking down and then the next day it was like

4:24 I don't know if we're leaving our houses for a few days.

4:27 Oh, I don't know if it's going to be weeks.

4:28 I don't know if it's going to be months.

4:30 And all that uncertainty, I remember a a few weeks in having a some

4:36 kind of interaction with my wife that was fraught.

4:40 As happens in a relationship.

4:42 And it was one of these places in which

4:45 we annoy each other and some little friction happened.

4:50 And I wa- I was looking I was noticing

4:53 that she I watched her make this choice to be like,

4:56 "I'm going to let this one go.

4:58 Like not worth it." And I was like, "Oh,

5:00 look at Look at she has raised the water level on what's important, right?

5:05 Like that that fight doesn't matter in this world."

5:09 And I saw that and I was like, "Oh yeah, she is right.

5:13 A lot of these dumb fights don't matter." And so,

5:16 we we just didn't fight about the normal dumb stuff for a long time.

5:21 And that's what this So, I submit that the reason we didn't is

5:27 because the difficulty of lockdown and what everyone

5:29 else was going through gave us real perspective

5:32 on how dumb our our little concerns were.

5:37 Yeah.

5:38 Um And I find that perspective motivating.

5:47 But more than that, I just like um I think Gandhi said this at one point.

5:52 It may feel that what you do is insignificant,

5:54 but it is absolutely vital that you do it.

5:57 And I'm I'm saying uh I'm saying

6:01 that the world needs you to explore those things

6:04 that you can't stop thinking about because you

6:06 become a better person when you do that.

6:09 You become a more rounded person.

6:11 Our all of our obstacles to getting done what we

6:14 want to get done are there are plenty of exterior obstacles,

6:18 but the biggest ones are all interior.

6:21 Our motivation, our our our ability to solve problems,

6:24 our ability to collaborate.

6:27 Um And so, I will say to you,

6:30 it's not just about being an artist in difficult times,

6:33 but like explore your obsessions.

6:38 That's still an important area and even though you

6:41 might have a lot less energy to do it.

6:43 I know I do.

6:45 I still feel like I am I am doing a good thing.

6:50 And we feel like here on Tested like we know what we are doing.

6:54 We creating this safe space where we can visit and talk about

6:57 the glories of making stuff in the middle of all this madness.

7:00 Um And that is also motivating.

7:05 Avshutsak A V S H U T S A C H Avutsak Avutsak Avutsak says,

7:16 "I'm getting into making scenery in model railroading.

7:19 I have used LEGO as tunnel support and I'm wondering what

7:23 else you can use in hidden places in model making." Oh, all sorts of things.

7:29 Um LEGO by the way, my favorite use of LEGO in the maker community in the past

7:36 30 years is as mold making a material

7:40 used to make mold dams and things like that.

7:44 LEGO is has exactly the mechanical tolerance to keep silicone from leaking out.

7:50 Uh so, I see a lot of people using LEGO boxes to hold their molds.

7:55 Um [snorts] What else you can use in hidden places in model making?

8:02 There's one material I want to show you and explain

8:05 the name of it because it's a weird one.

8:07 Wait a minute.

8:08 Is it really not Hold on.

8:11 There we go.

8:12 Okay.

8:13 That's it.

8:15 Okay.

8:20 This is a galvanized steel zinc coated galvanized steel strap with holes in it.

8:30 Um It is often called plumber's tape, which is confusing to call this tape.

8:39 But um in terms of hidden places in model making and a build,

8:48 this is such an important maker material.

8:52 In fact, this is This is a really

8:54 key film tinker toy material along with grip chain.

9:00 What is grip chain?

9:01 Hold on a second.

9:02 Grip chain THERE WE GO.

9:10 IT'S ALL RIGHT.

9:10 IT'S ALL GOOD.

9:12 THAT'S ALL FINE.

9:16 [laughter] I keep a lot of plumber's tape around.

9:18 Grip chain is this stuff.

9:20 Um and you can drive drywall screws through it

9:23 and I don't know what its tensional strength is,

9:26 but a good grip and gaffer team can build almost

9:29 anything in about 10 minutes with a few apple boxes,

9:32 some C-stands and some of this stuff.

9:36 Thank you for watching.

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