I love the Pen Ceremony scene in the movie A Beautiful Mind, although fabricated, what it symbolises is worth striving for; acceptance, and being recognised in the community for accomplishments made.

I’m 44 years old this year and I’ve survived my mid-life-crisis. I’ve come out of it with a new core (smoking bongs from 4.20AM-Midnight for 6 months wasn’t anywhere near as hardcore as this!). I’m mentally stronger than ever, clearer too, so clear that I can see past even more bullshit than ever.

The tall poppy syndrome I’ve been fighting my whole creative career has reared itself in the ugliest form so far. Where it was once people who had no idea of who I was, cutting me down for standing out just because, now it’s the friends closest to me using their adult smarts to belittle me in order to justify their own lack of success.

Some of my long time friends and followers chimed in when I was down in a hole. They offered advice, here are some of the things I was hearing:

– You have a self-importance issue.
– You try too hard to please everyone.
– You give too many fucks.

When I’m down I get caught up in the “I’m tired, it’s too hard. I’m done. I’m over it” basket. When shit gets overwhelming I want to hit the eject button. When I’m miserable I end up feeling immense guilt for not working, and that’s when mates chime in with stuff like; “why do you think you’re so important?” and “who cares if you don’t take photos, or blog, or keep your Facebook page and Instagram account active?”.

When I’m down I very easily agree with all these points and suggestions, recently I agreed so much with the advice given that I deleted my personal Instagram account of 13k followers and tried my best to delete Facebook (it’s impossible. I gave up). I let everything go. The forums, the blogs, the stuff that was keeping me busy and making an income.

Surviving the worst bump I’ve ever come across in my life so far I’ve found strength in learning how to accept and like myself again. If a capitalist is all about winner takes all and to hell with everyone else, I’m the opposite. I’m the Artist who has something to give, and is willing to share with competent young people in hope that I might be able to help them open doors of opportunity and see them develop into successful people.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson (professor of psychology) says “successful people love mentoring young people, it’s an intrinsic pleasure”.

Helping others has been a huge source of pleasure in my life. Ever since design school I’ve always believed in “feedback is gold” but I didn’t know back then that feedback would end up being my primary source of pleasure and that helping others would be a never ending source of satisfaction.

Since coming back to social media this year I’ve received hundreds of messages of encouragement from mostly young people who are suffering and lost. These messages are gold to me. With names omitted, I’ve included 2 below. I’m hoping that after you read them you’ll have a better understanding of how and why I gain personal benefit from helping others, and how truly important this feedback is to me .

Letter #1.

“Hey I’ve been following your posts on Facebook, but your latest one with the R U OK got to me. I can’t respect you enough for voicing your feelings, that’s a hard thing to do and it’s something I struggle with regularly. I love the fact that you can be so open with your feelings on social media, not only are you posting things that I can relate to so immensely, but your posting things that I couldn’t ever bring myself to admit personally. I’ve got mad respect for you and I never want to stop seeing you stop expressing yourself like this, its uplifting for the rest of us who don’t have the strength to voice it for ourselves.”

Letter #2.

Hey man, it’s been a while and we’ve never really been close but I wanted to send you a message. You’ve been a huge influence in my life, in so many ways. I remember when I first discovered Zen Garage on Facebook. I was so taken in by the culture of it all. The “I don’t give a fuck, I’m going to do me, but I’ll still respect you” mentality that seemed to surround it. You opened my head up to new music. I was mostly (and still am) a metalhead. It was “Hold Me Down” by Mansionaire that turned me on to a whole new genre of music. I never gave a fuck about photography until I saw your shoots, even though I was married to a “photographer” at the time. It pushed me. I adopted the Zen mentality as I saw it and became a better person for it. Truer to myself. It made me want to get back in touch with my artistic side. Made me start drawing and writing music again. In fact the one and only time I’ve ever actually painted anything was while listening to your Soundcloud playlist. I’ve always thought you were this amazing individual. Yet you would always chat with me on Facebook whenever I’m hitting you up to buy some stickers. It hit me pretty hard seeing all the shit you’ve been dealing with, and I feel for ya man. I do. I cant express how happy it makes me to see you coming back out again. I know you’ve still got a way to go before you’re fully happy again, but my heart is lightened to see that you are getting there. Sorry for bugging ya. Just some insight from a broke ass American kid.

Also on MEDIUM: https://medium.com/@justinfox_30083/feedback-is-gold-41724465efb3

Banned 30 days for sharing this lol!

This pic makes me both sad and mad! Growing up in Sydney Australia we knew to get off our seats if an elderly person got on a full bus. Even if we were too young and not confident enough to approach an elderly person to let them know a seat was available, we would still get up anyways and hope the elderly person would find said empty seat.

Times have changed; for the better? Or worse? I’m sure like anything else it’s debatable, but respecting your elders back then was just something that we were so acutely aware of, and something that every young person back then did without question.