Gifted Underachievers

If an aspect of your creative work isn’t going well, it can be tempting to think it’s solvable. We might see our work as a system, with a set of tools and a process for fixing issues. Or we can even see it as a machine and the same thing applies—there are schematics, processes, and visible steps toward fixing whatever’s not working. But here in the Gifted Underachievers clubhouse, it’s becoming ap...

Have you ever been to a party where another guest asks you what you do for a living? What do you say? Do you confess to being an artist, writer, performer or musician, then wait for them to ask why they don’t recognize your name? Or do you lie low and make stuff up? What about when you’re pitching your own work. Do you have a strategy for explaining it in a way that makes the pitchee want to buy i...

Life gives everybody more than enough to feel guilty about. It’s endless. Creatives, by contrast, are given a double helping of guilt. In this segment, Pat and James explore what we should and should not feel guilty about and how to manage guilt when it crops up unbidden by actually doing something to earn it. Hint: Getting our work done does not make the feel guilty list. Bad parenting? Absolutel...

Gather around, creative friends, and listen closely. It’s clear that here in the Gifted Underachievers clubhouse, we are underachieving all over the place. It’s not only our “brand,” it’s our way of life. How do we do it? We set the bar very, very low. Questions for Listeners: * What’s the last thing you underachieved at? * Or is it a way of life? * How does underachieving make you feel? Buy us a...

When the Gifted Underachievers meet for their Friday meetings they usually spend about an hour laughing and telling stories. During one such period of buffoonery, James noted his copious cowlicks. Pat took it from there… Questions for Listeners: * How do you get rid of a cowlick? * Ever have a perm? * Ever have a moustache hair grow up your nose? Buy the Underachievers a Coffee and Win a Book Here...

The dumpster fire known as 2025 is in the rearview mirror and your Gifted Underachievers are taking stock. Pat’s welcoming the new year, while James suspects it’s still a dumpster fire but now with potential to expand to something bigger. Both are battling burnout, and both have plans to make the most of their projects in 2026. How are they doing it? By rearranging TIME. Questions for Listeners: *...

Working with a respected mentor—either within the classroom or one on one—is often seen as a steppingstone toward greater things for creatives. However, a mentor who is rigid in their principles and beliefs can foster self-doubts and frustration in the mentee as they push against what feels like arbitrary creative boundaries. However, a mentor who takes on the mindset of a guide or teacher can ope...

Pat and James explore how creatives can be more prone to feelings of helplessness due to the subjectivity of success as a creative, constant rejection, and the systems we exist within. And then, the Gifted Underachievers explore ways to push back to regain our not just our sense but actual agency. Questions for Listeners: * Have you had a ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ moment that felt overwh...

“Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody’s willing to do anything about it.” With this agreed, Pat and James discuss their rather different strategies for handling the winter season and its ills—limited daylight, cold weather, depression, anxiety, the impact of an exhausting December, and the urge to hibernate. The takeaway? Check out Kath Montstream and the Red Hot Chilly Dippers, who LOVE b...

Submissions to literary mags can involve lots of rules, lots of waiting, and lots of rejection. Writers send their bright jewels of stories into the void to live or die on their literary merits, or on the hope that they’ll align with the magazine’s aesthetic. But what if there’s a way to spice things up? What if we told them how we’ll help sell copies, so that we’re pitching not just our stories b...

In any small business, whether it’s an art, a craft, or a trade, there is this tension between paying for the tools and training you need while at the same time being aware of the return on your investment. Sometimes you don’t know where a particular bit of training will bring you, but you’re willing to bet on yourself getting value out of it and seeing new opportunities on the other side. At othe...

No matter where you live, no one will build the creative life you want for you. In fact, no one will build anything for you to help you live the creative life you seek. We have to be DIYers to the extreme because everything we do and want requires a self-driven and self-motivated “build-it-ourselves” mindset. This is our superpower (one of them, anyway). Questions for Listeners: * What have you su...

It’s winter and boy-o-boy are there a lot of nasty bugs floating around. So far, Pat has had the flu and James survived a bad bout with Covid. In this first ever Gifted Underachievers public health service announcement, Pat and James discuss staying germ free…and then things go down a rather silly alleyway. Questions for Listeners: * Have you had the flu or Covid this winter? * If so, what’s the g...

In this groundbreaking segment set in the Interview Lab of the Gifted Underachievers clubhouse, James asks Dobes to explain her ability to come up with alternate revenue streams. She’s got courses, books, and the infamous Pleasure Journal. The questions are simple: Why did she think these items were a good idea? How did she develop them? What about audience, pricing, and marketing? Can “passive in...

We are always looking for better data on who our audience is and where they live. James has found that his part of the Gifted Underachievers competition experiment is providing better data on both leading to smarter submissions targeting. Meanwhile, Pat discovers that the benefit of these contests is not did I win or lose, but the structure means you learn if you were a finalist and you will recei...

We’ve all felt an innate sense of coolness—even, perhaps, superiority—when watching some dink act like a dink to a hip cashier at any checkout line. And then felt the swipe of comeuppance when we act like a dink in an attempt to display our inherent coolness. James had just such an experience while wearing his brand new Canadian toque. Question for Listeners: * What was your last Karen (or Ken) mo...

Welp, Pat tries to give James a little ‘flu guidance,’ which leads to James calling Pat a ‘Nancy no-mates know-it-all.’ Then we’re off and running down a discursive tangent that includes 19th Century female literary protagonists, Song of the South (a 1949 movie that Disney CEO described as “Antiquated” and “Fairly offensive”), and coffee shop misbehavior, culminating in Pat accusing James of livin...

As every creative knows, the big-ticket, long-term creative projects that sell for thousands require some time to conceptualize, produce, and sell…and that’s if the creator already knows who their audience is. So for those of us who work on projects with long turnaround times, what can we do in the meantime to bring in the monthly basic income that keeps the lights on and puts food in the cupboard...

As the calendar flips over to January 2026, the Gifted Underachievers discuss their plans and goals. Pat’s ambitious to stop the hamster wheel she’s inadvertently created. James wants nothing more than to courageously attack a Durian and get some time to write his own stuff. What about you? Questions for Listeners * Do you have any New Year plans or pledges you would like to share? * If you were a...

After creating a list of his daily and weekly tasks looking for those that could be outsourced, James realizes he needs to hire a maid, valet, and cook. Pat reins things in nicely, which creates the space to explore how each Gifted Underachiever’s creative adjacent work patterns—long hours, multiple clients, no days off—have brought them into systems that are unsustainable. They then reflect on gu...

In this segment, James quotes from the Robert Persig classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “When we master some aspect or skill of the creative process it loses its magic because we now understand it. But somehow, a new magic is born from the first death of magic, because we are constantly driving forward.” The Gifted Underachievers go on to talk about Jimi Hendrix, Slash, and other...

We’ve got so much to be thankful for this Yuletide Season...as we underachieve our way through one gong show after another in this adventure we call the creative live. To celebrate, we’ve got an elf and a giant tree and absolutely no scruples about making this Christmas our easiest one ever. How about you? Questions for Listeners: * Any plans for December 25th? * Anything you’ve managed to avoid?...

Content warning: Strong language. Here in the Gifted Underachievers clubhouse, we have realized that the ability to constantly adapt and transform is a key piece of earning our livings from creative (or creative-adjacent) work. This insight was sparked by developments in the year 2024, when James’s usual work pipelines became blocked and he had to step back from beating his head against the same b...

James is named a finalist in the biggest ‘self-esteem camp’ of literary journal contests he’s ever encountered and says a resounding ‘No!’ (thank you). Meanwhile, Pat updates us on her contest efforts while adding yet another identity to her complex mélange of personality traits (you’ll have to listen to find out what the latest one is). Lots o’ fun and lots o’ laughs. Questions for Listeners: * H...

Proving the truism that the human capacity to take in information, process it, analyze it, and then make a stupid choice is a gift, the Gifted Underachievers identify the most elitist muffin and share more than a few laughs. All good fun. Questions for Listeners: What is, for you, the most elitist muffin? Special Offer: Buy us a Coffee to go with your Elitist Muffin and Win a Book! Here in the GU...