For Multi-Passionate Creatives Who are Done Asking for Permission.
The world tends to hand those out selectively, mostly to people who already look the part, and the rest of us spend years quietly funding a system that has exactly zero interest in watching us thrive outside of it.
This newsletter exists because you contain multitudes. You’ve been told, politely or otherwise, to pick a lane, but that’s boring AF! If you’re nodding along like a Shohei Ohtani bobblehead, then you’re in the right place and I have things to share with you.
Nobody ever gave me a permission slip, and I’m not waiting for one.
What You’ll Find Here
The creative identity, the tension of making versus selling, the honest accounting of what it feels like to build something independent from scratch while the rest of your life keeps happening around you. That’s the foundation of The Creative Generalist and it’s always free.
What Membership Gets You
Let’s talk operational reality. It’s is about being in the room while the decisions are still being made in near-real time, which is a different and considerably messier experience than reading about them afterward.
That means real numbers from Lost Mixtape before I know how they turn out.
The Shopify configurations that cost me three hours of suffering so they cost you three minutes.
The platform decisions I’m making while the doubt is still attached, before I’ve cleaned them up into something that sounds like wisdom in retrospect.
If the free posts are the what and the why, membership is the how and the how much, and if you’re building something similar, that’s probably the part that’s most useful to you.
The storytelling always stays free, but if you want to get close to the actual work, membership is where that lives.
I’m Dave Conrey
Thirty-plus years as an artist and art director, which sounds impressive until you learn I spent a meaningful chunk of that career designing pages for a corporate machine that would tell me to back off whenever I tried making anything interesting. My job was to fill the space the publishers couldn’t sell as advertising. The creative freedom was theoretical.
I got laid off in 2013, and never looked back. That day, I went to a coffee shop and wrote a manifesto about it. I called it the best day of my professional life and I wasn’t being sarcastic.
Now I run a clothing brand called Lost Mixtape, write this newsletter, make art, and I started describing myself as a Creative Generalist, which confuses people who don’t know me, but makes for great conversations.
The look they get when they say it back to me is better than any business card I’ve ever handed out.
Just Be Here
Free or paid, it’s ok either way. The most important thing is to subscribe because you don’t want to miss out on the next post, which could be the one that helps change your life.
It could happen; if it does, I’d like to make it happen together. I’m also on YouTube, but I spend most of my time on Substack Notes, where you can send me a direct message at any time.
Otherwise, get on the bus.
