Austin Kleon | How to Keep Going When You're Tempted to Quit

Srini Rao:  Austin. Welcome back to the unmistakable creative.

Austin Kleon: It's been awhile. Thank you for having me.

Srini Rao: Absolutely. I think right before we hit record, you were saying it's been six years. I think that I interviewed you right around the time we rebranded the show as unmistakable creative.

Srini Rao: And we were talking about steal, like an artist. You've had two other books since then show your work and keep going. As I was saying, keep going is probably my absolute favorite one. And I've always appreciated your rawness and realness about the creative life. But before we get into your work, I want to start by asking you a question, which has nothing to do with it, because that's how I started interviews, as and that is what religious or spiritual beliefs were you raised with and how how did those end up impacting your life?

Austin Kleon: I was raised Methodist so it was very I went to church every Sunday. And the Methodists are pretty chill. It's it feels a little bit like a business meeting, donuts and coffee and the parlor.

Austin Kleon: And so I was I was a I was it's not really an alter boy, but I I was an usher, I was in the choir. I was confirmed like in sixth grade, my mom still goes to that church. So I grew up with a very, like I grew up with my paternal grandmother is intensely religious.

Austin Kleon: And I always felt she's kinda my line to the big man when I was growing up. I don't think of it as a big man anymore. That was just when I was growing up. But I love that you asked this question because I literally was the other day thinking I would re I would listen to a whole podcast where they just asked this question because I feel deeply that a lot of my favorite artists either still have some sort of religious faith or practice really a practice or they've replaced that religious upbringing with art.

Austin Kleon: Like a lot of my favorites that's the case. So I would probably say either, it's impossible for the stuff not to not to influence you in some way, but I'm not really a practicing Christian right now. But I am, that stuff sticks around. I'm deeply influenced by it.

Austin Kleon: I would say I have It's interesting. I have Christian friends who are able to speak about things in the culture that I'm really interested in a language I don't seem to have. So for example, I'm very curious in this culture, what is the role of forgiveness, whether there's any role for forgiveness in this culture.

Austin Kleon: And that is an answer that my Christian friends have that, my, my atheist or agnostic, or just, I guess whatever friends don't have. So it's interesting how it, but I would say the things that deeply impacted me by, and I don't mean to go so long with this, but I think it's such a

Srini Rao: please talk for as long as you want your answers.

Austin Kleon: Yeah. It's something really, it's something I think about all the time, particularly because my father is born again and he's, he'll call me on the phone and ask me, w what are you going to say to God when you die? Yeah. So it's that's to have the person who, helped to bring you into the world, ask you what do you think about going to hell every once in a while is it's a pretty, it's a pretty rough thing.

Austin Kleon: And I love my dad and I try to remain really close to him. And so it's it's interesting to me, I think the thing I've noticed, my wife's Catholic and so we always joke that if we go back to church, we'll just be a pesky paleo, and we know we'll just meet in the middle. So this and Catholic, but I think I think the thing the church really did for me is I just loved music so deeply.

Austin Kleon: When I was a kid and the music singing in the choir, I still think that singing. It's hard during the pandemic because singing is literally seeing in a church choir is literally the most dangerous thing you could do right now. Singing projects, all sorts of keynote. We know now that the droplets and stuff that's literally the most contagious activity you can participate in is singing with a group of people.

Austin Kleon: Unfortunately I think it's one of the most beautiful things you can do with other human beings singing together. And so I think for me, it was, the music was a big deal. I met my best friend in Sunday school. We both hated church. I hated Sunday school. So his mom was the Sunday school teacher.

Austin Kleon: So like we met over by the piano and started plinking out green day songs. That's it, we're still best friends, I think the church is, so it was deeply influential on me when I was younger. To the point where. God's funny. I particularly think in this age of.

Austin Kleon: I think it's interesting how religion and capitalism mix. I have a funny story about that when I was a kid. I literally prayed to God for Ghostbusters proton pack for Christmas. That's how deeply and I got it.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Interesting. I love that, we're talking about this and I love that you brought up this idea of meeting in the middle.

Srini Rao: And I think that to me is one of the reasons I asked this question of all the ones that I could ask you because we live in this very divisive kind of time. And I wonder, as somebody who has come from faith and married outside of that same faith, how do you think we. Find that middle.

Srini Rao: I think that, I think there was a, I don't know if you said I'm not a sports fan, but I watched the Superbowl primarily for the commercials. Like I could care less about the game. And I remember it, my favorite commercial was the one about the Jeep commercial, where they specifically talked about not blue States, red States, meeting in the middle.

Srini Rao: And I wonder, what do you think it takes an ad? What role do you think art can play in that?

Austin Kleon: I think that the thing about, so this, so my thing about I am interested in the practice of religion. I am interested in how religion has. Practices, it has rituals and routines, and it has spaces and special ceremonies and things like that.

Austin Kleon: I always was attracted to that kind of stuff. When I was younger, I was always, there's a great book called religion for atheists laying the Baton or and he he talks about this, the thing he says that I love it's so blasphemous, but to him, he said the least interesting thing about a religion to him is whether it's true.

Austin Kleon: It's it's everything else. It's so interesting. And for me, and this is what's hard, when I try to connect with my father he is that brand of evangelical that, that cannot get over. He, if you don't believe that there's no point to anything. So when I'm talking to him chuckling to myself because I know he sits down every morning with his Bible and reads and works in a notebook.

Austin Kleon: He has a daily devotional, just like I do. We do the same thing every morning. We commune, we read, we think about how we want our day to go. I just don't pray to you. You know what I mean? I'm just not, it's just, we do the same practice. I just don't have a belief. A really strong belief about it.

Austin Kleon: I have always felt that belief would come through practice rather than you believe. And then you practice now, this isn't, this is my own. This is just my own life I'm talking about. But it impacts me. That is exactly how I feel about art, because there are a lot of people out there that tell you if you just believe you're an artist, then you can sit down and make art.

Austin Kleon: You have to give yourself permission to whatever. For me, I'm like, no, you start the doing, you do the verb first you practice. And then you will become, eventually someone else will call you an artist. It's none of your business, whether an artist or not someone else will decide that for you. What is important is the practice.

Austin Kleon: And I know that Seth just had that book come out. Which I unfortunately, haven't got time to read yet, but I have, for me, what attracts me to religion is the practice. Having something to do the great religions, give us things to do. And for me, that is what life is about, and again this is somewhere where the thing about meeting in the middle is it requires both parties to extend.

Austin Kleon: And if you have one party that is just like completely incurious about the other party then there's no chance of meeting in the middle. And I think that's where you see. That's what in, in, in the culture right now is there's really just a basic incurious city. About the other side. And then there's no meeting in the middle, cause, cause, cause you can't meet in the middle of lunch, just one side trying to meet there. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. You can't build a bridge. Over without it coming from both sides of the chasm,

Austin Kleon: really

Srini Rao: from, I need something a little softer than that. Rest, easy. The sleep

Austin Kleon: number three 60 smart bed. You can both adjust your comfort with your sleep number setting here. It really helped me fall asleep faster.

Srini Rao: Yes, by gently warming your feet, but can it help keep us asleep?

Austin Kleon: It senses your movements and automatically adjust to keep you effortlessly comfortable.

Austin Kleon: Sleep number proven quality sleep is life-changing sleep. And now during the ultimate sleep number event, save 50% on the sleep. Number three 60 limited edition smart pet plus special financing on all smart beds only for a limited time special financing, subject to credit approval. Minimum monthly payments required.

Austin Kleon: See store for details. News laws and regulations are changing by the day. We get it. It's hard to stay on top of it all. That's why ADP's here to guide you with up to the minute compliance expertise to help you navigate these complex times. So you can pay your people accurately. And on time, regardless of changes in legislation, when you rely on us for payroll and HR, you're trusting us to help you take care of your people.

Austin Kleon: It's what we've been doing for over 70 years, and that's not about to change ADP, HR, talent, time benefits and payroll informed by data and design for people

Srini Rao: sound plays a much bigger role in our lives than most of us even are aware of. An ethos podcast powered by audio tells stories behind the sounds that we hear everyday sounds that inform, entertain, educate, get our attention, influence our behavior and save our lives. Randy's Zucker. We're going to just explore how audio shapes our experience and how pioneers are creating the sound of the future.

Srini Rao: Those sounds for your devices when you're using apps or receiving text messages or anything else online. It turns out somebody actually has a job doing that. Randy talks to the experts behind these sounds to find out about the work that goes into designing what she calls a Sonic logos as a podcast host, I think a lot about how sound impacts us, whether we're hearing it on a podcast or from a notification on a phone or from some app we're using.

Srini Rao: And if you want to learn more about the impact that sound has on our lives, listen, and subscribe to iPASS is powered by audio on a podcast, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a small business owner, there are all sorts of things that are necessary, but take up a ton of time meetings, managing your finances and dealing with payroll as an owner, your time is valuable and you want to spend it on doing the things you're best at if you're like me and you suck at math, chances are that payroll,is probably not your best skill and there are better things you could be doing with your time.

Srini Rao: Say hello to a new way to payroll roll by ADP is a chat-based payroll app for small businesses. Role truly helps you make the most of your time. It's as easy as opening the app and telling B-roll to run your payroll less than a minute later, payroll is done. And all you had to do was send a chat. Even better.

Srini Rao: Role is smart. It learns your payroll and notifies you when it's time to run, roll. Also double checks with you. If something seems off so you can stay focused on running everything else powered by AI role does more than just keep up. It learns your business and stays ahead sending you proactive notifications when it's time to run payroll so you can stay focused on the important stuff.

Srini Rao: For a limited time roles, monthly fee is discounted at just $70 a month. So download the roll by ADP app today and go to get role.com/chat. Again, that's get rolled.com/chat. So I want to come back to this, but you mentioned this idea of art and this was one of my favorite quotes from the book.

Srini Rao: You said, if you wait for someone to give you a job title, before you do the work, you might never get to do the work at all. You can't wait around for someone to call you an artist before you'll make art. You'll never make it. And I think the reason that struck me is because I see so many people who are just sitting and waiting.

Srini Rao: Hell even you and I were talking before we hit record about how, I got the two book deal with a publisher and, once the contract was up, I sat around sending, book proposals, waiting in the words of Seth Godin to be picked. And ironically, the reason I got that book deal was because I didn't sit around waiting to be picked.

Srini Rao: So what do you think it is that causes people to sit around waiting? What the hell are they waiting for?

Austin Kleon: I don't know. I waited too. The thing was it's I waited for someone to pick me, but I was putting things into the world as invitations. You know what I mean?

Austin Kleon: There was a certain element of. I was waiting for that editor to call. I was always bad about that in my early, I still am. I'm still like, what am I waiting on in a sense? I think the difference is that it's one thing to weigh, but, waiting without the work is that's. What I see is I just see a lot of people like waiting to work, not waiting to get picked.

Austin Kleon: They're really waiting to work. And you just have to do the work that you think needs to be done. I, you gotta do the job that you want. You have to invent it in a sense, and I, but I think, I always think punk rock helps with all this stuff. I think having a little bit of a A being in touch with that kind of DIY spirit of the, eighties and nineties or even the lights, seventies, the kind of punk aesthetic of no, I think every artist should read like Michael dad's book.

Austin Kleon: Our band could be your life, I think, yeah, you should read about artists who literally there was no scene happening and they just made it happen. I think that's a fundamentally American thing I think is to be in the middle of nowhere and to hit the road, then, that kind of thing.

Austin Kleon: I've always been really into, by the kind of do it yourself ethic of punk and not thinking of punk as a style, but as a real way of being, I always think that helps. And I think every generation. Sorta needs to rediscover punk cause, cause its roots go deep. It goes beyond the seventies, that idea of we're just going to do it ourselves.

Austin Kleon: But I don't know. It's, I guess it's, I think in some ways and I could be wrong about this, but I think a lot of it has to do with school to be honest. Student of the month Hey, here's our straight A's, like we're conditioned at a very early age that there are authorities that grant us privileges and rewards, and that happens at a very early age.

Austin Kleon: My kids, for example, for a variety of reasons. Haven't been to school like much at all, really. Like my youngest has been to preschool for a little bit and like my oldest is maybe done a year of public school. Like between like us homeschooling and the pandemic. And they just don't, they don't wait around for me to tell them whether they can do anything, they're just like maybe I'll do this. I could do that. Like maybe I'll make my own animated show or maybe I'll, they just don't have that, whatever it is. And I don't know if that's just because I've been encouraging of them or they see me working all the time, but they're not waiting around for the title, but I do think that, I was talking to my I was talking to the teacher and look, I love teachers.

Austin Kleon: I don't like school, that's a distinctive, let me say that right away. I love teachers. I don't like school. I love teachers. I don't like the systems they work in. And like almost every teacher I meet is, has has infinite patience in a good art, at least the ones I meet, but I was talking to the teacher that my son Owen was going to have for second grade, I think.

Austin Kleon: And it's hard to remember what grade they're in because of the pandemic, but she said to me, so his own more of a STEM kid, or is he more of an arts kid? And I was just like, he's eight years old. Wow. In the hell, like, why do we do this? It's hard for me, to, to even, we just speak, teachers are trained to speak these languages now through, it's so embedded.

Austin Kleon: And part of the problem is that, a lot of young teachers now, they went to school and then they became a teacher. So it's just. Like they speak the language of school. Like school is really the school teaches you about school, and so that, that's what happens in school is you get better at school by going to school.

Austin Kleon: I just think a lot of this happens through school and conditioning, and then, you get put in the marketplace where someone has to, pick you for a job and that kind of thing. The beauty, the beautiful thing about art, I think, and, of course there are issues of power and access and things like that.

Austin Kleon: But at the end of the day, I do think people have a pretty good shot. As far as, if you do amazing stuff, somebody's gonna notice

Srini Rao: Yeah, there, there's so many layers to this whole discussion on school. And I will ask you a question that I tend to ask college professors, and I know you're not an educator, but I think from your perspective, I'd be really curious.

Srini Rao: I agree. I think my teachers were phenomenal. I was the beneficiary of extraordinary music teachers in Texas who gave me the skills to practice. They taught me what discipline meant. They made me better than I ever would have been at anything. And so I wonder, based on our discussion here, if you were given the task of redesigning the system from the ground up, what would you do?

Srini Rao: How would you

Austin Kleon: restructure would turn? I would probably make things look more like a library. I think, libraries are terrific and an anecdote anecdote, not an anecdote, an antidote to schools. I think that libraries. Because of their emphasis on all ages lifelong education and resources.

Austin Kleon: If you walk into a public library, it makes me, I'm getting a little weepy talking about it because I haven't been in the library for a year, but in the before times, when you would walk into a good public library, there were people of all, just everybody just, there were homeless guys off the street, there were moms with strollers.

Austin Kleon: There were elderly people learning about computers. Really the whole kind of spread of the community was there. And I think, libraries because they are there for the libraries, do a lot of education, but it has to be asked for, it's people that are looking for the material are looking for the skills.

Austin Kleon: So I would actually make schools look more like libraries where, it's like you come there and there's a buffet, and there are people there there is programming and there's access, am I look like, in some ways, when you look at free schools, they look a little bit more like that.

Austin Kleon: For me it would be more about self-direction. It would be more about community based stuff like getting people immediately. I think young people in particular need to see real people in the world working as early as possible. I think that, I think apprenticeships are so important.

Austin Kleon: I was so lucky when I was in school. I had this basically office gopher job in high school for an attorney. That my dad knew I was just wonderful because I immediately realized I didn't want to be a lawyer. It was just so I was thinking about it. I was like, man, I bet there's people who go to law school who has literally never stepped in front of an office.

Austin Kleon: I'm sure there are people, so it's just I don't know my vision for America's better libraries. I really, I believe deeply in the library because I think it's the last democratic institution that really operates the way it needs to be operating. I really think that, and they're so strapped.

Austin Kleon: They really are the law, one of the last resources for a lot of communities. So I would like to, and I should say that I, when I'm thinking about the home I'm creating for my children I think it's very. A lot of dads, I talked to they speak as teachers. They're like, Oh, I'm going to teach them to ride a bike.

Austin Kleon: I'm going to teach them to throw a football and I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna teach them all these things, and there's like a million songs about dads who are going to all the stuff they're going to teach their children or whatever. And I have always felt the opposite.

Austin Kleon: I have felt very much I will create a space for them to learn in, but I'm not sure I really have that much to teach them. And so I've always felt like I was more of a library and for my kids I create a world in which they can be safe and explore their interests. I fill the house with a lot of materials, like books and curated DVDs and I pads, musical instruments and stuff like that.

Austin Kleon: And then we have some programming. Field trips and whatnot but on the whole, I think of myself as a librarian in which my kids come to me with their interests and I use my very limited skills in, I, I put them in touch with the materials they need and then they do it. So the libraries, I should note that my first job out of college was working in a public library and I think it shaped my it shaped me profoundly at the time.

Austin Kleon: I didn't realize how important it was and it really had a profound effect on my life to the point where, I started out in life wanting to be a teacher. And now I think of myself more as a librarian.

Srini Rao: Amazing. Before we start diving deep into keep going I wanted to ask you a question that was came up for me earlier in our conversation.

Srini Rao: You said you've had this best friend that you have known, since Sunday school, when you were kids. We had Lydia denworth who wrote this beautiful book on the psychology of friendship here, hands down, probably one of my favorite books I read last year. What is it that allows a friendship to sustain for that long?

Srini Rao: Because I think, one thing I saw in my adult life as people moved away, we were all in different chapters of our lives. Like my friends were married, honestly, like as a guy who's still single. Yeah. Some of them are great, I don't get invited on, weekend trips with couples anymore because it'd be awkward, but I wonder, what is it that allows a friendship to sustain for that long or what's allowed your friendship to last

Austin Kleon: for that long.

Austin Kleon: I think shared experience. I just think, shared formative experiences as a young person, just, you just it's, it forms shared experience and at a young age, and in my opinion, it forms a bond that can be picked up at any time. When I'm around my friends that I made, before the age of 20 I find that we can pick things up in a way that it just doesn't it's like we're right back there.

Austin Kleon: This is with my very close friends. Some of those friendships, of course, the ones that seem to stick around are the ones that can be. It's almost like a video game save game or something. They just load that up, and you're right there where you left off. I feel, I also think there is just something so deeply bonding about hating your surroundings and finding someone else that hates it as much as you do.

Austin Kleon: My buddy Corey and we hated where we grew up and then we just hated it. And music was, we were just like, we can be rock stars. We can get out of here, like we can just get out of here. Or at least that was my end of it. I, at least I fought here's somebody who hates it as much as I do.

Austin Kleon: I think the truth is that he didn't hate it as much as I did. And he sorta, but it didn't go quite as far. I grew up in Ohio, so I'm far from home and might as well be on Mars really. But and I think about that in college, like some of my really great friends in college just, hated the main,campus experience and thought that our other students were just morons.

Austin Kleon: We just hated everybody and I feel like we had a gang, and that unity, I think a lot about gangs. I don't know a lot about gangs, but I just feel like when I roll around with my crew maybe crew is the right where I like how rappers use that term crew. And the, I just feel like I'm in a gang when I'm with my kids.

Austin Kleon: When we, when my wife and I and our kids, we were like walking around the neighborhood. I just feel like we're a bunch, like a real crew. And I think, if you, weren't gonna let me lie down on the couch, which what is a podcast episode, but that I would say that I've always just, it's been desperately searching for people who cared about the same things that I did because I grew up in an area that didn't, I grew up in rural America and I've always felt this isn't fair as a heterosexual white man for me to say this, my gay friends, I always really felt really close to them because, they use the same words for you.

Austin Kleon: If you'd like music and you like the dance. W or whether you like the same sex, it's all the same to them. You're different differences different in this, in these areas. I do think it's gotten better weirdly. Like I go back home now and I just don't, I think the culture has changed a lot, but, growing up in the eighties, that's, wasn't the most enlightened time to be living in rural America.

Austin Kleon: But

Srini Rao: I can relate to Texas

Austin Kleon: town. And I think that's a bond that you find. My, my buddy who's from small town, Ohio and lives in LA now. He says, if you're from small town, Ohio, and you got out and you work in the arts, like we're going to be friends, there's that, there's a deep, there's something about, you meet people who got out, but there's also a great pattern as well, routine.

Austin Kleon: Patent Oswald had this routine called Sterling Virginia, then he just talked about how much he hated his small town. And he's just as despising this existence. And he did a routine where he basically said, you know what, maybe I was the crazy one because I get on Facebook and all these people are happy.

Austin Kleon: They've got, they've got kids, and their grandparents are around. And whatever, maybe I'm the misfit. Maybe I was the one that, you know, yeah, good. Get outta here, man. And I thought that was such a, I love that when artists revisit previous work and they say, you know what? That was really funny when I said that it's not the whole truth.

Austin Kleon: I'm just like, I'm delighted by that. That self like that correction in a sense,

Srini Rao: I appreciate that more than you can possibly imagine, because I think that, as, as weird as it is, I, in some way I feel like the work that people like you and I do the work that people like Chris Guillebeau and Tim Ferriss, do we, to some degree plant seeds of dissatisfaction in people's lives, where there aren't any.

Srini Rao: Yeah, it's who's to say, that living in the Midwest, raising a family and working a nine to five job, isn't a good life. Like I, I've been working on a self-published book and I I have a section called a good enough life. And, I think that for the longest time I felt like, wow, the people in these circles of teachers have, it's almost like we have this elitist attitude that we're superior to people who don't choose to pursue, this sort of passion driven quest in their life.

Srini Rao: And it, and I think with age, that's just dawned on me as, no, this is not accurate. There are multiple ways to live a great life.

Austin Kleon: And it's an enormous privilege to be able to live off your passion. It really it really turns to speak in that language is to really, is to minimalize the to minimize the challenges of so many people who are, who are barely scraping by.

Austin Kleon: This is a privileged thing to talk about. That's why I've just, I am just trying hard to push people to realize that, creative work keeps you alive. It, it's supposed to make life worth living, not make life harder. You know what I mean? It's just, so there was a great, Oh, I read this interview with Adam Phillips, the psychologist one time, and he just said, the tragedy of art is that so many people come to us out of pain and they really would have been much better off doing something else.

Austin Kleon: Like art seems like something that all. They're really suffering from something else and they think that art's going to fix it. And really, it just makes it worse is basically what he's saying. And I look around, I see a lot of people who are like whipping themselves, trying to become what they think is like a great artist or whatever.

Austin Kleon: And I just want people to fall in love with the basics. Again, I want people to fall in love with what it's like to get a sentence. I want people to know what it's like to watch the ink come out of the brush and lay on the page wet in the sunshine. I'm not trying to make a big, but what it feels like to nail a piece when you're, playing the piano, when you finally get this bar, it's just that to, just to fall in love with the real basics of it, again the feeling it gives you when you're doing it and not everything around you, small business software as beautiful. It not only looks good. It sounds good too. You can create online invoices. So as soon as the job is done, the invoice is seen and you can give your customers more choices to pay, like with their credit or debit card. So as soon as they get it, they can pay it to 10 and zero customers who use online invoice payments get paid up to twice as fast as those who don't check to touching.

Austin Kleon: Beautiful for accounting software. That's more than accounting software go to ECC, arrow.com. First 30 days, free terms

Srini Rao: last year, it was a disaster for most of us to put it lightly. But if there's one gift that the pandemic gave us, it was the time to express our creativity and bring our ideas to life. And no matter what 2021 holds in store, you can spend your time creating something meaningful with one of skill shares, online classes, they have classes on illustration, graphic, design, photography, writing, and so much more.

Srini Rao: If you're interested in learning a skill sculpture probably has a class for it. Former unmistakable creative guest, Andy pizza has a course titled find your style where you can discover your creative DNA and bring that thing that makes you unmistakable to your work. And sculpture is also super affordable, especially when you compare it to some pricey in-person classes.

Srini Rao: So without breaking the bank, You can explore the things that interest you most for less than $10 a month. Explore your creativity at skillshare.com/create and get a free trial of their premium membership. Again, that's skillshare.com/create. It's not just what you sell that moves the bottom line. It's also how you upgrade the customer experience and in a crowded marketplace where customers can go wherever they wish with the tap of a button you need every edge you can get.

Srini Rao: Introducing citizens pay. It's a buy now pay later solution that lets your shoppers get the upgrades they want right away by paying for them and smaller pieces. Over time, I recently used citizens pay to get a new top of the line ergonomically designed home office chair. And I do my research and I love the fact that I didn't have to settle for less than the best reviewed chair on the market.

Srini Rao: I could still fit it into my monthly budget by spreading out the cost over a number of months. And when customers like me get the things I want. So does your business more purchasing power with your business today? It means more customer loyalty in the long run. So while your customers enjoy their new 64 inch zillion pixel TVs, state-of-the-art exercise equipment, and six burner stoves to fry, saute and steam with perfection, you'll be enjoying a nice little boost to your bottom line.

Srini Rao: Citizens pay, get the power to upgrade how you do business. So a couple of nights ago, I couldn't really sleep. And when I woke up in the morning, I was struggling to put together a coherent sentence, which is really annoying. Considering that writing is the first thing that I do every morning. And I just felt off.

Srini Rao: Maybe you've had a night like that too, where the whole day kinds of falls apart. New, common, my phone put on some headphones and their IMS. 20 minutes later, I felt like I compensated for not getting enough sleep. And somehow got this amazing power nap. Of course, it's not a substitute for getting enough sleep, but stress, sleep recovery, whether in the gym or at work, these things really shape how we perform.

Srini Rao: And there's things you've heard. Every one of our podcast guests talk about. For, but for those days, when you do wake up in a bit of a funk NuCalm can be a game changer. NuCalm is the only stress management system of its kind as clinically proven in over 1 million sessions to improve your sleep, reduce your stress, boost your recovery without drugs or side effects.

Srini Rao: The NuCalm system uses cutting edge neuroscience and consists of three non-invasive and non-pharmaceutical items. All of which are included in your monthly subscription, which costs less than a daily cup of coffee. And the whole process is super easy to use and to work into your daily routine, to achieve better sleep production and stress and boost recovery.

Srini Rao: So when you wake up in a bit of a funk own the day with NuCalm, we have a special link set up just for our listeners. Go to creative, new calm.com and get 50% off your 30 day subscription of NuCalm and their money back guarantee. Again, that's creative, new calm, creative, N U C a L M. Calm.

Srini Rao: Yeah. It's so it's, I love this because, my second book was called an audience of one reclaiming creativity for its own sake. And I think for the

Austin Kleon: week's title, afterwards,

Srini Rao: I'll be sure to send you a copy. I, for the week and months after, of course I was really stressed about book sales.

Srini Rao: And I can't tell you how many times in an interview I've said, yes, I, I wrote this message, but I'm sure as my publisher would be a lot happier, if it was reaching an audience of millions and I'm like, wait a minute, I'm missing the point of my own damn book here. And it took me a long time to get back to that.

Srini Rao: Like I remember I wrote this collection of essays called the scenic route, which was probably the least read thing I've ever written. And one of somebody who'd interviewed me read that and he said, I loved this. And I said, yeah, I actually didn't do that for anybody. I wrote it for myself. And it was probably the most fun I've had in a long time working on a writing project.

Srini Rao: Cause that was the first time in probably three and a half years that I had a project that I, nobody was going to pay me for. I wasn't under any contract for it and it really changed how I showed up. But. One thing, before we start diving into this whole creative thing, I do want to ask you one thing about your friendships.

Srini Rao: And part of the reason I think this is on my mind is, one, we just had Mitch Prince Dean here who wrote a book called the power of likability in a status obsessed world. And he has a section at the end where he talks about the seven stages of status elevation and how you go from being lingering and obscurity, where nobody knows you to suddenly like all these people know you.

Srini Rao: And yet it's such a hard task to distinguish, like who is there because of, Austin Kleon, the author of steal, like an artist. And who's there because of Austin, the kid in Sunday school, who was my best friend, what does that experience been like for you? Because I find, that has often been something that I've struggled with.

Srini Rao: I'm like, okay, do people really know me? Or do they know the character that I've created online?

Austin Kleon: This is why I just think pseudonyms are powerful. And I love like whatever lady Gaga his name is, I don't know her name, it's gotta be helpful for her to say I'm not lady Gaga.

Austin Kleon: Carrie grant used to say, everybody wants to be Cary grant. Even I want to be cramped or it's Bob Dylan used to say, it's Halloween good thing. I got my Bob Dylan mask on, like these people knew like what they were, like the Austin Kleon that most people know is just me.

Austin Kleon: It's like a version of me. It's like a very helpful. Up to like happy, helpful version of me, my friends think it's hilarious that I've written these books because they know me as this deep, like kind of car mage. I've always been, I've always been a grumpy old guy and when I was 19, and so my friends think it's hilarious, I'm trying to be, that's why I think, I don't think it's authentic.

Austin Kleon: I think it's me attempting to, we started the conversation talking about religion. Redemption, there are so many things that, Christianity offers that like aren't on sale or available in. A secular world, like redemption or forgiveness, that kind of thing.

Austin Kleon: I think that, in some ways in my books, I'm trying to redeem myself. I'm trying to, I am trying to help people. I don't really care what happens to most of the, like most of the, most of them, I mean on a day-to-day basis I'm there's a great peanuts, there's great peanuts panel, where Linus says, I love mankind.

Austin Kleon: It's the people I can't stand. It's that kind of, I think, everyone quotes that Martin Luther King line, human salvation lies,in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. If you go back and read it though. What he's really talking about is the, maladjustment in a rotten world is I mean it's natural.

Austin Kleon: It's not sure to be maladjusted to a rotten world, to a world much. There are injustices and stuff like that. So what he's saying is, and I think what he was really talking about is, to be creative, to imagine something new or different takes a sort of distaste or something has to be wrong, something has to be missing if you were perfectly happy.

Austin Kleon: So for example, if you're perfectly happy with going to homecoming and playing football and the way that small town American life plays out. Then you don't imagine anything different, but so it's like the thing we talked about earlier, maladjustment, it's very hard to be creative without that maladjustment to, to not see that there are things in life that could be improved because, and I just think this is such basic information that everyone forgets about.

Austin Kleon: Like sometimes you just have to strip things down to a very basic level. If you think the world is perfect, then why would you ever make anything of it? It wouldn't be, there wouldn't be any reason to make anything. And so I think that, I have always felt in my work and I've been trying to write a little bit more about this to get people to understand this.

Austin Kleon: I am helpful in kind in my work, but that comes from this place of deep disgust. Just not a hatred because hatred is wasted energy, a disgust with civilization just discussed with, just just an itching, an agitation, just a itchiness against what is, the norm or whatever.

Austin Kleon: That's where the work comes from. And I think that's very personal to me, but when I look at some of my favorite artists, which of course are the ones that speak to me and therefore would be the most like me probably, the stuff that, this beautiful stuff, this beautiful life affirming stuff comes out of a deep pit of disgust.

Austin Kleon: And there is a redemption. There, there is a redeeming of, there is a taking in and putting out of. You become like a refinery, somehow you're taking in this stuff, that's like bothering you and you're transforming it into something, and so powerful. And it's so much what I wish people would think more about.

Austin Kleon: Which is so I don't know you're in this, you're in this world, it just everyone's happy-go-lucky, Oh, be creative, here's your get out your paints. And, and it's think of something that's deeply wrong and try to correct it, fix. And that's as simple as take a pair of jeans that are ripped and sew them back together.

Austin Kleon: That is a creative act. And I guess this is another thing that I was thinking deeply about with keep going, is just everything in the culture right now, as far as creativity is pitched at us as vandalism. If you think about The big tech companies, they all have these slogans.

Austin Kleon: They're just about make your Mark put a dent in the universe, move fast and break things. It's all just dudes messing stuff up. It's like vandalism metaphors. I just, I was just like, I've just been so deeply influenced by like quilters, like I find quilting to be just this incredible art form where you're taking these discarded scraps and you're transforming them into these beautiful, what I think are works of art that also have a function and that they could keep someone warm.

Austin Kleon: So if you look at the I'm looking at someone like Rosie Lee Tompkins or anyone in that, Gies bend area that does those quilts. That to me is like such a wonderful kind of opposition to this, make your Mark and the way those women. And they're mostly women talk about listening to their materials and letting the quilt become what it wants to be.

Austin Kleon: I find that to be so just it's freedom because listening to men talk about wrangling the canvas into projecting my, that I think, sometimes it's interesting because I think a lot of men, when they, when they think about feminism or they think about looking at the work of women or whatever it is, I think they think that something's going to be taken away from them somehow.

Austin Kleon: But for me, it's just a completely opposite way of thinking. It's just opened my life up so much to, to look at art forms like quilting or something like that, where, even the art world might say something more that's crap. That's not art. It's just opened me up so much.

Austin Kleon: It's just there's so much, there's so many more possibilities for work then. Cause if you're just like what Mark can I make on the world? That's one way of doing it. But if you do other things, like I start looking at the world and I'm like where are the gaps? Where are the things that have been torn?

Austin Kleon: What, where are the patches that I could, like what are the holes? Where's the effort that needs done? Where are the things that need connecting? But no one's connected yet. What's the quilt I could spin out of this. That's just like a profoundly different, I guess what I'm trying to say is as a writer, I take language so seriously.

Austin Kleon: And I think, I just think the metaphors that we serve up in this culture, one thing I would recommend to people is spend a week just paying attention to metaphor. Just spend a week just paying attention to how people talk about stuff like the war of art or the battle of creative. Just think about what all the military terms people use to talk about are in creative work.

Austin Kleon: And then think about what the opposite metaphor would be and ask yourself if it opens you up more. Because I just, there's a book called metaphors. We live by and on my shelf. No, I haven't actually read it

Austin Kleon: like four times one of those bucks, we do, we invent our metaphors and then they invite us, it's what McLuhan said about tools is it's like we invent our tools and then they invent us. And so I encourage particularly the men listening, to think deeply about the kind of metaphors you've been given for work and life and think about what the opposite might be.

Austin Kleon: Because my reading of feminism now, I don't even know why I brought this up. It's just to me, it's a complete reordering of the world. It's not about. It's not about women taking over or having equal power or anything like that. It's literally a restructuring of our culture. And I find that as a creative person, finding these other models of thinking these other metaphors, it's just it's just changed my life.

Austin Kleon: It just makes life more interesting and opens up possibility.

Srini Rao: Funny, you brought that up of all things, because I remember I don't know if you've seen it. There's a documentary on Netflix that Oliver stone did call the untold history of the United States. Very final one. He basically quotes a conversation that he was having with some woman, and she says to him, we need to feminize the planet.

Srini Rao: And he goes on to expand. He, he, in a lot of ways, he said, you know what you just did. And that struck me so much when he said that, because it was just like, wow, there's a great deal of truth. I love the fact that you've talked about vandalism as metaphors. Cause I remember I, in this new self published book, I actually started, writing a section called move slow and fix things.

Austin Kleon: Exactly. Exactly. Move slow and fix things.

Srini Rao: So I think that one thing in particular that really struck me as the way that you opened the book by talking about the sort of Groundhog day metaphor, because I had a friend, that at the CrossFit gym that I used to work at, when I lived in San Diego and he would call me Hank booty.

Srini Rao: I don't know if you've seen the TV show Californication. David is this, really brilliant writer who basically goes around LA sleeping with every hot woman who, he runs into an, a bar driving a Porsche, having these like crazy adventures. And I would tell him, Travis, my life is nowhere as near as interesting as Hank Moody's.

Srini Rao: And I don't think any writer's life would be that interesting. In fact, I think if you made a movie about most people's writing life, it would be like, here's stream you sitting at a desk. That would be it. And you say that, the creative journey is not one in which you're crowned the triumphant hero and live happily ever after the creative journey is one in which you wake up every day, like Phil referring to grandpa day with more work to do.

Srini Rao: And so outside of the perception of the artistic life that media creates, why do people have this sort of glamorous vision of what this could be?

Austin Kleon: I don't know. I tried watching Dickinson, the sort of re it's I don't even know how to describe it. It's so offensive to me.

Austin Kleon: I finally, the thing that broke me about trying to watch that show was I was just like, it seemed to the things I've read about Emily Dickinson. It's like her domestic life and her poetics were like deeply interwoven. She would scribble poems on the back of like envelopes and like scrap pieces of paper and stuff.

Austin Kleon: And in the show, it's she's always trying to get away from the domestic life. And I just, I think it's such a betrayal of what I see. I know they're trying to make her into this icon in that show, but, and I haven't gotten very far in the show, but it was just so against what I had, like read about Emily Dickinson that I just in her I just, it just ruined it for me and I'm fascinated by the depiction of writers and in, in in media, but I don't know where people get this idea that writing is like a fun.

Austin Kleon: I don't know. Most of the writers I know are just nerd, just particularly I spent a lot of time around cartoonists when I was coming up now there's a bunch of freaks. Some cartoonists, they are, freaks anyone who would pick an art form that is that labor intensive, that takes, a cartoon takes so many hours to produce and takes almost no time to read, it's so like it's so labor intensive.

Austin Kleon: The Groundhog day thing for me was really less about the glamour and more about the, it was less about the glamour of the riding life. We're about the repetition of the life. I think that's the thing that people really, I think people can get it through their head, that writing's hard.

Austin Kleon: And that's not necessarily glamorous what they really can't get through their heads is how every single freaking time you sit down to write a book, it is a new, you just have to learn again. So many of the people I know, unless, there are robot like Ryan holiday, who's a friend of mine, likewise, unless you just have them dislike extremely disciplined routine.

Austin Kleon: And once you have the system for cranking out books, most of the writers, I really admire deeply who wrote the work I did. They just talk about it is like every bulk is like a new. You just have to figure it out every time. And that, that sense of return, that, that idea that you're back, that it loops, but the thing about Phil is like every time it's a new, it's a new thing, but he does accumulate experience.

Austin Kleon: He, in the movie, he has things to rely on, even though he faces the same thing every day, he does build up a skill and a wisdom over time. And I think that's what the writer has. And when I sit down to write a new book, I realize like I'm going to have to go through all the horrible things I usually go through when I'm writing a book.

Austin Kleon: But the thing is that been there before? And so I know when I'm having a terrible day, if I just get to the end of it, that the next day will be better. And just that little bit of knowledge lets me keep going. When you know, someone just starting out would have a harder time and w

Srini Rao: yeah. Sorry, keep going.

Srini Rao: Is there anything else you wanted to add to that?

Austin Kleon: Yeah. So just that loop, for me, I just thought that life, when I was younger, I thought life would be a straight line. And, it was just like, I would just accumulate wealth and power and fame, whatever it was just whatever it was, it was just like going to be a straight line and it just feels more looping to me now, like I'm stuck in loops that I orbit the planet.

Austin Kleon: I orbit the sun along with the earth and on each rotation, there are too many echoes and it. I think, for me, a lot of it's been, people make fun of middle-aged white guys who read Thoreau mostly because they take the wrong things from thrill. If you, if the message you get from Thoreau is I should go live in the woods by myself.

Austin Kleon: Like you're an idiot. Like I, you really don't understand like you haven't got it. Because to me, what reading thrill has done for me is to pay deep attention to the rhythms of life and the seasons, and to take lots of walks and look at the world and come back and write about it. That is what I take from Thoreau.

Austin Kleon: And I think reading his work, walking every day in my neighborhood and keeping a diary has put me in touch with the sort of circular rhythms of life. More than, anything else. And I do think because I've been a parent for eight years, parents there's a certain amount of brain damage that comes from having young children.

Austin Kleon: Okay. It's just, you have a kind of amnesia and it's evolutionary. It's literally, if you knew how terrible you felt when you had a newborn, you wouldn't have any more kids. If you could remember people wouldn't keep having kids. If,they remember, if they had the choice, but if you, for me, it's there was a certain amount of amnesia, but with my second kid, I was like, wait a minute, fool me twice.

Austin Kleon: Now I'm just kidding. But it's, there was a sense of, I've noticed this, even in my family life where it's I can recognize patterns now because I've noticed them and written them down in my diary. And I think that, people talk about how boring their diary. Oh, I don't know. I try to keep a diary for awhile though, so boring or whatever.

Austin Kleon: And I was like what do you think it's supposed to be dummy? Like it's supposed to be boring because it, it shows you what your life actually is. Like your life is mainly mundane. It is that is what life is it's mainly Monday. But if you do it long enough, you start noticing your own patterns and then some sort of wisdom comes out of that, or the opposite where you realize that this is just the loop you go through and you'll go through it again.

Austin Kleon: And it's just the passage of time, you know what I'm saying? Absolutely. But I just feel deeply that learning more about. Learning more about nature, learning more about seasons and cycles and the idea of a natural time versus man-made time. It's just really opened up, how I think about creative work now?

Austin Kleon: It feels like so much of what we do is fighting our own natural impulses,

Srini Rao: I think that makes a perfect segue to talking about where I want to wrap things up money and metrics. I think that. I, like I told you, before we hit record, there was one quote that stayed with me from steal, like an artist that honestly like that has been the compass for how I choose to do what I do.

Srini Rao: And that was a hearts over eyeballs. But you keep going say, we used to have hobbies. Now we have side hustles, everyone who's turned their passion into their bread-winning knows this is dangerous territory. One of the easiest ways to hate something you love is to turn it into your job, taking the thing that keeps you alive spiritually and turning it into the thing that keeps you alive.

Srini Rao: Literally you must be mindful of what potential impact monetizing your passions could have on your life. You might find that you're better off for the day job, which is funny because it brings us full circle with something we were talking about earlier. And I think people understand that.

Srini Rao: And yet how many books, how many self-help groups? Hell how many pod-casters go out and tell you the exact opposite. Chris Guillebeau has an entire. Conference dedicated to the opposite of this

Austin Kleon: message.

Austin Kleon: Yeah. Chris doesn't pay people by the way. I know

Srini Rao: I've never spoken at it. No, he's literally built in Chris. He's built a cult as far as I'm concerned. I asked him about this. I said, you seem to have an implicit understanding of cult psychology because somebody compared WDS, like when they went there said it felt like a cult. And I was like, yeah, that's because there are definitely elements of it.

Austin Kleon: Oh God. Goodnight folks. Oh, my goodness. I forget what the question was,

Srini Rao: not a question as much as an observation,

Austin Kleon: so much in a podcast, which is a really good sign for me.

Srini Rao: The thing is, I think that this has really been on my mind lately because I'm writing a book that's literally titled not another damn self-help book.

Srini Rao: And and it, a lot of it is questioning what comes out of this sort of personal development ecosystem because, a thousand interviews, hundreds of people that I've talked to over the years, I realized all of this messaging completely ignores context.

Austin Kleon: Here's what I would tell people about self-help and self-help writers.

Austin Kleon: Suspicion is always great. Yes. The other thing I would say, though, in Zen, Buddhism. And in, there are a bunch of like John cage has a lot of really good stories about like Zen masters and stuff. Read the great stories about Zen masters, because the best teachers are the reluctant ones. Like the people you want to listen to and learn from are not the people advertising their teachings.

Austin Kleon: I am really suspicious now there are people in the culture who really want to be self-help authors. And I'm like why, w that's your dream? Why? For me, I fell in self-help really by accident because what I was trying to do is be an artist and. What I happened to find out, and many artists have found this out w H Auden talked about how a poet will always make more money than, about talking about making poetry than you both.

Austin Kleon: And he said that 50, 60 years ago my, my thing was, it was like, look, I know I'm not good enough for anyone to carry yet, but I'm learning. And so the idea was I will share with you what I'm learning along the way, and maybe you'll find something interesting in it. And that will make me interesting enough for you to follow along with, and then eventually maybe I'll make something that you'll love.

Austin Kleon: And you'll like, that was my game in the beginning. And I'm very obsessed with this idea. I think that so many great books are accidents. Like you take something like the, meditation's like a really assists meditations, which I know Ryan loves so much. And the thing we talk about sometime is like that book's a mistake.

Austin Kleon: That's not supposed to be a book that's like something, some dude wrote down for himself. It's not, it's it wasn't supposed to be like a best-selling book or whatever, and I think that way about steal, like an artist, like steal, like an artist was a collection of blog posts that became a talk that became a book, there's a, there's an accidental element to it. And so when I realized it was going to be a self, I just never really thought about self-help until I became a self-help author, which is so weird. But in hindsight, It's once I learned I was writing in there, Sean, then it just became how can I play with this?

Austin Kleon: And so every book has been like my attempt to play with the genre and specifically to play with the genre of the self-help gift book, which is like the kind of thing you would find by the cash register at a paper source or a FedEx Kinko's. Like for me, it's look at people who are doing work that you actually, instead of looking for people who have a message that you really you might want to spend a little bit more time, like looking at people who are in the world the way you'd want to be in the world or who are processing the, like doing work that you I'm trying to figure out how to put this my, my grades fear in life is becoming the guy who, if I'm ever able to travel again, And I ended up on a conference stage again, if someone looks at him and says, but what does he do? But what does, is this what he does?

Austin Kleon: You know what I mean? Cause it's I don't know. I just think there's something about the reluctant teacher. There's something about the Zen master, who the guy shows up. There's a great story that John cage tells and silences guy goes out to the woods, find design master and the Zen master is on his porch, sweeping leaves.

Austin Kleon: And the guy says, send master's and master, teach me, please. I've come all the way out to the middle of the woods here. And I'm asking you like, please teach me then master ignores him. So he goes off for awhile. Makes a campfire comes back next day, Zen master, please teach. I'll do anything. I'll be anything.

Austin Kleon: I'll do you know, whatever said masters ignores them, keeps it can leaves. Same thing happens. It goes a Bill's a campfire comes back next day, said master for the lap, please. I'm begging you. Teach me, just please teach me your secret. Zen master ignores him, keeps raking leaves or whatever. Finally, the guy says, screw this is terrible.

Austin Kleon: Those off back into the world. That's something else. Build the house. One day he's out on his front porch and he's raking leaves and it hits him like a ton of bricks and runs back into the woods and he finds the Zen master. Who's still raking leaves to Zen master. Thank you. And that's the parable, that's it?

Austin Kleon: That's it man. And I think some people would be like, what, if your average American here is that is like what, but like everything in there is in there. To be in the world doing the work. And to, just to just be there doing it in a sense as a form of teaching, what more teaching do you need is right there.

Austin Kleon: He's right there in front of you is doing the work, and every parable, part of the thing with parables is that they teach, it's very dependent on the hearable of the parable to understand what's going on. But for me, it's just I love and reluctant teacher. I want people to stop.

Austin Kleon: And in fact, I love the people read my books, but I want them to remember when they're reading my books, that my books come, they don't come out of the urge to teach. They come out of the urge to share. They come out of them, urge to learn something and to share what I've learned, not out of the sense of wanting to be a guru or a teacher or a leader.

Austin Kleon: They come out of these are things I've learned. I'm writing them down for myself. Maybe you'll find something interesting in them. And I try now at every talk, I give to tell people that to say, look, I'm trying to remain a student. I hope you've learned something here today, but I am learning too. And this is my way of learning.

Austin Kleon: Writing books is my way of learning. And you can make anyone a teacher you can make dead people, your teachers. The great thing about dead people is they can't refuse you as a student. They left everything they know in their work. You can learn from that. You don't need a teacher. What you need is to become a student.

Srini Rao: I love that. Yeah, it's funny because I think even the introduction to the book that I'm writing, I basically said, I want you to read this with skepticism and above all things, consider the possibility that every single word I've written here is absolute and utter bullshit.

Austin Kleon: Yeah. That's always a good, it's always a good strategy to read with a sense of skepticism.

Austin Kleon: Yeah. Wow.

Srini Rao: Yeah, no, I love conversations like this because you packed, it was so many brilliant insights and nuggets. So I want to finish my final question which is how we finish all of our interviews with the unmistakable creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something on the stable,

Austin Kleon: I'm really starting to I play all the time with the idea of. I wrestle so much with authenticity, this kind of, this notion of authenticity, because it seems to me so worthless and art and in other realms too. But there is something that I think makes someone unmistakable, which is just really being yourself really.

Austin Kleon: Can I know that's so cliche, be yourself, like what, but I feel like there's a way when you put on a mask that you're more like who you are than when you're naked. There are costumes you can put on where you're more of yourself. And if we've learned anything from modern culture, it's that we should let people try on, I love drag, I love what RuPaul says about drag.

Austin Kleon: She says, RuPaul says we're all born naked and the rest is drag. And I just think what makes someone unmistakable is just you get the feeling that they've self realized that they're this is who they are. It's a pure essence, is what I'm looking for and are looking for like someone who it seems like they figure out how to fire on all cylinders, to really, to take all the pieces of themselves and kinda bring it all together into something unique.

Austin Kleon: Like they're not denying any part of themselves, they're using the whole deal. That seems unmistakable to me.

Srini Rao: Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story and insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, your books, and everything else you're up to,

Austin Kleon: I'm old fashioned just go to Austin, kleon.com.

Austin Kleon: And my website is the portal. It's still the portal. It's the thing. That's the most, up-to-date, it's the thing that I pour myself into every day. I would encourage anyone who enjoyed this conversation to if you can stand the sound of my voice. There's a new audio book that has all three of my books bunched together in a somewhat affordable package.

Austin Kleon: And I would recommend those. And then there's the favorite thing I do online is I have a weekly newsletter it's free and it is my favorite thing I do online and it's very easy to sign up for it. And then unsubscribe, if you don't like it. So Austin kleon.com. Awesome.

Srini Rao: And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.