YouSaid · the spoken record

Debbie Millman

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2024-06-27
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2024-06-27
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  1. “And I honestly did not know what to do, Tim. I felt like if I wrote in that it would seem defensive, that it would bring more attention to this story. I felt that if I didn't write in, that I would be missing an opportunity to at least contribute to the conversation with a point of view that might be different than theirs. I didn't know what to do. And looking back on it now, I'm actually really ashamed of what I did because it was disingenuous. But at the time, it was the only thing that I felt I could do. And so a few days after the story broke and the comments piled in, I contributed and my first comment was, you're not going to approve of this.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “And I'm reading this, and my jaw is agape, and I am just in a state of catatonia. I couldn't move. I was ashamed, embarrassed, terrified that people in my office would see it, that the reputation of the firm was being sullied by me. And I didn't know what to do. I was despondent. I remember why. Thinking that I had to quit, I had to leave the design business, and my career was over, this career that I had finally found for myself was now officially over.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “And proceeded to take my entire career down. And it was a pile on. So not only was the open letter quite harsh, but then there was the pile-on of comments that happened in the early days of blogging. Remember that?”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Know right, and I am not one that likes surprises or anticipation. I need instant gratification. So I don't wait to go home. I don't wait to get a drink. I click into the link at my desk, in my office, and come to a letter, an open letter to AIGA written by a designer named Felix Sockwell on this thing called speak up And speak up was one of the first weblogs and the first design blog. And the letter chastises AIGA for including me, Debbie Milman, as a juror in their annual competition. What is supposed to be the most prestigious competition in the country and accused me of not only being a corporate clown, But also because of the work I do, they called me a she devil.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Work of mine to be included in the journal as evidence of my credentials for being a juror and the two biggest projects that I had done at the time were the Burger King identity and the Star Wars identity. And so I sent those in as my credentials. They were printed in the journal and that was the end of that. Or so I thought May 2nd, 2003. I get I get a link from a friend of mine. She sends me an email and she's like, read this in the privacy of your own home, preferably with a big drink.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “On the panel, this is while we're on the panel, and there's somebody that's trailing us writing notes for an article that's going to appear in the annual. Was mortifying. In any case, we were only able to agree, I think, on seven things that would go into the competition journal, which is not a way to encourage future applicants to apply for the competition. So AIJ was not particularly happy with us. This juror of mine, the fellow juror, hated me. And I felt at the end of that day that I would never, ever be asked to do anything with AIGA ever again. And I remember walking back to my office, which was at the Empire State Building at the time. It was sort of dusk, and I felt like, oh, this is never, ever going to work out. And resign myself to that. Rick asked for some”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “The imager looks at me when I get there and she's like, just so you know, I don't intend to have any mass market packaging in this competition get an award. And I was like, okay. And I didn't agree with that. I mean, I understandably had come, I was working at a CPG package design firm and we had recently designed a Burger King logo and the Star Wars episode 2 Attack of the Cones packaging and merchandising and the Hershey bar. And so, you know, I was coming from a completely different point of view. We ended up disagreeing so vehemently that at one point I thought we were going to actually come to fisticuffs.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “This to me was almost worth being kicked to the curb by this special interest group of the brand experience center. This was like the biggest honor of my career at that point, to be a judge in the country's biggest design competition was unfathomable to me. It felt like a miracle. And so I went to the judging and there were two other judges with me. We had 700 entries that we needed to look at in one day. And when I got to the judging at AIGA headquarters, I met with the other two jurors. One was a very well-known designer who had a bit of a boutique agency, very posh. She was very stylish. I did not feel nearly as stylish. Another guy was there from Apple, and this was shortly after the iPod had been released and he was on his iPod the whole time and really didn't spend a lot of time.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “I know. Oh, they were really good cupcakes and brownies. And I was devastated. I was just devastated. And Rick Raffay, who was then the executive director, he had been aware of how much I wanted to be in AIGA and how much I wanted to do and my aspirations. And I think he felt really bad for me. He asked me if I wanted to have lunch and he took me to a very expensive lunch at 11 Madison and over the course of lunch. Yeah, it was super wonderful and generous of him. Over the course of lunch, he said, please, please don't give up on AIGA. We need people like you and don't give up. We'll find a place for you, I promise. And I guess it's a bit of a consolation prize. He asked me if I would be a judge in the upcoming annual competition that AIGA had called 365. And he asked me if I wanted to be a judge in the package design category.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “And the board term was, I think, two years. And at the end of the term, if we wanted to be on the board again, we all had to reapply. And in that two years, I was very active. I went to all the meetings and we weren't funded by AIGA. We had to self-fund. And so I made cupcakes for bake sales and we had a flea market. And I was very, very involved in the sort of day-to-day runnings of this little special interest group. At the end of the two years, we all had to reapply if we wanted to be on the board again. And every single person reapplied. And every single person was appointed on the board again except me. I was rejected.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “I was working in marketing and sales So, and I wasn't at that time doing very much design work. I was doing some work freelance. I had been appointed the off-air creative director at Hot 97, which is a whole other sort of story to share at some point. But I was working. To develop the identity and the graphics for the first ever hip hop radio station, which happened to be in New York and was called Hot 97. That was the only thing that I was doing on the side. I started working at Sterling Brands and was longing for a design community and was longing for a feeling of being part of something bigger than I was on my own, but something that was much more creative and had no commercial implications.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “I think because of my early childhood in my father's pharmacy, being surrounded by brands, I had, and my own sort of obsession with things like lays potato chips. Exactly. I had this almost magical ability to understand why and how people chose the objects that they did to be part of their lives, mostly the brands that they chose. So I started working at Sterling brands and had this heretofore unbelievable level of success financially. And I really enjoyed it. I am also endlessly fascinated by the choices people make for the objects in their lives, what they choose to surround themselves with, the kinds of things they buy and share and eat and wear and so forth. And in as much as I loved what I was doing and in as much as I was relishing the level of success that in my early 30s I was finally finally getting.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Buy things online and they can be shipped to you, and you don't have to leave the house. Oh my God, that's so amazing. And we were playing games and we were emailing and reading the news. And there were forums where people would congregate, but they tended to be more niche forums and not so much mainstream cultural forums. Prior to that, leading up to that time in my life, I had joined Sterling brands in 1995. And this was one of the first moments of that click that you had mentioned earlier where suddenly, without even realizing it, I had joined a firm where I was hired to help grow the business via the acquisition of new clients in branding. And the job was one of the first times in my life where I was Almost effortlessly successful.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Okay, so I want to start this story by letting people know that this was something that while it was happening, I thought was the worst professional experience of my life. And it's turned out to be the most important and life-affirming of my life. So let me tell you a little bit about the speak-up story. So the year is 2003. And the time in the world was quite different than it is now. So we were online, but we weren't quite online in the way that we are now. I think YouTube was just, just, just beginning. It was a video sharing site more than anything. We were online, but we were playing games and we were ordering from the J-Crew catalog. I don't know if people remember when the J Crew catalog went online. People's heads exploded. You could.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Not only the sort of rape culture that we're living in, but also the blaming of victims. So we can change culture by doing this work together. And it's something I'm super proud of.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Well, let's talk about some of the really important things that people are doing now to not only eradicate this type of violence, but also to change the world. One of the other things that Joyful Hard is doing that I am so proud of is ending the backlog. There are hundreds of thousands of rape kids that are not being investigated that are sitting in shelves in police departments all over the country. And so the joyful Heart Foundation, along with Vice President Joe Biden, has been very involved in getting funding to help analyze those rape kits to be able to analyze the DNA and get serial rapists off the streets and get justice for the victims of those crimes. So that's a really, really important thing that they're doing and something that I feel can ultimately change.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “And I believe that I was a little girl. I believed that. And I was protecting them. And I didn't know that I had any other resources, none. And didn't even tell my mother until after they got divorced because Tim, I didn't want to be the reason. I didn't want to be blamed. And I also didn't think anybody would believe me. And I didn't want my mother and my brother to be harmed. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that this was pervasive. So for anybody that is listening, if you feel alone, know that you're not, you can go to the Joyful Heart Foundation, the Joyful Heart Foundation.org, and there are resources and phone numbers. You can also go to nomore.org, which is another organization that I've helped. And there are resources and people that are there to help and listen and get you out of the situation that you are in.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “One of the things that I experienced when I was in the midst of these experiences was a sense of profound aloneness, the worst experiences I had were in the 70s. And at the time, the topic wasn't one that was as understood. I didn't know what was happening to me. unnatural and Punishing. It didn't occur to me that this was pervasive, that this was a cultural epidemic, and I was told at the time by the perpetrator that if I told anybody that he had the resources to hurt my brother and my mother, that he would kill them.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Person who I work with is a PhD. She was very involved in the psychoanalytic community in New York City. She's now living in Santa Fe. I think that it's a combination of a number of different philosophies and theories probably at its foundation, psychoanalysis, but certainly with quite a lot of variations. It's talk therapy. I started back in the early 90s five days a week and then moved down to three days. And now I'm usually two to three days. And it is enormously helpful to help me try to make sense of these experiences that I've had. For anybody that is either in the midst of experiencing them or experiencing the aftermath, there are a lot of resources.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “I think that the work that I've done in therapy has saved my life. I have always been really dedicated to my therapy and have been in therapy with the same analyst now for over two decades.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. And I've been working with Marishka and Miley Zambuto, the CEO of the foundation now for the last five years. And this work, I believe the branding work that I've been able to do with them taking into all the expertise I've had in repositioning and branding some of the biggest CPG companies in the world and now dovetailing that with my own background really truly makes me feel like my whole life makes sense, Tim.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “What the aftermath then caused, but also how I can use that empathy and that understanding to try to help the world. And that's a lot of the reason that I've started to do the work that I do with Marishka Harket and the Joyful Heart Foundation, which is a foundation that Marishka started after she started working on Law and Order SVU shortly after she started working on that television program, she started to receive a lot of letters from people that the very victim she was trying to find justice for on the television show and realized that this is way more than a television show. This is a huge opportunity to make a difference in our culture. And shortly thereafter started the Joyful Heart Foundation, which is an organization to help eradicate.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “It's not something I talk about a lot, mostly because I've had an enormous amount of shame about it, and that's a very normal thing, and I still do. And it's still very, very hard for me to share these types of things. But I do think it's important that people do see that there is hope for a better life even when you are the victim of these types of situations. I've spent a lot of time working on better integrating those experiences into my life in a way to not only understand what happened, why it happened,”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “That I would never allow anything bad to happen to me. Not quite a realistic expectation, but was something that I felt was possible to do. Of course, it's not. That takes decades to also figure out. But at that time, I wanted very badly to be able to live in my own home, to be able to take care of myself, and to be in a position where I would never be vulnerable again, you know, sort of Scarlett O'Hara. I'm never going to go hungry again. Yeah, that doesn't always work out that way, but it was definitely the journey that I've been on.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “After they got divorced, I was 13. My father came back into my life. My mother then got involved with another man who was 10 years younger than her, so therefore only 10 years older than me and was also, I guess I'll put it sexually provocative with me and also emotionally abusive. So for the first like 18 years of my life, I lived in a state of constant terror and compensated or self-soothed with art with a lot of extracurricular activities in school. I was always an overachiever probably in an effort to prove to myself and to my family that I wasn't worthy of the abuse that was being inflicted on me. I wanted so much more for my life even back then and grew up thinking that if I had the resources to take care of myself,”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “About a year after my parents got divorced, my mother married again, and she married a man who was physically and sexually abusive to me, physically abusive to my brother and also sexually abusive to one of his two biological daughters and severely, severely beat us for four years. During that time was one of the times, the first time actually that I was estranged from my biological father. And so I had a lot of brutality in my life.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “Do think that it's certainly in Maslow's hierarchy of needs a really important one. For me, it takes an extra level of significance in that I grew up in a really, really challenging environment. So my parents got divorced when I was very young, I was about eight years old. And I had a very, very complicated relationship with my father. My father died last year unexpectedly. My father sort of in my daughter eyes was brilliant, charismatic. He was an incredibly well-spoken man. He was also extremely turbulent. He had a lot of anger issues. And over the course of our lives together, I had five different experiences with him where he rejected me and decided that he didn't want me. In his life. And so one of those periods was about nine years. So we had a very, very turbulent relationship. When my parents got divorced, I told myself.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “The one most important thing to you, you will likely do whatever it takes to get it. And the most important thing to me was not being a writer and it was not being an artist. It was living in Manhattan and I did whatever it took and lived in whatever conditions that I needed to in order to make that happen. I think that's a really important realization”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “In Manhattan, and I lived in a fourth floor tenement walk up. I had a walkthrough, somebody else's bedroom to get to mine. I was living on a floor with people that were constantly, the other tenants in the building were locking each other out. It was an elderly couple and they were always fighting. There were a whole family of pigeons living on the fire escape outside of my window in my bedroom, which was so decrepit. I couldn't even open the window in the summertime. And there was no air conditioning in this apartment. I mean, the conditions that I lived in were deplorable, but yet that was the most important thing to me. So when I talk to people now about what do they want to do when they first graduate, I ask them to think about what is the one most important thing to you? What is the one most important thing to you? Because if it is truly...”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “Absolutely positively lying to myself because more than the self-sufficiency was the desire to be in Manhattan. I could have easily become, or more easily, become an artist or a fine artist or a writer if I didn't want to live in the most expensive city in the world. I could have gone and lived with my mother in queens. I could have lived with friends in Albany. I could have had seven roommates in a little commune in Bedstey. There would have been any number of things that I could have done if my lead gene had been artistic purity. But no, I told myself that it was because of X, Y, and Z, but really what it was was the most important thing to me at that point in my life was being”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “corner of Bleaker Street in 6th Avenue, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had to make a decision. And the decision was, what was I going to do? And I realized that if I wanted to be an artist or a writer, that I would likely have to take some type of job that would not necessarily be able to safeguard what I considered to be my financial future and therefore made this little pact with myself in my head that I would become a designer so that I could make enough money to be able to be secure. And I've been telling myself that for decades, what I realized in the last couple of years was that I was unbeknownst to my psyche, my consciousness, I was lying to myself.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “I needed to make some type of reasonable income in order to pay that rent. And so I have been telling myself for decades now that I decided that I needed to work as a designer because I needed to have some sort of income that would give me some sense of self-sufficiency, self-sufficiency has been enormously important to me. And I've said that for years and years and years and that being safe and secure and being able to manage the course of my own life having financial stability was something that was a bit of a lead gene for me in making the decisions that I did. And back in that summer of David Bowie and the police, I remember coming home from a club one night and I was on the...”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “And because I wanted to live in New York City, because I wanted to live in Manhattan, I felt that I needed to be able to get a job that would pay my rent because I didn't want to be a waitress and because I didn't want to be a bartender”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “And I wanted very badly to be in Manhattan. That was something that I knew for sure. In thinking about what I wanted with my life, I knew that I wanted to do something creative. One of my big hopes and dreams at that time was to work at Conde Nast. And I did apply and I did get a call back and I got rejected and then never tried again. Another example of that. One of the more high altitude aspirations was either being an artist or being a writer. So being more of a fine artist and not a commercial artist. But at the time, I did not think that my chances of success at that would either be possible and certainly if it were possible, not fast.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “Well, there's sort of two parts to the question, I think. And the first is this notion of New York's. The place that I wanted to be. And what I told myself at that time, and then ultimately how that leads to happiness or fulfillment. And one of the things that I struggled with when I first moved to Manhattan or when I first graduated really was, what was I going to be? What was I going to do? I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have any network. And I certainly didn't have any type of connection to any inns for apartments or jobs or anything like that.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “One thing that I find about human nature is that ambiguity is always perceived negatively. So there might be nothing in that one line email that would be in any way disparaging or insulting or anything, but because we as humans perceive ambiguity negatively, we tend to read into things that aren't there in a way that makes us feel bad. But I also think that a lot of that for me comes from having a very sort of fragile center and not necessarily thinking that they are specifically upset with me because of something that I've done, but just because everything that I do is sort of bad. They're just cognizant of that. So it's not something specific. It's just something all in common. And so that's been something I've been struggling to overcome over the decades.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “And Rob is not the only person that I can point to as being somebody that initially provided some sort of obstacle or roadblock that was a reasonable one. And then ultimately I befriended and we become, we are now lifelong friends. He didn't even remember rejecting me that freshman year and is mortified now by the notion that he might have done anything to hurt my feelings. So one of the other things that I would suggest that people consider if they believe they are being rejected is consider what the perception from the other person doing the rejection or the supposed rejection might be. And that sense of empathy might be really helpful in understanding where you're coming from and what you're bringing to that specific. Example or that specific experience.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “And I have been friends with that man. His name is Robert Edelstein. I have been friends with him ever since. So just because somebody rejects you doesn't mean that they don't like you. First of all, he didn't even reject me. He asked me for a very reasonable. He asked me for something very reasonable. He asked me for some examples of my writing. I was so intimidated and was so embarrassed by not knowing exactly what he meant and the fact that I didn't have anything other than some things from high school, which I didn't feel were appropriate, that I was the one that rejected myself in many ways. One of the interesting things that I have found is”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “So one thing that I haven't shared about this particular story is that the young man that rejected me that first year is somebody that I then befriended in that experience of working at the paper that junior year. And I graduated in 1983. It is now 2017.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “Give yourself options. The timeliness of those options or the timeliness of those retries do at your own pace. You're not in competition with anybody but yourself. So if you are rejected to something that you want, then think about what it is that caused that rejection and work to better understand how you can Present your best possible self when you try again.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “Well, it's an interesting question, Tim, because I have the benefit of hindsight and looking back on those years, yes, I certainly could have tried again sooner and maybe had more of a runway to experiment and grow and learn. In that newsroom and in that environment. But I also think that those years in between learning and growing in other ways contributed to my ability to then, when appointed the editor of the arts and features section, I somehow had a lot more to pull from. And maybe this is my own sort of synthesizing happiness or calibrating to my own set point or looking back and thinking, well, it all sort of worked out so Why give somebody advice that I wouldn't have necessarily taken at that point? What I would say is don't accept the first rejection ever.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “Licking my wounds, re sort of knitting my confidence or hopes and dreams together and then trying to do something else or trying again.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “of going to get a master's degree in journalism. Shortly thereafter, because I also am a painter, I had been accepted into a show at Long Island University, the Brooklyn campus, and got some good reviews and thought, hmm, maybe I should become an artist. I love doing this. I'm getting some good response from it, but I don't feel qualified or educated enough. Maybe I should get an advanced degree in art. And I applied to the Whitney School, the Whitney Museum of Art had an independent study program that would allow me to continue working during the day. I applied for that. I had really good references, wonderful clips at that point, you know, some good reviews and got rejected to that and then abandoned that dream. And so it's been a long history of Making an attempt, getting that early rejection, retreating, and then finally sort of.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “To opportunity. And every time I would try something new and would ultimately get rejected, I use that first rejection almost as a permission slip to avoid having to try again. So when I graduated, I started working at a couple of different magazines. I worked for a cable magazine and I worked for a rock magazine doing layout and paste up and some editing. And at the time thought, oh, I'm really enjoying this, but I don't really feel qualified to be doing this. Maybe I should go back to school and get a master's degree in journalism. And I lived in the neighborhood of a very good journalism school, the Columbia School of Journalism, and my dad had gone to Columbia and studied pharmacy. And I thought, why not apply to the Columbia School of Journalism? But that was the only school I applied to. I thought, you know, I want to consider getting a master's degree in journalism. There are a lot of good journalism schools in New York City, but for some reason I had my heart.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “Well, there I was rejected that first year of college took me then three years to go back again. I might have been feeling confident about something else that had gone well in my life and thought, what the heck, why not go back and try and then those steps up to the campus center and went back up to the third floor and asked again. I am somebody that has a very hard time taking no for an answer, but it takes me a long time to recalibrate and get my courage back to continue to keep trying. And when I graduated, because I had such a hard time finding a job initially that I really loved, and because I was having so much trouble figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, I kept bouncing around from opportunity.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “I actually don't. I wish that I did. It would make for a much better story and certainly a better interview. But I can tell you is that all these years later, I have noticed a pattern in my life of Being very easily hurt by an initial reaction or an initial rejection, so much so that it thwarts any other attempt at making something like that happen for a very long time. I am extremely sensitive and any rejection sort of takes me off of that path for quite a long time. It takes me a while to recover.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “I had purpose. Suddenly working on this paper, I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself. I felt like I had some reason for being. Design. I loved being able to work with writers and I felt for the first time in my life really excited about something.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “Happened. I never wrote one letter to the editor. And for some reason, and I guess an aberrant moment of courage, I went back up to the newsroom, my second semester junior year. And there was a women's uprising. And the student went to the student health food store. And they were like, could you go cover that? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And I went and did it. And that was how I started writing for the paper. I then wrote a piece about an exhibit in the art center. And by the end of my second semester junior year, only because I think no one else would take it. I was offered the job of being editor of the arts and features section and began that summer, that senior year in college was one of the most exciting and best years of my life in that for the first time ever. I felt like”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  49. “And I didn't have anything and I didn't know when to do, and I was embarrassed and humiliated and ashamed and sort of scurried away and didn't go back until my junior year, I was so intimidated by the talent and the work that was coming out of that newsroom. And it was at the time and very well may still be one of the best student newspapers in the country. It came out twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, and I would just enamored with this newspaper and I fantasized about writing really pithy erudite letters to the editor-in-chief that would then get published in the letters to the editor section, and they would realize what a great writer I was and then invite me to be a reporter. And I sort of walk around like Rosalind Russell with a pencil behind my ear and my heels click clacking in the newsroom. And of course, that never happened.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  50. “I wanted to write for the student newspaper, I think the very first issue I saw when I got to SUNY Albany freshman year and went up to the student newspaper, which was on the third floor of the campus center and approached the editor at the time and asked if I could be a writer or offered my services, volunteered my services. And he looked at me and asked me if I had any clips. I was like, you know, I didn't say what I was thinking, but like hair clips. I mean, I didn't know what he's talking about.”

    2024-06-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #750: Neil Gaiman and Debbie Millman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT