We recently had the chance to connect with Addie Thibodeaux and have shared our conversation below.
Good morning Addie, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What is something outside of work that is bringing you joy lately?
Recently I’ve made a personal curriculum of different subjects that I’ve always wanted learn more about. It’s my way of staying off social media and succumbing to the doom scroll effect.
Surprisingly, allotting small blocks of time to study has given me more excitement than I thought it would. I find myself calling my friends and discussing all the new things I’ve learned, and it seems to fire them up, too. It’s contagious. I even retain information better than I did during college. Maybe because there is less pressure and it’s for pure enjoyment.
Don’t feel guilty about taking time to study something you may “never use.” It’s learning, it’s fun, and I firmly believe anything we study, no matter how random, will always show up again in our lives later on and prove itself useful, especially if we enjoy it.
My current subjects are chemistry (Thanks, Hank Green!), Korean language and history (one of my life long goals is to be a polyglot), and volumetric drawing.
I’ll check out library books and look up general YouTube videos on them and take notes. Just for fun.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I have quite unique schedule at the moment. For the last 5 years I have worked in live action film in the art and set decoration departments, and it has changed my life. I met so many amazing people, and I learned so much about myself that I could not have learned alone or in any other environment. Film has very long hours, and it can be mentally strenuous, but I can honestly say I enjoy my work even at the hardest moments. I’ve learned to work with people of many different talents and personalities!
In between working on films, I’ve done some freelance pet portraits and sticker designs on the side along with coordinating for various businesses.
As for my art brand, I have the desire to motivate and help people find their own work-life balance. I want to eliminate as much personal shame as possible, and help people remember that we are all human, and many of the challenges we face are absolutely normal. There are always ways to get our spark back. It has a lot to do with reconnecting with ourselves and our inner truth. Life can toss us around a bit, and it can cause us to side step.
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
Oh gosh, I feel like I have so much more autonomy now. It feels amazing.
As children, some of us can come from environments that may have meant well, but we were not very free to explore who we were. There are always expectations and beliefs we were taught that could actually do damage to us as adults.
I often think of the analogy of the baby elephant tied to a pole. It has what is called “learned helplessness.” After fighting with being tied to the pole so long, it doesn’t fight anymore, so as an adult, it doesn’t have to be tied to the pole even though it could run away freely.
It’s a sad analogy, but it takes time to learn you have more power, freedom, and choices over your life than you did as a child. The most important lessons are kindness and boundaries, and the two can exist together. Having a network of people you trust is also very helpful. Their voices become some of the voices in your head and the way you speak to yourself, so make sure they are kind and reasonable!
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering taught me to feel my feelings. Oddly, it’s a skill a lot of us avoid without meaning to.
If it hurts seriously it’s because it was that serious, whether it be in magnitude or it can can reflect just how much we cared about or desired something. It’s a mirror where we can see who we are by observing what we lack.
If you’re in a job that you hate, all of a sudden you know what you wish you were really doing with your life. It helps us move out of routines that are keeping us from the life we really want.
Taken literally, if you feel an emotion in your chest or your gut or your throat, that is something to take note of. It’s related to somatic therapy, and we can start to identify our needs faster when we can recognize how they show up in our body. Emotions are not our enemy, they are signals to who we truly are, what we truly want, and where our boundaries lie.
Ultimately, it’s taught me to let go and understand the difference between what I actually have control over and what I don’t. When things come to us without resistance and people willingly want to spend time with us, it’s so much more meaningful and warm.
Success has its place, too. It’s a different set of responsibilities. If we never had success, we wouldn’t bother doing anything. It’s important to give ourselves little wins along the way and not let the suffering alone define us. It’s not all we are.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
I have a few personal projects in mind that I cannot imagine pushing aside forever. I don’t care if they flop, they are things that I think about too often to give up on. We can become lost in trends while trying to seem relevant, but if you have something that won’t go away, it’s really important you express that. If you enjoy your art, someone else out there will, you just have to find the right audience.
I have a mythical bird book that won’t leave my mind, a YouTube series that contains all my thoughts on navigating rough patches in life and how to be kind to ourselves during the process, and a few scenes I would like to draw from a story about my own personal characters that I created for comfort.
In recent years, I’ve been feeling a lot of resistance for art even though I want to continue drawing. I think it’s a mix of having major life changes, unlearning old art habits to make room for better ones, and losing touch with myself.
I would rather create art slowly and enjoy it rather than force it out and lose the desire to create altogether. I want to hold onto that as much as I can because it gives me the freedom I need to properly express myself. When it starts to slip away, I know I need to take a break, jump back into the real world, and invest in myself and in new experiences again.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What will you regret not doing?
This is tough. I’ve avoided practicing certain elements of art because I’ve convinced myself somewhere that it’s risking an investment of time and energy. Recently allowing myself to study other subjects just for fun has helped me remember that I can practice things if they give me joy. I’m allowed to be happy. It’s not a waste of time. It’s a hard limiting belief to overcome. It’s a type of self-denial that can turn really ugly if we ignore it. There’s that aching feeling of knowing you are way more capable than you’ve been accomplishing. Not in a pompous way, but you can feel yourself standing in your own way.
Society has pressured a lot of us to turn our hobbies into jobs, and that pressure is enough to take away the freedom and joy we once felt about it. I find it takes a strong source of internal validation to be able to keep the joy and freedom of art and to not be carried away by what you think you “should” do. Structure is still important, but self-validation and having a healthy group of friends around you is what started to heal my avoidance that developed over the years. I feel much more joy while practicing art than I have in the past because I’ve worked hard on rebuilding my social circle and my self-image.
I would heavily regret not continuing art and losing the enjoyment of it because I defined it as a waste of time or comparing myself to others that I don’t even know and who don’t know me.
Frustration, feeling down on ourselves, those are really good feelings to work with. They show us what we really want and lack. They signal the blueprint of how we need to build our life around our desires. It’s why so many people are in the gym after a breakup. The hack is to keep that going because you want to better yourself despite your circumstances.
Is everything against you? Are you against you? Now it’s you against everything. Become better, redo your life, rip it apart, and become a new you. Do this over and over, and you’ll see change faster than you thought would happen. Make choices that you’ve never made before to get different results. Thinking you know how something is done already will cost you more time than if you decided to come at the situation with a new approach like a beginner.
Give yourself a real tangible chance, not just a figment of your imagination.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.addieelisabeth.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/addie.elisabeth/
- Other: IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm12357688/
Image Credits
Erica Laughlin
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