I’ve been thinking a lot about the relentless creep, that monster in the alleyway of your mind that shows up uninvited when you’re brushing your teeth, when the world isn’t playing fair, when you’re staring at the latest piece you’ve made and the negative voices start whispering. It’s the one that reminds you of your age, your choices, your perceived failures, the smallness of your position in life, and the harshest critique of all, the one that tells you your art isn’t enough.
My new dream journal NFT, Relentless Creep – Day 166 of my Visual Dream Journal (an ai collaboration), is my experiment in confronting it ‘the negative creep’ directly, in naming the beast and mapping its appearances so it no longer runs unchecked in the shadows. I wanted to give it form, make it tangible, and by doing so, create a ritualistic act of killing it, a symbolic slaying of those destructive thoughts. Today’s prompt asks about a secret skill or ability. Mine would be the power to obliterate that creep, to silence the loop of self-doubt, because what you tell yourself becomes the world you inhabit. You become the story you repeat, and if that story is full of fear and negativity, the trajectory follows.
What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?
I am not even selling this artwork. I am turning it into something tangible and giving it away, a free NFT offered with care and intention. It is both a meditation and a weapon, a small rebellion against the insidious narratives that feed on artists, a step toward rewriting the internal dialogue and reclaiming a sense of sovereignty over your own mind. Making the creep visible, giving it shape, and then offering it freely is my way of confronting the patterns that keep so many of us trapped and showing that the act of creation itself can be a form of liberation.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 