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🎙️ The Creative Life — with Jim Kroft
This podcast is for creatives who’ve chosen the long road.
Each week, I take one aspect of the creative life — a breakthrough, a challenge, or a tool that’s helping me — and share what I’m learning from the inside.
I started the show because I couldn’t find what I needed: a companion for the real challenges of making art while building a life around it.
The podcast swings between the psychological traps we face and the practical tools that keep me going. It moves between mindset and method — but always comes back to how we keep showing up.
I’m Jim, your host. I’ve lived a long life in the arts — full of meteoric highs and humbling lows.
Here are a few stops from the journey:
🎸 Released 7 records — from major labels to van tours
🎥 Filmed 6 feature docs, screened at 200+ festivals
🧠 Built a creative business in Berlin since 2013
✍️ Top 1% on Substack for weekly consistency
📈 Raised nearly €100K for refugee & Ukraine war efforts
🎧 The Creative Life has hit the Apple Podcast charts
Thanks for being here,
Jim
🔗 Listen & Follow:
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magine you could be all that you wish to be.
The idea suggests something — that there’s a space between who you are now and a place you want to reach, a person you want to become, a thing you want to create. This space gives you two points of reference: the present and the imagined future.
Today I want to explore that space in between — through the state of my own project, and what it reveals about how we move from where we are to where we wish to be. Is it not possible, after all, that you could be all that you wish to be?
In last week’s Substack, I wrote about how I’d hit a low with my project. After doing a lot of the hard stuff — getting the album written and recorded, releasing songs and videos, gaining momentum — I hit a wall. I felt really blocked musically, didn’t play for three months, and did everything with full commitment except the project closest to my creative heart.
I’ve been documenting this album journey from the start as transparently as possible on YouTube and Substack. At the peak moment of the block, I had a bit of a meltdown. I don’t need to go back into it, but I recorded the reckoning with myself in this video.
Since this reckoning, so much has shifted. Not since I started the project have I felt such a deep connection to what it is I am trying to do — but more importantly, to the emotional life inside me informing that journey.
I have had many stages of stuckness in my creative life. In fact, every time something of significance has happened has been preceded by such a period. Yes, it feels painful while in it. Everything in the modern world is berating you to be productive, to move forward, to get better, to be more. But if you don’t hear the message contained in your own stuckness, you end up putting your ladder against the wrong wall.
In my case, I realise now that the block wasn’t just a block. It was my spirit railing against my own compulsion to move forward, to make moves, to hustle as an artist. Often, because I’m juggling creative life with working life, I will do whatever happens to be on the list for that day. Somewhere along the line, I’d become so gobbled up in my weekly output that I had lost the whole bigger picture of what I’m trying to do.
So the stuckness was saying: you’ve got to stop, brother — there’s something you need to look at. The thing is, if you really don’t stop, you never let the right thing catch up with you.
I had a bit of a cry and allowed myself the gift of what, too often, fellas in their 40s never allow themselves to feel — vulnerable, unsure, and fragile. I know this work is inner work and personal work. But the reason I’m trying to include the full arc of what I’m going through in this album is that all these cadences are what make us human. And for some reason, we’ve reached this absurd point in our society where we only show our strength, or project ourselves as experts or leaders. That’s not the reality of a creative life.
Everything has to be invited in. And in doing so, something new emerges — that potential I bang on about in every newsletter. Because I goddamn believe it in every person.
After this reckoning, I felt so deeply centred in myself. I had the courage to talk again with some loved ones about what had been going on, which felt healing. I could write about it. I didn’t have to avoid or pretend. That’s the crazy thing about times when you’re blocked: at some point, you have to move the stone. But you don’t do it through “more, more, more.” Exertion isn’t the answer; surrender is.
It is this sense of surrender that allows you to sit with the very voices that had been tormenting you and realise they were trying to counsel you. I realise now that a lot of the decisions I made during the block were preliminary conversations with myself, as if I was readying myself for what I needed to do — and for the challenge ahead.
I’d given up drinking in September because it was clouding my ability to hear myself. I’d returned to the gym because I wanted to better serve my creative energy. I realise now that these decisions were my spirit priming itself for what I need to do creatively.
Walking out of the gym, it was the most splendid day. A squadron of pigeons darted across the azure sky and autumn was at its crescendo. Once again, I was within life’s heart, and ready for what lay ahead.
“I understood it all. I understood Pablo. I understood Mozart, and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter. I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life’s game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason and I was determined to play a new hand at the game. I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell of my inner being.”
— Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
One of the things that had been haunting me was that I hadn’t done two things: reached out to booking agents, or done anything at all for the album and vinyl artwork. I had these things on my list at the beginning of the year, and somehow, my year got so busy that I never got around to them. Or rather, I became too busy — and the longer I didn’t do them, the deeper the resistance set in.
That’s the worst thing about resistance. You know it’s something you could at least try to do, but something holds you back. For me, I told myself I was afraid I’d never find a booking agent, and that rejection would spell the end of my life as a touring musician. The reality, though, was different. I was blocked because I needed to get clear that I still wanted to tour.
You have to find it in yourself again — especially as you get older. That was what broke through my little breakdown. I rediscovered that I really wanted to play live again. It didn’t matter where, or who was there. I had to do it for me.
Imagine all that you wish you could be. Between here and there, there’s a whole universe of challenges. Everyone says “just start” — but that advice is mostly for beginners. The greater journey, as you progress in your creative life, is staying close to your innermost driver. I rediscovered that. Yes, I want to do this even if I’m on a pillar at the edge of the earth and there’s nothing but hell and damnation around me. Okay brother, good answer… now what?
And so, armed with that knowledge, I got to work.
First, a booking agent is attached to the project again. It’s hard to describe how humbled, happy, and thankful I am. After a long period of being professionally in the wilderness, this is like finding my compass. It’s early days, so I’m not ready to announce details — other than to you guys, my core supporters. Somehow, I will get this musical project back on the road. What began as a dream when I started writing this album is slowly taking shape.
Remember: the road between potential and actualisation is a long one. But just because a dream is not yet concrete doesn’t mean it lacks the capacity to become so. A dream has its own nature — and sometimes your job is simply to be its vessel.
Second: I’m working with an extraordinary collage artist in the US on the vinyl artwork. I was so nervous before reaching out. When I did, I explained that part of the reason was that I dream of doing collage too, and feared offsetting that dream. But this artist is so talented, and it just feels right — both artistically, and for a deeper reason.
You have to start extracting stuff. If you imagine all you wish you could be, does it land on a certain dream? A certain goal? The trouble with modern life is that it pulls you in every direction. Yes, I could go out and buy collage materials — and damn, one day I hope to. But when I imagine what I want to be musically — the vision is clear. More time for music itself.
Life will get in the way again — that’s a given. The question is: what can I remove to clear the way for the outcome I dream of?
Between the present and the potential version of yourself, there are vector points. The reason the dream feels so challenging is that you have not yet become the version of yourself who has already realised it. That version is made by how you respond — often under pressure — along the way.
If you’ve got a little lost, don’t drive further into the dark. First, you have to own where you are.
To do that, you need to:
Name your next move.
Write down the one thing you keep avoiding. Clarity dissolves resistance.
Remove one obstacle.
Ask: what can I take away to clear the way?
Recommit to the central driver.
Before anything else tomorrow, reconnect to why you’re doing this.
Begin the habit flow again.
Start small. Even 10 minutes counts.
My project has come a long way since moving into Mahalla, determined to write one more song in this life. I’ve completed my album. More importantly, I’ve burrowed into the basement of my being and recovered my musical heart. It hasn’t been a straight line — but this week, I course-corrected.
You will get blocked, and you will lose your way. But you will find it again too.
You start by imagining you could be all you wish to be.