What does it mean to Do the Does?

The short answer is, Doin the Does doesn't really mean anything. At surface level, it is vague and repetitive phrase. However, I think that its vagueness works to its advantage. It allows you to dig deeper and find meaning in it for yourself. Doin the Does has stuck with me for years. Before I made it the name of my brand, it was just something I said as a response to "What're you doing?". "Oh you know, just doin the does". It was something dumb to say because I found it fun and refreshing.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to me and why it resonated with me so much. Did it have a deeper meaning that I wasn't really aware of? To find that out, I sat down to write my first essay since college, and my first essay I've ever written in my free time. It turns out that writing down your thoughts is a great way to organize them and understand yourself a lot better! Who knew!? Maybe reflecting on your life, who you are, and how you fit into this world could be considered Doin the Does! I say why not? It can mean pretty much anything you see fit.

Today, I want to talk about three different interpretations of Doin the Does that I have: Doin the Does is art, and Doin the Does is to live free and in the moment, and Doin the Does is to spend time with others. Before I begin, I do want to share the origin of Doin the Does because who said it to me the first time definitely played a huge role in how much it means to me.

The Origin

My Pa was a brilliant man. He touched the lives of many people, which was very clear at his funeral service a couple of years ago. He had been a pharmacist at a family owned pharmacy he and my grandma had built into a very successful business. He was an artist who created beautiful watercolor paintings of different places around the places he called home. And above all, he was a wonderful grandfather who cared deeply for his grandchildren. He used his skills as an artist to bring joy into our lives. Each of us 6 grandchildren would receive a hand-painted, personalized postcard in the mail on every holiday or birthday. EVERY. SINGLE. HOLIDAY. EVERY. YEAR. Growing up this seemed normal to me because I didn't know anything else, but it was an absolutely amazing thing that he did for us. He made us feel so special and cared for in his own way.

When Pa was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, he would never be the same. It was very hard to watch him decline over the last few years of his life, but deep down, you could always tell that there was a piece of him in there. One Christmas time, all of the cousins came together to bake cookies with Grammy and spend some time with Pa. It is a day that I will never forget. It is the last time all 6 of us were in the same place as Grammy and Pa at the same time. We baked and decorated cookies, swapping roles from rolling dough, to cutting shapes, to decorating, to hanging out with Pa. When we were done with cookies, we were all together in the living room, and of course Pa had to line up all of his singing and dancing animals! We got a whole show, from the Christmas Penguin to the dancing Christmas tree. But one of the animals wasn't animatronic, so Pa made it sing and dance himself. Grammy had said "That one doesn't even do anything", to which Pa responded "Oh but it does, because I'm doin the does". And now I live by that! It doesn't matter if it doesn't do anything, regardless of what "it" is. As long as you are Doin the Does, anything can do anything.

So thank you Pa for coming up with 3 words that would end up changing my life. Thank you for all of the postcards who helped shape me growing up. And thank you for always caring so much about your family. We are doing well and miss you dearly.

Doin the Does has stuck with me since that day, but so much happened that day that isn't as vivid. Why did that moment stand out so much? Was it the situation they were spoken in, or was it the words themselves? I think that these words can mean so much once you apply your own meaning to them. At the surface, they are grammatically incorrect and don't mean anything in particular, but I look at them the same way I do a blank page in my sketchbook, a blank canvas with infinite possibilities. I blank canvas is only meaningful once you put your whole heart and soul into creating something on it. I took the time to think about what Doin the Does means to me. I would like to share that with you all now.

Doin the Does is Art

I just compared Doin the Does to a blank canvas, that casting your own meaning onto those words is similar to drawing something on a piece of paper. You started from nothing, but YOU made it into something. I think this analogy works very well because it helps give a definition to "Art". My definition of art is the process of converting one's inner self, their feelings and emotions, their personal interests or relevant ideas, into a physical medium.

I love to draw. I love to create characters with unique designs and personalities. Others love to make music, or to write, or to photograph, or to dance. Art is as much the final product of a piece as it is the beginning or middle. I think that art is the continuous flow of yourself into the world. Each piece, whether it is a drawing, painting, or musical track, is a step in your journey as an artist. Your art is as much the completed product as it is the entire process of learning the skills of a medium, to watch your work evolve over time. If your art is supposed to represent who you are, then there is no better representation than seeing your art change over time. Everyone changes, everyone has this flow to their life that they can think back on until they get back to the present. That is art! Every finished piece is the culmination of every piece of artwork they have created up until that point. It's also the culmination of every other part of their lives! Your art is to create something from deep in your soul.

The point of art is not to be technically good at art. Being technically good helps others understand what you were intending to create, but it is not necessary for art to be good. There is absolutely a victory in creating something that replicates something in the real world, that another person can look at and recognize immediately. But there is also victory in making something that others interpret as something completely different from you. Making something that takes a little time to understand what it's supposed to represent. Sometime ambiguity is the whole point sometimes. Being able to reach a large amount of people in a unique way every time is a wonderful skill. Look at musicians! They make music because it speaks to them in some way, but it won't speak the everyone the same way. That creates a space for tons of people to feel their own way about a song, but still share a moment together. My favorite part of a concert is that community, that feeling that we all resonated with a musician's art in one way or another. Art brings people together. In a world so divided, good art is something that can bring people together no matter who they are. It doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to be masterfully done.

So how does this fit into Doin the Does? I think just like how Pa made the stuffed animal dance by "Doin the Does", we can all create art by just doing it. Not thinking so hard about what it is supposed to be ahead of time. We can spread messages that are important to ourselves and may resonate with others. When the point is not to express who you are, but instead to "resonate" with as many people as possible, you lose the point of creating. What I can tell you is NOT Doin the Does, is using AI, not just for art, but for anything (especially art though).

AI robs you from the opportunity to put your whole self into something. You give an AI a little bit of yourself, then it fills in all of the gaps and produces something that isn't entirely you. AI art goes against everything that I have argued up until now. That art is this continuous flow of your life as a medium, something that can show progress, not just in skill but in dedication, interests, and state of mind. AI art completely eliminates any of the nuances that a piece of artwork can show about you. How were you feeling when you made this? Who or what was important in the creation of this? When you look back through your "portfolio of AI slop", you may be able to see what you are interested in, what you wanted to see created, but it loses so, so, so much. If you look back at a portfolio of slop, are you proud? Does it give you any sense of growth? A sense that you made that? I would argue if it does, you have no idea what art could actually do for you. What creating something from hand really makes you feel. And that you are fully comfortable taking credit from others. You are NOT Doin the Does if you allow AI to interpret who you are and rob yourself of the opportunity to express yourself. You will lose touch with who you actually are and what you actually want with your life. Rather than reflecting on your own, if taking the thoughts of an AI is good enough for you, you become the AI and lose who you once were. I am very passionate about AI's role in the loss of humanity, so I could go on forever about this, but I don't want to turn this into an AI focused essay. I do think that it is important to bring up because it is a great example of what Doin the Does is not. AI can't make art, because it isn't pouring the culmination of it's life and experiences into something. It is just producing the most predictable result because that's what it was created to do.

A trap that I commonly fell into as a kid when I was learning to draw was expecting my drawing to look like something specific BEFORE I even started. Not only did I determine what I was drawing, but I created this expectation that it needed to look a certain way to be good. I was comparing my drawing with what I was trying to draw, and most of the time it was wrong. Drawing was something I wasn't naturally talented at when I was younger like math. I was a logical kid, so math made sense in my head, and I was trying to approach art in a way that had a right and wrong like math did. Something clicked for me one day that changed how I approached drawing. I had more fun drawing when I wasn't trying to replicate something. When I just drew, and focused on what I was actually drawing vs what I was trying to replicate, I had confidence with my strokes for the first time and my creations came straight from my head. I got really good at seeing a potential drawing from some scribbles on a page, or even better, from a drawing that i had just messed up! Instead of considering my drawing as "bad" because my initial intent wasn't going to work out, I got really good at saying "oh well now it kinda looks like this" and changing direction without a problem. This is how some of my favorite drawings came to be, how some of my favorite characters came to life. Boom Box Waddle popped into my head because I was trying to draw something else, who knows what it was at this point, but I figured that a boom box penguin guy would be pretty epic once I saw that as an option. So when I think of Doin the Does, I think back to that initial ah-ha moment with my art. When I stopped thinking about how good my drawings were, or what they were supposed to be before I even started to draw, I was able to be happy no matter the result.

Art is such an important part of my life, and when I finally felt comfortable making it myself, it was more freeing than anything else I've ever experienced. There is no greater feeling for me than looking back through old sketchbooks and seeing the progress of both my art, and who I am as a human. I encourage you to find what types of art bring you joy and start creating that art!

Doin the Does is to live free

I spoke on how finding the confidence to just draw, not worrying about how good it would look or even what it was going to be, was one of the most freeing moments of my life. I think this moment is a great model to work on things that bring me angst in my life. I want to live free. Free of expectations. Free of the fear of failing. No matter what my goals are, if I don't feel free to pursue them, if I hold myself back, then I will achieve them.

I would like to point to my favorite work of fiction: One Piece. I read every new chapter of One Piece as soon as it releases every week or 2, and I have been reading week to week for about 7 years and had tried to watch it even years before. I am only 24, so 7 years of my life is substantial. It spans so many phases of my life where I was rapidly changing. But even as I changed, as I grew into the person I am today, it has been a consistent part of my life. I love reading it. There are so many wonderful themes that One Piece portrays, but I think the one that really got me hooked was the idea that anyone can be free! There is no better example of someone who is free than the main character Luffy. He lives in the moment at all times with a single goal in mind, but he doesn't ever live in the future. He wants to be the King of the Pirates, but he doesn't live in his head pretending to be someone he isn't yet. He spends every second of every day living in the moment, living to become that person, but never losing sight of who he is in the present.

When I was 17, I had no idea who I was or who I wanted to be. I thought I knew what I was supposed to be, but it turns out, I had it all backwards. I am at a point in my life where I know who I am, and I know who I want to be, but I also know that I am not "supposed" to be anybody. There is no telling how life will play out. I can be whatever I want in combination with whatever life throws at me. When I was younger, this pressure that I put on myself because I thought I needed to be somebody really kept me from living in the moment. I was always trying to live my life aiming for a specific result, trying to control my life to get that result. I think the difference between wanting to be someone and thinking you're supposed to be someone is the same difference between wanting to draw something and thinking that your drawing is supposed to look like something specific before you even start to draw. When I had these expectations about my art and my life, I forgot to stay in the moment and enjoy the process. I lost confidence in myself a lot because I was always aiming for a goal and putting myself down when I was off track. Sometimes being off track is exactly what is supposed to happen, but if I'm not there in the moment to realize that, I won't be able to change course, to turn a messed up drawing into Boom Box Waddle. Enjoying that process is what I think living with freedom is all about, and I also think that's what Doin the Does is. Life is never going to go as planned. It is just impossible to think that you can control everything that happens. If you can, you probably live a very boring life. Coming to that realization is a freeing thing. Life is scary. The world is terrifying. I have NO IDEA what is coming in the next few years. I do know this though: if I do the does, take what life throws at me and make the most of it, I will be ok.

Doin the Does is to Spend Time with Others

So far, I have really just focused on what Doin the Does has meant to me as an individual. I think it offers lessons to be a better person, and I genuinely feel that as stupid as it sounds, Doin the Does is a way to live life. A way to stay in the moment and create wonderful things. But there is so much more to life than how we live alone in a vacuum. Our lives are built around others, so I want to look to see what Doin the Does can mean in terms of being with others.

For me, the hardest part about interacting with other people, especially new people, is this sense of unknown. My whole life, I have had this anxiety around spending time with others because I didn't know how to act or what to say around a new person. I was always so worried about doing or saying the wrong thing. A lot of times this brought me down a rabbit hole of trying to map out conversations ahead of time so I was prepared. If you have never seen the show "The Rehearsal" by Nathan Fielder, it is the absolute most extreme example of this. Please watch that show, it is insane. Because I was so anxious, I wanted to think through conversations that hadn't even happened yet. I wasn't living in the moment. I didn't have faith in myself that I would be ready to respond to anything a person says. There was this fear of failure, of rejection, that I had because I saw it as a possibility when I looked ahead. I looked ahead because I was anxious, but I was anxious a lot of because I was looking ahead at this made up scenario and psyching myself out. I'm not saying you can't plan to speak to a person about something, but if you go too deep, you lose sight of the conversation itself. You will be prepared for what you planned for, but if things don't go as planned, and they generally won't, you won't be ready. You won't be spending time with that person, you will be spending time with the idea of them in your brain. That was my greatest mistake as a kid, not realizing that difference.

It took a lot of conscious effort to stop doing this. It was (and sometimes still is) a natural response when you are nervous about an interaction. Whether it is a conversation with a friend, asking someone on a date, or a presentation at work or class, sometimes over preparing can be to your detriment. It certainly has been to me. If there is one thing that I have noticed about speaking with others, is that the first thing that comes to my mind is usually the best. I just need to trust myself to go with the flow of a conversation. I have the practice, now I just need to believe that I will be ok. No one can prepare you for the feeling of saying something that hurts a friend, or getting rejected, or knowing you slipped up in front of a bunch of people, but you learn from these experiences, and you will be ok! It is part of life to be uncomfortable, to jump into the unknown knowing that something bad could happen. But odds are good that this bad thing you came up with in your head isn't going to happen at all, and it sure isn't a reason not to have the conversation in the first place. If you hurt a friend by mistake, you will learn from that moment. You will never want to make that person feel the way they did. You will change for the better, forever.

I think a lot about conversations. I shared how much I overthought things when it came to them, so when I finally started to have confidence in my voice, to speak from my heart and not my brain, I began to feel free. It is so closely tied to how I talked about living freely. Luffy never thinks before he talks, neither do some of my friends. Sometimes that gets them in trouble, but most of the time it doesn't. There is certainly some sort of balance between thinking before you speak, but if you think too much, you are at risk of not saying what you truly mean. Doin the Does is to speak from the heart, to have confidence in your voice, and use it to become closer with others. You won't be able to connect with others if you can't talk to them, and you won't be able to connect with others if you treat conversations with them like a formula with a right or wrong. That was something I had to learn. I had to learn to Do the Does.

Doin the Does is to Be Yourself

As I write about my experiences with art, people, and my own life, I see a common trait between it all, and I think this trait is what I associate with Doin the Does. To create art from your soul, to live your life without regrets and staying in the moment, and to truly spend time with others, it really is what it means to be human. Staying in the moment is what life is all about. I feel the most like myself when I'm creating art and when I'm with my people, and I think that is because I'm most present when I do those things. I don't feel like myself when I'm alone watching AI write code for me at work, or when I'm doom scrolling online. That kind of stuff takes me out of the flow of life. It makes me feel unfulfilled and sad. When I am truly Doin the Does, I am myself. I am free! So I am going to live the rest of my life Doin the Does and I hope you join me. Thank you for reading and supporting my art. I hope this has inspired you to reflect on what it means for you to Do the Does. Create some art, give the ones you love a hug, and don't be afraid to learn something new about the world and yourself. Peace out.