This is the fourth bonus episode of Captn OffScript. When Gemma O'Brien and I recorded her main episode, we got into burnout and flow, and I held that part back for this.

It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too.

Gemma has talked about burnout in a lot of other interviews, so I didn't want to rehash it. What I wanted, as someone who leans towards overworking, was the thing underneath it: how she sees it coming, and what she actually does about it now. Her answer was calmer than I expected. She's made peace with burnout by treating it as information about her process rather than a catastrophe. She talks about a sweet spot, too much work and you burn out, too little and you're bored and understimulated, and about looking after the foundations: sleep, rest, human connection, nature. Then we got into flow, which she's now studying formally, reading neuroscience papers on the very thing she's spent her life inside. Her line on it: she's like a chef who cooks an incredible meal for someone else, then comes home and eats McDonald's.

In this conversation we talked about:

• Why she's made peace with burnout
• The sweet spot between overworking and being understimulated
• The foundations that make high-level work sustainable
• Studying flow state from the outside, and why that's tricky
• Why flow matters more as AI makes everything convenient

Timestamps: [Awaiting confirmation]

The main episode this bonus extends: S02/E35 — Gemma O'Brien on Getting Bored of Herself & Refusing to Pick One Thing https://captnoffscript.com/s02-e35-gemma-obrien-bored-of-herself

Find Gemma here:

• Website: https://www.gemmaobrien.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrseaves101
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/studiogemmaobrien/

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

If this resonated, listen to: Radim Malinic (S02/E34) — another conversation about overwork, the cost of doing too much, and learning to look after yourself.

This was the fourth Captn OffScript bonus episode. Newsletter subscribers get future bonuses on YouTube a week before they reach the podcast feeds. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

This is the third bonus episode of Captn OffScript. When Radim Malinic and I recorded his main episode, the conversation about fear came near the end, and it was good enough that I kept it back for this.

It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too.

It's short, and it's the most reassuring thing I've put out in a while. Radim used to think you could unlearn fear, get rid of it entirely, and then realised you can't. Fear isn't a fault in the system. It's the system doing what it was built to do. We've been wired by evolution to look out for things that could kill us, and that wiring hasn't changed even though the threats have. So when you think about sharing your work with a thousand strangers, your body runs the exact same programme it would run for a sabre-tooth tiger in the bushes. Same mechanism, same flood of fear. The line I'd want you to keep: when you freeze, ask whether the tiger is actually coming. Most of the time, it isn't.

In this conversation we talked about:

• Why fear can't be unlearned, only understood
• Why your brain treats sharing your work like a sabre-tooth tiger
• How we're wired for survival but live in an era of pleasure
• Why the reward only comes after the difficult part
• Real risk versus the risk your body invents
• Fear as a sensation you can work with
• The question to ask when you freeze

The main episode this bonus extends: S02/E34 — Radim Malinic on Creativity as Escape & Becoming More of Who You Already Are https://captnoffscript.com/s02-e34-radim-malinic-creativity-as-escape

Find Radim here:

• Website: https://radimmalinic.co.uk/
• Podcast: https://radimmalinic.co.uk/podcast/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/radim.malinic/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandnu/

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

If this resonated, listen to: CJ Cawley (S02/E32) — another conversation about doing the work and putting yourself out there even when everything tells you not to.

This was the third Captn OffScript bonus episode. Newsletter subscribers get future bonuses on YouTube a week before they reach the podcast feeds. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

Gemma O'Brien is a lettering artist, a fine artist, a muralist, and most recently a student of neuroaesthetics. She's painted a billboard in Times Square, had work acquired by a museum, and she has a public Strava profile on her website, because running is as much a part of her as the lettering is. I'd been trying to get her on the show for a long time, and the hardest part was knowing where to start.

So we talked about how someone ends up doing this many things at once, and why she has no intention of narrowing it down. The line that stayed with me: after ticking off every career goal she'd ever dreamed of, she went back to university because she'd grown "almost bored of myself."

In this episode:

• Her intuitive path from law to lettering to neuroscience
• Why she has Strava on her website, and runs to galleries
• The 2008 video she uploaded by accident that launched her career
• Going back to school after a Times Square billboard and a museum acquisition
• Getting bored of herself, and wanting to feel fresh on stage again
• Where her love of lettering really came from
• Refusing to pick one thing, and making peace with the boring parts
• Still feeling imposter syndrome, and forgetting her own achievements
• The one word she'd keep if she had to destroy everything else

Find Gemma here:

• Website: https://www.gemmaobrien.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrseaves101
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/studiogemmaobrien/

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

This week's Friday bonus: Gemma and I go deeper into burnout and the flow state, the hidden cost of doing this much, and what it takes to protect your focus. It goes to newsletter subscribers first, a week before it's public. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful.

If you liked this episode, listen to: Jessica Hische (S02/E21) — another lettering artist on building a creative life on her own terms, and why imposter syndrome never fully goes away.

This is the second bonus episode of Captn OffScript. When Martyna Wędzicka and I recorded her main episode, we spent most of it on the past and the present. But right at the end, I asked her where she's heading next, and the answer was so warm and so hopeful that I held it back for this.

It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too.

It's a short one, and a lovely one. Martyna noticed a pattern in her own career: roughly every four to five years, she rediscovers herself and her style. She thinks she's at the edge of one of those cycles right now, and the next thing turns out to be knitting. Her husband calls what she makes "her posters, made of yarn." She talks about fabric as another canvas, the same design thinking carried out in a different material, and about choosing the handmade on purpose as a counterweight to AI. And then the line I can't stop thinking about: graphic designers don't retire.

In this conversation we talked about:

• The four-to-five-year pattern of reinventing herself
• Knitting, and why her husband calls it "posters made of yarn"
• Fabric as another canvas for the same design thinking
• Making things by hand as a counter to AI
• How she actually uses AI, and where she won't
• Why graphic designers don't retire
• Maybe becoming a fashion designer in ten years

The main episode this bonus extends: S02/E33 — Martyna Wędzicka on Being Weird, Polish Design & Why You Can't Rush Your Style https://captnoffscript.com/s02-e33-martyna-wedzicka-being-weird-style

Find Martyna here:

• Website: https://www.wedzicka.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wedzicka_com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martyna-w%C4%99dzicka-obuchowicz-69343252/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wedzicka

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

This was the second Captn OffScript bonus episode. Newsletter subscribers get future bonuses on YouTube a week before they reach the podcast feeds. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

Radim Malinic has been a role model of mine for years. He's a designer, a writer, a speaker, he runs the agency Brand Nu, he hosts his own podcast, and he's built a whole philosophy around the idea of daring creativity. I expected this conversation to be about all of that output. Instead it became one of the most honest talks I've had on the show, about the cost of the work and the years he spent hiding inside it.

He told me he once thought he was the happiest person in the world while crying into his birthday cake from overwork. We talked about creativity as escape, growing up in Czechoslovakia and wanting to blend in as an immigrant, reaching therapy at forty, and the philosophy he built out of all of it: become more of who you already are, because everyone else is taken.

In this episode:

• What daring creativity actually means
• Becoming "singular" and refusing to compare yourself
• Doing things before he knew how, an agency before he'd ever worked in one
• The immigrant who wanted to be called John Smith
• Looking like the happiest person in the world while burning out
• Creativity as a way to hide from himself
• Reaching therapy at forty, and unlearning the stigma he grew up with
• Radical accountability and the anger he didn't know he had
• Why he'd happily delete all his work and start the next mountain

Find Radim here:

• Website: https://radimmalinic.co.uk/
• Podcast: https://radimmalinic.co.uk/podcast/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/radim.malinic/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandnu/

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

This week's Friday bonus: Radim and I go deep on fear, why you can't unlearn it, and why your brain treats sharing your work with strangers like a sabre-tooth tiger in the bushes. It goes to newsletter subscribers first, a week before it's public. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful.

his is the first-ever bonus episode of Captn OffScript. CJ Cawley and I recorded the main S02/E32 conversation for over an hour and twenty minutes, and somewhere around the hour mark it took a turn that didn't belong in the main episode and didn't deserve to be cut either.

So we held it back. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too.

This is the more personal part of our conversation. CJ talks openly about growing up on a council estate in London, leaving home at 16, and cutting ties with his family two to three years ago. I share my own parallel story for the first time in public — Bosnia, a relationship with my mum that I'm grateful for, and most of the rest of the family almost non-existent.

It's a conversation about the scripts we were given as kids, the partners who helped us rewrite them, and finding home far from where we started.

If this is one you needed to hear, I hope it does for you what it did for us when we were having it.

In this conversation we talked about:

• The script you're given by your parents as a child
• Leaving home at 16 and living above a pub
• Cutting ties with family after years of trying
• The partners who saw the good part first
• Finding home far from where we started
• Why we wouldn't change it, even if we could

The main episode this bonus extends: S02/E32 — CJ Cawley: Getting Cloned, Getting Married & Showing Up Anyway https://captnoffscript.com/s02-e32-cj-cawley-showing-up-anyway

Find CJ here:

• Website: https://www.cjcawley.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cjcawleydesign
• Sticky Notes podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@WeAreStickyNotes
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cj.cawley.design/

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

This was the first-ever Captn OffScript bonus episode. Newsletter subscribers get future bonuses on YouTube a week before they reach the podcast feeds. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

Martyna Wędzicka is a Polish graphic designer from Gdańsk with one of the most distinctive styles working today. She's a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale, a two-time winner of the Polish Graphic Design Awards, and she built her entire body of work on something most designers are taught to avoid: mistakes.

"I really wanted to destroy something," she told me. "That was my main goal."

We talked about what that actually means, why finding your style takes ten years and not ten hours, and what it's like to be a designer from a part of Europe the rest of the world keeps overlooking.

In this conversation we got into:

• Why she builds her style out of chance, error, and "organising mistakes"
• The truth she tells students about how long style really takes
• Leaving her own studio because she'd become a project manager, not a designer
• Why being "not Western enough" turned into her biggest strength
• Keeping a Polish name on purpose, and her mission to make Polish design visible
• Being the weird kid in a Polish village, and why that's where style is born

🎙️ This week's Friday bonus: Martyna shares where she's heading next — the reinvention pattern she's spotted in her career, why she's knitting now, what she's making with her hands in an AI-driven world, and why graphic designers don't retire. Newsletter subscribers get it first, as a private link. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 04:35 A Polish name, and making Polish design visible
• 07:33 Leaving the studio to design again
• 10:41 Why her style never stops shifting
• 13:38 What recognition actually took
• 16:37 Turning mistakes into a style
• 19:34 Why style takes years, not hours
• 22:27 Breaking into the global design world
• 32:27 Visual identity through an art-history lens
• 35:14 Finding what makes you different
• 39:55 Weirdness as the source of style
• 43:31 What nine years of art school did to her
• 47:04 Teaching, and how to give good feedback
• 50:24 Why she'd rather open minds than teach software

Find Martyna here:

• Website: https://www.wedzicka.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wedzicka_com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martyna-w%C4%99dzicka-obuchowicz-69343252/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wedzicka

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏

If you liked this episode, listen to: Marta Cerdà Alimbau (S02/E26) — another European designer with an unmistakable, art-led personal style and a deep relationship with craft.

For the conversations behind the episodes, including the occasional Friday bonus, subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

CJ Cawley is having the strangest year of his career. Someone built a pixel-for-pixel clone of his website and replaced his face with theirs. A parody video of him triggered a wave of hate inside the design community. He's getting married this weekend. And through all of it, he keeps showing up on camera.

This is one of the episodes I've been most looking forward to publishing all season. We recorded for over an hour and twenty minutes, and the conversation went so deep that the most personal part is going out as a separate bonus episode. The main one is here.

The bonus drops Friday as the first-ever exclusive bonus episode of Captn OffScript, available only to newsletter subscribers for the first 7 days. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

In this episode we talked about:

• The website clone called Delwox and his perfect retaliation
• The parody video and the pile-on inside the design community
• Getting married this weekend with a surf simulator and an aerial hoop
• Psoriasis, the camera, and why no one cares what you look like
• Sticky Notes and four years of private calls with Jack before pressing record
• The McDonald's theory of AI
• Knob head tax and interviewing clients before saying yes
• The loneliness of going freelance, and the friend who pulled him through it
• What he's most grateful for in the year before his wedding

🎙️ The bonus episode on Friday: CJ and I share the most personal part of our conversation, about childhood, family, and rewriting the script you were given as a kid. Newsletter subscribers only for the first 7 days. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

Timestamps: [Awaiting confirmation]

Find CJ here:

• Website: https://www.cjcawley.com/
• Studio (Seeside Studio): https://www.seesidestudio.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cjcawleydesign
• Sticky Notes podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@WeAreStickyNotes
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cj.cawley.design/

Find me here:

• https://captnoffscript.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/captnoffscript

If you liked this episode, listen to... Andy J. Pizza (S02/E30) — another deeply personal conversation about showing up on camera, working with what you've got, and cultivating yourself instead of trying to fix yourself.

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏