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You may have seen our post and tiny campaign to raise awareness for trans equality and the right to use bathrooms according to gender identity.

We haven’t backed away from our support of trans people or fighting those ridiculous bathroom bill(s). However, we did take the shirts down and there are a few reasons:

Support for Trans People

Wow. The support for trans people and agreement over equal bathroom use, especially from the White House, has been pretty overwhelming. Is that fight over? Not by a long shot, but it turned out that our little t-shirt campaign wasn’t really making a dent. The support from the U.S. Government had way more impact. Great news, but there’s no longer any real use in pushing our tees.

Keep Calm and Copy On

Ugh. A hard thing to admit, but the design of the shirt left me feeling like I jumped on a trend. In my excitement to render an idea that I thought would be received in a big way, I lost sight of our core design philosophy, which is to not jump on design trends. I have better, more original designs and don’t need to lean on the overused “Keep Calm” meme. Lesson learned!

Rush Limbo

We kind of rushed the whole thing. Again, our support has not wavered one bit, but the campaign could have been executed much better with more thought. In the middle of a much bigger project, I popped out a design and ran with it, hoping something would spark and catch on. Instead, it got stuck in a sort of limbo. That meant zero sales and zero money donated to support awareness of trans equality. We flubbed it. We’re taking ourselves to Raising Awareness School so we get it right next time.

Polarizing Effects

This issue in particular really polarized people that follow what we do. The majority, we’re happy to report, agree with our message. I suspect the problem is that (unlike being vegan or environmentalists), even when people agree, they sometimes prefer to do it quietly, or simply by liking a post on instagram. Wearing a t-shirt to the mall that might get the wrong kind of attention is not something everyone is up for, even if they support the cause. We’re now thinking of different types of media that might be easier to display. More lessons.

The polarizing effect? We think that’s actually pretty awesome. We lost a few fans over this, but now we know where we stand. No judgement or hard feelings, it’s good for all of us to know what we believe and stick to it.

The Future

Using art to raise awareness about an issue is something Jenni and I have always done and will always do. We are still learning about how to get our message out there so it has a bigger impact. Working in conjunction with other organizations that align with our stance on a given issue is one thing we’ll seek out in the future.

There’s more to come. We hope you’ll stick around and thank you for being here in the first place!

Likeable people look a lot like this.

Are you likeable? Or do you eat onion rings on a plane?

A lot of people walk around constantly asking themselves, what do likeable people do differently than me? Which means that a large percentage of the population believes themselves to be either unlikeable, or are just curious about how much more likeable they could be without taking their clothes off in public.

There are many lists out there just like this one. In fact, a secret bonus quality of likeable people is that they avoid the temptation to constantly post lists like this on Twitter. But go ahead and post this one anyway. It could save a life.

So here’s my list. It could’ve been longer. Or shorter.

Likeable people:

1. Put their tray table in the upright and locked position when asked to do so, not when forced to do so by an air marshall.

2. Give back a thumb drive without it being covered in… wait, why is this sticky?

3. Share their booze. A step above that would be to share it before it’s been ingested.

4. Taste really, really good.

5. Admit their mistakes. Like back in #4, where I accidentally used one from my Lickable People list.

6. Listen to you talk about your bad day before they tell you what happened to your cat while you were gone.

7. Avoid using big words indecorously, or trying to impress with Latin words, ad infinitum.

8. Stand still when you need them to (See also, 8 Things Lickable People Do)

9. Always flush the toilet before sharing their selfie.

10. Give you opportunities to shine. Which is what I’m doing right now. This is your opportunity to come up with a #10.

This box is full of trash, not crackers. True story.

I’m going to make a movie reference. It’s a bad one. Ready?

In Star Trek VI, Kirk, Spock and Bones are camping in Yosemite on shore leave. In the morning, they’re called back to the ship suddenly, cutting their (weird) joint vacation short, and Kirk sighs, “Pack out your trash.”

Pack out your trash.

So now I not only just outed myself as a Trekkie, but as a person who gets geeked out at environmental catch phrases. Oh, shut up. You love that crying Indian.

I’m not embarrassed (well, maybe a little – I think only seventeen people have even seen that movie, much less quoted from it). As an environmentalist, I love this phrase. I was taught at an early age to take my trash with me, to throw it away in a bin instead of littering. Most people are, I believe. It was sandwiched between “Wash your hands before dinner” and “Stop licking the dog!”

But I also believe there’s more to it than just not littering. Not littering is admirable, but I believe we need to think further.

I like to think that when we visit a place, we should leave it better than we found it. Not just Yosemite or the beach, I mean places like airports, malls, Disneyland, Starbucks. Sure, people get paid to clean up our messes. That’s one way to think of it. “Let someone else take care of it,” we tell ourselves. After all, we’re busy, We are Important. We don’t get paid to pick up trash. I mean, aren’t there, like, workers for that?

There’s no immediate reward for this. It’s, just like, work, Dude. Yeah, I know. You’re thinking, Who needs more work? And who needs this kind of guilt? I already struggle with that whole should-I give-that-homeless-lady-a-dollar thing. Now this?

Well, poor you. So much to think about. You can’t keep up! Who will take over for Letterman? Does Khloe Kardashian wear Spanx? Does my Uber driver know I’m completely shit-faced?*

Get over yourself. Pick up some goddamn trash for a change. Get off your ass and make a difference for once. Not because it’s better for the planet and society. Do it because I said so.

*Yes, your driver can smell you.

“You really need to be better at thinking on your feet. You were way too quiet in there.”

That’s the fun feedback I got from my boss after a very long “brainstorming” meeting. This was early in my career and I really let it get to me. For years after, I sweated meetings and routinely kicked myself if I hadn’t thrown out a handful of frenzied ideas along with the rest of the group.

I got over it. Eventually.

It took years to learn this about myself, but I finally realized and accepted that everyone doesn’t need to think at the same pace to be effective. I also learned that group brainstorming sessions are complete bullshit. Typically they become an exercise in everyone making sure the room knows how smart they are. I’ve never been part of an idea-vomiting party that resulted in a great solution. Usually they fizzle into an apathetic pile of half-baked concepts that nobody knows how to execute.

I used to listen to my colleagues whip up complex schemes on the fly and bat them around the table like wadded up pieces of paper. I could follow the conversation, but trying to get my own creativity operating in the melee was almost impossible. I had the confidence to speak, I just couldn’t think.

For a while I researched all kinds of articles online to see if I could change the way I operate. I was so sure that I was somehow inadequate. Sure enough, the Internet assured me that I was indeed totally lame because I couldn’t toss out fully-formed ideas like walnuts in a salad.

They made me feel like crap. The thing is, I’m a smart person. I’m a creative person. And one of my unique skills since childhood has been coming up with simple analogies for complex concepts. So it was pretty ridiculous that I was being shamed into feeling that I just couldn’t keep up and had to change.

Here’s how it works for me. I’m an observer, a sponge, a Bounty paper towel of things going on around me. So after I soak up everything in the room, I go away to a quiet place and wring myself out into a basin. It’s only after gaining true understanding of an issue that really juicy and effective ideas get compiled by my brain.

I still admire quick thinkers. It can be fun to watch, and I’ve worked with some truly genius people who could access their brains as quick as a Gmail search.

I’m not going to be that person. More importantly, that’s completely okay. I don’t have to be. You don’t have to be, if that’s not the way you operate.

Think about how you come up with your best ideas. How does it work? What do you do to make that happen? Because the path you took to get there is not going to work for someone else. In the end, the result is what matters. We need to teach our kids this little secret so they can confidently contribute to a team.

I’d love to hear how you operate. Toss it out there in the comments. NOW! Quick! You’re taking too long…

But seriously, I’d love to hear from you. Take your time.

In this video, I explain how I built my own exposure unit for screen printing… which is really just an excuse to talk about more important ideas like consumerism, DIY and experimenting to be more independent in life. It’s about duct tape (quack!) and trying new things.

If you’re a screen printer, you’ll learn how I made an exposure unit for under $20.

If you don’t care about screen printing, you’ll get some free homespun wisdom from Sparky Firepants. Go forth and spin some homes. Whatever that means.

It’s only 10 minutes, but I packed in about an hour’s worth of ideas. Enjoy and please share!

Make sure you subscribe to the Sparky Firepants YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/sparkyfirepants