We recently connected with Andy Greene and have shared our conversation below.

Andy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience? Are you happy?

Ha! I constantly wonder what it would be like to have a regular job, to do something else. And I want to be clear, a “regular” job could be construed as judgmental, but I admire the hell out of so many “regular” jobs and the people that do them. I often wish I was a plumber. Plumbers are always useful, always in demand, they get paid well. And it’s something I would be so lost at. A plumber definitely symbolizes a more masculine, “traditional” handyman type that I decidedly am not.

Ironic enough, these daydreams often come when I am clogged creatively, when I’m in need of a plumber for my brain or for a clearer diagram of how all these disparate pipes or ideas connect. When I’m in that space, the doubt and fear that is always around is now louder, and my dear old friend Imposter Syndrome returns. I question whether I’m good enough to be an artist, to be playing make-believe, to be working on and devoting my life to something intangible when there are sinks to fix, drains to unclog, problems to solve. This cascades. Given the litany of crises around the world, it feels selfish, an undeserved privilege – why am I not a firefighter, why am I not a teacher, why am I not XYZ?

It’s taken 35+ years of life to get to a place where I am secure enough in my artistry (a word that still makes me cringe to use) to remember that THIS is what I’m supposed to be doing, THIS is how I help. That I can trust myself, trust this uncertain path I’m on because I believe in a world where everyone gets to do what they love, what they’re passionate about. And the stories I’m constantly playing with are in service of creating that world.

Am I happy? Sometimes. I’m more often frustrated and confused and anxious. But I’m also grateful and excited and hopeful. I’m happy when I am IN the making of something, when I am writing, directing, dreaming and not self-conscious, not worried about the outcome or quality or utility of what I’m playing with. That’s what I’m searching for and longing for as an artist every day: to find and return to that happy place, to the Andy who played in the bathtub with his toys for hours in his own world.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and your brand. How you got to where you are today? What are you most proud of?

This question of describing who I am, my story and my brand freaks me out, because it’s a lot to distill.

Over the years, I’ve carried a lot of shame and guilt for my white CIS maleness and privilege. I can feel your eye-roll. I was basically doing an eye-roll for my whole existence and I knew that self-hatred wasn’t helping anyone. Indeed, it was holding me back and was part of the problem.

It took years of therapy, of understanding (and forgiving) my anxiety and depression, to recognize that our patriarchal society has failed men too. I wanted to explore that, I felt a responsibility to. I wanted to create a safe space for myself and others to be vulnerable, to explore not only masculinity, but the conversations and topics that scared me. Grief, circumcision, becoming a parent, gender affirmation surgery, sobriety, sex!

I created The Naked Man Podcast as an interview show, not knowing I was creating a mental health podcast that would feature monologues I’d written.

I’m proud of doing and creating and sharing ANYTHING, but what I’m most proud of is how my identity has changed through this project. If it weren’t for the show, for turning mental health into work and thus, making it a priority, I don’t know that I would’ve come out as gender nonconforming, as queer. I discovered that all the times I’ve been hurt or hurt others was when I was living up to some false masculine idea or trope I had absorbed, but hadn’t consciously chosen. Now I’m trying to be intentional about everything.

In addition, I’m in post production on Contraction, a psychological horror short film that I wrote and directed. My directorial debut! It stars my friend Liesel Hlista who was quite pregnant at the time. The premise came from a primal fear she had: giving birth alone. What happens if, on the day you start labor, you realize your husband… isn’t quite your husband?

I’m working on a couple other short scripts while dreaming about a horror feature and the financing necessary to make it.

To wrap up my totally cohesive brand in a neat bow, I’m a voice actor and an author shopping around several children’s picture book manuscripts!

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I’d have a different answer for that depending upon the day or hour, but it all distills down to the same mission: Connection. To you, to me, to the world. To better know the angry, messy, sappy, toxic, wounded, anxious, lonely parts of myself in order to better know and connect with humanity.

It’s taken a while to own and understand that this is who I am, that this is my responsibility, but I’m a storyteller and I have to share these stories, these pieces of me. It’s how I learn, how I process my feelings, how I find hope and belonging in a world where it can be so hard to find.

I’m not proud of it but yes, there’s definitely a part motivated by validation, that lonely Andy who used to literally scream “Listen to me!” as a child because he had so many big and scary feelings that he didn’t understand.

I’m creating for him. When I’m in dialogue with that Andy, finally listening to him, is when I feel connected to the work. When I’m consumed by what other people think or want or need (or more accurately, what I think other people think or want or need), something I do a lot in art and relationships, I’m in trouble.

I’m creating for myself, to make-believe a better me into reality. I’d love it if my movie, my podcast, my whatever, connects with people, but I have no control over that, and for most of my life, my work hasn’t reached people. It has to be enough for me.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and the backstory?

The past decade of my life has basically been a never ending onslaught of unlearning.

Something I’m still trying to unlearn is the comically false idea that I’m supposed to do this all on my own. That I’m “weak” for needing and asking for help.

In my 20s, I realized how long I had been living with anxiety and depression. It never seemed bad enough to warrant help, not compared to my friends who were struggling with it more. But I only thought they were struggling with it more because they were brave enough to share their hardships with me, to be honest. I was so good at pretending to be okay that I tricked myself despite the increasing number of sleepless nights where the thoughts and fears never stopped coming.

I thought anxiety was something that other people should get help for, but not me. I didn’t need help. This was something I just had to live with, this was part of what made me me. Which is why I could support and believe in therapy for so long without believing I needed to go.

It took falling in love and not wanting to screw that up to finally seek help and go to therapy. It took years of therapy before I was brave enough to try anxiety medication. It took making a podcast about mental health to make it a continued priority. It took years of doing the podcast by myself before I got a producer. I even hired a decision coach to help me hone in on what projects and ideas to focus on because I had so many.

It goes on and on. To do the things I want to do, to be the person I want to be, I need help. We all do.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Society just needs to do a better job of helping people period. I don’t think it’s necessary to elevate or separate creatives from “non-creatives” in the discussion. I don’t believe in “non-creatives.” Everyone is creative, everyone is an artist in some way whether they recognize it or rather we recognize it as a society.

What gets in the way of art, of dedicating some or all of your life to our dreams, whatever they are, is MONEY.

Self-doubt and fear of failure wouldn’t be so devastating if the stakes didn’t feel as dire. If I didn’t have to work a litany of side hustles and part-time jobs to pay my rent, not only would I have more time and less stress, but I’d also not be forced to give up on a project, a story, a dream to take the safety of a paycheck.

What this also does is create the illusion that success in art, in all fields, is tied to money, to ‘making’ a living instead of just living. Removing that expectation, that idea would be immensely helpful for all of us.

I’d like to believe that I’d still be an artist if I hadn’t had the privilege of help from my parents during lean times, but I can’t know for sure. That privilege is precisely what perpetuates the inequality and lack of diversity in art that in turn propagates the same ideas and stories being told over and over.

So yes, of course we need things like funding for art programs in schools, but those wouldn’t be in question if education wasn’t a capitalist enterprise. We need a society with free education at all levels. We need student loan forgiveness. We need medicare for all. We need rent control. We need change on a structural level. We need socialism.

Hello? Are you still there?

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wanderinggreene
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nakedmanpod
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/nakedmanpod/ — Naked Man Podcast IG https://abgreene.medium.com/ — Medium page

Image Credits
The only ones that need credits are the artwork pieces of me modeling. In upload order: Lawrence Lee Michael Olivares Carrie Chen Shirley Huang