John Vogel's big year
A wide-ranging conversation with 'stay-at-home creative' John Vogel, and an update on what he's up to now.
Hello and welcome back to Creative Parenting Club. Whether you’re reading this newsletter in your email inbox, or checking it out via the Substack app, we’re excited you’re here.
Thanks so much to everyone who has joined since our last issue. We’ve had a lot of new subscribers lately, which is exciting for any writing and publishing team, but feels particularly validating of the entire reason this publication exists in the first place.
In other words: if other people seem to be interested in a community focused on the intersection of creative life and parenting, that must mean there are even more parents out there like us.
Finding your people is truly one of the most exciting things in the world.
This week we’re pleased to present our latest parent profile — from a conversation that originally took place when we launched the first edition of this newsletter back in 2023.
Based in Philadelphia, John Vogel is a multimedia artist who’s also the Creative Director for Talking Writing, a digital magazine and podcast which talks to artists of all mediums about their personal and creative lives – and the intersections between the two.
Sound familiar?
When we originally started communicating with John in November 2023, there was instant chemistry. After years of staying at home until his kid was old enough to go to school, he had the creative aura of someone who was in the process of unleashing all that pent up energy.
In addition to joining Substack and writing one of our all-time favorite manifestos about creative parenting, he had just completed an original music video and composition project called Weird Music that he’d been working on since before having children.
Since we last spoke to John, he’s continued to stay busy. Last year in addition to his work on Talking Writing, he also released his latest album White Zinfandel, an instrumental album written on piano and overdubbed with horns and electronics.
Most significantly, he and his partner welcomed their second child just a few months ago, almost exactly a year after we first spoke.
Re-reading our interview with John, all of his life updates from the past year only seem to reinforce what we discussed in our original conversation with him.
Let’s get to the good stuff. In his own words, here’s John Vogel.
Creative Parenting Club (CPC): John, thanks for joining us! You’re actually the first guest we’ve had who reached out to us first, which is exciting. What drew you to the project?
John Vogel (JV): Yeah! I found you through your recent cross-post on Bird’s Eye View, and when I checked out your newsletter, it really resonated with me. I’ve spent years trying to find other people who talk about balancing parent life with a creative life. I’ve seen so many friends have kids and then completely stop making art, which I always found kind of depressing.
So when I saw your post I thought: “Yes! This is exactly what we need to be talking about — how to keep making art as an adult, and as a parent.”
It’s so common for people to be creative in their teens or early 20s, but once they get into the career grind or start a family, the creative side falls away. I want to challenge that.
One of the things I find really sad is when people say, “Oh, I’m just not creative.” I believe everyone has creativity inside them, but we tend to lose touch with it over time. And I think that starts really early. So many people have these vivid childhood memories of being told their art or performance wasn’t good enough. Kids internalize it and start to believe, “Oh, I guess I’m just not artistic.”
For adults, I think the biggest challenge is just starting. If you’ve spent years thinking you’re not creative, then when you do finally try, you don’t know where to begin. And of course, once you add kids into the mix, finding time becomes even harder.
CPC: Can you tell us a little about your creative life and what you’re working on right now?
JV: My main professional focus is Talking Writing, which was started by Martha Nichols and which I’m now leading.
Musically, I’m working on a more classical-sounding project. My last big project was Weird Music, a multimedia piece that I started years ago, but at the same time, I had also been writing these piano-based compositions. Instead of building tracks from loops like I usually do, I wrote full pieces on piano, recorded them, and then overdubbed trumpet, clarinet, and synthesizers.
So now, I’m revisiting those pieces, relearning the piano parts, and expanding them into a full-length album. The plan is to re-record everything in one focused session. Or, realistically, over a couple of months.
CPC: What’s that like in your current setup?
JV: So in terms of the actual analog aspect of Weird Music and this piece that I'm working on now, I'm not going to studios to do any of this. It's all done in my house, which involves some interesting logistics.
To go a little bit technical, for Weird Music I started by making a digital skeleton out of the whole musical piece and then manually subbed out all of my synthesized sounds with real instruments. Which is a lot of work! Over the course of the project, I did a lot of this during naptimes. Just recording each line and you know, maybe getting halfway through the next line of one song and then my kid wakes up.
For the piano parts, I use the piano in our living room. Which means I have to have my family out of the house first and then set up the computer, take apart the piano, put up the mics, wire all the recording and stuff like that. And then sit there and play takes until you get a good one, you know? And then listen back, make sure it's okay.
At the end of this process, I pack up all my gear again so the family space is back to a family space.
Finding time can definitely be an issue!
CPC: In The Stay-at-Home Creative, you talked about trying to get things done in these small nap and childcare windows — on those days when it feels like your workday never really starts. When you’re in the thick of it on these types of days, how you think about time? And specifically, what advice can you give parents on how to make the most of it without putting too much pressure on ourselves?
JV: That’s a big question! I’ll try to give a big answer, as this is a topic which has become very close to me.
I think as a species, we’ve become obsessed with time. It’s frustrating to hear all this advice about maximizing your time — "Here are five tips to be more productive!" — because I feel like we’ve internalized this idea that time is a commodity.
Ben Franklin’s whole “time is money” thing really stuck. If we have even 15 minutes of downtime, we feel guilty about it. It creates this pressure to always be optimizing, which, honestly, is exhausting.
We’ve created a culture where “living life to the fullest” means operating at max capacity — usually in service of our jobs. And I think that’s made us a little crazy.
As a parent, it’s even harder because you’re constantly distracted. You might want to be present in the moment with your kid, but in the back of your mind, you’re thinking about everything else you need to do. And that stress can really affect your relationships. It makes you more impatient, and more short-tempered, both with your kids and with your partner.
I don’t have a perfect solution for it, but I do think just talking about it helps. Naming the problem. There’s value in saying, “Hey, this is hard. I feel this pressure too.” Because then other people can say, “Oh good, it’s not just me.”
CPC: How do you carve out time for your creative passions while balancing family life?
JV: That’s the ongoing challenge, right? For me, managing time as a freelancer adds another layer of complexity. I have creative projects that I want to do, but then there’s also the work that actually pays me. And on any given day, I only have a limited number of hours when my kid is in school.
So I end up constantly asking myself: What do I focus on in today’s five-hour window? If I stay busy all day but only end up with an hour or two of billable work, I feel bad about it. It’s tough.
And when you add in the societal pressures that often make you feel bad for sitting idle for, you know, longer than 10 minutes — which is all it feels like you have most of the time — it can be a lot to juggle mentally.
So I think we also need to just be conscious of the fact that we're not always going to be running at full capacity and that's okay too, you know. There needs to be space for that.
CPC: How do your kids influence your creative life, and how do you bring creativity into your family’s daily life?
JV: I love finding ways to involve my son in creative projects. It can be a bit of a challenge sometimes. I want him to play with some stuff, but like, I also can't give him like free reign over all of my equipment, you know? I try to provide a space where he can explore, because I think that’s really important, while also trying to set some limits to it.
One thing we did together was record audiobooks of some of his favorite stories. I’d set up the mic, we’d record me reading while he said the titles, and then we’d burn them to CDs for him to listen to in his room. He loved it.
It was a great way for him to experience the full process of creating something—recording it, turning it into a physical item, and then playing it back. Seeing how something is made from start to finish can be really exciting for a kid.
CPC: What’s the biggest challenge you face as a creative parent, and how are you navigating it?
JV: As I kind of alluded before, I think we put so much pressure on ourselves to be productive that we don’t allow for natural ebbs and flows in our creative energy. Some days, I feel like I need to be working constantly. Other days, I’m exhausted, but I feel guilty if I’m not making something.
One thing that helps me is recognizing that starting is often the hardest part. I compare it to exercise: when you’re debating whether to go for a bike ride, the 30 minutes might feel like a big commitment. But once you’ve done it, you realize it was a tiny part of your day and you feel so much better.
Creativity works the same way. If you make it part of your routine, eventually you won’t even question it. It’ll just be something you do.
CPC: What advice would you give to parents who feel a creative yearning but don’t know how to make time for it?
JV: One thing that always helps me is looking at how I’m actually spending my time. Is there something I’m doing every day that isn’t really serving me? I’m not talking about necessary decompression time — we all need that. But maybe there’s a habit, like scrolling on your phone at night, that you don’t even enjoy. Could you swap that time for something creative?
Another one is setting up your space. If you want to get back into art, or writing, or music, what do you need? Do you have your tools accessible? Do you have a space that makes you want to play your instrument or pull out your art supplies or whatever it is? Where possible, setting up your personal surroundings in a way that makes it easy to dive in when you have a spare moment is something that has really helped me.
But to bring it back to some of the other points we’ve been talking about, it’s also important to be realistic. We’re all imperfect, and there is so much going on every day of our lives.
So if you do fail to do something creative or whatever it is that day, don’t beat yourself up over it. We’re all doing our best.
And so that’s also a big part of what I’m constantly reminding myself: if it doesn’t work out today, that’s okay. It’s like so many things with having kids. Just try again tomorrow.
Thanks to John Vogel for joining us, and congratulations to John for his various personal and professional milestones over the past year.
If you want to support John’s latest album White Zinfandel, you can stream or pay to download it via Bandcamp.
To learn more about John’s earlier project Weird Music, check out this page on his Substack.
We also encourage you to subscribe to Talking Writing, which is full of interesting conversations with artists across the creative spectrum, including this parenting roundtable that we participated in last year.
Meet us in the chat
A reminder in case you haven’t had the opportunity yet: our newly-launched Creative Parenting Chat is a space is to exchange more informal thoughts and reflections about the journey of creative parenthood. Every two weeks we’ll be kicking off a new chat thread about different aspects of juggling creative and family life.
It’s the first time we’ve experimented with the chat feature, but we’re excited to add this new space for engagement and connection.
We’ve got our latest discussion live this week about the challenges of staying in rhythm with your family. You can check it out and join in by clicking the link above or the button below:
If there’s something about being a creative person with a family that you’ve been itching to talk about, we also encourage you to please feel welcome to start a new thread of your own.
That’s all for today! Have a nice weekend everyone, and see you next week.
Very inspiring story!