The Robot's Heart: How Voltage Teaches Us to Feel

0:00 Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball, if you believe you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today, I am joined by author John Wanzelak, better known as J-Dubs. We're going to be talking to him about his new book and we're going to be talking to him about how he helps creatives connect with wonder by blending storytelling, art and community.

0:47 John is interesting, so let's get into it. John, thank you so much for joining me. Curveball. Thank you for having me. It's a blessing to be here. I love finding anyone who would love to hear about what I'm doing. Well, why don't you start off by telling everybody about yourself? Well, my name is John Wanzelak and I'm an artist from New Jersey, born and raised. I am currently 41 years young and in the last couple of years my wife and I have worked on me starting my art business. My wife and I have worked on me starting my art business, tried online to kind of publish that and get my art out in the world.

1:31 It wasn't working so well because my last name was confusing and then I kind of leaned into the name I now use publicly, j-dubs, because Wanzelak frightens so many people that I had to shorten it much like actors do. Yeah, you sound like some serial killer, John Wanzelak. Right right, it's a very serious name, absolutely, we're a very serious family. Well, why don't you? Why don't you start off? You know, do you want to get into your family? Or, if not, just start off by telling people how you got into writing and art.

2:14 Oh no, absolutely Everything. Everything is on the table. So I am actually. The book itself is a product of my therapy. That comes from all of my upbringing. My parents split at a young age. They were great as friends but not as partners, and they did a great job raising me but they did better separate. I now know that in my late 40s. But growing up you know a lot of kids deal with the stressors of that stuff. So I kind of recently went into a whole therapy journey and that's how I kind of started learning about my feelings and in learning how to deal with it myself, self-soothe and kind of find my way through stress and anxiety.

3:00 The book was born. Okay. Well, when the book was born, you chose a coloring book illustration instead of a regular format. Why is that A? couple of reasons, actually. Number one I have ADHD and with that I struggle to focus in a big way. So by doing a coloring book I took the whole process of having to not only illustrate and write a book, but then I'd also have to color in all the pages to make it entertaining. So option one was to just do that make it a coloring book and it seemed like a lazy option.

3:42 But also with my therapy lately I've learned that coloring books are not just a children's toy anymore. It's a tool for therapy and it can. Spending a half an hour coloring in an image can take your mind off of the things that are worrying you solve your problems. But it can unlock your mind to a point where you might, once you're done, have stepped far enough away from an issue that you can now maybe find a solution for that problem, because your brain was distracted long enough that you're no longer hyper fixed on it, like when you're trying to find your car keys and you just take I'll take a second Hold on, all right, what was I doing?

4:26 And then all of a sudden they're in your hand the whole time. I do that all the time. Where are my keys at, and spend 10, 15 minutes looking around? Where did I last put them in there, right there in my pocket, yep. So oh, go ahead. Oh, no, go ahead. No, I wanted you to finish your point because I was going to ask you another question about the design of the some of the pages. Oh, by all means. By all means, because I don't really. Because you know, I know that you design some of them to resemble calm, you know, and self-reflection and stuff like that.

5:06 Did you intentionally do that? Talk about that. So I didn't originally intentionally do that, but when I started drawing the book right before January, it just kind of happened because I actually had a heart issue that I've been treated for for the last couple of years. I'm an AFib patient, but every once in a while my heart will do weird things and you know when you start focusing on what's bothering or what's going on with your body. There's actually a point in the book where Voltage, our main character, is hiding from a storm, an electrical storm, because you know, a robot wouldn't survive through lightning. So he's trying to figure out ways to hide from lightning and he's just making all the wrong choices because he's not thinking logically, he's thinking emotionally.

5:56 I had a very real situation like that where I was in my backyard with my dogs, my wife was inside taking a shower, my daughter was inside watching tv no one else knew where I was and I I actually fell down in my backyard and I had that realizing moment of I'm on my own and if I go someone will find me. But there's nothing like. It was a very, very. I then decided to write the series scene with it was like five pages of the book where he's just trying to navigate the storm and deal with the identity of what happens to me.

6:41 If something happens to me, you know what happens after I stopped to exist. Well, how did you come up with the name Bolt Voltage for a book? That's interesting now. So originally Bolt was a little art project I had. Again, I said I started off as a painter and I was just trying to learn some new techniques so I always doodled. I love illustrating. So I drew the robot holding the umbrella and that was my first picture of Bolt. So I drew the robot holding the umbrella and that was my first picture of Bolt. Everyone loved it so much Like I say everyone. I have a decent social media. Following on an app called Clapper, I'm at 216 followers and a lot of them ask questions, craving more information about this character I created.

7:27 So it went from one picture to making 13 paintings, selling eight of them, then making a series of Christmas themed paintings, selling one of those and starting a Christmas version of the robot now. But they got so enamored by the character that the more they asked for it, the more I had to make more stuff. And then someone said John, you should really like make a book of all of your pictures of the robots so that I could buy all of them, because I can't afford to buy all of your paintings. Now, mind you, this person has bought five of my paintings at this point on top of other artwork in the past from me.

8:14 So that's when I started working on the book. I started just doodling and I was like you know I can make an actual story that can help people because in the five years I've been on social media, a lot of the people that I've come across have a big problem with their emotions and we see it in viral videos online all the time. You see kids that are confronted by a security guard and they just lock their arms up and scream at the top of their lungs because they don't know how to use their words to tell them I'm embarrassed, you caught me, and can we do this somewhere else where I'm not a spectacle? So this book aims to give people those tools, but it does it in a way that's soft and gentle and you don't feel like you're being therapized.

8:59 You feel like you're just reading a story about a book, about a robot who suddenly just starts feeling emotions and has to figure it out. And if you don't know your emotions, you kind of got to figure it out with him. I kind of got to figure it out with him. And is that why you chose to cover topics like self-doubt and anxiety in a children's book? I mean absolutely, because as an artist I deal with that all the time I put myself down I tell myself my work's not good enough. But I know that children and again we aim at 12 year olds and up know that children and again we aim at 12-year-olds and up. But children deal with self-doubt, especially children whose parents are struggling with life themselves and they're having fights or if they're having some kind of a just any marital dispute that trickles down on the children, and children will shelter themselves and they won't talk about their feelings and they become freaking sociopaths or they become abusive adults themselves or they become emotionally unbalanced people.

10:02 So I just I I'm not a medical professional, but I went through the therapy and I'm still starting to heal myself and I know that some of the stuff I've learned really, really helped. So I'm just touching on the small stuff that someone who's afraid to go and talk to a therapist can read in my story, connect with my character and say, well, if a robot could do it, why the hell can't I? Well, how do you hope that kids and adults both will will be able to connect to the journey of boat? voltage that's. That is the beautiful thing because, like I said, we aim at a 12 and up audience, but the book is so much more than just 12 and up.

10:48 You can definitely bring this down to an eight, even a seven-year-old level, because, a the school lingo is starting to change a little bit and, b the whole point of this book is, yes, it's a coloring book, but it's also a storybook. I grew up with my parents reading stories to me at night. It was a way to wind down. You turn the television off for a little bit, you read a story, you relax, you go to bed and it's a way for the parents to bond with the children. Mom, I don't understand what that word means. What does that mean? Well, it means this, and then you have a conversation. It's a way to create a bonding experience for parents that are already trying to figure it out.

11:29 I had a child at 19 years old. I tell you, my two children would have been completely different. I'm not going to say they'd be better. They'd be completely different had I been better prepared to raise children when I did. But I raised two fantastic children that are well-rounded and they have dreams and jobs, and I push them towards their dreams and jobs as much as I possibly can. Well, walk the listeners through the illustration process, you know. Walk us through what it was like to design Boat's journey.

12:12 Well, I'll tell you, it was long. I decided a couple of times. I've done this and I noticed that you know, with with images, you have to, you have to shrink things down, you can't blow things up. So I drew the entire um book on an 18 by 14 pad in pencil, each page. Then I would go over it in ink and then I would erase all the pencil, clean off all the eraser, run a vacuum cleaner and move on to the next page. After I did like 15 drawn pages, I started writing the story and taking my notes and writing an actual story to go with the pictures I had.

12:54 And when I struggled with something I would actually lean into a robot. I asked questions to an AI chat bot to try and ascertain how a robot would navigate human emotions, and it was a really weird conversation that led to some really beautiful moments that made me very hopeful for not only this book but the series that it hopes to line up for. Ah well, ah well. Do you feel like coloring is a way for relaxation and and emotional healing?

13:39 Uh, so you know why. Why not? right and absolutely. And the best part is because the way I set the book up, like I said, story on one page, coloring page on the other, but it kind of looks like a graphic novel, almost like a manga, and at the end of the page, at the end of the page, at the end of the book, I leave two blank pages with a QR code. That QR code leads to a Facebook account that I've created called Bolt's Dream Masters, and I ask all of my readers, when you're done reading the book and you've colored in your pages these pages are here for you to give Bolt his dreams to share on the page, so that when I write the next book, I have a community who is now contributing their thought going to draw one way, I'm going to draw another and your neighbor will draw a different way.

14:37 And when we all start sharing our stuff online, it stops being self-help, it stops being self-therapy, it starts being group therapy, it starts being just a discussion. You know, why did you choose greens where I chose blues? Why do you choose yellows where someone else chose purples? And it's stupid little idiosyncratic conversations like that that can lead to real healing and that's one of the points behind the book. That's where I said I could blend community with art. That's the community. With art. That's the community.

15:22 Well, let's talk about some of the challenges that you face when you were trying to create this book that's visually engaging as well as emotionally meaningful. Well, I would say the biggest struggle. January 3rd 2025, I had just started drawing the pages and my friend sent me a link to a new movie that is just releasing in the theaters the Wild Robot and I looked at the trailer and I was like, wow, that looks an awful lot like my design. I mean not to say that they took my design. I would never say that, mostly because I don't want them coming after me, but robots are very, very popular right now. If you go to any streaming service, there is at least five to seven different robot TV series and or movies that are available.

16:08 So once I realized that the wild robot had no real like, I wasn't, I wasn't infringing on their idea and they weren't kind of taking away from mine. They're two totally different stories, I would say. The only challenge I had was I wanted to make sure that my character didn't blend in too much but also didn't come across as only a self-help book. It needs to be seen as a book, a storybook that you color. The therapy comes afterwards. Speaking of therapy, how do you feel? Do you feel like teachers, parents and therapists can benefit and use this book and, if so, in which ways?

16:57 So I feel like this book would actually be great in a middle school setting and I actually have tried to set up an appointment with my school's board of ed and my town's mayor, because I would love to do some community outreach, get the book into schools so that at least the mental health counselors that have certain students maybe not every student, but there's at least a small percentage that may benefit from introducing the book to them, even if it's just to give them something to color take their mind off of a bad day, or if it's something that the them some color take their mind off of a, you know, a bad day, or if it's something as the story might actually connect with them.

17:38 Um, I would love to see all of that. I also, like I said, I'm reaching out to my township government because we have a lot of local parks right now that are being revitalized and I would love the opportunity to take some of the students from the high school and then have them meet me on site so we could do some murals based off of my character and the pages of the book as a community mental health outreach. So these are all programs I'm trying to currently work off of this character and really take this further into the stratosphere. And really take this further into the stratosphere.

18:23 Who do you feel is your ideal audience for your book? Well, I mean, the ideal audience is going to be teens that are struggling with stress, anxiety, depression or identity issues. Adults who are struggling with, uh, connecting with their children, or maybe moms and dads who just have some very, very active kids and they themselves are, are are exhausted because, you know, not for nothing, but being a parent is a hard job. Um, I know this because I raised two of them. But there's some people out there that have more than two kids and it's, it's rough, and some of these kids they don't.

19:03 They don't feel for their parents the way me, on the outside, I could look and say I feel sympathetic for them. So I think that exhausted parents, I think that overworked professionals, people who love to say the title of your show I used to use it all the time how you doing John, living the dream, one nightmare at a time. Dreams are nightmares that grew up and I think people who say that they slightly believe that a little bit, you know. So I think they would also be a good target audience, because they're all people that are struggling with life just a little bit and this could just take away a little bit of that weight for a small amount of time, you know.

19:52 Yes, I do know, Living a dream, one nightmare at a time. Can you tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of? well, aside from the one that I'm talking about, with probably doing some hopefully doing some murals in town, I am running a Kickstarter that closes in two days, but other than that, we are working towards building a second book. My followers have already reached out and they would love to see Bolt with a companion animal. I'm an owner of two Huskies, so I'm thinking about making a robotic Husky a possible character in the near future.

20:36 Our Kickstarter actually reached its goal and went over, so every dollar that went over went into developing sensory toy prototypes. So we're going to be doing print-in-place fidget toys of the robot to companion with the book so that it again is a sensory experience. Okay, well, just for the record, how big are your two Huskies? The one's a short, stocky guy, but the other one when he stands on his back legs, I'm 6'2" and we see eye-to eye. He's part shepherd.

21:19 Wow, Well throw out your contact info so listeners can keep up with everything that you're up to. So anybody that wants to know what's going on in the Dubbosphere. You can hit me up on Facebook, instagram, any social media. You will find me at jdubsarts that's J-D-U-B-S-A-R-T-S, and you can also go straight to wwwjdubsartscom. Sign up for a mailing list so you can get stuff in the moment, including, but not limited to, my exclusive content blog that I post on my website Anywhere between seven and 21 blogs monthly. It just depends on how busy the month is, but we do try to put something on at least once a week so that even if it's just I like to.

22:08 I like to post some resources for people that might be in distress sometimes. So if there's anything like that, I like to post it on my site. You can find it at jdabsartscom. Perfect. Close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe, if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners. You know it's hard being human, but it's not impossible and if you can get out of your way long enough to see from someone else's perspective, you might actually find a way to heal yourself.

22:51 Well said. Ladies and gentlemen, jdubsartscom, please be sure to check it out. Follow rate review. Share this episode to as many people as possible. Check out Voltage Journey. Check out John's book. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Visit wwwcurveball337.com for more information on the Living, the Dream with Curveball podcast. Thank you for listening and supporting the show, john, thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining me. Curveball. You have a wonderful evening. Thank you for having me on. For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, visit wwwcurveball337.com.

23:37 Until next time, keep living the dream.