Debbie Millman’s ongoing project “What Matters,” an effort to understand the interior life of artists, designers, and creative thinkers, is now in its third year. Each respondent is invited to answer ten identical questions and submit a nonprofessional photograph.
Matt Owens is a designer, a creative, an entrepreneur, a twin, and a founding partner and Chief Design and Innovation Officer at Athletics.
What is the thing you like doing most in the world?
What I like doing most is two-fold. It encompasses doing great creative work that comes to life when a team works together. Doing great work as an individual has its own rewards, but it can be challenging due to being self-critical and never completely satisfied with your own ability to be objective. Working together with others and arriving at a creative solution that encompasses the creativity and input from everyone can be far more nuanced, while also being far more satisfying. Everyone has their own perspective and their own biases. Working together to push all our sensibilities toward a common goal that we all feel makes sense and we are all creatively proud of is one of the most rewarding things you can achieve as a creative professional. The goal is the same, but how to get there is always different.
What is the first memory you have of being creative?
Drawing as a child. My father still has an old dresser with a crude drawing on it that I made when I was three or four. I was surprised that my parents kept so many things I drew when I was young. Clearly, those artifacts were the first indications that I had some degree of creative capacity.
What is your biggest regret?
Holding on too tightly to my own point of view and what I felt was right. This produced decades of resistance and tension that, in the end, did not produce better work. Letting go without giving up is one of the hardest things to do in life. Being open to other points of view and realizing that you are not the center of it, but one ingredient.
How have you gotten over heartbreak?
Never fully.
What makes you cry?
Deep loss.
How long does the pride and joy of accomplishing something last for you?
It does not last as much as it lingers in different forms. I’ve felt immediate pride and joy that over time evolved into satisfaction, ambivalence, complete amnesia, and many other nuanced emotions. As humans, we are perpetually revising our own story.
Do you believe in an afterlife, and if so, what does that look like to you?
I’d like to think that there is a chapter beyond this one. A singular consciousness, perhaps, or a portability of the soul into a new form. To be alive is a rare gift, and to be conscious is a fundamental mystery. The unanswerable question of human awareness of existence gives me hope that there is something beyond.
What do you hate most about yourself?
Certain mental patterns I find hard to shake. Our default mode network and our pattern-based mind make us fall into predictable behaviors and thinking. These easy ruts that make you fall into expected ways of living and being are the things I dislike. In an effort to give us faux certainty, our old patterns limit us.
What do you love most about yourself?
Those moments when I’m able to let go and give freely with no need for anything in return. That and the fact that I have a family that cares for me and appreciates me.
What is your absolute favorite meal?
Cheese enchiladas with beans and rice at Matt’s El Rancho in Austin, Texas.
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