My Creative Journey
My creative journey has really happened in two major acts.
The first began when I was twelve and lasted into my thirties. Over those years, I performed more than 850 comedy magic shows and learned animal balloon twisting, ventriloquism, clowning, and even playing Santa Claus.
Then my life transitioned, and I focused on my love for computers—designing websites and programming. But eventually, the stage called me back.
In October 2018, I felt a strong desire to begin performing again. I read a book on performing mentalism that focused on mixing storytelling with the effects to entertain the audience, which intrigued me. My new journey began in November 2018, when I rejoined Toastmasters International with the single goal of learning the craft of storytelling.
That one decision started a cascade. It took me down a path to earn my Toastmasters Advanced Communicator Gold award in May of 2020 and led me deep into the world of public speaking and storytelling, including several live events where I shared real-life stories. From there, a new phase began on April Fool’s Day of 2019, when I dove headfirst into improv—putting in over 500 hours of training in all its forms and performing with two different long-form troupes.
But something major happened to me during that improv journey. I was on stage when my instructor called out, “Grant, you need to respond with emotion.” That note hit me hard. I realized that sometime as a teenager, I had built a thick brick wall around my emotions as a coping mechanism. I now know this is a common experience for people with the neurodivergent trait of being a Highly Sensitive Person. That brick wall helped me survive for over 35 years, but my improv training demanded that I tear it down.
And I noticed something incredible. As I slowly dismantled that wall and allowed my emotions to flood back in, my storytelling became more impactful. I felt that old, familiar feeling of being alive on stage, just as I had when I performed magic shows. I remember one time in particular, while telling a story, feeling a strong sensation of warmth run through my body, as though rays of energy were streaming out from me to connect with everyone listening.
From there, my journey became a wonderful exploration of the performing and creative arts. A new phase began in October of 2019, when I started private singing lessons at a local community college, where I learned I am a bass-baritone. My goal was to learn the craft of singing so I could incorporate that with my work in ventriloquism.
This sparked a deep dive into the world of puppetry, where I took over 100 hours of specialized classes in a huge variety of forms: hand-and-arm-rod puppets, glove puppets, ventriloquism, shadow and crankies, toy theater, paper pop-ups, object puppetry, and even monitor training for TV and film.
While I was taking improv classes, I realized acting was critical, so I dedicated over 250 hours to acting classes, which led to roles on stage in a production of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar and in small-production films. I also dedicated over 100 hours to the study of the voice through voiceover work and dialect coaching. And I explored a wide array of other performance arts, including clowning, physical comedy, mime, and re-exploring magic and mentalism.
At the same time, I knew I wanted to learn how to create compelling characters for my stories and live shows. Initially, I couldn’t find a class specifically for that, so my search led me down a different path: extensive training in sketch writing.
I clocked more than 200 hours and wrote over 50 full comedy sketches, from solo character pieces to shorter scenes. I learned about the difference in sketch length between the USA and the UK through my work with the UK-based Hoopla, where I was trained to write for both TV and radio. This process taught me the critical skill of keeping my writing tight and to the point. Ultimately, sketch writing was the perfect training ground for learning how to build characters through finely tuned dialogue, which has helped in all my future writing.
Eventually, this path led me to over 100 hours of specialized character creation classes, where I developed characters like “Mad Dog the Gamer” and “Santa the Barber.”
I created and performed, in full Santa attire—suit, beard, wig, and hat—a solo video as “Santa the Barber,” set in “Santa’s Singing Salon.” The humor came from the details: giving haircuts like the “Little Cindy Lou Who” and styling hair for clients like The Grinch, while offering bizarrely flavored candy canes like “cheeseburger with onions.” The performance ended with me singing a parody to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:
“Then one foggy day, Santa came to say,
Rudolph, with your nose so bright… it’s time to sweep up.”
This period of intense study wasn’t just theoretical; it was a time of immense creative output. I wrote an 80-page first draft of a screenplay, completed a full play for puppets, and created an original TV pilot. Over the last few years, I also built the entire fictional town of Dairy Dairy Cowtown, filled with quirky characters and heartfelt storytelling, where I voice all the characters myself.
After wanting to launch my own podcast for at least 20 years, I finally did—releasing a 28-minute pilot episode of Dairy Dairy Cowtown as an audio visit to this strange little town. That project became an early testing ground for the kind of world-building and storytelling I now bring into my live shows.
Through all of it, I fell in love with the learning process itself—with expanding myself, even when it was difficult.
The Quick Starter & The Reframe
Alongside all this dedicated training, there was another pattern when it came to my own creative, self-directed projects. A professional coach once labeled me a “quick starter,” and she was right. My interest would jump from one passionate idea to the next. I’d get intensely focused, plan everything in great detail, and then my attention would shift. I would look at this trail of brilliant beginnings and see it as a personal failing.
The real shift came when I started to understand the “why” behind the labels that had followed me for years. Being called an “overthinker” or “too sensitive” always really hurt my feelings, because it felt like a judgment on who I was at my core. In the past, a comment like that would have made me shut down completely. But I remember the last time someone said it. This time was different. I finally found the strength to simply say, “You know what? That is who I am.”
That moment of self-acceptance was a turning point. It opened the door for my own research, born from a love of philosophy and introspection. I discovered I was an empath, and that I had several neurodivergent traits related to things like Executive Function.
That was the true reframe. The dedicated student who loved the difficult process of training, the “quick starter” who jumped between projects, the “overthinker,” and the “too sensitive” person who finally stood up for himself—they weren’t separate, flawed people. They were all facets of the same neurodivergent coin. My brain wasn’t flawed; it was building a vast, diverse library of skills.
All of those paths, all of that training, all of those ideas—they’ve become the research and development behind the way I create, perform, and build worlds like Dairy Dairy Cowtown today.
Grant E. Wuellner
Grant E. Wuellner
Grant E. Wuellner
Grant E. Wuellner
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