I'm sitting here watching a 10-year-old TED talk by Scott McCloud, creator of the visionary and influential Understanding Comics trilogy (together with Reinventing Comics and Making Comics). It's titled "The Visual Magic of Comics". Watching the guy, whom I've met recently - a very affable, personable fellow; very humble - I can't help but think, Geez, he's a mild-looking schlub like me...how the hell did he get where he is now? How did he turn his hobby into a career?
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| Scott McCloud |
I'll admit, I'm feeling low at the moment (and it's not just the craft-beer hangover, although that doesn't help...) Blind Alley Comics is trying to expand its operations. We're emailing stores across the Midwest and Northeast, and trying to get a website together, as well as working on our various comic projects. It's a real drag: not too many bites on the old email trail, and the guy who was to do our website (the third in a row!) flaked on us. I have this horrible feeling of sitting here, spinning my wheels, while other people are somehow dipping into a magical stream that causes all their endeavors to succeed.
The stream is called, "Money". Okay, sorry, that was cynical. I'm just not sure how else it works.
This low feeling isn't just due to lack of money/success/fame etc., it's actually part of a mental cycle I've gone through all my life. A couple weeks ago I was feeling very "up", and now it's time to pay the bill. I wouldn't call it bipolar, although it might fall on the extreme low end of the spectrum; I'm not hallucinating snakes or cashing in my 401(k) on a delirious 5-state shopping spree. I'd go so far as to call these periodic mood swings, "within normal boundaries" most of the time. They're just extremely frustrating. It's like I'm jogging along rather well, everything's great, and all of a sudden I start tripping over my own feet, and the more I try to correct my gait the more tangled my legs become. The only way to manage it is to stop altogether and sort the knot out.
This disthymia (as I'm choosing to call it) directly affects how I work and try to achieve my goals. When I'm "up", feeling great, I start collecting projects, knowing I can handle them. I have the mental energy to think about five or six different things at a time, to jump from project to project. But on the downswing, I start to get overwhelmed. I can't prioritize. My work starts to suffer. My inspiration doesn't exactly dry up (thank God), but the will to work is diminished. I start to wonder what the point of it all is. The road to "success", whatever the hell that means, seems to stretch onward with no waypoints or landmarks, just an empty trail across a salt-flat. There's clouds and mountains over there, but they never seem to get any closer.
Don't be alarmed, I'm managing myself a lot better these days. I take the "down" times as a sort of "reality check": relax, think things through, re-prioritize your goals. Remember the baby steps. One thing at a time. The "up" times are for productivity, the "down" times for reflection. And feeling low isn't all bad, in fact I quite like it - the slow melancholy feeling, the time to nurse your wounds, to indulge in a little self-pity. It's "coming down" that sucks. You feel like you're falling apart. As though your recent ebullience was somehow due to your own effort, and now you're failing, or doing something wrong. It's not your fault; it's brain chemistry, combined with whatever random circumstance triggered the episode. It's important to adjust yourself to the swinging pendulum, to find the advantages in it, rather than trying to stop it from swinging.
I did have a major crackup about five years back. End of college, no prospects, no connections, working shit jobs for shit money, frantically picking up projects while questioning the point of it all. Frustrated with my portfolio, no idea what to do with my internship. Extremely angry. I cared too much, while everyone around me seemed to shrug: no one takes you seriously when you're 22. I couldn't communicate with anyone. There I was, trying to start a career in graphic design in the midst of the worst recession in twenty years, when a chorus of sympathetic but otherwise preoccupied voices were saying, "Have you tried putting it on the internet?" like that was the magical rainbow-and-money-farting unicorn of all success. Uh, yeah, I put it on the internet. Right next to the thirty billion other nice pictures. And no, I don't have a goddamn website, hypothetical advice-giving moron, because that costs money. Needless to say I was in a very bad place.
I won't go into the awful details of what happened; that's a story for a different blog. Suffice to say I suffered a classic nervous breakdown. "Nervous breakdown" is a term psychologists smirk at nowadays - it's too vague, they pick it apart and put it into several other baskets - but it is definitely real, and strikes very ambitious but frustrated young people. I slogged through that pool of shit for three years, and the aftereffects still linger. The recovery process is, in an emotional sense, like learning to tie your shoe after getting your arms chopped off.
I'm pretty much recovered by now, but I'm always aware of the danger of going that route again: biting off more than I can chew, bottling up my anger and resentment. And I find myself approaching the same crossroads I was at before. Again I'm trying to get a graphic design job, and at the same time launch my comics career. This time, however, I'm older and wiser, know how to prioritize, and I'm not nearly as frantic. Also the recession is backing off a bit, that helps. But the frustration with my lack of success is still there, and very real. I feel like I should have "gotten somewhere" by now. At this point, I should be either a) an art director at a graphic design firm, or b) own a small comic book studio. As it stands, I'm not even able to establish a good cash flow. The money I earn from comic sales goes toward beer and bus rides, not churned back in to make the next comic. I've established a vision of my art and what it means, but not a business model. I'm not a salesman. It's frustrating, and I feel like I'm not going fast enough.
It'll work out. We've got our recent projects in the works, business-wise, and we'll be able to add another couple of stores to our roster, at least. Hopefully we can get the website up and running before the year is out. I just have to be patient, and prioritize, and not let the success of others get me down. Nose to the grindstone, that sort of thing. And hopefully, while I'm "down", I'll establish the kind of framework that will allow for more success when I'm "up" again. Which should be in a couple of weeks.
Rick Out.
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