Why don't you post anymore?
I got older. And as I got older the already-questionable premise of this blog started to feel just-plain-creepy.
I got sleepier. When you get older, you get sleepier.
I had a family. My child was born in April of 2016. You can see the immediate and precipitous decline in posting volume thereafter.
My child was sick. He was born with cystic fibrosis. This has been devastating. And time-consuming. His breathing treatments take hours daily, which contributes to the sleepiness discussed in item 2.
I threw myself into my work. For the first couple of years of working at Tumblr, it was far and away the best job I’ve ever had. And likely ever will have. The office was thick with weirdos and we were given a shocking amount of freedom to do whatever we wanted—as long as it was relatively inconsequential. Visionaries did not do well at Tumblr. Jokesters and aesthetes did perfectly. I spent all my time filling our official channels with stupid, confusing garbage that I was horribly proud of, and remain proud of to this day.
Work got bad. They hired some visionaries. I spent two whole years writing and rewriting unused company vision statements at the behest of these visionaries. The uselessness of this task was overwhelming. I should have picked myself up and posted modest entertainments on this modestly entertaining blog, but instead I simply wallowed and fretted and atrophied.
As did everyone else who clung on. We almost reveled in the poison of it all. We drank too much and filled the Tumblr app and Tumblr staff blog with nihilistic discontents. There was pleasure in that.
I grew doubtful of my talents. Maybe these visionaries were charlatans, but maybe these charlatans were right. Maybe I needed to come around to their way of thinking. Maybe everything I do is bad, lame, indefensible. Maybe this blog is exhibit A.
I got shy. I would compose texts and not send them, fearful of how boring they were.
I got depressed. That soft, round depression that inspires nothing. A prickly depression can be a decent creative driver. But this was just a blob.
Drawing Garfield was a way to deal with this depression. This should be plain to anyone who has seen those posts. People started sending me links to kooky Garfield stuff, which I appreciated, but which had the unintentional sourness of a children’s birthday present. You like Garfields so I got you a Garfield! Soon your room is full of Garfields because that’s what you’re about. You stop caring about Garfield but you keep up the charade so no one’s feelings get hurt.
I am approaching mid-life, now, or perhaps I am firmly in it. And the outlines of a crisis are forming and they’re exactly as boring as you think. I’m not creatively fulfilled. Boo hoo!
We tried to leave America, do you know that? I had a very nice job lined up in Montreal. Less pay, but Montreal is cheap. Montreal is also generous with benefits if you are a citizen or a permanent resident. But it turns out you cannot become a citizen or a permanent resident if you have an expensive pre-existing health condition. Cystic fibrosis such a condition, so Canada did not want us. Another blow, one too hurtful to talk about on this dumb little blog.
I could not talk about any of this stuff on this dumb little blog, but it’s all I’ve been able to think about for the last two years.
This dumb little blog! It made my life what it is. It had about 40 followers when it was discovered by a neighborhood blogger, who passed it along to a city blogger, who made it a minor local sensation (a sensation! how embarrassing to write that!), which led to a local designer discovering that I, too, was designer, which led to our small design business, which led to the acquisition of our small design business, which led to our move to New York, which led to my working for Tumblr, which led to being able to make whatever I wanted and force millions of teenagers to look at it. God, what fun. And now it’s done.
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