Failure, has always been an option...

This night, Friday, December 27th, I find myself alone in my room, thinking, yet again. I made an attempt to visit Undergrounds Coffeehaus with the hope of making progress on Issue 3 of Periphery; that idea then being noticeably a bad one considering that the vicinity was brimmed with what I could only presume to be children, all flocking to one place, due to their schools being closed for the winter holiday. I vacated, and decided that I'd best return home, since the likelihood of doing "something" outside would never transpire. Simultaneously, another accomplishment that would have been gratifying should Undergrounds have worked, was that I would get a cup of coffee, to waken me, and give me the energy needed to apply 3, perhaps 4 more hours of work in the comic. En route to my home I stopped at Dunkin Donuts and did just that, only to find my self, in front of my computer; here.

I sat down at my work station, gazed upon my poster and inspirational imagery laden wall, and ran my eyes over one small piece of data that chilled me.

Frighteningly so.

This sensation is no stranger to me, its poison, however, worsened by the fact that I have substance behind it.

Over a period of one year, I have bled an insurmountable amount of hours in my series, alone, with little to no real help in seeing it's fruition come to be. For over a year, I have focused my strengths and every ounce of energy I can muster into 48 pages of sequential imagery.

I've graduated from an obscenely expensive and poorly chosen college with a degree worth as much as my own sweat. It has since been 4 years that my leaving that school has set me on a path of a, grind, so to speak, the likes of which many may never experience. It has been 4 years after encapsulating over eighty thousand dollars in debt, worked under 7 different employers, lived in three different addresses, applied for x number of field related jobs and continuously am turned away; and after four years, all I have to show for myself is two comic books?

Let's say tomorrow I burn everything I've ever acquired in my life: every gift, every hand-me-down, every object, every toy, every movie, every game, every book, every letter, every picture, every article of clothing; burn it down until I can manifest the weightlessness of it no longer existing; burn it all away, I would only have two comic books.

Two.

Take away EVERYTHING! EVERYONE! ALL OF IT! And those comic books would be the greatest, most fundamental integer of my life.

But such a luxury does not exist, it never COULD!

I want to ask why that is, but the answer would be subjective. I want to know what I can do to change it, but I think it won't. So my first step to recovery? Admitting failure.

As an artist, as an individual, as a societal entity, I am a failure.

Healthy or not, it's necessary to identify shit like this, to bring it to life, to regain control and get a grasp on the larger picture looking in. Any man unable to change a life he finds unhealthy, by the sheer fact that nothing he does allows it, is a failure.