I was having a conversation with a friend and it emerged that they were working 4 days a week at their job, so they could use the remaining 3 days to work on their art and making an app to sell. Another friend is going to head to China to learn unique pottery techniques and then self publish a pottery book, and have a pottery teaching side hustle. She is also making apps.

This kicked off a bunch of issues in me. I’ve done many things that were intended to take me to the big time. I’ve created songs, a kids TV series pitch, posted art to Instagram that took months to make, a short film. All were meant to gain me fame, recognition and wealth. But that intention never came to fruition.

But something has changed in me, I no longer want to keep going down that path. I’ve now gone in a different direction of making personal art for my personal website. And when I tell people that, it feels like there’s this slight odour of defeat. I was aiming for the top and now I’m not even aiming? Where's my elevator pitch of “yep this next thing could be my ticket to the big time.”? How is this different from a hobbyist?

Something they said actually solved the whole thing "Once the baby becomes manageable, you could start a side hustle"
Within that statement is a value system, where attempting to generate enough money to leave the rat race is more valuable then spending time with my family, making art and working for a living wage to help support my family.
Thankfully I instinctively knew that spending time with my newborn son had more value.

So I think I’ll reframe it as, I’ve refocussed:
I want to put all my energy towards creating a world, an experience. Drawing people into my domain expansion. My goal is to bring my inner world to this one, to recreate that feeling of having my mind blown, reading something till 2am, I’m just so immersed. And once I’ve reached that level I want to expand it without doing anything that would cancel out its frequency. If I have an artist alley then that stall is a work of art, that expresses the real me. When people peer into my world it should feel special.

And when people ask “how will I generate revenue from what I make?” I’ll say “my dream is to make art I'm satisfied with, and when I know what the end of a project looks like, then it feels like a craft, not an art to me. So the project should be free to grow into any form, and I'll be able to look at the business end when it’s done.

But I'll also give active statements like “I showed a friend, and she thought that this was the beginning of me accomplishing a goal I had from years ago. And is excited to see how it develops”.

It was a tough labour so I was doing kangaroo care for hours at a time. he was breathing really fast which was why we were in the NICU. Kangaroo care is when you put the baby with nothing but a nappy on your chest, and your breathing, heart beat and body temperature helps stabilize them. I would try to stabilze his breathing by breathing in really slowly and deeply. When I was fully inflated I could feel his lungs massaging my heart. It was the most intimate thing I have ever experienced.

I've always been a daydreamer, now I realize that just means multitasking poorly. Thinking about what I care about while I do things I don't care about. And during this period I have never been more locked in, absolute lazer focus. To me that means I don't have ADHD as when it counts I can focus really well.

I've always struggled with knowing what matters, An irritating neighbour can become my whole world. What I experienced was the baby became the sole arbiter of what mattered, whatever was happening in the world really did become random pixels on my phone. Usually I do that through cynicism to stop myself from being overwhelmed. But this time I was able to focus on my life, my partner and the baby in a positive, not a defesive way.

naturally this started to wear off by week 2, but amazing to know that this way of thinking exists.

Inside of me are two wolves,

One thinks Nekojiru the mangaka is the coolest: an artist that chooses their own path and says what they want to say and has no issue showing the contents of their soul agressively to the world. Who disregards upsetting people because she sees the world and its people as an exotic and disgusting zoo.
The second wolf worships koji Morimototo, a mavrick genius anime director that has the backing of one of the most hardcore creative animation companies. Starts at the bottom of the organisation, and goes from success to success until he's at the top, presenting his vision to the world, to critical acclaim and a fat paycheck.

There are two core problems that prevent me becoming a new version of these people.
Problem one is, Im good at what I do, I've been the top artist for multi million dollar companies, and consistently made a living getting picked as a freelancer. But when my competition is the best in the country, the best in the world, for a handful positions, thats when it gets tough for me.
Being Koji Morimoto relies on making something amazing and being picked by the best place early in your career. And I work harder then your average guy, but not at the level of the best of the best. Where I would put in a hundred hours, they would put in a thousand, is what it feels like.

Problem two is that I haven't found a source of free money, and Im not dedicated enough to my own path to choose being unable to afford rent and dental care.

So now I need to find a way to synthisize those two wolves, to take the strengths of both and create something Im happy with. Something that blooms in the environment of my limited time and opportunities.

I need something that doesn't require enormous amounts of time and resources to be all it can be:
• Something that competes with itself, not other pieces of media.
• A medium that I can imbue with all of my personailty, that isn't dull for the audience.
• Something not punk as it is now, but punk as it was in the 70s: an abrasive reaction.

My current approach is Neocities, each hour is stored on this website and makes it a better experience, like my own personal art installation. Not put on the sushi train of social media to be shot into oblivion.

This is a long story so I'll try to do it in point form

• Go on a trip to Spain where I walk up a small mountain and get a sense of eternity, I make a 1 page comic about it

• Decide to make a short film and set a film festival as the deadline

• Somehow make the film, first time I've actually finished a project of self expression like that since highschool

• Show it to friends, they all think its cool, my partner is moved by it. So Im starting to think "I've done it, the world of film is going to open for me, the start of a new dream career!"

• But then! It doesn't get in to any of the film festivals. This was honestly rough as when you pay extra so submit it late because you're still working on it. You expect to win, or be in the top selection, or get a peoples choice or something

• Not, "Yep we'll take your money to partially watch your film and send you a form rejection letter, no we wont tell you that you aren't even close, send us more money next year!"

• So then I'm like "Okay, while this film that I've made is great, its missing something" So I find out that Peter Cheung of Aeon Flux fame has a Patreon where he will face to face review your work through some equivalent of zoom, this takes like six months to set up

• Once again my expectations are high, will he see me as really good? Will he connect me to his famous and talented friends? Will he hire me to work on his really cool projects?

• When the meeting happens, it is brutal, he picked apart every aspect for like an hour. This I also did not expect as I've been animating and creating for about 25 years. My partner wanted to run into the room to tell him off, it was so hair raising.

I'm sour about this whole series of events and Im trying to unpack why. How can I be in this industry for so long, and be so out of touch?
I think a huge part of this is my internal value system. Why did I spend like a year of my life on what's basically a get rich quick scheme? When I could have spent that time on friends, family, making actual money, and on my personal art. Capitalism plays a part in this somewhere.

• This whole thing is an event with layers

Q: Who screwed me over the most?
A: The festivals who from my persepctive are basically scams to steal my money. And more importantly wasted my time and resources that I could have spent making real art and reaching my full potential. For over 99 percent of the participants its just a way to flush time and resources into the trash.

Q: Who caused me the most distress?
A: Peter Cheung: while its true that I said I wanted to make something so good it stands out, thus meriting being held to the standards of greatness.
This was a very blunt way of delivery and the initial effect was to cause me to lose sight of my dream and vibe. Setting me up to refer to him as my sole source of truth and dedicate my life to making a handful of mediocre films, and wasting my remaining years on this earth making art that wasn't reflective of my true self. This requried a lot from me to process this into positive and useful advice.

Q: Who helped me the most?
A: A mix of everyone, but a big part was my instict to go my own way, I synthisized that whole experience into the following lessons.
• Harder isn't always better, if your true goal is self expression you need a frictionless environment not shaped by competition or standards.
• Other peoples dreams are like rungs on a ladder
Peter Cheungs dream is to help filmmakers attain greatness, and obtain tuition from them that will fund his own film making dreams.
The Festivals dream is to show the next big thing to the film making world, and that means sorting the wheat from the chaff.
And neither of those dreams are my dream, I just need to use those rungs to gain experience, skills and insights and keep climbing.

So what is my dream at the top of the ladder?
To bring my inner world out, and have it affect my space and people.
I used to think that meant making works of excellence that accumulated wealth and a community. But now that I've accumulated some wealth through motion design and respect through friends. Its just about tuning into something deeper.

Q: Is my life better because of this?
A: Purely comparing me with myself and no one else. I would say that I gained new skills and uncovered some truths about myself. And it contributed to me going down a path where I was able to discover a way of creating where I can combine anything quickly and casually. So if Im diligent about comparison being the thief of joy, then yes.

Q: What do I think of my film now?
A: Its been more then a year since then and I have watched 0 short films and maybe watched a couple of big budget movies. It seems that I liked the identity of being a film maker and I may have loved films in the past, but I don't have a special love of film now.
Also something telling is during the film making process I would show people my work and ask "is this good?"
To me this says I don't know what I want or have an in depth knowledge of the structures Im working with. I should be able to intuitively know if something isn't right.

I never got Van Gogh. I bought his books, studied him in class and never felt more then when I looked at a take away wrapper. But then I went to Amsterdam, to "his museum" with his family history and saw his works of paint, so thick they were sculptures, and then I got it. This site is my lite version of that. I believe that you need context and wacky bespoke font choices to appreciate things for what they are.