I Quit Making Art for Five Years

On the 1st of June 2017, I clicked publish on a project I had spent nearly a year making. It was the best and most ambitious thing I had made.

Three months later I — to all intents and purposes — “resigned” from the internet. I stopped making my own videos and posting about them; I closed up my Patreon campaign and switched my website to a single page of plain text. There was almost no way to contact me.

As much as I tried to dress it up to other people, my creative-self felt mortally wounded by the response the project had received, quite clearly measurable in the numbers of cancelled subscriptions.

The prevailing wisdom for dealing with a setback like this is to allow yourself one day to wallow in the sadness — and then get back to work.

I needed more than a day.

A long winter

I lost all confidence in my creative taste and instincts. I wanted to disappear, to be invisible. As I look back on it, the overwhelming emotion I felt was shame — even though I had nothing to be ashamed of.

The only public-facing thing I felt able to start was a little newsletter…