Late Night Panic

I’m eighteen and going nowhere. That’s right, currently, I am going nowhere. I feel like I’ve dug my heels into the thick and muddy dirt road of life and I can’t bring myself to put one foot in front of the other. It’s something a lot of people can relate to.

College, right? It’s looming over my head. It’s something pushed down your throat like a baby bird's belated breakfast. Personally, burying myself in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt has never been a dream.

So, what now? I just moved across the country and I’m brave enough to admit I’m lost. I was lost before, in all honesty. Now I’m just lost in a different forest. All that’s changed is the cost of living.

I applied to all kinds of jobs and, unsurprisingly, none of them were interested in my resume which just so happened to be a blank piece of paper. All in all, adulthood’s going great.

I considered cosmetology school. It’s an option, something you can call feasible. But, if someone asked me what my dream was? I could tell them here and now it’s to write. That’s all it’s ever been, and I don’t think a lot of people get to say they’ve known their passion from day one. It’s something I’m very grateful for. From the moment I could hold a pencil, it was all I was doing. As a kid, I would hoard all of the printer paper (because notebooks were beneath me) and make ‘novels’. I would staple them together, diligently illustrating my work, and then promptly hand them out to anyone who cared to give it a read. Back when writing a lot meant typing half a page on my mom's computer in our living room, it seemed a lot easier.

I’m older now, and in a lot of ways, it’s stayed the same. It means aching fingers and burning eyes, late nights alone in my dark room. Something I’ve grown so close to over my life. Hunched over a computer as my fingers beg me to stop and my mind insists I write more before that coffee crash hits me hard.

Sometimes, though, it means not writing for days or even weeks on end. It means avoiding my computer like the plague. I don’t dare to look at it, afraid of the shame that crawls up my spine for never doing enough. For never being enough.

I’ve always struggled with my mental health and through all the ups and downs writing has been my constant. My passion, my reason for existing. I take my meds, I go to therapy, and I see my doctor. Sometimes it just isn’t enough. But, even in my worst of times, I write. It comes as easy as breathing. Now, making a career out of it? That’s another beast entirely.

It’s a thought that gives me crippling anxiety, and in those times I think of one person.

Jhonen Vasquez. You may know him as the man who created Invader Zim, a cartoon on Nickelodeon from the early 2000s. It’s one of my favorite shows, and I have the tattoo to prove it.

So, he graduates High School, goes to film school, and immediately drops out to be a professional cartoonist. No experience. Talk about a leap of faith. He created a comic called Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (a personal favorite of mine) and it sounds about as gruesome as it is. He worked on a few more minor projects and then was hired by Nickelodeon to make an entire show. This man is my hero.

He made a show that, despite being canceled for many reasons after only a few years of airing, lives on in cartoon history and didn’t even finish college. While he certainly is talented, I’m still torn on what part was talent and what was luck.

And if it was luck, maybe not everyone gets that chance. I’m willing to accept that. It’s overwhelming sometimes. To wake up, terrified you aren’t going to live up to your expectation of yourself. I don’t want to be a cog in a broken machine, and I know the odds. They’re stacked against me. And still, I’m here, writing when I could be sleeping.

One foot in front of the other and maybe I’ll get out of this forest.