{"id":1994,"date":"2012-11-05T18:41:24","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T23:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/?p=1994"},"modified":"2012-11-05T18:41:24","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T23:41:24","slug":"why-do-i-do-what-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/?p=1994","title":{"rendered":"Why Do I Do What I Do?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My head would be a lot nicer place if I just stayed out of it.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s me trying to be clever in describing my mental state this past week. I spend a lot of time in my head (don&#8217;t we all) and it sometimes keeps me from enjoying myself. This was definitely the case at Reunion Stellaire. One week later and I still hadn&#8217;t quite moved on. My disappointment was still bothering me. That weekend, I couldn&#8217;t get out of my own head which is something that occurs all too often I&#8217;m afraid. So instead of having an awesome time like my friends, I felt like this:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ageofanimus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Cyran-Alone.gif?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1995 aligncenter\" title=\"Cyran-Alone\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ageofanimus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Cyran-Alone.gif?resize=284%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"284\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ageofanimus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Cyran-Alone.gif?resize=284%2C300&amp;ssl=1 284w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ageofanimus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Cyran-Alone.gif?resize=24%2C24&amp;ssl=1 24w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ageofanimus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Cyran-Alone.gif?w=700&amp;ssl=1 700w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 284px) 100vw, 284px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>That strip was about as autobiographical as it gets for me. When I said Cyran was a reflection of my insecurities, this was the main strip I was referring to.<\/p>\n<p>This is all building up to what I wanted to talk about this week. Why do I work on this site so much? Heaven knows it&#8217;s not because I have a huge following. I wish I did, and I&#8217;m slowly (so slowly) working on building one. No, I do it because when I&#8217;m drawing a strip or mash-up or writing a story it&#8217;s one of the few moments (other than when I&#8217;m at work at my paying job) I&#8217;m able to stay out of my head. The negative thoughts don&#8217;t come as often. I&#8217;m happy. That&#8217;s what makes this site so important to me and why I want it to succeed. So I can feel justified that all this work I&#8217;m putting into it is also being appreciated or enjoyed on some level by others.<\/p>\n<p>It makes me so happy when someone mentions something they read or saw on the site. If they liked it, that&#8217;s even better. If you want to make my day, leave a (non-spam) comment on the site. If you see me in public, let me know who your favorite character is and why. I&#8217;m always interested in talking about my work with others but I don&#8217;t usually initiate though unless there&#8217;s something I&#8217;m really proud of. Of course, this only works if you sincerely want to know more about the site. If I think you&#8217;re just patronizing me, that&#8217;ll just send me back into my head.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, I&#8217;ll write every post as though I have an audience. I&#8217;ll ask questions to generate feedback. Someday, somewhere, someone may care what I have to say, so I might as well practice.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My head would be a lot nicer place if I just stayed out of it. That&#8217;s me trying to be clever in describing my mental state this past week. I spend a lot of time in my head (don&#8217;t we all) and it sometimes keeps me from enjoying myself. This was definitely the case at <a href='https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/?p=1994' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-1994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carja-corner","tag-monday-blog","category-7-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ageofanimus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Cyran-Alone.gif?fit=700%2C738&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1UaSI-wa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1996,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions\/1996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}