Ending Sabbatical

I’m starting to transition out of sabbatical mode and back into focused work mode.

I started this sabbatical back in July with the goal of identifying a new purpose and figuring out how to pursue it in a way that makes me a healthier, happier human. I approached this with as much of an open mind as possible, with no definite end goal other than to find joy in creative work again. What kind of creative work was intentionally left open: the sabbatical was to be about exploring possibilities.

In August I planned three storytelling experiments: one written, one audio, one visual. In September, I got a lot more interested in music, and back-burnered the audio and visual projects to make room for musical pursuits. In October and November, I refined my focus, leaning into dark fantasy and horror fiction and learning the guitar in earnest.

In December, I started working through The Artist’s Way, finding methods to better prioritize my creative practice, and thinking seriously about how to turn that practice into an income generating business. And in January, after a lifelong struggle with mornings, I started getting up early to write every day. I also launched my Lit Up blog series, and began mainlining information about the self-publishing pipeline to bring books to market.

And that brings us to February and a more concrete forward direction that’s starting to solidify.

Building a small press

Brianne and I were talking about my self-publishing research, and it begged the question: if I’m building a go-to-market pipeline for my books, why couldn’t we also leverage that pipeline for others’ books?

And thus, Shiraki Press was born.

Our focus is adult novellas with a hopecore vibe. We’re still nascent, but we’ve set up the legal foundation of the business and we’re working on establishing our publishing pipeline now. A proper launch announcement and call for submissions will follow soon!

Writing

I have a final draft of Briarcliff, my moody horror short about one man’s desperate sacrifice to a prehistoric supernatural force. While I’m proud of this piece, it doesn’t fit what we’re doing with Shiraki Press—it’s a horror short, not a hopecore novella—so I may end up submitting it to some lit mags and see where that goes.

I had planned to spend February drafting The Deep, my cosmic horror short about a deep sea salvage dive, but then we started Shiraki Press, and I decided it would make more sense to put my immediate energy into writing something more aligned with our intended tone and style.

To that end: Crossroads, my hopecore novella about a down-on-her-luck artist who takes a job at a supernatural boutique. The shop is a community for outcasts: an curmudgeonly immortal bookseller; a neurotic fire sprite; a pair of klutzy sibling witches; and one exhausted manager somehow holding it all together, despite the sins of the shop’s demonic angel investor. The vibes are cozy, and our artist finds family and community there, but Crossroads also holds a secret—we don’t talk about the hellmouth in the basement—and that secret could threaten everything.

More on that story soon; it’s well underway right now!

Reading

I finished The Artist’s Way at the end of February. I’m hoping to do a writeup on that in its own post here soon, but the TL;DR is I would recommend it without reservation to anyone who has, or wants to have, a creative practice. Those twelve weeks of reading and exercises shifted some pretty fundamental stuff in my brain about art, commerce, and identity, and did a lot to defuse the creative cynicism that took root in my soul over the last five years.

I did not, unfortunately, manage to get in any other reading this month, hence the absence of any new Lit Up posts. The impromptu trip to Utah at the end of January to support my mom after her car accident bled over into February in the first place, but even after we finally got home, making up for that lengthy unscheduled disruption took a large chunk of the shortest month. We barely managed to get Shiraki Press spun up at all; very little else made the cut.

My planned Lit Up reading for February had included Starfish by Peter Watts and The Wilding by Ian McDonald, but I discovered to my dismay that The Wilding does not currently appear to be available in digital format in the U.S., so my revised goal reading for March now looks like:

• Starfish by Peter Watts (attempt #2)
• A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers

I did start—barely—reading Make Art Make Money by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens. It’s a biography-of-sorts about Jim Hensen (of Muppets fame) and how he was able to reconcile art and commerce in his storied career. I’m not far enough into this one to provide much commentary yet, but it did refer me to another book, The Gift by Lewis Hyde. This excerpt from Make Art Make Money explains the significance of The Gift:

The Gift shows us why artists don’t make money: because art is, anthropologically speaking, a gift. Trouble arises in societies when a person tries to convert a gift into a commodity.

This is another one of those fundamental brain-shifts for me. It doesn’t change the sad reality of capitalism, but it does change how I understand it, and that new understanding brings me closer to feeling like I can cope with it rationally and practically, instead of getting trapped in my frustration and cynicism about it.

Ending the sabbatical

When I started my sabbatical, we had a significant financial runway and plenty of space for me to explore and experiment with reclaiming my creative identity. I went into it with no specific end state in mind—the journey was the point, and the destination was intentionally left to be discovered, not predestined—but I did have a goal of figuring out how to be a healthier, happier human overall.

The million-dollar question is: did I accomplish that goal?

All that financial runway and space to play didn’t amount to a tenth of the impact it should’ve had, because almost from the outset, I had to battle a ton of adversity: the deaths of my wife’s brother and grandmother; my mom getting in a car accident and needing recovery support; helping close friends navigate divorces, layoffs, evictions, emergency moves, and deaths in their own families; the garbage fire that was Election Day, and its ongoing fallout.

An optimal sabbatical, this was absolutely not.

And yeah, when I think about all the shit that came down the pipe at us, all the friction and frustration that laid claim to our mental and emotional bandwidth almost as soon as we’d freed it up, I get pretty upset. Doing an eight-month sabbatical in the Seattle area is expensive, and we only had accumulated the money to do it by, essentially, luck; it’s not an opportunity we can recreate any time soon. Having life come along and just absolutely bulldoze that opportunity at every turn felt, you know, malicious.

But at the same time: without the sabbatical, I wouldn’t have read The Artist’s Way, which has significantly improved my relationship to my art and my identity. I wouldn’t have written Briarcliff, which I’m proud of on its own merits but which, more importantly, jump-started my sense that I can actually do this storytelling thing. And we wouldn’t have started Shiraki Press, which is a long-term bet on ourselves that nobody can fire us from.

So, am I a healthier, happier human overall?

Somewhat. The problems I faced at the beginning of the sabbatical aren’t totally resolved, but at least now I have a more positive trajectory and some concrete tools for continuing that journey.

Job hunting

I’m still looking out for new game dev or tech employment, either on a full-time or contract basis. Here are my resume and my LinkedIn.

I’m writing with purpose, and we’re starting a small press, but neither of those things is bringing in money right now, and our financial runway is very much running out. We’re not in full-scale crisis mode yet, but we’re definitely starting to tighten the budget.

We’ve both been job hunting since late last year, but the games industry—and the tech industry more broadly—has been going through a whole time lately. (And if you’re in it, you understand the intensity of the understatement.)

As of just the last week or so, I’m in maybe-promising talks with two studios, but with so many candidates hitting all these roles, I’m being very cautious with my expectations.

In the meantime, I’m starting to poke at alternative modes of income:

• I could try pitching articles or essays to games and tech sites, magazines, etc.
• I could try starting a paid email newsletter, perhaps focused on my ongoing research and experience with building a creative practice
• I could open the books for contract game/tech engineering work

I’m open to thoughts, suggestions, encouragement, and cautionary tales. Email me!