You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) (27 page)

Whether it was by someone volunteering to be an extra in our show, or part of the crew, or someone buying a DVD at a convention, or a superfan who tattooed our characters’ faces on her calf, my career has been built fan by fan. I wouldn’t trade that relationship, or collection of dolls of myself, for all the money and fame in the world.

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The Deletion of Myself

That time I had a nervous breakdown and dreamt nightly of slashing my face with a straight razor while screaming, “DO YOU BELIEVE I NEED A BREAK NOW, GUYS?!”

I was born anxious. My mom must have watched a horror movie marathon while I was in utero or something, because I freak out at loud sounds, driving at night scares me because all the lights make me feel like I’m inside a UFO, and I’m traumatized, never delighted, by things that are startling. (SCREW surprise birthday parties.) My biggest fears in life are to be locked in a department store after hours, or to be kidnapped while walking to my car at night and my body disposed of with a wood chipper. Clearly, you can understand how challenging REAL problems are for me, like being late to a lunch meeting. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find a parking spot. Where would you like me to shoot myself: through the face or heart?”

It might be genetic, but it feels like I’m a stupid flouncy flower, destined to wilt at any second. I definitely didn’t take that fact into account when I decided to dive in and create a multimillion-dollar entertainment company with absolutely no previous business experience.

Classic Felicia.

In 2011, Kim and I pitched YouTube the idea for a brand-new channel focusing on geek entertainment called Geek & Sundry. We went in armored with a bitchin’ PowerPoint deck of all the cool shows we wanted to make. Even bought skirt suits to look official.

“Let’s get in there and get us some funding!”

We high-fived like we were in some bro-comedy plotting to save our fraternity, then marched in to do businessing. And rocked our presentation.

Afterward, YouTube selected our channel as one of one hundred it would invest in. It was awesome. I mean, all those years of acting like a secretary in commercials was about to pay off in running my own company, right? Uh . . . kinda.

As much as I love creating things, the amount of work was, frankly crushing. As part of our deal with YouTube, we produced more than
420 videos in 2012 alone. More than sixty-two hours of content in a year. To put it in perspective,
The Guild
released
one and a half hours
of content in the same amount of time. A real television show releases ten to twenty-two hours a season. With a crew of up to a hundred to help.

We had eight full-time people. Total.

So the scale was . . . different.

But I hung on, like a tiny four-year-old grasping the curved bars of a playground merry-go-round when someone’s older cousin spins it too fast.
YAY, THIS IS FUN, KINDA!
Then the months rolled along. And as time passed, I started to realize,
Holy crap. This “own-your-own-business” thing doesn’t have an end point.

The responsibilities of running a small company with huge ambitions shoved me squarely into areas I was not suited for. Like insurance liability coverage and an icky concept called “Management.” Most of my time morphed from
making
things to
supervising
the making of said things. Kim and I had created
The Guild
by stretching ourselves as thin as possible to do everything. Perfect for a control freak like me. But in this new company, when I saw an employee doing something even slightly different than how I would have done it, I couldn’t help it—I flipped.

“She used the wrong font? But the video is due to be uploaded in an hour! She’s a North Korean spy sent to destroy us, isn’t she?!”

It did NOT help that the skills I’d built up over the years didn’t apply 100 percent to this new venture. Sometimes the opposite. Getting out from behind my computer and into people-meeting networking events was particularly jarring. Especially when it involved the advertising world, one of the places I had to spend a lot of time schmoozing, because it is the most backward, chauvinistic world I have ever encountered.

I’ll never forget the time in Las Vegas when a supremely powerful ad exec I was encouraged to “get to know” looked me up and down as I approached and said, “Nice dress. I’d love to see it off you.”

Um, hello. Nice to meet you, too?

When we launched Geek & Sundry on Sunday, April 1, 2012 (April Fool’s Day, oh irony!), we did it with a day-long livestream “Subscribathon!” We invited tons of guests, held virtual panels, giveaways, dance competitions, you name it. We did anything we could to fill
twelve hours of programming
. I hosted the entire time, and at one point, in hour eight, I was so loopy I punched a unicorn in the face. Thank goodness the unicorn didn’t sue.

The “Subscribathon!” was an excellent encapsulation of what that first year of running a business did to me.

On the outside, from 2012 through 2013, I was on top of the world. Privately, I collapsed completely. I was trying to juggle too much (running Geek & Sundry, maintaining an acting career, keeping up with the electric bill to keep my cats cool, and remembering to call my grandma EVER). And sure, the overwork contributed to
it, but the real thing that made my world fall apart was the realization that season six of
The Guild
, which we produced with Geek & Sundry, needed to be the last.

The momentum of the show had stalled between moving from Xbox to YouTube. MMO video games and World of Warcraft had dipped in popularity. The show released months later than it should have because I didn’t have the bandwidth to make it faster. All those factors impacted the fans. And views. Which in turn, made it hard to ask someone to fund a seventh season at a price point that had become unrealistic in the “Everyone has a web series in their garages now!” market.

The project had started to wind down.

Problem was, I had focused myopically on
The Guild
for six years. My work was my life. Conversations at parties I attended during those years went something like this:

“Hey, Felicia! Haven’t seen you in a while!”

“Yeah, I’ve been working.”

“You’re the hardest-working person I know.”

“I know!”

“Seen any movies?”

“No.”

“Any TV?”

“Not really.”

“Have you checked out my new web show?”

“No. But I’m finishing a new season of
The Guild
! It’s great, Codex goes to—”

“Sorry to interrupt, I have to get a drink.”

I understood. I thought I was a total bore, too.

Work-play balance is, in retrospect, something that can EASILY
get out of whack. Especially if you’re self-employed, you never turn it off. Your fate is in your own hands, so you can’t let up.
Taking a weekend away for your birthday? Is your present to yourself RUINING YOUR LIFE?!
I don’t think I could have achieved what I did with
The Guild
if I didn’t have an insane-woman drive, but I made the mistake of transferring my self-worth wholly and completely. I was so excited that I’d found fulfilling work that I BECAME it. Felicia Day WAS
The Guild
.

There wasn’t a day or night for six years where I wasn’t obsessed with my show.
Let’s see what people are thinking on Twitter. And Facebook and Tumblr. Then I’ll check the forums. Yikes, we’re due for another music video, better start writing. Damnit, I forgot to send out the newsletter. And did that contract for the DVD close yet? Why is the website down?!
On and on and on. When it looked like the show might end for good, you’d think I’d have been ecstatic. “Yeah! Mojitos for a year!” Instead, I panicked. Because I was facing a world where there’d be nothing of ME left.

That anxiety, plus the stress from working too hard on my start-up, pushed me to the edge of my own mind. I know that sounds after-school-special dramatic, but seriously, guys, I lost it. Big-time.

It wasn’t the first time I’d struggled with depression and anxiety. At the height of
The Guild
success in 2010, after season three and our viral “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar” music video, I sat down to write the next season and cried for four months straight. The pressure of everyone’s praise got to me. Not in a “Wow, they like what I did! Let’s do more!” way, but in a “Wow, they like what I did. People are expecting great things now. I don’t know what to give them to top it. Let me curl up and die now, please!” way.

I love it when people tell me I’m doing the wrong thing, or that something isn’t possible, or just straight dismiss me. That lights my
fire in a perverse way, like a two-year-old who deliberately touches the hot stove after you tell them not to. But compliment me or expect something big? That’s the perfect way to destroy my confidence. There’s a crazy people pleaser inside me screaming,
They won’t like you if you mess up. You set the bar too high. They’re all waiting for you to fail! And you’re definitely going to. Good luck, stupidhead!

I gave myself horrendous writer’s block and almost ended the show because of my depression. Season four got written, but the ugly way, like too many layers of nail polish piled on top of each other. I’d start writing, then throw everything out and start from scratch. Over and over again. (Any writing book will tell you this is the WORST THING TO DO. I’ll reinforce it here: don’t do that.) Every time I’d get halfway through the script, I’d panic.

I don’t know what Bladezz is doing here, I don’t think the storyline makes sense. I’ll have Codex get the job instead. But that breaks my whole outline. What do I do now? I don’t have any ideas!

Commence three days of sobbing.

After a while, I was too paralyzed to decide anything at all. I woke up every single morning filled with dread, knowing I was going to
have to sit down at my laptop and fail again. It’s hard to understand how someone can get so incredibly depressed about the act of typing letters together, but I did it! That Stay Puft Marshmallow of Doom hovered over me for months. I destroyed a keyboard with my tears once. No joke: the left set of keys just stopped working. Okay, it was a combo of snot and tears and some Doritos dust, but same difference. Anxiety bled over into every aspect of my life (it wouldn’t be the last time; hello, last Thursday!), and I had to be coaxed through the process by gentle and understanding friends.

Eventually, I got a version of the script done, and others around me helped me make it better. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t the best season, but we got through. And the year after, I wrote our fifth and BEST season in just ten days on vacation in Hawaii. So . . . that turned out better. (My inner muse loves them mai tais!)

Fast-forward three years, that same “You can’t do it!” spirit returned with a vengeance.
Hey, are you feeling happy or confident? Let’s fix that!
It was spring of 2012, in the middle of the Geek & Sundry launch, and amongst THAT storm of learning-curve ridiculousness, Kim and I were locked in months-long negotiations with
The Guild
cast to return the next season. I couldn’t start writing the script with the possibility I would have to eliminate one of the main characters if one decided not to return. That put me, even before lifting my pen, into a state of panic.