![\"meandako\"](\"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/meandako.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nI spent the next 6 years of my life working on this insane job, that from the first week seemed like it would be too much for me to handle. A big part of me thrives on being overworked so I never seriously considered quitting for that reason. It’s hard to pin down exactly why, but I started talking about quitting a lot around Season 4. Each season felt like it was going to be my last. I was pretty set on this idea that if the quality of my output was waning, I would do the show a service and leave. But with each season I’d look back and really feel like my material was improving; getting more interesting. I believe this is in part because I was reaching deeper and deeper into my “well” for fresh ideas. I think I’m using David Lynch jargon to describe where ideas come from. I think it’s a good analogy so I’m going with it…<\/p>\n
All the ideas I had in the beginning were right there on the surface of the well water. It was pretty easy to scoop up. Once that material was gone though, I felt obliged to dip further down, essentially holding my breath for longer and longer stretches of time. I was used to doing this in my personal work, but not on Adventure Time, which had a completely different effect on my psyche. Incorporating this method into Adv Time was born out of a respect for the audience, and I believe the other artists\/writers on the show have experienced a similar mental struggle to keep the material fresh. <\/p>\n
Maybe this sounds dramatic, but with each season, the level of exertion to produce original and thought provoking episodes (within the confines of a children’s show and within the corporate pipeline structure of a popular entertainment brand) was taking me to higher and higher levels of mental blowout. Not to mention the level of freedom the writers were being allotted by Cartoon Network, which weirdly contributed to a sense of personal pressure to make the most of every opportunity. Does that make sense? <\/p>\n
It got to some kind of fever pitch for me in Season 6 where I felt totally insane as a contributor of ideas. I think I had reached some level of emotional exhaustion that was so intense, it felt like I’d lost all mental defenses or sense of personal space. I think that’s how it was. I felt like a raw nerve that was tied symbiotically to the internet and to how I was judging my own work. This resulted in a slew of episodes I was involved in that were, at least on my end, trying to test the limits of what I could get away with on a kids television show, in terms of narrative structure, innuendo, spiritual struggle, and observations about human growth. The idea was, I would throw as many ideas at people as possible, with complete disregard for explaining anything or holding myself up to any notions of established 11 minute TV structural guidelines. I felt like if my head was breaking open, I would try to break open other people’s heads. I mean, basically it was my one chance to work on a hit show and do something that could be construed as “next level shit!”. That was how I saw it. I don’t know if other people saw it that way or not. That was the idea going on in my hermetic head, in the midst of an emotional collapse, that resulted in a panic attack where my girlfriend at the time had to pick me off the floor and drive me around to sleep in a strange house to help me feel safe? It’s a weird story. <\/p>\n
So that collapse thing happened right after finishing You Forgot Your Floaties<\/em>, which for me is the episode I’m most proud of formally, conceptually, and emotionally. Somehow, being allowed to write something that fucked up for TV, put this level of pressure on me that my brain couldn’t handle. I think because I was so keyed into internet response to my contributions, that it was causing this preemtive mental backlash in my head. At one point I equated it to the Eye of Sauron turning to me, and not being able to handle the weight and chaos of it. <\/p>\n I could write a whole book about my relationship with pop-culture TV audiences. It’s such a complex and crazy thing that I think about endlessly without coming to any definitive conclusions about it. The pop-culture audience is such a massive and powerful force of irrational chaos. It operates in a similar way to the stock market. People pretend like they understand it or can master it, but no one can master it. It’s both a force of good and evil, but assigning “good” or “evil” to it is maybe misleading. Essentially it’s like this powerful djinn that can make you rich or tear your house down for no predictable reason. You either decide to play with it, or leave it alone. If you have good luck with it, it’s also good to know when to step the away for a time. <\/p>\n So in part, that’s why I decided to step away for a time. I wanted to get back to my lifestyle of 6 years ago: Sitting in coffee shops and drawing my own stuff, with no one to answer to. Expressing on a pure, direct level to a an audience that is generally more receptive to experimental narrative, if only for the fact that it is much smaller. <\/p>\n When I complete Forming III I am going to re-assess where I’m at see how I feel about jumping into another paying gig. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I started work on Adventure Time at the tail end of Season 1. I was brought on as a storyboard revisionist and then bumped up to boarding by Season 2. Previously I was working as a towel washer at University of Penn’s gym. So if you’re interested in some half baked thoughts on leaving a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2544,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions\/2544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}