Midlife Crisis on Finite Earths

I turned forty this month.

Midlife. Mandated crisis time.

Despite that, and the title of this update, I don’t actually feel in crisis. At least, not in the midlife way. Instead, I feel it in the Mark Ruffalo Hulk way. There’s always a crisis. It’s been inside of me all along.

Maybe because of that, I’ve been able to reach this milestone without the stereotypical midlife crisis panic. That feeling of dread that you’ve spent your whole life doing something you were never meant to be doing. The realization that you’re running out of time and you need to make a change, even if it’s a superficial one. The near constant anxiety that comes from all of that.

It’s hard to start feeling something when you’ve already been feeling it to varying degrees your whole life. That said, in forty years I’ve found ways to manage the dread, hold the feelings of crisis in place and keep them static. In those moments, I can appreciate where I’m at. I have plenty to be thankful for, and when I take stock, I’m proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish up to this point, both personally and professionally.

In just a few months, I’ll have been working as a graphic designer in the publishing and entertainment industries for twenty years. It’s a significant amount of time. That’s half my life. Two decades. An entire Dafne Keen. It’s a stretch of time that feels all the more consequential when I start to consider the mileage.

I was still in college when I started working professionally. In my junior year, as part of a design class focused on projects for real-world clients, I created an ad design for the 48th Annual Grammy Awards that CBS adapted and used to promote the event. It was a very early 2000s design. I’m proud of it, but also, don’t look it up. That project led to my first professional contacts in the industry, as well as a handful of freelance jobs. At the same time, I started an internship with Top Cow Productions, a small comic book publisher based in Los Angeles. Before too long, I was also taking on freelance work in their editorial and design departments. The first thing I was ever paid to do in comics was set balloon placements for letterers, which isn’t something we really do anymore. Just one of the many ways the industry has changed in twenty years.

After graduating in 2006, I made the decision to pursue a master’s degree in writing. My freelance design work had slowed down, and at the time, graduate school felt like something I needed to do in order to stay competitive. My internship with Top Cow had come to an end, but I managed to transition into a part-time position as a Production Assistant. So, between that and some perfectly normal, not-at-all-predatory student loans, I was set for the next two years. Thankfully, 2007 through 2009 would be an uneventful period of time in the United States.

Enter the financial crisis. Enter the theme.

Everything’s fine.

For those two years, the Great Recession loomed outside my collegiate bubble. Friends who had just graduated were struggling to find work, and many of my professional contacts began to disappear. Companies were laying people off, cutting wages, and running skeleton crews. One of the agencies I had freelanced for closed down entirely. I’ve seen the impact of that time called “recession scarring.” People who enter the work force during a recession can feel the effect for years, even decades. At the time, I knew things were bad but I had no idea how bad. It’s embarrassing to admit, but it wasn’t until recently that I learned what was happening at the time was the most severe economic recession in the United States since the Great Depression.

The most severe… so far. We’ll get back there.

Anyways.

I was fortunate. I had graduate school and my job with Top Cow to hold my focus. For those two years I studied writing while developing as a graphic designer. Even with the impact of the recession, my goal was to find a job at a creative agency after graduating. While I enjoyed the work I was doing for Top Cow, it wasn’t exactly the thing I wanted to be doing. A job with a creative agency, managing big name clients and their brands, that felt like the thing I needed to be doing. It was the version of being a graphic designer that felt legitimate. The version my successful friends had achieved. An actual graphic designer.

By the time I earned my master’s degree, reality began to set in. My job with Top Cow wasn’t going to be enough to support living in Los Angeles on my own. My student loans were quickly turning into student debt. Anyone I had freelanced with at a creative agency didn’t seem to be around anymore. My inquiry emails either bounced back or vanished into the void. Job hunting felt futile. Like many other graduates at the time, I made the sobering decision to move back home and regroup.

Again, I was fortunate. I had parents who were supportive and gave me the bandwidth I needed to figure out what I was going to do next. Not everyone had that. At forty, I can now look back on that period of my life with genuine appreciation, knowing that it gave me more time with my family and the breathing room to figure out where my career was going next. Of course, at the time I hated moving back home. It felt like I had failed. It was purgatory. An inert state. A regression.

At home I applied to design jobs, worked part time, and discovered MMORPGs. It’s a story you’ve heard a million times before. After a few months and very little luck on the career front, a former colleague of mine, Mel Caylo, reached out with a freelance opportunity at a small graphic novel publisher, Archaia Entertainment. They were in need of a graphic designer, and what started as a freelance position quickly evolved into a full-time role as their Production Manager.

While Top Cow was where my career in comics began, Archaia was the foundation it was built on. We were a small publisher with few heads, so as you would expect, many hats got worn. For my part, I was handling all of the production work on our books while also providing graphic design for every creative, publishing, and marketing need there was. I had learned the fundamentals of print production and comic book design at Top Cow, but it was still early in my career and there was plenty I didn’t know how to do. At a small publisher, your impact is more immediate, more visible. If the company is going to succeed, you need to succeed. And if you’re a twenty-something year old early in your career, you need to figure out what you don’t know.

So, I learned by doing. I made mistakes, made adjustments, and over time found better and better ways to do things. I managed to figure it out. More importantly, I realized that print publishing and book design were the things I wanted to be doing. I didn’t have to end up at a creative agency, working with big name clients on their multimillion-dollar brands. I could be a book designer at, name a publisher, and that would be great. Even twenty years in now, when I think of myself professionally, I think of myself as a book designer first.

In 2013, Archaia was acquired by comic book publisher, BOOM! Studios. The timing of the acquisition was fortunate as I had been considering other opportunities both in and outside of comics. While I had accomplished a great deal at Archaia, I was eager to expand my responsibilities and grow as a manager. I wanted to lead a team and have a bigger impact. BOOM! Studios presented me with that opportunity. As manager of the Production & Design department, I was able to build and lead a team of talented designers. I developed guidelines for our production and design workflows, established branding standards, and mentored young designers.

Being a mentor, as narcissistic as it sounds, was my favorite part of the job. It was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done, but easily the most rewarding. With the support of my team, I was afforded the bandwidth to grow creatively. Over time, I defined my style, set new personal standards, and I even managed to create a few award-wining designs. It was a standout time in my career.

Then came 2020. The global pandemic. Crisis.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that we all experienced the pandemic differently. Considering the scale of it, the loses, and the inequalities that existed long before the world shutdown, the impact of the pandemic is likely to be very personal. I can only speak honestly about my experience, and for me, the pandemic was an inflection point. I managed to stay employed and safe throughout the lockdown, and being in that position afforded me the opportunity to consider something I had been missing.

I realized that in the narrative of my creative life, I wasn’t the central figure. Who I worked for and what I worked on were the focus. To some extent, that’s the nature of being a graphic designer. You are first and foremost a support role, bringing form and function to an idea that starts with someone else. And while that dynamic is part of why I enjoy graphic design, I had allowed it to completely take over my creative life. My professional work had been my sole creative outlet for years, and it was one where I was never completely in control. I had convinced myself that I didn’t have the bandwidth to create outside of my job. The pandemic changed that. Without a daily commute or places to be on the weekends, I suddenly had more free time. With that time came the desire, and then the need, to start creating for myself.

I started painting tabletop miniatures. It was a hobby that I had always wanted to pursue, and since I now had the time and the means, I decided to finally give it a try. It was important for me to choose something that was very different from what I was doing professionally. The difference made it easier to motivate myself, like I was tapping into a completely different creative reservoir. And as far as hobbies go, painting miniatures ticked all the right boxes for me creatively. It’s a hobby that rewards precision and patience. You have tremendous creative freedom, but you’re never really at risk of staring at a blank canvas. There’s no right or wrong way to paint, but there are all sorts of techniques, with varying degrees of difficulty, that you can learn and make your own. There’s also a whole welcoming community of hobbyists, painters, and gamers out there, willing to share their knowledge and support your creative journey. It’s a hobby that has been exactly what I needed, when I needed it.

Over the course of the pandemic, I would go on to work at two more comic publishers. As my career has progressed, I’ve managed to keep up with my own creative pursuits. It’s become a necessity, one that has made me a better creative professional and a better designer. Rising tides and all that. Over the last two years, I’ve had more creative bandwidth than ever. I’ve worked full time as an Art Director, kept up with my hobby, and taken on side projects for the first time in more than a decade. I’ve also started making art for myself, and with these news updates, I’ve started writing again.

I haven’t done those last two since college. Making art for myself in particular feels long overdue. While the pandemic motivated me to find new creative pursuits, it also redefined some of my beliefs and world views. Making art again has been a means of catharsis, a way for me to work through what I’m feeling amid the increasingly dire, Orwellian times we’re living in. Sharing my art with people, let alone offering it for sale, is somewhat new territory for me, but again it feels long overdue.

When it comes to writing, well, it’s too early to tell how I feel about it. Despite having a master’s degree in writing, it’s not something I think I’m particularly good at. Of all my creative outlets, writing is the one that comes least naturally to me. When I began to rework my professional brand and overhaul my website this year, I made the somewhat arbitrary, borderline erratic decision to include a monthly news blog. My rationale was simply that I should try writing again. No real motivator beyond the basic desire. Of course, these news updates give me a chance to share what’s going on with me as a professional and a creative, but they’re also simply a reason to write. A regular task to scratch that particular creative itch. Again, I’m not very good at it. I agonized over this first update and I imagine that feeling will be something of a norm going forward. But ultimately, it’s the act of writing that matters to me right now, not the result.

If nothing else, that’s the real takeaway I have from the last twenty years. If I’m going to create, I need to be doing it for myself first. Secure my mask, then the child’s. Projects and jobs and opportunities will all come and go, but I’m stuck with me for the long haul, so I have to allow myself to be a priority. In another forty years, when we’re bartering organs for water and the bones of our billionaires are floating aimlessly in space, I hope I can say that I’ve kept up with all of these creative endeavors. That I’ve kept myself as a priority.

A central figure. Still in crisis.