Original link: https://twitter.com/aguywhodraws/status/967899600488038400
"WHO WANTS TO HEAR A CRAZY STORY AND MAYBE LEARN A LESSON?! It's a long one, so bear with me...
On Season 1 of Wabbit (Now "New Looney Tunes"), I was still a very green storyboarder, and I wanted to prove my worth, so I put in a lot of extra effort and time to make my shows better. I'd work extra hours (unpaid), stay late and practically animate shots so there was enough information for the overseas animators to work off of. I'd even try to clean up my boards so that I wasn't dropping a ton of work on the already-swamped board clean-up people.
After a year, I was exhausted. I was spending most of my time in the studio so I wasn't eating or sleeping well, and my immune system was in really bad shape. I got sick a lot more, but I worked through it because I knew the work needed to be done. And on top of that, I didn't tell anyone how I was feeling. My director, my co-workers, my roommates, not even my girlfriend at the time. I wanted to prove that I was a hard, diligent worker, so I powered through. At one point I got a very high fever, collapsed in the parking lot and had a bit of a breakdown in my car. I couldn't drive so my friend drove me home. The next morning, not wanting to bother anybody, I walked 2 miles to the studio to pick up my car, and ended up staying a few extra hours to work on my board. Whether it was delirium, stubbornness or stupidity (looking back it was definitely all three), I did it.
At the end of the season, we had no idea if we were gonna get a season 2 pickup, so after a whole year of making solely Bugs Bunny shorts, for the last episode they wanted to do one with Daffy, and they assigned it to me. Daffy's my favorite Looney Tunes character, and we were gonna make him the classic screwball Daffy that I loved most, so despite being so tired and the fact that I was told I had a bit of a shorter schedule than usual (3 weeks instead of 4), I was excited to take it on. Still semi-recovering from my fever, I started working on the board. But soon after, I caught a virus called "herpangina", which is a lot like hand, foot and mouth disease. The most prominent symptom of it is that your mouth and throat is completely covered in blisters. Imagine that every surface of your mouth outside of your teeth is covered in canker sores. Tongue, underside of tongue, cheek, gums, uvula, throat...everywhere. It was painful to swallow, drinking anything that wasn't lukewarm was excruciating, and eating ANYTHING was next to impossible. So on top of recovering from a fever, I wasn't eating or drinking for days. After 4 days I could finally eat Jell-O because it was soft and slimey enough to pass through my mouth and throat without irritation, but there's still little to no nutritional value in Jell-O. I was as close to a zombie one can be without being dead, but the board needed to be done... so for the days leading up to my 2-week rough pitch, I was trudging way, stopping every few minutes to spit blood into my garbage can.
The day of the pitch arrives, and at this point my directors know about my mouth sores and they offered to pitch the cartoon in my place, but I was too stubborn and proud to let them. If this was possibly gonna be my last time live pitching a cartoon, I wanted to do it no matter what. So right before the pitch, I rinsed my mouth with a numbing mouthwash, went into the board room and began the pitch. Two minutes in, the mouthwash wore off and the pain was back. Doing Daffy's lisp and Porky's stutter with a mouth full of sores is no picnic. But the pitch went well. Immediately after getting notes, I ran to the bathroom and vomited blood. I was done.
I went to the doctor and he said I was in pretty bad shape. He advised me that even though my last day was only a few weeks away, I should put in a notice to leave now and take a few months off to recover. And on top of that, remove any other outside stresses from my life, including moving out of my current apartment to get a place of my own, changing my diet and to not exert myself as much as possible. I was conflicted, but he was right, and I did all those things. My board was half-done, but thankfully my friend David "Pez" Hofmann went over my rough board and made that cartoon just shine. The short is called "Porky's Duck-livery Service", and it's probably available to watch online somewhere if you're curious enough to look for it. Apparently it was so well-received that when the show WAS approved for another season, they wanted to do a lot more Daffy/Porky shorts, and open things up for other classic characters too. I was out of work for almost 5 months, but eventually I was back to normal and jumped back to the fray again, getting hired back onto Season 2 the following year. Since then, in regards to work, I've learned how to pick my battles. I don't try to over-accomplish, I just work within my means. I've learned to let things go, and to trust that the people around me, the people I work alongside every day, will do an amazing job taking on my work after I'm done with it. And I make sure to enjoy my time AWAY from the studio, to find a nice balance between work and leisure to keep me happy and healthy.
I learned a lot from that experience, the hard way. Working myself to that degree was not only harmful to my health, but it affected a lot more in my life. By not communicating to the ones I was closest to or seeking help, trust was frayed, if not totally broken with some. I missed out on a lot of things I really wanted to do, and it actually made my job, which was something I loved, not enjoyable anymore. Overworking myself did nearly irreversible damage to my body, and changed my entire outlook on life, as well as people's perceptions of me. I was stupid, but very, very lucky.
The big lesson I learned was that, even though your intentions might be good, overworking yourself is the worst thing you could possibly do, because in the end, you wear yourself down to the point where, among other things, you're not doing the best work you could be doing, so you end up where you didn't want to end up in the first place. People need breaks, and time to rest, and your co-workers and employers understand that too. And you should not make your job the most prominent thing in your life. You only live once. Appreciate life, and enjoy it, because you may not get another chance at it."
