Thanks For Letting Me Take a Mental Health Break
When I was a staff writer for The A.V. Club and then The Dissolve the idea of striking out on my own and becoming a full-time freelance writer never even occurred to me. That’s because I thought, not without reason, that I would NEVER be able to exist outside a system where I had the security of benefits and a salary and more conscientious writers to edit me and save me from my propensity for sloppiness and typos.
But I also nursed a strong conviction that I wouldn’t be able to hack it as a freelance writer because it involves constantly courting rejection and failure. I feared that I did not have the thick skin necessary to handle pitches getting rejected or columns cancelled.
Being a freelance writer requires a broad and impressive skill set that I did not possess so I clung to the relative safety and security of my full-time positions with The Onion and Pitchfork partially out of fear.
Now that I have been freelancing full-time for eight years I think I can safely say that I have NOT been able to cut it as a freelance writer. I couldn’t be prouder of this site, or the books that have come from it, or Travolta/Cage or even my new Substack newsletter Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas but individually and collectively they’ve allowed me to make about 60 percent of what I need just to barely get by and every year I have fewer Patreon patrons and less and less income from Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place.
I’m broke. I’m exhausted. I feel like I will never get out of the massive hole I find myself in.
And this is me AFTER a two week mental health break! You should have seen me when things were REALLY difficult! I kid, but not really.
One thing that I DO have is a wonderful readership here at the Happy Place, a core group of readers who come to this site every weekday to have intelligent conversations and interact pleasantly and generally make me feel like I’m doing something worthwhile and valid with my life and my career.
It’s because of these beautiful, kind and empathetic readers and patrons that I felt like I could go on a mental health break without my readers abandoning me.
I was abandoned by my mother as a baby and again in my early twenties when I explicitly sought out a relationship with her that quickly became impossible.
I have never gotten over this fear of abandonment and sense that I have to keep people entertained and amused and understood or they will abandon me.
Thank you for letting me take time off. I still have pretty much ALL of the same massive, seemingly insurmountable problems that I had before I went on the break but things don’t look QUITE as impossible. They still seem impossible, but not as much as before.
It is incredibly validating having readers tell me to take us much time off as I need, because they will be waiting patiently for my return.
Will I ever achieve my professional dreams and aspirations? Probably not! Things don’t look so good from here but the community that has built up around this website makes me feel like a success all the same.
I’ve created something special here even if I have done a terrible job of monetizing and promoting it. You guys give me the strength to get up every morning and keep failing. For that I will always be grateful.
Check out my newest literary endeavor, The Joy of Trash: Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop and get a free, signed "Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring book for free! Just 18.75, shipping and taxes included! Or, for just 25 dollars, you can get a hardcover “Joy of Positivity” edition signed (by Felipe and myself) and numbered (to 100) copy with a hand-written recommendation from me within its pages. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind collectible!
Or you can buy The Joy of Trash from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Trash-Nathan-Definitive-Everything/dp/B09NR9NTB4/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= but why would you want to do that?
Check out my new Substack at https://nathanrabin.substack.com/
And we would love it if you would pledge to the site’s Patreon as well. https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace