I Am Really Struggling With my Every Episode Ever Project
When I was diagnosed with autism, bipolar 2, and ADHD recently, I told the psychiatrist that there must be a mistake. I definitely had the Attention Deficit Disorder aspect of the condition, but I did not think of myself as hyperactive, probably because I can be so lethargic and devoid of energy.
The man then told me that for some people, hyperactivity manifests itself in taking on more work than they can handle and then melting down when an impossible situation proves predictably unfeasible.
That was me. Oh, sweet blessed Lord, was that ever me. I am, regrettably, a man of ideas. That is a good thing and a bad thing. I’ve had some very big ideas that turned out spectacularly well, like My World of Flops, Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and writing books about the surprising commonalities between Juggalos and Phish fans and “Weird Al” Yankovic’s life’s work.
However, those good decisions are all solidly in the past. I keep having big ideas, but they all seem to fail.
To cite a representative example, I became weirdly obsessed with the ridiculous hagiography Mank, so I decided to embark on “Crank and Mank” Month here at the Happy Place devoted to Fincher’s silly homage to the world’s greatest super geniuses and the Crank films.
I’m all about the juxtaposition of high and low culture, so the idea of combining the ultimate exercise in middlebrow respectability with an explosion of glorious trash appealed to me. Unfortunately, it did not appeal to anyone else.
I had my illustrator, Felipe Sobreiro, whip up some nifty artwork for the occasion, which was available as merch for subscribers.
Inside my weird, autistic, bipolar. ADHD brain Crank and Mank was an amazing idea that could do wonders for the site. Outside of my brain, unfortunately, Crank and Mank is a bizarre conceit with no mainstream or crossover appeal whatsoever. It didn’t even seem to appeal to my audience.
Does anyone have any Crank and Mank merch? Because I literally have never seen anyone wearing a tee shirt or hoodie with that image.
More recently, I discovered that Saturday Night Live would be celebrating its 50th anniversary late next year. I had planned on writing a book about the worst and weirdest hosts and episodes of Saturday Night Live.
When I saw the landmark anniversary looming, I became convinced that if I embarked on a time and labor-intensive journey where I watched every episode of Saturday Night Live and wrote books on its best and worst episodes, it would be so successful that I would be able to put everything else on hold and essentially devote two years to watching and writing exclusively, or at least overwhelmingly, about Saturday Night Live.
I was inexplicably encouraged by the sheer massiveness of the undertaking. Over the course of less than two years, I would watch something in the area of 1000 episodes of a famously uneven, sometimes unwatchable 90-minute-long television show and write seven books about the experience. There would be books about the best and worst, along with massive volumes devoted to each of the show’s five decades. There would be a book devoted to 1975 to 1985, 1985 to 1995, 1995 to 2005, 2005 to 2015, and finally, 2015 to 2025.
There was at least a method to my madness. Saturday Night Live has been a massive cultural force for half a century. It’s created more movie stars than any other television program, and it’s a show with particular appeal to members of my generation.
I was convinced that Every Episode Ever would do so well in its crowd-funding campaign that I’d be able to work less frequently on this website, Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas, my podcast, and my books.
That did not happen. I pulled a real choke job on the crowd-funding campaign when I didn’t notice that it had ended. It felt like the project had failed before it even began.
I was in a dilly of a pickle. For months and months, I’d stay awake after my family had gone to bed and watched ancient episodes of Saturday Night Live for a project I was convinced couldn’t fail.
Then it failed—spectacularly. I probably should have paid closer attention when I would giddily explain my Saturday Night Live idea to people and they would respond with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
My exuberance was irrational. My confidence and belief in myself and the project was shattered.
I’d created at least forty substantive articles about early episodes of Saturday Night Live. I love Saturday Night Live. I find the work interesting and rewarding, but the cold, hard truth is that Every Episode Ever will never be even a modest success.
When I launch an ambitious new project, it hits a wall early and never moves past it. If there’s any movement, it’s in the opposite direction. My columns, books, and ideas grow progressively less popular and lucrative.
I have a little over fifty paid subscribers for Every Episode Ever, the ongoing newsletter where I write up classic Saturday Night Live in order. That means that if I work really hard and do a fine job chronicling Saturday Night Live’s early years, then two years from now, I’ll have 47 paid subscribers and the next year, 43.
The Saturday Night Live project went from being a can’t-miss idea to being a DOA idea that can only hurt a career that is limping along as it is. It went from being my most commercial idea to my least commercial idea.
If you do the math, twenty-seven years into my career as a professional pop culture writer, I’m making about five dollars an hour writing and researching Saturday Night Live for Every Episode Ever. That’s slightly more than I made when I was 16 years old and a Blockbuster clerk in 1992.
From a cost-benefit analysis, it makes no sense to continue with the project. It won’t succeed, and it can’t succeed.
The Manic, ADD part of my brain dreams up impossibly ambitious ideas for me to throw myself into with total abandon. Then the saner parts of my mind have to turn implausible conceits into reality. That part is tough!
I now associate Saturday Night Live with failure, rejection, unpopularity, stupid mistakes born of my various neurological conditions, self-sabotage, and disappointment. That makes it difficult to muster up the energy to write up the remaining NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN EPISODES.
I hate giving up on an idea with so much promise, but if I were to keep pursuing it aggressively, I would be doing so out of pride and a stubborn refusal to accept that I’d failed.
I have failed. The crowd-funding campaign failed. I failed to get people excited about the project on social media. I failed to find a following on Buttondown or Substack.
Every day, I wake up feeling overwhelmed, broke, and behind. I wish I could start over and do things differently. That’s part of why I was excited about Every Episode Ever. It was an opportunity to start from scratch on a fun new project.
Holding onto Every Episode Ever ensures that I will remain forever behind, overwhelmed and frazzled for at least the next two years. So, while I am not completely giving up on Every Episode Ever, I think I will scale back to once a week. That seems more manageable.
The truth is that I would never have had time to realize the project as I initially conceived it without abandoning my family and work. Now I can focus on Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place, Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas, my books, and my podcast.
More importantly, I can spend time with my family. They’re great. I don’t feel like a failure as a father and a husband the way I do as a writer.
I’m not quite ready to give up on Every Episode Ever, so hopefully, it can live on in a new, dramatically scaled-back form.
Nathan needs teeth that work, and his dental plan doesn't cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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