I’m pretty hyped for Eldin Rings. I always wanted to play a Souls game but I tend to obsess over little things, within every aspect of my life. So a game like Souls will without a doubt take up time that I don’t have. Currently I finally have time, also my time management has gotten better and better over the years, so I’ve been slowly beating games I’ve had for 5 years. I also had to admit to myself that I was overworking myself and had to make room for more self care.
The mangaka of Berserk has passed, rest in power. He was overworked and it lead to health complications. This brought up the conversation of Tezuka and other artists suffering from exhaustion and artist burn out. More and more artists have been taking time off and putting their comics on hiatus. This is something that every artist should do, put their health first. Don’t succumb to the pressures of keeping up with demand and staying relevant on “social” media.
These recent events hit me closer than usual because I have been over working myself at the same time my wife and I have been extremely busy with a major thing we did (not sharing the details on that yet). I didn’t even know I was so overworked until my BPPV (which I didn’t know I had) got worse. I was doing really well keeping up with my weekly 1 page comic, but felt more and more tired and my dizzy spells ramped up. My wife put her foot down and told me to take a vacation. During this time off I looked back at everything I was doing and taking care of and was shocked I managed so much. For what???
Current society has us in this constant state of running and running. It’s a game that you shouldn’t really play, but on some level you must participate. Tezuka died trying to over achieve at this game, and he was huge. Imagine a small brand new indie creator trying to keep up with the likes of Tezuka. What does all of this have to do with Eldin Rings? The Souls games reminds me of Berserk, which is probably by design. In the Souls games, you keep dieing and dieing, but you learn and grow and get better. In real life you do the same thing, but perseverance is much more important. You need your health in order to keep that perseverance. Keep your health up. Pamper yourself, treat yourself, take care of yourself. The viewers, readers, hopefully supporters, will be there. If they are truly for you, they can wait.
Hopefully, with all of these artists finally taking back their power and taking their time off will make this sort of thing more normal. Maybe the consumers and fans will also realise these are people and not machines or a magic void just pumping out “content” (stop calling creative work content).