The Journey So Far/Chapter 9: Year of New Beginnings (2018)

2017 came and went. I was still sick with my stomach issue going into the new year. What a great way to start. This year marked a shift in my life *(as if there weren't shifts before).* A few note-worthy events happened in my life during 2018. First off, going back to my illness. After tests, doctors, and taking medicine to help ease my pain, we still were never able to figure out why or how I got the illness. With that, I decided to take a little better care of myself by trying to eat healthier and trying to work out. Both tasks have been a struggle for me, even to this day, but I try to stay up on it as best I can because I feel that without knowing what caused nausea, I'm assuming it was because of a poor diet and lack of exercise. Over time I managed to tame my nausea episodes and now they were happening less frequently. I was able to start getting out of the house, hanging with friends again, and getting back to my personal projects.

In terms of projects, I remember this year being extremely hard. Attsri Studios was not performing well. In fact, I was putting more money into it than I was putting out. People were still watching the GojiFan93 channel even though I wasn't uploading any more content. I was continuing to use my popularity to help showcase my Attsri projects. Two big projects were the straw that broke the camel's back. At this point, I was already frustrated at how my old channel seemed to be looming over me no matter what I did. I had this fear that people would only see me as GojiFan and not Chris. I felt trapped into doing something Godzilla related and anything else would be considered a creative failure. I wasn't mentally healthy with that. Then these two projects I was leading didn't help.

The first one was a sequel to a series I did on the GojiFan93 channel called, *"Kaiju Fantasy Battles!"* I was making season 2 and it was going to showcase many different animators from the Godzilla community. I made a GoFundMe to help fund the project so that I could pay the animators for their hard work. During the live stream, it did not go as well as I hoped. I didn't make my goal, which made it hard to fund the project. Things were not looking good.

The second project was a comic book called *"Kaiju Horizon".* This was an original idea I had since 2016. As you know, the series had a chaotic development and now has been rebranded to *"Emergence of Monsters"* which was released in February of 2021. For context though in 2018, it was supposed to be a comic book and I made a Kickstarter for this project. I needed the funds to help pay my co-writer at the time, an artist, and other bills that would come from this project. I needed $5,000 to fully fund the first volume. I only made $500. The Kickstarter failed and I completely lost it. With the combination of my unhealthy mindset on Attsri Studios, two failed projects that I was really excited about, and living in the shadow of GojiFan93, I felt backed into a corner with no way out.

I can't fully remember how I came to the decision, but I think back that I was so frustrated with everything creatively, I thought I was washed up and done. I decided that I do honestly still regret it to this day. I deleted everything. Without any warning, I told my viewers the GojiFan93 channel will be deleted in September of this year. Attsri Studios was shut down and deleted, season 2 of Kaiju Fantasy Battles was canceled, and I left the Kaiju Horizon team. At the time I honestly thought this was the best thing for me. It caught everyone by surprise. I thought for sure I was done with content creation.

On a side note, there was one shining event that happened creatively. Remember my team, Kenshin Studios? We managed to produce close to an hour-long feature that was a final chapter in our Godzilla fan fiction series. We went to G-Fest 2018 to premiere it at the film festival. To this day, I am still with this team and I wouldn't have it any other way.

From here, I took a good look at myself and asked, *"What else would I do in life?"* An idea popped into my head. I always had a love for animals and my parents constantly said I would make a good Veterinarian. As soon as I thought that, I got excited. I thought that this could be the new beginning I was looking for. Something completely different from what I thought I would do as a career. My illness was under control, so I was able to go back to work. I went to my local vet clinic and put in an application. In just a few days I got the job as a Kennel Tech. This meant that my job was taking care of the dogs that were staying in our "Doggy Day Care" department. I was happy again. I could be with animals all day and I felt accomplished. A feeling I had not felt in a while. This piqued my interest in becoming a Vet Tech and working in the hospital. With a completely new outlook, I left behind the entertainment life. The rest of 2018 was good, and I was getting closer to having to the full happiness that I felt back in 2012.

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