Illustration by Andreas Hykade. Courtesy of Chris Robinson.

I’m scared. I feel things falling away. I’ve been here, comfortable, too long. Time to shake. Everything I’ve thought I’ve wanted has come to me. I wanted the festival, I got it. Then I wanted to write, I did it. I wanted to be write books, I did it. I wanted to write a column, so I did it. I wanted a son, a family, I got it. So why is it not enough? Why, once I reach these destinations do I want to pick up and leave again?

I don’t think I take it all for granted, but maybe in some deeper sense I do. And I don’t mean in some smug sense… it’s something far worse, in an existential sense. The days I waste getting no writing done, playing videogames, jerking off, scouring the Net for nothing. Then I stop and think, well shit man you had three books published this year. You programmed a good festival, wrote articles, spent a month this summer entirely with your son. What’s the problem? I take life for granted.

I’m two years shy of 40, still relatively young, but too old to fart around. Then again, does it matter? If there’s no god, no nothing… then this is all there is. That means there are no rules. I can do whatever I want and it don’t mean a thing in the end. None of this does, except now. Now is all we got. That’s a lot of pressure cause I don’t know ‘bout you but I don’t know what I want right now, always now.

I’ve always been scared to commit to life. Maybe that comes from being an unplanned birth… maybe the loss of the father… the never of my mother. Then the loss of my grandparents. But so be it. That’s over now. I have my family. It is everything really that I could want and yet I cannot grasp it. I am petrified of letting myself go because I know one day this and these will all be gone. Stop wanting, be?

The animation tent is shaped like a chapel. Animation has been a sanctuary for me, provided me with a space to find, cleanse, confess, define, lose and discover myself. Some days I feel it’s time to leave this tent, but then I think, why? Unlike the solid foundations of a church, this tent can be folded up, it can blow away, it’s temporary… it never stops moving. I can step in and out as I please. So, no, there will be no grand pronouncements, proclamations or promises. Nothing of the sort. Sorry.

What has all this narcissism been about (me, obviously! heh, heh)? Simple I guess. These past five years I’ve been using this space to try and figure out what animation means to me, to try and find out where I fit in… more importantly, to try and find out where animation fit into my life. And yes, ultimately, this journey was about me trying to find me. I’m not sure I have. I’m not sure we do. I do know, though, that I’m not now who I was then, and that I’m perhaps closer to paradise, to truth than I was five years ago. For that I’m thankful to me, and to you.

Chris Robinson is little more than a man. In his spare time he cares for the elderly. www.animationpimp.com.