Danger: High Potency

An Animator’s Guide to Burning Out

Photo by César Hernández on Unsplash

I had been animating for nearly ten years at that point, working on commercials and video games and so many other wacky projects that nobody should have ever paid me to make. But all I ever wanted to do was make movies. I wanted an audience to walk out of the theater before my name scrolled by in the credits. I wanted to do work that made you feel something like Nicole Kidman said in that silly AMC ad. I would have done almost anything to make a movie for her to introduce on that huge silver screen. Nicole Kidman said that movies are magic, and she was right. They are. I wanted to make magic.

So when I finally got a call from one of the best studios in the world to come and help them with a film, I was ecstatic. I quit my job the next day, packed up a duffel bag, and started my dream job on the opposite coast less than two weeks later — my magic moment.

After nearly a decade of focusing every single day on my one goal of animating movies, I finally made it. I wasn’t going to waste it. I threw myself into the work, and I worked hard. Overtime was normal at that particular studio, and I started working some rather aggressive hours. I was handling it. Though that’s what I always told myself when I started burning out. As an animator, burnout is often just a part of the job.

Unfortunately, since I left my entire life behind when I upped and moved across the country, I didn’t have any social support system to help me handle that amount of work. I didn’t have a group of close friends I could meet with on weekends or for a late-night dinner when I finally got off for the day. I didn’t have any hobbies I could quickly jump back into in a new city. All of my talented new friends were at my job. They were working right there with me, 70, 80, sometimes 90 hours a week. Enablers.

My enablers were great.

They were so nice and talented. Some had been around long enough that they literally invented my job. They were all so driven, and I just wanted to feel like I belonged. I needed to feel worthy of sharing that space with them. So I got to work early. I stayed late. I earned enough money from overtime in just two months to buy a new car in cash. Public transit was too slow; I needed that car to get to work at all hours of the day. Saturdays disappeared in my cubicle, and Sundays were for sleeping straight through until Mondays.

It didn’t seem so horrible at the time. Burning yourself out never does. An addict always has that confidence that things are fine; they can stop anytime, just one more late night before taking a break.

But then two of my closest friends from New York came to visit, and they brought a foolish amount of edibles to share.

I had never done edibles before, but when I got off work that night, they gave me a tiny little brownie that was only labeled as DANGER: HIGH POTENCY (I’m sure the pun was intended.)

And you know what? It turned into a wonderful Tuesday night. We laughed, we caught up on each other’s lives, and we ordered a bit too much food off Doordash. It felt so good to get away from the computer and talk again with people who had real lives outside of their jobs.

Unfortunately, when I woke up the next morning, I was the highest I’d ever been in my entire life. Listen, I started smoking weed in middle school. But that’s a story for another time. The point is, I’ve been getting stoned for just about as long as I can remember. But that morning was different. I was so baked I couldn’t stand up. The ceiling was spinning, and my bed felt like an old rope bridge made out of Jell-O. Danger, high potency.

I was so high that I could hear the sunlight, but the sad thing was I felt like I still had to go to work.

Calling in sick didn’t even cross my mind.

We had a legitimately high-profile director coming to the office that day to work with us, one-on-one, on his movie. This guy was the big-time. A-list. THE master of big explosive blockbusters. A director who wasn’t afraid to yell at you for ruining his movie. I hadn’t met him yet, and I couldn’t mess it up. I couldn’t be late; I couldn’t miss such a monumental day in my career.

I melted out of bed and turned on the shower. And that’s when the brownie REALLY hit me. My legs were cotton candy dissolving in the water. I was definitely too high to go to work. After what felt like a solid thirty minutes lying on the shower floor, I crawled back into bed and fell asleep. No email to the studio, no phone call to my producer, nothing.

You know those days when you are so exhausted that you fall asleep on the couch, but twenty minutes later you snap awake and think it’s already the next morning, so you panic and start getting ready for the day? I jumped awake like that. My eyes were tabasco, but at least my legs were somewhat solid again. I had to get to work.

I stuck to the shadows once I got there. I was Batman, only moving when people weren’t looking. I had to pass teams of security guards, scan my very official badge at a minimum of three doors, and walk past the kitchen that normally had free, stale donuts but for some reason had a mountain of free In-N-Out cheeseburgers that day. If there is one thing that artists love more than a livable salary and healthcare, it’s free food. The kitchen was swarming with artists and animators and actual pioneers of the industry. I shouldn’t have risked any of those people seeing me, but Batman was hungry. I must have looked like a lunatic, sliding around the kitchen with my face to the wall, eyes closed, reaching between a group of people talking about how the director brought lunch for everyone before grabbing a burger and scampering away like a dog with a bone (or a far-too-high animator with a cheeseburger).

I didn’t even know what time it was. I did know the cheeseburger was cold, and I could already hear our big-time director walking around to all the animators’ desks. His private gaggle of producers and assistants giggled anytime he said anything at all. They were little puffs of hair and hats that bounced around my cubicle, circling me like the shark in Jaws.

A message from our producer popped up on my screen: “Mr. Big Time is coming by your desk next. Be Ready!” I couldn’t have been any less ready. I made a serious mistake, and I should have just run home and crawled back in bed before anyone knew I was ever there.

I stood up to look for an exit, but all I saw was the director doing a somersault a few cubicles away. (Seriously.) I was doomed. Why did he have so much energy? Who does a somersault, as an adult at work, for no reason at all? And why didn’t anyone over there say anything about it?

Another message from our producer: “Got held up. You’re next!” I wanted to ask if I had to do any gymnastics with him when he got around to me. I had never met any director before, let alone a famous one. Was that normal? But then I realized I didn’t even have my shots open to work on. Now, I don’t know if you’ve worked in an animation studio before, but it’s not uncommon for some shots to take over thirty minutes just to open. There was no time!

“On our way!” The ceiling started spinning again. The sharks circled. They smelled like Starbucks and In-N-Out as they laughed past my desk and kept going down the hall.

“Sorry. He stepped out for a phone call. You’re still next!”

At least I had a few more minutes to finish my burger and open one of my shots. Just as I took another bite, a hand appeared above me. Floating in that dark space above my head, fingers splayed, arm connected to a body I couldn’t see behind the wall of my cubicle. I couldn’t process what was happening. Honestly, I still can’t process that happening. I froze, mouth open, burger in hand.

Thinking back, I probably should have reacted to that hand in any way at all. Maybe on another day I would have screamed at seeing that hand, or slapped it, or stood up shocked that someone was reaching way too close to the opened ketchup packets littered over my keyboard. But no, I stayed perfectly still as that hand reached down and grabbed a Captain America figurine off my desk and disappeared again over the cubicle wall. I stood up and saw the director scurrying away with it. (Seriously.)

“Sorry, he wanted to use that to show something to Lucas. Heading to your desk soon!”

And for the next six hours, I was the “next artist” on his list. And for the next six hours, I sat there terrified that all my dreams were about to disappear. That I had made a big mistake and my whole life was about to come crashing down, and what do you even say to a big-time Hollywood director when you meet them anyway? “Hello, sir. Love your movies. Films, I mean. Um, by any chance, could you give me that Captain America back? Please? Oh, what’s wrong with my eyes? No, no, they’re definitely not red. It’s so dark in here. How could you even tell? No, there’s no reason why I’m sitting on the floor. Do you know if there are any more cheeseburgers?”

Six entire hours. And then, just as covertly as I had entered the office, the director disappeared down the hallway; his flock of laptop-wielding gigglers followed.

“Sorry, he ended up working the entire day with Lucas. Thanks for this.” My producer said as he dropped Captain America back on my desk.

Six hours of stress. Six hours of anxiety. Six nightmare hours sitting in the dark, staring at new messages every five minutes telling me to be ready. Be ready. Be ready. Be ready. Be ready. For. Six. Hours. While. I. Was. Still. So. Insanely. High.

I ran home earlier than I had gone home in months. It was already dark out, but my friends were still asleep on my couch.

And do you know what I learned? Not that drugs are bad and you shouldn’t go to work high. No, no. I realized that working so much and treating your job as the only important thing in your life is obviously unhealthy. Those of us with creative careers need to stop working all of the time. We need time to decompress and recharge. We need time to live our own lives and find our own stories to tell. It’s okay to be too sick or tired, or even too baked to be professional sometimes. How could we ever make Nicole Kidman proud if all we ever did was work?

So take a day off. Call your friends. Lay down in the shower. Stop working so much damn overtime, and stop enabling others to do it too.

And please, if the brownie is labeled DANGER: HIGH POTENCY, think of me when you eat it.