Powder
05-25-2010, 05:31 PM
This excerpt, taken from Peter Laird's most recently posted blog entry, is seemingly the true, saddening reason as to why he sold the TMNT property (though not directly noted as such). I had already emphasized with his stance but I had never imagined how truly grim & dare I say, 'heart-wrenching' it is.
In short, in the first half of this blog he states that he started to update his family photo albums by bringing them into the digitial age. He was nostalgic but curiously not as much as he had expected...
Read the rest here: http://plairdblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/things-change.html
"But what COMPLETELY blindsided me -- what I've been calling my "epiphany" -- was the rush of feeling, of clarity, that hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks one night about two weeks into the project. I suddenly realized how emotionally blocked I had been for many years, especially the last five or six.
There are many reasons for this, as I have realized through further thinking and analysis. A great deal, perhaps the largest chunk of it, comes from the Turtle years. I have often said to Jeannine that through those years, I very often felt like a square peg in a round hole, at least as far as the business end of things. It wasn't so bad when it was just me and Kev putting together our little comics and self-publishing them out of our living rooms -- that I could handle without many problems. But when the major licensing stuff hit in 1987… that was a whole different story.
We went from being two guys having fun with our comics to those same two guys trying to hold onto the reins of a runaway licensing and merchandising success. Piles of contracts, meetings with lawyers, hiring new people to make our business work -- this was all new to us, and we were learning as we went. And in short order, we discovered the wonderful world of parasites.
It is a sad fact of life that money can make people do weird things. I will freely admit that it's made me do some not-terribly-well-advised things over the years. I think Kevin would probably say the same. That's bad enough, when YOU are doing something dumb with YOUR money. But when creeps and jerks start coming out of the woodwork wanting to do THEIR dumb things with YOUR money, the crap level goes up precipitously. From a local politician blithely saying publicly that we should just donate six million dollars to the local schools, to the total stranger asking me for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars so that he could buy a local general store… it got pretty weird and disconcerting.
It was weird and disconcerting enough that I started making moves to protect myself and my privacy. Some of the things I did were common sense -- unlisted phone numbers, not advertising Mirage's street address, things like that. And they made a difference… they helped. But the other stuff…
What was the other stuff? Well, in short, it amounted to me slowly but surely, bit by bit, tiny increment by tiny increment, starting to draw away from people close to me, and from enjoyment of life itself. It was not intentional -- or at least, if there was any intention on my part, it was instinctive and unconscious. Slowly I built up emotional walls around me, distancing myself from many of those closest to me. Now, I'm not going to say I wasn't still close to these people -- I was. But there was a thickening, protective skin coming between us. (I'm tempted, somewhat, to say "a shell", but that might be too corny… and I'm not feeling particularly corny right now.)
There was -- and still is -- a physical manifestation of this protective covering, and I name it "stuff". What is this "stuff"? It's all -- or at least most -- of the things the Turtle money allowed me to buy. Toys, books, magazines, motorcycles, Segways, gadgets, computers, and on and on. It makes no rational sense that this "stuff" would protect me from anything… but humans are not always rational beings, no matter how much we desire to be. I continued to pile up this stuff around me, often literally -- anyone who has seen the two rooms in our house which I have taken over for my use has seen the truth of this. (This must change -- in fact, IS changing… but that's getting a little ahead of myself.)
The thing that really nailed me to the floor with my "epiphany", the thing that has made me feel like a total heel, the thing that has reduced me to a sobbing wreck on more than one occasion in the last week, was the realization of just how much this walling off of myself emotionally had affected my relationship with my wife, Jeannine. It crushed me. I am starting to come to grips with it now, but… it is very difficult.
The especially aggravating, insidious aspect of this situation is that I didn't even realize it was happening… and it's been happening for at least the last five years, and probably even longer than that -- more like ten or twenty years, I'd say. In fact, if someone had asked me the day before I experienced my "epiphany" if I loved my wife, I would have said "Yes, of course!" And it would have been true -- I love my wife. I've loved her since long before she became my wife, in fact in a remarkably short time after we'd started dating. She is a beautiful, kind, generous, funny, creative person. (And she makes GREAT raspberry muffins.) Like any couple, we've had times over the course of our relationship which have not been as rosy as other times. But I can state unequivocally that I have always loved her.
The big problem is that, until this past week, I had no idea just how much of that protective barrier I had let grow between us, and how much that had dulled and reduced my ability to let her know how I felt about her. It galls me to see now exactly how much time has gone by with this barrier in place.
I have spent much of this last week talking with Jeannine and spending more time with her on a daily basis than I have in a long time, trying to let her know exactly what kind of change has occurred in me. And it is an enormous change. One sign of it -- and this is going to perhaps sound a little mundane to some of you -- is that for the last five days, we have gone to bed at the same time. Or, to be more precise, I have adjusted my sleep schedule to hers. This comes after many years of a staggered schedule, wherein Jeannine would go to bed around 9:30 or 10, and I would stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning. (For a few years, it was even more extreme -- I'd stay up until four or five AM.) Originally, it was a vital ingredient to my staying sane and getting my work done -- the quiet of that time at night helped defray the angst of those crazy Turtle days back in the late 1980's and 1990's. I could work without having to take phone calls about this deal or that.
But… for a long time, it
hasn't
been
necessary.
And yet, I stuck with it. I honestly could not, at this point, tell you exactly why I did -- except that perhaps it was a combination of ingrained habit, mixed with some of that unconscious self-protective impulse -- as if by having this time with no one around, no calls coming in, no demands on me, then nothing bad could happen. Perhaps at some time in the future I will fully comprehend why I did this and some other things.
At the moment, what matters to me is that I feel as if a great, previously- unknown (but still present and heavy) weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Just getting up at the same time as Jeannine this past week has given me a tantalizing glimpse of what I have been missing.
Things are changing.
This doesn't mean I'm going to start doing comics again, or finish Volume 4 of the TMNT series, or jump into any particular new art project any time soon. (Actually, I hope that last thing DOES happen, but I'll have to wait and see.) But the important thing to me is that -- to use the old Biblical phrase -- the scales have fallen from my eyes. I feel recommitted to my marriage, to Jeannine, in a way which I haven't consciously felt in a long time. The strength of these feelings is almost scary.
But I think I can deal with it.
Because for the first time in a long time, when I go to sleep at night, I am actually looking forward to the coming day. -- PL"
In short, in the first half of this blog he states that he started to update his family photo albums by bringing them into the digitial age. He was nostalgic but curiously not as much as he had expected...
Read the rest here: http://plairdblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/things-change.html
"But what COMPLETELY blindsided me -- what I've been calling my "epiphany" -- was the rush of feeling, of clarity, that hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks one night about two weeks into the project. I suddenly realized how emotionally blocked I had been for many years, especially the last five or six.
There are many reasons for this, as I have realized through further thinking and analysis. A great deal, perhaps the largest chunk of it, comes from the Turtle years. I have often said to Jeannine that through those years, I very often felt like a square peg in a round hole, at least as far as the business end of things. It wasn't so bad when it was just me and Kev putting together our little comics and self-publishing them out of our living rooms -- that I could handle without many problems. But when the major licensing stuff hit in 1987… that was a whole different story.
We went from being two guys having fun with our comics to those same two guys trying to hold onto the reins of a runaway licensing and merchandising success. Piles of contracts, meetings with lawyers, hiring new people to make our business work -- this was all new to us, and we were learning as we went. And in short order, we discovered the wonderful world of parasites.
It is a sad fact of life that money can make people do weird things. I will freely admit that it's made me do some not-terribly-well-advised things over the years. I think Kevin would probably say the same. That's bad enough, when YOU are doing something dumb with YOUR money. But when creeps and jerks start coming out of the woodwork wanting to do THEIR dumb things with YOUR money, the crap level goes up precipitously. From a local politician blithely saying publicly that we should just donate six million dollars to the local schools, to the total stranger asking me for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars so that he could buy a local general store… it got pretty weird and disconcerting.
It was weird and disconcerting enough that I started making moves to protect myself and my privacy. Some of the things I did were common sense -- unlisted phone numbers, not advertising Mirage's street address, things like that. And they made a difference… they helped. But the other stuff…
What was the other stuff? Well, in short, it amounted to me slowly but surely, bit by bit, tiny increment by tiny increment, starting to draw away from people close to me, and from enjoyment of life itself. It was not intentional -- or at least, if there was any intention on my part, it was instinctive and unconscious. Slowly I built up emotional walls around me, distancing myself from many of those closest to me. Now, I'm not going to say I wasn't still close to these people -- I was. But there was a thickening, protective skin coming between us. (I'm tempted, somewhat, to say "a shell", but that might be too corny… and I'm not feeling particularly corny right now.)
There was -- and still is -- a physical manifestation of this protective covering, and I name it "stuff". What is this "stuff"? It's all -- or at least most -- of the things the Turtle money allowed me to buy. Toys, books, magazines, motorcycles, Segways, gadgets, computers, and on and on. It makes no rational sense that this "stuff" would protect me from anything… but humans are not always rational beings, no matter how much we desire to be. I continued to pile up this stuff around me, often literally -- anyone who has seen the two rooms in our house which I have taken over for my use has seen the truth of this. (This must change -- in fact, IS changing… but that's getting a little ahead of myself.)
The thing that really nailed me to the floor with my "epiphany", the thing that has made me feel like a total heel, the thing that has reduced me to a sobbing wreck on more than one occasion in the last week, was the realization of just how much this walling off of myself emotionally had affected my relationship with my wife, Jeannine. It crushed me. I am starting to come to grips with it now, but… it is very difficult.
The especially aggravating, insidious aspect of this situation is that I didn't even realize it was happening… and it's been happening for at least the last five years, and probably even longer than that -- more like ten or twenty years, I'd say. In fact, if someone had asked me the day before I experienced my "epiphany" if I loved my wife, I would have said "Yes, of course!" And it would have been true -- I love my wife. I've loved her since long before she became my wife, in fact in a remarkably short time after we'd started dating. She is a beautiful, kind, generous, funny, creative person. (And she makes GREAT raspberry muffins.) Like any couple, we've had times over the course of our relationship which have not been as rosy as other times. But I can state unequivocally that I have always loved her.
The big problem is that, until this past week, I had no idea just how much of that protective barrier I had let grow between us, and how much that had dulled and reduced my ability to let her know how I felt about her. It galls me to see now exactly how much time has gone by with this barrier in place.
I have spent much of this last week talking with Jeannine and spending more time with her on a daily basis than I have in a long time, trying to let her know exactly what kind of change has occurred in me. And it is an enormous change. One sign of it -- and this is going to perhaps sound a little mundane to some of you -- is that for the last five days, we have gone to bed at the same time. Or, to be more precise, I have adjusted my sleep schedule to hers. This comes after many years of a staggered schedule, wherein Jeannine would go to bed around 9:30 or 10, and I would stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning. (For a few years, it was even more extreme -- I'd stay up until four or five AM.) Originally, it was a vital ingredient to my staying sane and getting my work done -- the quiet of that time at night helped defray the angst of those crazy Turtle days back in the late 1980's and 1990's. I could work without having to take phone calls about this deal or that.
But… for a long time, it
hasn't
been
necessary.
And yet, I stuck with it. I honestly could not, at this point, tell you exactly why I did -- except that perhaps it was a combination of ingrained habit, mixed with some of that unconscious self-protective impulse -- as if by having this time with no one around, no calls coming in, no demands on me, then nothing bad could happen. Perhaps at some time in the future I will fully comprehend why I did this and some other things.
At the moment, what matters to me is that I feel as if a great, previously- unknown (but still present and heavy) weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Just getting up at the same time as Jeannine this past week has given me a tantalizing glimpse of what I have been missing.
Things are changing.
This doesn't mean I'm going to start doing comics again, or finish Volume 4 of the TMNT series, or jump into any particular new art project any time soon. (Actually, I hope that last thing DOES happen, but I'll have to wait and see.) But the important thing to me is that -- to use the old Biblical phrase -- the scales have fallen from my eyes. I feel recommitted to my marriage, to Jeannine, in a way which I haven't consciously felt in a long time. The strength of these feelings is almost scary.
But I think I can deal with it.
Because for the first time in a long time, when I go to sleep at night, I am actually looking forward to the coming day. -- PL"