text: The Deletion of Myself
  
  That time I had a nervous breakdown and dreamt nightly of slashing my face with a straight razor while screaming, "DO YOU BELIEVE I NEED A BREAK NOW, GUYS?!"
  
  I was born anxious. My mom must have watched a horror movie marathon while I was in utero or something, because I freak out at loud sounds, driving at night scares me because all the lights make me feel like I'm inside a UFO, and I'm traumatized, never delighted, by things that are startling. (SCREW surprise birthday parties.) My biggest fears in life are to be locked in a department store after hours, or to be kidnapped while walking to my car at night and my body disposed of with a wood chipper. Clearly, you can understand how challenging REAL problems are for me, like being late to a lunch meeting. "I'm sorry, I couldn't find a parking spot. Where would you like me to shoot myself: through the face or heart?"
  
  It might be genetic, but it feels like I'm a stupid flouncy flower, destined to wilt at any second. I definitely didn't take that fact into account when I decided to dive in and create a multimillion-dollar entertainment company with absolutely no previous business experience.
  
  Classic Felicia.
  
  In 2011, Kim and I pitched YouTube the idea for a brand-new channel focusing on geek entertainment called Geek & Sundry. We went in armored with a bitchin' PowerPoint deck of all the cool shows we wanted to make. Even bought skirt suits to look official.
  
  "Let's get in there and get us some funding!"
  
  We high-fived like we were in some bro-comedy plotting to save our fraternity, then marched in to do businessing. And rocked our presentation.
  
  Afterward, YouTube selected our channel as one of one hundred it would invest in. It was awesome. I mean, all those years of acting like a secretary in commercials was about to pay off in running my own company, right? Uh... kinda.
  
  As much as I love creating things, the amount of work was, frankly crushing. As part of our deal with YouTube, we produced more than 420 videos in 2012 alone. More than sixty-two hours of content in a year. To put it in perspective, The Guild released one and a half hours of content in the same amount of time. A real television show releases ten to twenty-two hours a season. With a crew of up to a hundred to help.
  
  We had eight full-time people. Total.
  
  So the scale was... different.
  
  But I hung on, like a tiny four-year-old grasping the curved bars of a playground merry-go-round when someone's older cousin spins it too fast. YAY, THIS IS FUN, KINDA! Then the months rolled along. And as time passed, I started to realize, Holy crap. This "own-your-own-business" thing doesn't have an end point.
  
  The responsibilities of running a small company with huge ambitions shoved me squarely into areas I was not suited for. Like insurance liability coverage and an icky concept called "Management." Most of my time morphed from making things to supervising the making of said things. Kim and I had created The Guild by stretching ourselves as thin as possible to do everything. Perfect for a control freak like me. But in this new company, when I saw an employee doing something even slightly different than how I would have done it, I couldn't help it—I flipped.
  
  "She used the wrong font? But the video is due to be uploaded in an hour! She's a North Korean spy sent to destroy us, isn't she?!"
  
  It did NOT help that the skills I'd built up over the years didn't apply 100 percent to this new venture. Sometimes the opposite. Getting out from behind my computer and into people-meeting networking events was particularly jarring. Especially when it involved the advertising world, one of the places I had to spend a lot of time schmoozing, because it is the most backward, chauvinistic world I have ever encountered.
  
  I'll never forget the time in Las Vegas when a supremely powerful ad exec I was encouraged to "get to know" looked me up and down as I approached and said, "Nice dress. I'd love to see it off you."
  
  Um, hello. Nice to meet you, too?
  
  When we launched Geek & Sundry on Sunday, April 1, 2012 (April Fool's Day, oh irony!), we did it with a day-long livestream "Subscribathon!" We invited tons of guests, held virtual panels, giveaways, dance competitions, you name it. We did anything we could to fill twelve hours of programming. I hosted the entire time, and at one point, in hour eight, I was so loopy I punched a unicorn in the face. Thank goodness the unicorn didn't sue.
  
  The "Subscribathon!" was an excellent encapsulation of what that first year of running a business did to me.
  
  On the outside, from 2012 through 2013, I was on top of the world. Privately, I collapsed completely. I was trying to juggle too much (running Geek & Sundry, maintaining an acting career, keeping up with the electric bill to keep my cats cool, and remembering to call my grandma EVER). And sure, the overwork contributed to it, but the real thing that made my world fall apart was the realization that season six of The Guild, which we produced with Geek & Sundry, needed to be the last.
  
  The momentum of the show had stalled between moving from Xbox to YouTube. MMO video games and World of Warcraft had dipped in popularity. The show released months later than it should have because I didn't have the bandwidth to make it faster. All those factors impacted the fans. And views. Which in turn, made it hard to ask someone to fund a seventh season at a price point that had become unrealistic in the "Everyone has a web series in their garages now!" market.
  
  The project had started to wind down.
  
  Problem was, I had focused myopically on The Guild for six years. My work was my life. Conversations at parties I attended during those years went something like this:
  
  "Hey, Felicia! Haven't seen you in a while!"
  
  "Yeah, I've been working."
  
  "You're the hardest-working person I know."
  
  "I know!"
  
  "Seen any movies?"
  
  "No."
  
  "Any TV?"
  
  "Not really."
  
  "Have you checked out my new web show?"
  
  "No. But I'm finishing a new season of The Guild! It's great, Codex goes to—"
  
  "Sorry to interrupt, I have to get a drink."
  
  I understood. I thought I was a total bore, too.
  
  Work-play balance is, in retrospect, something that can EASILY get out of whack. Especially if you're self-employed, you never turn it off. Your fate is in your own hands, so you can't let up. Taking a weekend away for your birthday? Is your present to yourself RUINING YOUR LIFE?! I don't think I could have achieved what I did with The Guild if I didn't have an insane-woman drive, but I made the mistake of transferring my self-worth wholly and completely. I was so excited that I'd found fulfilling work that I BECAME it. Felicia Day WAS The Guild.
  
  There wasn't a day or night for six years where I wasn't obsessed with my show. Let's see what people are thinking on Twitter. And Facebook and Tumblr. Then I'll check the forums. Yikes, we're due for another music video, better start writing. Damnit, I forgot to send out the newsletter. And did that contract for the DVD close yet? Why is the website down?! On and on and on. When it looked like the show might end for good, you'd think I'd have been ecstatic. "Yeah! Mojitos for a year!" Instead, I panicked. Because I was facing a world where there'd be nothing of ME left.
  
  That anxiety, plus the stress from working too hard on my start-up, pushed me to the edge of my own mind. I know that sounds after-school-special dramatic, but seriously, guys, I lost it. Big-time.
  
  It wasn't the first time I'd struggled with depression and anxiety. At the height of The Guild success in 2010, after season three and our viral "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar" music video, I sat down to write the next season and cried for four months straight. The pressure of everyone's praise got to me. Not in a "Wow, they like what I did! Let's do more!" way, but in a "Wow, they like what I did. People are expecting great things now. I don't know what to give them to top it. Let me curl up and die now, please!" way.
  
  I love it when people tell me I'm doing the wrong thing, or that something isn't possible, or just straight dismiss me. That lights my fire in a perverse way, like a two-year-old who deliberately touches the hot stove after you tell them not to. But compliment me or expect something big? That's the perfect way to destroy my confidence. There's a crazy people pleaser inside me screaming, They won't like you if you mess up. You set the bar too high. They're all waiting for you to fail! And you're definitely going to. Good luck, stupidhead!
  
  I gave myself horrendous writer's block and almost ended the show because of my depression. Season four got written, but the ugly way, like too many layers of nail polish piled on top of each other. I'd start writing, then throw everything out and start from scratch. Over and over again. (Any writing book will tell you this is the WORST THING TO DO. I'll reinforce it here: don't do that.) Every time I'd get halfway through the script, I'd panic.
  
  I don't know what Bladezz is doing here, I don't think the storyline makes sense. I'll have Codex get the job instead. But that breaks my whole outline. What do I do now? I don't have any ideas!
  
  Commence three days of sobbing.
  
  After a while, I was too paralyzed to decide anything at all. I woke up every single morning filled with dread, knowing I was going to have to sit down at my laptop and fail again. It's hard to understand how someone can get so incredibly depressed about the act of typing letters together, but I did it! That Stay Puft Marshmallow of Doom hovered over me for months. I destroyed a keyboard with my tears once. No joke: the left set of keys just stopped working. Okay, it was a combo of snot and tears and some Doritos dust, but same difference. Anxiety bled over into every aspect of my life (it wouldn't be the last time; hello, last Thursday!), and I had to be coaxed through the process by gentle and understanding friends.
  
  Eventually, I got a version of the script done, and others around me helped me make it better. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't the best season, but we got through. And the year after, I wrote our fifth and BEST season in just ten days on vacation in Hawaii. So... that turned out better. (My inner muse loves them mai tais!)
  
  Fast-forward three years, that same "You can't do it!" spirit returned with a vengeance. Hey, are you feeling happy or confident? Let's fix that! It was spring of 2012, in the middle of the Geek & Sundry launch, and amongst THAT storm of learning-curve ridiculousness, Kim and I were locked in months-long negotiations with The Guild cast to return the next season. I couldn't start writing the script with the possibility I would have to eliminate one of the main characters if one decided not to return. That put me, even before lifting my pen, into a state of panic.
  
  "What do you mean we need to draft another version of the contract?"
  
  "One of the cast's managers has a comment about the overtime provision."
  
  "That will take another two weeks! Cancel the season, I don't want to write it."
  
  "Felicia, calm down."
  
  "I can't calm down! I have a script I haven't started that I need to finish! Give them whatever they want; I'll pay it out of my own pocket! Oh God, heart attack."
  
  This attractive shrill tone in type has NOTHING on my attractive shrill tone in person. But I'd never learned how to deal with problems any differently. I grew up ruled by constant anxiety, and when my fears proved a tiny bit possible, even just a hint, I panicked and lashed out at myself and everyone around me. All in all, a real treat to work with! Many times, people in my life, including Kim and my Guild director Sean Becker, who headed most of the show after season one, tried to get me to enjoy the process of making the show, but underneath I couldn't let go of the idea that my dysfunctional anxiety was the REASON for our success. Like broody writers and their penchant for hard drinking. The idea that we could succeed without my obsessive problem-anticipating skills never sunk in. (To be super honest, I think I was just too proud to admit I had a problem. Denial is strong with this one.)
  
  After two months of freaking out and bashing my head against the wall and pulling the plug on the season many times over, I finally found a theme in one of the guest characters I had created, Floyd Petrowski, a superstar game designer, who inspired me to write.