On Making, and Hiding, and Hoping to Begin Again

After a long silence, some thoughts on what my art gave me... and what it took.

When I started Chris Fights Demons, I believed in that title. Every sentence felt like a jab at something: self-doubt, inertia, the sense that life was slipping by while I waited to feel ready to start living it.

Over the past year, I’ve poured everything I have into various projects. I’ve edited and released two more episodes of the Lucy Chandler web series (a third is already finished and waiting its turn), put together a 20-page treatment for that show’s second season that I’m about to turn into a first draft, completed a six-song EP that drops next month, wrote two short stories, a screenplay, and half a dozen other things I could point to and say, See? I’ve been busy.

And yeah… on paper, it looks like growth. Considering the whole purpose of CFD was to try and break through a creative block I couldn’t seem to move past, it certainly seems like I’ve done that.

A while back, I wrote about the urge to “tilt at windmills” — that impulse to conjure up imaginary problems that have to be solved before you can start creating. It’s still the most popular post from this newsletter. And it was so gratifying to see that it struck a chord, because that was definitely the biggest obstacle standing between where I was and where I told myself I wanted to be. How can I take that first step unless this entire path is cleared?

In the early days of 2025, I wound up thinking about that piece a lot. And about how every December, I open up the same Google Drive document of New Year’s resolutions, delete the year at the top, and type in the new one. The list never changes. Just the date.

Maybe this is my year.

And like most years, this one went by a hell of a lot faster than I was ready for. When I realized we were already in the back half and I still hadn’t made much progress on anything, I thought, Well, yeah… but, what else is new? Isn’t this always the story? Isn’t this just who I am?

From there, an already bad year got worse. That nerve damage I described in my last post? Where I said I was 95% healed? Yeah, no. I didn’t know it yet, but I was only about halfway through my recovery.

I also lost two of my oldest and most reliable clients back-to-back. Bills piled up. The job search was (and remains) BLEAK. I don’t have to tell you; I’m sure a lot of you reading this know exactly what that feels like.

Actually, just last week, after finally landing an interview, I sat down for a video call and discovered I was speaking to HAL 9000 from 2001. A fucking A.I. chatbot. A pulsating dot in the center of my screen. It was so demoralizing.

But as the symptoms of my nerve damage flared up and my bank account (and self-worth) cratered, I wondered: what if even at this low point, I could still knock a few of those resolutions off my list before December? What if I could prove to myself that it was possible, even now?

There were so many things going wrong that I had no power over. What if, as I continued jumping through all the damn hoops the rest of my life was requiring me to, I also focused on the handful of things I still had some agency over?

Not only would I then still have something to show for this miserable fucking year, I’d also never be able to fall back on any of these excuses ever again. Because if I could do it now, then surely anything was possible.

So it began with noble intentions. And for a while, it worked. I carved out half an hour in the morning to write and an hour in the evening to edit the web series. Non-negotiable. Those were fixed points in my day. The bare minimum amount of time I would devote to those goals Monday through Friday, without neglecting my other responsibilities.

That routine stuck. The progress was undeniable. And once that all became second nature, I spent my weekends reconnecting with another part of myself I’d let drift away… making music.

I kept separate journals for each project. Just some brief notes about how each session had gone and what the next steps were. If I didn’t do that, my mind would race too far ahead and I’d quickly get overwhelmed. Instead, I just concentrated on whatever the next bullet point was.

Time still flew by, but the days felt less immaterial. Even when I ran into walls and felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere, the journals were there to prove me wrong. So although many aspects of my life were still operating on someone else’s terms, I had managed to reclaim some small sense of control.

Days turned into weeks turned into months. That bare minimum amount of time I promised myself I’d spend on each project was almost immediately exceeded, and eventually, it expanded out into every free moment I had available to me. Every. Single. Day.

I kept waiting to burn out. Surely, this pace was unsustainable. But it never happened. Instead, I felt a little manic. That was probably the first red flag. And eventually, I had to ask myself, would I even be able to stop?

No more chasing windmills. That was good. But for the first time in my life, I had the opposite problem. I was using art as camouflage. The work gave me something to disappear into when life started asking harder questions.

How are you going to pay these bills?

How long can you keep juggling all of this?

Do you really think revising your resume AGAIN is going to change anything?

What happens if the next thing doesn’t land either?

When will you accept that the only thing you’re qualified to do is teach A.I. to be even more effective at replacing you?

Aren’t you too far past the point of becoming whoever you thought you’d be by now?

What is all of this for anyway?

Aren’t you tired of disappointing everyone?

But as long as I was making, I didn’t have to listen. I didn’t have to feel.

The demons adapt. I’ve made that point over and over again. So I should know better than anyone at this point: they don’t always show up as fear or anger or self-destruction. Sometimes they show up disguised as the exact thing you thought you wanted.

For me, that was a place where I could control the variables. Rewrite the ending as many times as I needed to. Make sure a character gets rewarded for paying their dues. Decide what stays in the frame and what gets removed. In that world, everything made sense. But outside it, I was unraveling. The place I had retreated to for safety was becoming a very comfortable cage.

The truth is, both extremes will burn you.

Now. If I’m being honest?

If both scenarios end with me feeling like a sad, broken piece of shit, I guess I’d rather be the broke, ugly, untalented loser who’s at least finishing stuff. But…

BUT…

Somewhere in between is something steadier. A middle ground where the work feeds life instead of replacing it. I haven’t found that balance yet, but I’m trying to steer toward it. Slowly. Imperfectly. Because I probably could have accomplished all of this same stuff without feeling like I was hiding from the vultures I thought were circling me.

That desire for equilibrium made me feel like it might be time to come back.

I want to be clear: I’m not saying the work I’ve been doing doesn’t matter. It does. Some of it feels like the most honest stuff I’ve ever made. And believe me, I can’t wait to open that same list this December and finally cross a few things off. Are you kidding me? That’s HUGE.

Aside from the web series, a lot of this was stuff I had to do just for myself. To prove that I could. To be free of it. To finally move on. But I also want to share some of it with you, because each project came with its own set of trials, tribulations, and lessons learned. And it’s wild to look at this stuff now and realize how much of it was my subconscious trying to send up a flare.

So I’ll be highlighting a couple of things over the next month or so. I’ll include some commentary about the process, the end result, and how I think they tie into the larger themes of this newsletter. You can skip those posts if you want, but if you are interested, think of them as postcards from the dark corners I’ve been hiding in since the last time we spoke.

I used the noise of creation to drown out the things I didn’t want to face. Grief. Uncertainty. Insecurity. The fear of what happens when the project’s finished and the room goes quiet. But maybe that silence is where the next real thing lives.

I don’t know yet. Maybe we can find out together.

This isn’t going to be exactly the way it was before. There’s no set schedule. I’m only going to write to you when there’s something I feel like I need to say or that I think you’ll want to hear. Because, no… this is not another thing I’m taking on just to distract myself. I’m doing this because I know I’ve gotten lost and I need to find my way back. It worked once, and I hope it can work again.

The fight has changed shape. But in some ways, I’m in a similar spot to the one I found myself in when I first created this…

Scared. Tired. Like I’m down too deep to climb out.

So I’m not here to shout a rallying cry or lead anyone into battle. I feel beat up and small. I am really not doing well. At all. It’s pretty fucking scary.

And it’s disappointing to once again succumb to so many of the same feelings I thought I had used this newsletter to try and work through. Like the fear that no matter how far I feel like I’ve traveled, I always end up circling back to the same place. Because I can’t outrun me. And after living most of my life with the same list of hangups, insecurities, and deficiencies, I’m afraid this is always who I’m going to be. And this is always how life is going to feel. There is no next chapter. This is the whole story.

But I’m here because I want to believe in even the smallest chance that I’m wrong. I have to. The alternative is too grim to even acknowledge.

It was never Chris DEFEATS Demons. That was always the point. What I’m up against can’t be beaten, only managed. I do accept that. What I can’t accept is complacency.

So let’s see if I’ve still got some fight left in me.

Missed you, friends. Talk to you soon.

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If there’s a topic you’d like me to cover or a question you’d like to ask, send a message to chrisfightsdemons@substack.com. If it’s something I think other readers will be interested in, I’ll add it to the list and respond in a future post.