When I was in college one of my psychology professors, Dr. Rubin, asked in class one day, “Is it worth dying for?” He was talking about stress, what stress does to the body and the brain, and how stress takes years off a person’s life.
Yesterday a blog post from 2019 surfaced on my blog. I was talking about a recent partial-week vacation, my first in years. “My last vacation from Diamond,” I wrote, had been two days in March 2012.
This morning, I saw a LinkedIn post that asked, “A Sense of Perspective: Are Comics Worth Dying For…?“
A few days ago, I saw an image on social media describing “the 4 stages of burnout.” Stage one: The Hustle. Stage two: The Strain. Stage three: The Breakdown. Stage 4: The Crash.
I spent 2016 through 2019 vacillating between stages 3 and 4. There’s a reason I will darkly say that Diamond–read: Roger Fletcher and Larry Swanson–tried to murder me in 2017. Someday I may explain that.
I asked for a sabbatical. I had enough banked PTO that I could take three months off. Dan Manser said no; there was no one to do my work.
One day Dan told me if I left he would have to replace me with two people. Essentially, he admitted my job was too big–even too important–for a single person. But did he hire someone new? Did he pay me more? No and no, because that would mean spending money, and while Diamond was a place where money would be freely spent when it wanted to, staffing up to meet business needs or paying for talent were not things Diamond wanted to do.
Things got better for me with COVID. I healed somewhat as the comics industry contracted in the summer months of 2020. There were new challenges, I felt somewhat rejuvenated–though also very depressed by the state of the world. By late 2024, though, I was again approaching burnout stages 2 and 3. The collapse of Diamond’s monopoly fell on me very directly and very hard. Honestly, the bankruptcy declaration in January 2025 came at the point where I didn’t know how much farther I could go and I knew I was going to break down.
I knew there was a problem. I felt abused and psychologically tortured. I thought about quitting so many times–I regret almost daily not doing so in the summer of 2018–and my fear of not finding a job or being unemployable kept me there.
I felt trapped. I thought I would die.
I didn’t have to suffer, but I also didn’t know how to help myself. Nor did I want to bother others; I didn’t want to worry anyone, and there was nothing they could do.
My health broke down. I spent a week in intensive care, I was on stroke protocol.
I should have listened harder to Dr. Rubin.
Diamond was never worth dying for.