The summer of my fifteenth birthday, my family had to move to Louisville.
When you examine your underwear close enough, EVERYTHING looks a little bit suspect. I.
He’s flying through Norway. Notice the fjords I created with hundreds of individually cut-out gray mosaic pieces? It’s daylight there in the winter, it would be untruthful to have the night sky be so dark.
When we graduate from childhood into adulthood, we’re thrown into this confusing, Cthulhu-like miasma of life, filled with social and career problems, all with branching choices and no correct answers. Sometimes gaming feels like going back to that simple kid world. Real-life Felicia wasn’t getting more successful, but I could channel my frustration into making Keeblerette an A-list celebrity warlock, thank you very much!
My story demonstrates that there’s no better time in history to have a dream and be able to reach an audience with your art. Or just be as weird as you want to be and not have to be ashamed. That lesson’s just as legit.
Yes, a FROWNY FACE. My teacher wanted me to get a B! But I didn’t give him the satisfaction. I spent a summer of my life dedicated to something I’d never use again. I showed him!
So after graduation, I moved to Los Angeles to become an actor. That was what my heart told me I needed to TRY to become. I knew I could do it. After all, I had two Real Degrees. How could I fail?
When the occasional stranger approaches me at a party to say, “Hey, you’re Felicia Day. Let’s talk about that comic book you were tweeting about last week!” it’s the greatest thing in the world. Because it saves me from having to stand in the corner awkwardly, drinking all the Sprite, and then leaving after ten minutes without saying good-bye to my host.
Whether it was by someone volunteering to be an extra in our show, or part of the crew, or someone buying a DVD at a convention, or a superfan who tattooed our characters’ faces on her calf, my career has been built fan by fan. I wouldn’t trade that relationship, or collection of dolls of myself, for all the money and fame in the world.
There was only one commercial online company at the time, CompuServe, and it was not sophisticated, guys. It was the cave painting equivalent to Tumblr.
Upshot to my bizarre upbringing: I got super-hyper-educated in many odd areas but was pretty lonely for many years. Sometimes achingly so. They say that the root of everything you are lies in your childhood. Every emotional problem, every screwed-up relationship, every misplaced passion and career problem you can blame on the way you were raised. So I can be kinda smug when I say, “Boy, do I have some excuses!
But here’s the part I unapologetically embrace: My weirdness turned into my greatest strength in life. It’s why I’m who I am today and have the career I have.
This is the story of someone who found her place in a corner of the world that literally didn’t exist till just before she showed up. Felicia’s place is always off the edge of the map, where dragons wait, and this story is more than a memoir. It’s a quest. If you wanna survive, stay close to the redhead. She knows her way.
But during my childhood my fringe interests remained uncriticized, so they bloomed inside of me without self-consciousness until I was out in the world, partially formed, like a blind-baked pie shell. By then it was WAY too late. I was irrevocably weird.
I wasn’t used to humans enough to have organic social impulses. But.
The only kid in real, close proximity to me was Erin, a thirteen-year-old who lived next door. She taught me that owning a trampoline was the most glamorous thing a girl could have, and that jelly shoes were haute couture. I learned all this through spying on her through my bedroom window, because she didn’t like me and wouldn’t spend any time with me, physically. Despite.
Accepting that we’re imperfect, and knowing that we have a right to exist anyway, is an empowering and important life tool.
Everything creative we put out into the world is just a way to figure out how we can be better.
I have a right to spend my time this way.
How can I make this fun for me?’ should be the mantra in every creative activity that we do.