I Refuse To Fold

Lately, I've been coming from a dark place. Actually, I've been in a dark place for a long time—well over a year. The last five or six months have probably been the worst of it. For whatever reason, it seems like every time I start thinking negatively, more negative shit follows. Eventually, you reach a point where you just say, "Fuck everything." I reached that point.

Part of it came from putting trust in people I don't actually see in everyday life and assuming they were going to be loyal, friendly, and genuine. That's one of the lessons you learn dealing with people through social media from a distance. Apparently, it's a lesson I have to learn more than once. Meeting people in the real world isn't exactly simple anymore either. As you get older, everybody has their own life—kids, families, jobs, responsibilities, and problems. Then there's the bar. That's supposedly where adults go to meet people, except half the people sitting there sometimes have more problems than you do.

So what's the answer? I'm starting to realize that sometimes being a loner isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you're better off looking at your wife, your dog, your family, and the people who are genuinely there and saying, "This is where I stand." Certain people don't remove negativity from your life. They bring more of it with them and throw it onto a pile that's already high enough. My pile got pretty fucking high.

Watching the Dominoes Fall

Over the past year, I slowly watched the dominoes start falling around me. One problem came along, then another, and then another. Some of it came from things happening right now. Some of it came from shit years ago finally catching up and saying, "Hey asshole, remember me?" It's one thing when you've got one or two problems to deal with. When you've got ten of them coming from ten different directions, eventually your brain just starts saying, "I'll deal with it tomorrow."

Then tomorrow becomes the next day, the next day becomes next week, and eventually you're surrounded by shit you've been meaning to deal with for months. My family relies on me for a lot. I rely on them too, but most of the time, I'm the one everybody is relying on. That gets heavy. Work gets heavy. Bills get heavy. Debt gets heavy. Life gets fucking heavy. Somewhere in all of that, I started shutting down.

Angry Archie Became a Reflection of It

Angry Archie has become this colossal collection of everything I refuse to give up on: art, music, podcasting, videos, writing, AI, the website, laser engraving, and ideas that randomly enter my head at two in the morning and apparently decide they're moving in permanently.

At some point, I made a decision: I'm going to be seen, I'm going to be heard, and I'm going to let people know who I actually am. Angry Archie may be a persona, but it's also me, and now it's a brand. The problem is that I was trying to build all of this while mentally standing in the middle of a fucking tornado. Eventually, the tornado became visible. All I had to do was look around my office.

The Room Told the Story

My office, studio, art room, creation station, whatever the hell we're calling this thing became an absolute disaster. I would buy something for a project, put it on a shelf, and say I'd deal with it later. Then something else went next to it, and something else went on top of that. Art supplies, laser materials, camera equipment, podcast equipment, packing supplies, half-started projects, things I bought for ideas I haven't gotten to yet, and things I probably forgot I even owned.

Every time I walked into the room, instead of feeling like I was walking into the place where I create, it started feeling like I was walking directly into my own misery. Today, I finally looked around and said, "Enough." This has to change. Not next week, not when I feel better, not when work slows down, and not when the bills magically disappear. Now.

So, as I'm writing this, I'm cleaning the studio. Actually cleaning it. I'm putting things where they belong, getting rid of shit I don't need, organizing what I use, and making space to work. It's pretty fucking difficult to create when you don't even have room to create. The uncomfortable part is admitting that I caused a lot of the clutter myself. "I'll put that there for now." "I'll get to it later." "I'll organize that tomorrow." That mentality doesn't just apply to physical objects. Sometimes it applies to your entire life.

Then Something Strange Happened

Last week, I found myself thinking about an old friend named William Curtis. Bill and I go way back, but I hadn't really talked to him in about fifteen years. I was thinking about where my life started, where it had gone, and where the hell I was standing now. I talked to God about it. That was it. I didn't call Bill. I didn't message Bill. I didn't send some smoke signal into the universe. Nothing.

Less than three days later, Bill contacted me. He basically said, "Hey, give me your number. We should talk." I remember sitting in my truck, looking up, and saying, "You're crafty. You are a crafty man up there." I had no idea what the intention behind it was, so I basically said, "Game on."

You can call something like that coincidence if you want. Maybe it was. I can't prove otherwise. But the timing meant something to me, and sometimes that's enough. It reminded me that maybe I'm not supposed to sit under a fucking rock waiting for life to change. Maybe I'm supposed to participate in changing it.

It's Time to Build Again

A lot of you probably noticed that I haven't been nearly as active on social media lately, other than recordings and things that have continued posting. It wasn't because of you. I was in my own world. I crawled under the proverbial rock and stayed there for a while.

When you're left alone with your own thoughts long enough—and every time you try seeing something positive, your brain immediately finds five negative things to attach to it, you start wondering what the fuck is going on. Where's the break? Where's the luck? When does something finally go right? I didn't particularly want to share that part of my life publicly, but if I'm going to write about rebuilding, creating, and moving forward, then pretending everything has been sunshine and fucking rainbows would be bullshit. It hasn't.

Even Making This Website Was a Battle

The website you're reading right now is part of that rebuilding process. Angry Archie New Jersey has existed in different forms, and I've rebuilt the damn thing several times trying to find the right platform. Most recently, we went through the GoDaddy nightmare—shipping problems, technical problems, and problems getting things to work the way they were supposed to work. Enough was enough, so we moved to Wix.

So far, I'm realizing there's a hell of a lot more we can do with this site than I originally thought. The site is still under construction, but now the pieces are starting to come together. Angry Archie Art is moving forward, and the laser engraving never really stopped. That's one thing I've surprisingly managed to keep doing through all of this.

New ideas keep coming: new products, new designs, new ways of selling them, and new ways of presenting them. We're finally building the infrastructure to actually put that shit out there. Shipping has been its own adventure. When UPS wants nearly as much money to send something a couple hundred miles as somebody paid for the damn product, you start questioning whether you're shipping a canvas or personally purchasing it a first-class airline ticket. We're working through that too. Trial and error—that's business, that's creation, and that's life.

What's Coming Next

I refuse to quit. That's the point of this entire post. I refuse to fucking fold.

I've been under enormous stress. I've been dealing with debt, long work hours, bills, collectors, household expenses, and the simple reality that everything seems to cost more than it used to. When you're making what should be good money and still looking around wondering where the hell it went after the mortgage, vehicles, food, fuel, electric, phones, internet, and everything else gets paid, eventually you have a moment of clarity: something needs to change.

So, I'm changing what I can control. In the coming weeks, you're going to start seeing more from me. I'm going live more, and the podcast is coming back. Carmine has even thrown around some ideas and may become part of that process. When you've known somebody long enough, there's a natural conversation there that you can't manufacture with a stranger.

The animated project is going on the back burner temporarily because it's an enormous amount of work, and I want to find a better way to produce it before throwing all my energy into it again. The J-R-I-S project continues, and that's absolutely a work in progress. The art continues. The laser continues. More products, more options, and more stories are coming. The rants aren't going anywhere.

Digital Table with Jarvis now has its own place here as well, and a lot of the stories you're reading on this site will eventually make their way into spoken form through the podcast, TikTok, YouTube, and wherever else Angry Archie ends up. None of this is finished. That's kind of the point.

Put Up or Shut Up

I've spent enough time saying what I want to do. I've spent enough time thinking about what I could build, and I've spent enough time letting stress convince me to put things off until tomorrow. There comes a point where you have to get up and fucking do it. For me, apparently, that started today with cleaning an office.

Maybe that's not some profound, life-changing event to everybody else, but when I look around this room, I'm realizing that every pile represents something I said I'd deal with later. I'm done living entirely in "later." I'm not expecting every problem in my life to magically disappear because I organized some laser supplies and cleared off a desk, but I can control this room. I can control whether I create today. I can control whether I publish something. I can control whether I take one step forward instead of sitting here thinking about the thousand steps still ahead of me.

And that's where I'm starting. I don't know exactly what God, the universe, fate or whatever the hell you personally believe in has waiting for me. But I do believe my life was meant for something. If something out there has been waiting for me to finally put my best foot forward, fine. Game on.

I'm still here. I'm still creating. I'm still building. And I refuse to fold.

Thanks for reading.

Archie