Mathias Vanthienen
A post about how I suck
Hey kids, who wants to read another chapter of my rambling? Nobody? Well, that’s too bad because here it is anyway.
Today I’m going to show you some of the content I make for my Horseflan channel, which is mostly short animations. Why do I have 4 channels to post content on? Because I’m a walking existential crisis.
As a clumsy & chaotic spazzbrain, the post-academic realization that I suck hit me really hard. I think they’re calling it “the quarterlife crisis” now, which sounds like something invented by a marketing manager to sell products, yikes. I prefer ‘post-adolescent depression’ cause I read it in a Douglas Coupland book heh.
When I started my first job as a graphic designer 4 years ago at a startup, I quickly realized that I really just suck within the ‘time = money’ framework our society is built on. I do everything at half the speed of someone “normal”. So I realized that if I was going to make a ‘career’ (yikes) it would be with things that can only come out of my brain. Next, I moved to Berlin to work as a creative in advertising (because Belgium fucking sucks hahah lol).
After almost 2 years of failing at getting my craziest ideas past my creative director and not really climbing the corporate ladder because my managerial skills suck, I started to push out more content on my own. In the 2 following years, existential crisis hit me hard. In those 2 years I read a shitload of self improvement books, listened to a shitload of podcasts, moved back to Antwerp & developed a panic disorder, you know, the usual.
Today I’m still looking for a new long term goal. The prospect of always sucking at a regular job and never being able to climb the corporate ladder, is not the most motivating. I don’t constantly want to be confronted with the fact that I suck. Accepting my spazzbrain self pushed me even more in the direction that I should be doing my own thing, because it’s the only way I’ll ever become better. My always farting brain is my strongest skill, and I shouldn’t put brakes on that. So then I suddenly end up with 4 instagram accounts, maybe 8 in 2 years, who knows. I'm also currently freelancing which gives me the freedom to try many different things.
The reason why I write stuff like this is because I find it tremendously helpful to read that people are having the same struggles as me. Some of you will probably suck as bad as me and I hope I can make those people feel less alone in their struggle. (Also I hope that by being open about this, suddenly someone will magically appear and solve all my issues, and I will live happily ever after)
Now, here are my shitty animations x