Rob DenBleyker

Dear myself,

The universe is around 14 billion years old. We know this for a fact. This incredible length of time is impossible to wrap one’s head around. But you’re not an astrophysicist or a philosopher. You don’t need to wrap your head around it.

You don’t need to wrap your head around it because for all useful purposes, the universe is quite young. It’s only a few decades old. To be more specific, it’s the same age as you. It was observed into existence on the day you were born. Well, that’s not exactly true. It gradually phased into existence when you were 4 or 5 years old, as your developing mind began questioning, understanding and remembering its surroundings. Between the Big Bang and your personal spark of cognition lies 14 billion years of darkness. Yes, a lot of stuff happened, but it didn’t happen for you. You are only aware of this vast stretch of pre-birth through your absorption of history, geology, and astronomy, among other fields. You did not observe these events themselves, but rather their eventual effects.

The galaxies, the stars, the sky, the world, and everything in it did not exist to you before you were born, and they will cease existing to you after you die. The observable universe begins and ends with you.

Your brief encounter with the world will probably last seventy-something years, since you’re healthy and in a first world country. When that time is up, all that will be left is whatever impact you made on the people you encountered or on the world at large. Before you get too cocky though, realize that impact will eventually vanish just like you did. Time will first erase memories of you. Then stories of you. Then your public records. Based on our understanding of the history of life, our species itself will probably not last forever. It’s unfair, but time and space are too vast to be fair to beings as small and brief as us.

That seventy-odd years is your only time here. You didn’t get to hang out in the universe before you were born, and you’ll be promptly kicked out of it when you die. So far, there’s no indication that you get to live more than once.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that you waste way too much time on the Internet, and you should probably accomplish more stuff. At the very least, read a book.

Sincerely,
Myself 

Today Dave and I finished up our fourth day of working together on the new Cyanide & Happiness short. On Monday we had nothing but an animatic (a rough storyboard in motion), and now it’s just three shots from being completed. As we finish up those last few shots, Chase is on the home stretch with another short. The one Chase is working on has been in the works for quite a while, and it’s one of my favorites we’ve ever done.

I’m excited for both of the shorts, and also incredibly grateful that I get to spend 10 hours a day dreaming up ideas and animating them. It’s a pretty long process. To give an idea of how long it takes, this week’s short clocks in at 45 seconds and will have taken about eighty man hours in total. That’s not true of all our shorts — this one has a LOT of weird effects animation, like long hair and galloping horses, and Dave, directing this one, thought up enough crazy camera angles to keep himself busy with the backgrounds.

There’s nothing more rewarding than to spend a week becoming a slave to your work, and ending up with something you’re proud of. I like animation more than drawing comics in that regard. It’s a great feeling of catharsis when the whole world gets to see something you worked hard on.

Heh. “Hard on”.