Saying Goodbye to the Brick House – Part 2 of 3
So, for the first few years this strip was easy and fun to create. Then things got tougher. And then 2011 arrived.
My personal life went through some pretty big revisions. While the end result was most definitely in the plus column, getting there resulted in a lot of fairly hefty negatives. In the larger scope, my day job continued to get more and more stressful, the Detroit area continued to spiral downward, and things in general continued to suck in new and exciting ways.
Somehow, I still managed to make comics for the Brick House.
I can’t say they were particularly good comics. Several long-time readers commented to me (in both public and private forums) that the quality of the strip was going downhill, that the stories that had brought them in and kept them around just weren’t there anymore. I had to agree.
I kept trying to fix things. No miracle cures appeared, though.
2012 was more of the same. Slow yet important improvements in my personal life were counterbalanced by more and more negatives in the larger scope. I kept plugging away at the comic when I could. There were a few strips that felt “right” and good, but the majority felt like filler. I was just marking time and holding on until something changed somewhere.
And then 2013 arrived.
The year started out about as rough as it gets – with my brother’s suicide. I made the mistake of talking about this in the comics’ commentary. While there were some very supportive comments there were also some really juvenile ones. Of course the negative and childish ones are the comments that stuck with me. I think that was the first time I ever really thought of my reader base as “ungrateful bastards.” While I knew logically it was an unfair reaction based on an unrepresentative cross-section of readers it was still a strong emotional response. I knew 99.9% of my readers weren’t like that. But that 0.1%, the very vocal squeaky wheels, matched and augmented the stress that I was dealing with at work, and in other areas of my personal life. And my desire to do anything for those jerks was at an all time low. And dropping.
By mid-2013 I knew I was done with this. The benefits I was getting from creating the strip were vastly outweighed by the amount of time and effort I was putting into it. And that, in turn, was creating even more stress for me. What was I doing wrong? Why couldn’t I make this work? Why was I failing so badly at something I had worked hard at developing skills for? And if I was just going to keep failing, why the hell was I even trying anymore?
These were not thoughts I wanted to be having, particularly in the wake of my brother’s choices. I was suddenly very glad I had gone back on antidepressants in late 2012.
At the same time, work and financial issues had hit a crisis point. I had to find a new job. Thankfully, with some help from friends, I had a successful search. But it meant pulling up stakes and moving to a new state.
With a certain amount of relief I put the comic on indefinite hiatus. My wife and I relocated to Madison, Wisconsin in just 60 days. That included transitioning out of a 12+ year job, getting our home ready for sale, finding a place in Madison, packing, moving, and unpacking. It would be an understatement to call it “a little rushed.”
I had planned on taking the rest of the year off from the comic. I was super busy trying to get up to speed at my new job, and didn’t have they cycles to focus on much of anything other than work.
But every time I was at Target I’d see the LEGO advent calendars. Then the nagging voices in my head would start up again. “You’ve always done an advent countdown!” “Do you really want to give up on that tradition?” “You’ll lose what few readers you have left!”
So, eventually, I caved and bought a calendar. I had waited so long that the only one left on the shelves was the overpriced Star Wars one, but I had a coupon. So I bought it, and promised myself I’d just do a very low-key daily review. If I could manage just that, I’d be okay.
And that’s what I started with. And, as is usual for me, the characters decided to write their own story and things got complex. And suddenly I was back down the same damn rabbit hole I was trying to climb out of.
About mid-way through the month, overwhelmed at work, exhausted, and stressed I finally gave myself permission to walk away. No more hiatuses, no more reboots. Permission take Brick House off the “I don’t want to, I have to” list. A Christmas gift to myself. A gift I wasn’t really sure I could afford, but one I knew that I really, really needed.
I knew I’d be disappointing that loyal core readership. I wasn’t looking forward to letting down the people who stuck with me until the bitter end. But I hoped, in time, they’d understand and forgive what had become a necessity.
I had planned to end the strip on Christmas day – but one last time the characters and story took control. I wanted my Christmas message to be something positive and not just a goodbye. As it was, all I could manage was a bittersweet moral. Try and focus on the things that really matter to you. Not just today, but every day.
That’s what I’m going to try and do.
The last part of this blog post will go over where the Brick House comic might have gone, and where I had envisioned the characters ultimately ending up. If there’s someone you’re particularly curious about, mention it in the comments here and I’ll try and include them in the “future-recap.”
Thanks for reading.
Always thought of Brick House as a way for you to share your love of Lego with wacky stories. I’ll be sad it’s gone, but it was funny and occasionally brilliant. Hope you can find another outlet for your creativity.
I’m infuriated but unsurprised jackwits were disrespectful in your time of loss. Seems like civil discourse has gone out the window with the 20th Century.
Well, I’ll be sad it’s gone, even if I did not comment I have your feed in my RSS reader and check every entry. Anyhow, good luck with whatever you decide to try next!
I salute you, (civilian style) Christopher Doyle! You have done a magnificent job of making a webcomic. Might I suggest that if there are going to be advent calendars for next year, that you consider taking up the storyline. A really good storyline never really ends, it just keeps writing itself.
What you have to do is take control of the direction it’s taking itself in but more importantly, first you have to relax, and walk away from the comic for a bit, just don’t do random bits here and there. Let it brew up a properly done storyline, and when and if that is good and ready to go into production, only then should you even consider picking up another storyline! 😉
In the meantime, as I said above, relax, and let the natural flow of ideas come naturally, rake notes of anything that might really be good for a plot, and when you find you have time to do something about it all then it should flow properly and easily.
I know you’ll eventually come back to it, it may take you a few years, but some time in the future, you’ll want to pick up the bricks where they started falling apart and putting together new and old ones to repair the structure. 😉
I hope you have a happy life long after you end Brick House. I’m going to be one of those people reading back over it repeatedly, even after it is gone.
Been here for a few years, but I appreciate and understand where your coming from, don’t worry about us Chris, it’s been a fun ride, good luck in all your future endeavours, and heres hoping for a fantastic 2014!
Well, good luck man. I’ve always enjoyed reading Brick House over the years, coming back to your comic every day after school to check up on it. It’ll be sad to see it go but I wish you all the best for the future all the same.
Hi, i found your comic series when i was looking LEGO-webcomics for my 10 year old son,
we strated yesterday reading it and finished it today.we both enjoyed the comic and your creations, although my son is looking around now to create several characters and make his own stories( could be fun)
Anyway, just a token of my appreciation for your efforts and creativity
Thank you for letting me and my son enjoy a funny and creative LEGO storyline
and the best wishes for 2014.
netherlands
I have been reading this comic for three years now and I salute you for your services to LEGO Webcomics.
I appreciate how much effort and time you have put into this comic and the lengths you have gone to keep this comic going.
And also, I am actually only 10.
A lot of my favourite authors have gone through a funk lately. Neko The Kitty is just coming back from one, and Girl Genius is BOUND to go into one now they’ve got somebody taking the helm for a few months while the creators have time off. There’s some very meaningful talk in the Neko The Kitty comments pages that you’d probably identify with. Everybody gets it, I’ve gone through a funk of my own since mid-college, and I’m in my final year of uni now. Keep us posted. You need the creative outlet, we all do. People who don’t… freak me out. I can’t think of anybody who doesn’t at least knit, or hasn’t at least written the first chapters of a forgotten novel. It often becomes a chore to stick with something, and things like that fall apart in a matter of weeks once the magic has left… The trick, I guess, is to perform well enough to believe your own act. Letting the chaos take you places (while making attempts at tying up the odd loose end) is what keeps everybody, author included, interested. Writing that way can feel like fixing the plumbing on the Titanic, but it’s more entertaining than regular plumbing (and boats). Mix things up, don’t feed the trolls, let Whiskey take the backseat, to heck with the audience, and make something you want to see. Doesn’t have to be this, but we’re all secretly hoping it. Some writers feel it easier to come back to a story an imagined year later, in vastly different circumstances – everything solved, with one problem to kick things off with. If I were you, listening to the ramblings of a fool like myself, I’d want to consider ditching the cast for a while, doing something different. If you ever return to the story, avoid the mess that came before, and take it from an angle that excites you. It could be following Fox Trot on her quest to hunt down Bilbo Fett, it could be Whisky finding a decent place to live. Or else throwing the booze in my face for such a terrible suggestion, going on indefinite/probably permanent hiatus, and making mosaics and rusty-looking spacecraft from awesome-but-forgotten movies. Whatever you try this fresh new year, be glad you did. Keep me posted. I’ll only worry about you otherwise.
It sounds like as much as I’ll miss it, you’ve made the right call. Thanks for keeping with it as long as you did – and here’s to 2014 being better than 2013.
I feel as if I’m hitting something like you hit early on. I’m starting to lack with creativity.. I’m a Roleplayer and I used to be the one starting other adventures (not irl roleplay, CPU.) and my last good storyline was last month. the best I had and I trashed it because I wasn’t online enough. now I latch onto other people’s stories..
sorry, i’ve moved my email and its messing me up..
I will miss you, your comic and always wonder what if… I came to your comic because I love LEGO and saw a bit of my self. I know I suffer from depression. The comic helped, it would be to complex to explain. But let me thank you for all your effort, dedication and keep following your dreams down whatever rabbit hole they take you!
I have read this comic for a very long while. I have enjoyed it thoroughly the whole way through. I was impressed, from the start, by the quality of your builds, and grew impressed with the complicated story and entertaining characters as I continued to read.
We met at Brick Bash, several years ago- you may remember, you may not. I was a fairly young TFOL at the time. I, being a big fan of yours, had encouraged Duane Collicott to invite you. I missed it the next year, which became the last Brick Bash for a while, so I don’t know if you went again. I hope you enjoyed showing your amazing creations there, I very much enjoyed seeing them and meeting you.
I feel some regret, looking back, for not commenting about my appreciation for the strip in recent years. In as much as I can express it retroactively, know that I’ve loved every single strip of Brick House. even when it did ramble.
I am not disappointed with you for ending your comic. I am thankful to you for all the amazing comics you wrote.
I wish you all the best of luck in your new endeavors, and thank you again. Brick House has been a pleasure to read.
Hey man, I remember a long time ago, back when I was still in high school I commented on one of your posts talking about how I had a dream about getting a Lego set and you kinda’ trash talked me for it… Reading over the trouble you were going through I guess I can’t really blame you, I’m not sure if it really lines up or anything, but if someone in my family died like that and people were treating it like a circus act I’d be pretty pissed off and bitter too.
Sad as I am to come back to see that the adventures of Whiskey and his various companions are drawing to a close, I understand completely that it had to happen some day, you can only run so far with one idea and obviously once real life starts to get… real, for lack of a better term, you have to push things aside and deal with the bigger mess. I’ll always think back to the early episodes, reflecting on what a colorful, interesting world you had put together… To be totally honest, I used to want to build a copy of the Brick House itself for my town layout! I think it might have actually been the first modular Lego building I had ever seen, and now with Lego releasing large modular kits so often it’s not as impressive, but I still hold a bit of nostalgia for it.
Good luck in all your future endeavors, and I may have to get something on the buy-me-mizer some time. Take care!
– Christopher Williams
I honestly don’t remember that exchange, but my honest apologies if I was a dick to you. I try not to be that person anymore.
Well, it’s over. When I first found this comic when I was younger, I spent a week reading it to catch up. I loved everything about it. Since then, I’d check in every once in a while to get caught up. Even though you had jumped the shark, it was hard to tell. All your readers, whether the casual ones like me or the hardcore ones like some others, will miss your comics. We aren’t upset at you, but at the loss of a friend. Wish you well in your future endeavors, and God bless.
I’ve been reading Reasonably Clever since I was 8 or 9, so this comic has been a unique part of my childhood. I have recommended it to tons of people and they never end up reading it because they think it’s just a webcomic. To me it’s a lot more than that though. I used to check on the comic every day in December just to see the advent calender things. I even took a comic strip of it and posted it onto an ‘All-About-Me’ for school.
I remember spending hours reading strip after strip, watching the numbers go up as I invested myself into a little-known lego webcomic. It was always something to look forward to. I am very sorry to see it go and it would mean a lot to see what the characters were supposed to become. There’s something sad about seeing a 3 part thing never completed. I understand that it was becoming more difficult to make more content that was on schedule and of quality, and I don’t begrudge you for ending the series. Everything ends eventually. I guess it was just sort of a surprise. I hope you are happy, and who knows, maybe there’ll be more one day.
I have read Reasonably clever since I was ten and I am know currently 15 this was a amazing comic and story good characters and a great narrator (You Doyle) I understand why you had to get rid of this comic because what happended in you’re life we all understand and we all will miss the brick house and advent madness comics and such.