This is not the usual type of thing I post, but admittedly, at the risk of looking like Calvin in that one Calvin and Hobbes comic where he essentially complains about people complaining all the time until he blows a gasket himself, I'm personally getting sick of people who declare whatever year it is (2022 in this case) shot because something bad and out of our control happens in some other part of the world and rather than make a donation to a relevant charity or just focus on more personal problems, they BOMBARD me with pessimism and a constant reminder that I can't do things until my day is ruined, too.

I am, of course sympathetic to people who are genuinely depressed and I can't avoid "bad vibes" all the time. I am, however, losing my patience with edgelords who still feel the need to remind of us all the doom and gloom in the news like we're not already stressed (particularly in a workplace where we need to at least need to be a LITTLE bit relaxed to be productive and avoid burnout/quitting) or like we're avoiding the news because we're willfully-ignorant morons, and not just because the news is often ALL bad and biased and again, while it is important to be informed and not completely deny bad things are happening, at the same time it seems since 2014 or so people have felt the inappropriate need to "wake us up" to problems of the world even when we're trying to rest and recover or when we're already stressed out from our current workload, but need to work through it so we can earn the money to at least attempt to solve larger societal problems. Basically, people that, on one hand, are good people for being SO personally affected by, say, the War in Ukraine or when celebrities like Will Smith do something that could potentially badly influence the younger generations, but on the other hand ironically do more harm than good to their efforts to convince people to care by focusing on the negative all the time (in Ukraine's case, focusing on how evil Putin is and how he could still possibly win and not on how charitable people have become for the people of Ukraine despite the stress of gas prices and inflation, plus how surprisingly incompetent Putin has proven in trying to conquer this seemingly-less-powerful country so far) by enveloping us in bad vibes to the point where we feel too powerless to solve problems that are hard, but not impossible to tackle, and too sad to be productive and at least make enough dough to throw money at a charity or something.

My day job as a grocery clerk definitely gives me plenty of examples from the past week alone of just how DARK everyone seems to act now and how it's getting harder and harder to just "ignore the noise, bro." Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr are also infamous for actively encouraging negativity and politics because it somehow gives them more ad revenue than fun art, funny memes or inspirational Tweets could ever give them, but it especially catches me off-guard to see people act like this in Newgrounds from time to time, since for the most part I actually find this site more fun-loving and uplifting than most so long as I obviously avoid the forums. For instance, I am lucky to literally drive an EV and should feel smug that concerns about sky-rocketing gas prices don't even affect me these days, yet I feel anxious about it at work because people both on the floor and in the break room complain about it NON-STOP during my 9-hour shifts and the lack of positivity ensures I come home from work drained and even a little bit resentful of the entire human race every night when I should be motivated and energetic enough to still do some "fun" work, providing fun art and animations for you lovely fans.

Perhaps that is the point I'm getting at: rest from the world and its problems is important if I want to be more productive as an artist on Newgrounds (and especially have the energy to work my way up to a higher-paying job filled with less unhappy burn-outs bringing me down and leaving me more mental energy to do what I truly love, animation). But it seems like the avenues of rest and healthy escapism are getting less and less common (can't escape in Kirby and the Forgotten Land forever as a working adult) as American society and the news seem more intent on making us hate everyone and everything and just give up rather than address our challenges in a healthy manner. I would probably have MUCH more to show you this year AND give you a temporary escape from the madness of 2022 if I wasn't forced to listen to every problem in existence at work to the point where I'm always like "You know, maybe I'll just sleep and wait until my next day off to work on this..."

All I ask is that those of you that are not genuinely suffering from depression or have a therapist to turn to try to spread some more good vibes on the Internet, like in the earlier days where looking at Newgrounds and YouTube mostly just filled me with joy and laughter after a long day of school, rather than adding to the stress I was already experiencing by everyone slipping in their political rants and doomsday predictions in a video or article that should be about a fun video game I should try or a new comic series I should check out. I will admit that I should drop my addictions to fan sites that clearly suck the joy out of my favorite hobbies, like PC Gamer and Cartoon Brew, but at the same time I should not have to be nearly as careful reading funny reviews under Newgrounds art, fearing there will be one "party pooper" comment that will ruin my day and make me increasingly feel like there is no escape at all from this "2020's malaise." Everyone here will be more motivated to just make increasingly-awesome art if they feel Newgrounds here is more of an escape from all the bickering and sadness, and who knows, maybe our collective optimism will give us the energy and passion we need to solve climate change? It's when we all decide that the problem is insurmountable, give up, and spend the rest of our dreary existence being advertised to non-stop in Facebook's Metaverse that we should start to worry. Hope is crucial for being prolific in art and solving problems that many say can't be solve.

At the very least, it's times like these that counting one's blessings is crucial not just for mental health, but being prepared to solve problems as they come. For instance, I still can't believe the Omicron variant is the absolute least of my concerns at the moment considering how dire the pandemic situation seemed to be at the start of this year (being fully vaccinated/boostered helps, of course). Having grown up during a very apathetic 2000's, too, it is encouraging to see people so affected by problems in the world these days and want to do everything about it when, in the past, they would over-do it with the escapism and pretend any problem they can't easily solve doesn't even exist. Maybe those that bombard us with constant negativity are simply a bit behind-the-times, thinking that most still only think for themselves and avoid anything that makes them feel uncomfortable when that is actually becoming less true. A lot of ink has been spilled about how "Shit Happens," but nobody ever talks about how sometimes, Shit DOESN'T Happen.