For most of my life, I’ve measured my worth by how creative and productive I am. Like, look at me: I’m making albums, books, animated shows, documentaries. Always trying to prove something to the world, compensating for a basic self-esteem problem — an inability to, by default, like myself. Simply because I’m me. Simply because.
This is typical for artsy types.
It turns out: liking oneself based on creative output (or based on anything) is dangerous. You can be too dependent on outcomes. If you hit a creative block, someone doesn’t praise you at the right time, or you go too long without “success,” the illusory identity you’ve created will collapse. And then you’re faced with the terror of that original “I’m worthless” problem again.
Breaking that ridiculous cycle, letting go of all the ego stuff, and simply being okay is a challenge. Ask any Buddhist.
So here I am. My 2024 was remarkably low in creative output. Oops!
And yes, I’m anxious about it. It’s been a long twelve (actually eighteen) month crisis of, “It’s over, I’ll never be creative again!”
The longest ever.
But it’s not so bad. I’ve done a ton of walking (rucking) and journaling. That’s been useful.
And I’m at least trying a new perspective. I’ll talk about that at the end of this update.
In the meantime, since you signed up for this, why don’t we celebrate the few projects I finished — and some that I’m making good progress on?
MUSICAL SCORE: TETRIS DOCUMENTARY SERIES
First up, the biggest project of the year, Best Of Five: The Classic Tetris Champions.
This is a five-episode documentary released in July by filmmaker Chris Higgins.
Technical trivia: if you’ve ever wondered how long it takes, I kept track because I was paid hourly. I spent 300 total hours on it (nearly 200 hours went into scoring. The other 100 hours went towards helping with the storytelling and video editing.)
The work itself was not difficult for me. But during this creative drought, I only pushed through it by self-discipline. The lesson is this: you can’t always count on feeling inspired. Just show up every day and work. Progress will happen.
My favorite cue is called “Jonas Is Different” — with its 7/8 Geddy-Lee-Inspired Rickenbacker riff. (And it’s in my favorite, the Lydian mode.) I like to think I can predict how a piece will turn out, but that one surprised me. I love it!
Listen to the complete score album on BandCamp, Apple Music, or Spotify.
You can also watch the complete documentary series on YouTube for free:
METAL ALBUM
For years, I’ve wanted to record a metal album that pushes the genre forward — incorporating some outsider rhythmic concepts from Dr. Zoltan’s Why I Am So Wise, the theme and variation techniques from Grand Architects of the Universe, and the harmonic vocabulary of my favorite 20th-century classical music and horror film scores.
It’s my “bucket list” album, and I think it will be unique.
I’ve been tinkering with it, working on demos, but I haven’t hit the target yet. In fact, I recently decided I would throw it out and start over from scratch. But here’s the good news: the work I did wasn’t a waste. I actually discovered some new techniques in the process, which I’ll apply to the new material.
You can hear the previous demos and rough experiments inside my Patreon.
Also: just a couple of weeks ago, to inspire myself to make music, I bought a new Ibanez RG550 Genesis. I always wanted one — ever since I saw a rich kid playing one in that color at my middle school in 1989. (Take that, Brendan!)
I love that color. You can’t tell from the photo, but it’s bright fluorescent, like a highlighter. I strung it with the bottom six strings of an Ernie Ball 8-string set, going 17-74 (typical strings are 10-46), and intend to make some low-pitched dissonant sounds.
My aim is to get the album done in the first half of 2025 with Travis Orbin on drums.
BLOGGING
I love writing blogs, mostly “pop philosophy” stuff. It’s motivated purely by my own curiosity, and it’s an exercise in thinking clearly. Hardly anyone reads it, but it’s my favorite creative activity. It’s possible I could give up everything else, sit in a lawn chair with an iced coffee, and only do that every day. 2024 was my best blog writing yet.
I wrote 22 of them, and three of my favorites were:
I’m Mad At You About The Subjective Experience I Had
On Interesting And Boring
Epiphenomenalism Is Cool
THE CARL KING SHOW / PODCAST
Back in late 2022, I committed to releasing weekly episodes of The Carl King Show. It started as audio-only and eventually became a YouTube thing. I kept at it for a year. I didn’t want it to be interview-based because the world has enough shows with two idiots talking for hours. I wanted it to consist of thought-out ideas. More educational, more useful. Eventually, the pre-written episodes took me around 20 hours of writing and research per week.
For me, the best thing that came from it was my concept of Type 1 and Type 2 art (explained in Episode 57). If I accomplished nothing else in my time on Earth, at least there’s that?
In late 2023, the show got to be too much work. I had to put it on hold and focus on other priorities. So this year, I only released one episode.
It was about a horror film I love: The Witch, by Robert Eggers.
When I wrote that episode, I had hoped to reboot the show and launch a “third season” focused on horror films. And to get it back on the weekly schedule. I even made a new cover design for it.
But for now, I don’t know what the show’s future is. We’ll see.
DRAGONTOOTH INN: THE ATTACK
For context, I’ve written and directed two animated show pilots: The Oracle of Outer Space (2019) and That Monster Show (2020).
Everyone thinks they can write a script. But I learned it’s deceptively difficult. It’s not just typing funny things. Unless you’re a natural (almost no one is), it takes a LOT of reps to develop the specific skills. Meaning: you’ve got to write a script, see it produced, watch an audience not understand it, figure out why it was so bad, write another script, see it produced, over and over before you get the hang of it. There’s an absurdly high failure rate. Since I’m self-funded, I can only get so many episodes made and learn from my mistakes.
It’s like trying to be a chef, writing down your recipes, but only cooking twice.
But I DO get a little bit better at it every time. I can definitely see my progress, even if no one else can.
The next animated pilot is called Dragontooth Inn. I describe it as Cheers meets Game of Thrones.
I’ve been developing it since 2022. I recorded the first version of the script with my voice actors (Dan Foster and Stephanie Southerland) way back then. And it’s gone through numerous rewrites and re-recordings. When I thought I was almost done – while scoring the music for it in 2023 – I put the project on hold.
Earlier this year, I took another look at the script. Nope, still not right! I rewrote and re-recorded parts of it AGAIN with Dan Foster.
Since animation is super expensive, I plan to release only a single, fully animated short called Dragontooth Inn: The Attack. It’s my favorite scene from the episode, slightly modified to stand alone. Just this month, Lance Myers (my animator and album cover artist) started on the storyboarding and animation. Hooray for that!
After this, I don’t know if I will ever make another animated project due to the costs and complexity. But I might record more radio dramas with my voice actor friends. There was recent talk of this, so stay tuned!
LUNCH WITH MR. VAI
A personal highlight this year was having lunch with my favorite musician, Steve Vai. I went over to his place when he was rehearsing for the Beat tour. I picked him up, drove us down the street to get some food, and we spent a couple of hours talking about Buddhism.
I’m surprised that the MTV rock star who inspired me to play guitar when I was 13 is still in my life. It’s at least a fun story to superimpose on reality. His philosophical YouTube series, Under It All, changed my philosophical trajectory quite a bit, and I’m lucky that, sometimes, I can continue discussing those topics with him in person. He’s such a positive and encouraging force for me.
Here’s my favorite episode he did:
AND WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
1 – In the new year, I’ll continue learning about Buddhism. Not basing my worth on my productivity (ego) has been a source of peace. If you’re interested in the topic, read a dang book! Or you can watch my video: How Buddhism Makes Me Better Than Other People.
2 – I’d like to create out of curiosity rather than anxiety. I’ve tried it before, and it’s not easy. Even when it might not seem like it, much of my creative fuel has been anger and fear (especially with music). I rarely confess this to anyone, but I’m also deeply competitive and territorial. I want to not only be the best, but I want to defeat others that I see as a threat. That’s a nutty behavior, isn’t it? Going forward, I want to cultivate a more positive process — and learn to enjoy that process. I’ve seen others operate that way. I hope that the more I do it, the easier it will become.
3 – As of now, my creative priority is the metal album. For the past few months, I’ve been trying to work on it — but only giving it very limited time and attention. And this shouldn’t be surprising… the results have not been useful! I have to admit the musical part of my brain is out of shape because I don’t regularly use it. (What was I thinking?) To get my compositional chops back and make a truly crazy album, I’ll need to immerse myself in that universe — listening to challenging music, reading scores, analyzing, and even playing every day.
Thank you to everyone who supports my creative projects. I hope we can all make some cool stuff in 2025.
-Carl.