i think the past year cracked me open. not in some movie way—more like “lost my wallet again, rent due tomorrow, still gotta finish this piece before the light dies.” it’s weird, i moved here thinking i could balance nyc chaos and the phettaverse like they were two sides of the same coin. turns out the coin was melting the whole time.
brooklyn’s been heavy. loud. kind of mean. i’ve had months where i paid rent just to stare at blank canvases, wondering if people still buy art or if i’m just stubbornly painting into the void. i keep saying the phettaverse is my escape, but maybe it’s the only world that actually listens back.
drawing feels different now. not performative. more like survival. pieces like meat cube or who is me?—they’re me trying to find where my head’s at, one messed up line at a time. i don’t plan much anymore. i just let the marker bleed and see what the paper says.
somewhere between the broke months and the caffeine comedowns, i started creating again without overthinking. daily drawings, weird 3d prints, meme packs, stupid little animations that make me laugh for a second. the phettaverse stopped being a brand or a “project.” it became a reflection. phetta—the purple rat, the detective, the alter ego—feels more real than i do sometimes.
AI crept in too. i saw sora videos and thought, okay, this is either the end or the next door. i didn’t run from it. i just fed it into the lore. phetta’s world was always meant to live in the cracks between real and digital anyway.
there were still high points. burrito dao hangouts, tylerinternet collabs, mailing physicals to collectors who actually cared. it’s wild when someone across the planet buys something you made in your tiny room. feels like proof that the chaos matters.
i don’t know, man. i think i’ve learned that art doesn’t fix you. it just gives you something to hold while you rebuild. rent’s still insane. the city’s still weird. but the phettaverse keeps growing, even when i don’t.
maybe that’s enough.
maybe i'm overthinking everything and it's always mean't to work out in the end, it feels like that sometimes. i would like to believe it.
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