I’m officially calling it a day for Neko Nation. There will be one final national tour in a number of capital cities and I will wrap up with the final show in Sydney in early 2019.
The reason for the decision is 100% to do with personal reasons and nothing to do with Neko Nation and the events.
Unless you are super close to me, this decision may come as a bit of a shock because the last show was a massive success, heck if anything with how well Neko is going this made it even harder to walk away.
To sum it up, I’ve been doing Neko Nation for a long time, it’s something that takes up a lot of time, effort and energy. I don’t regret doing it but trying to juggle it on top of multiple jobs, getting a uni degree, a relationship, numerous interstate moves, health scares and Neko has probably taken a toll on me more than any of these.
At the time of writing, I’ve racked up around 70 shows all over Austrlaia and this goes well beyond the night, setup and packdown but many months of preparation, in the case of certain shows like TeddyLoid this can be up to a year of work. There’s a lot of weekdays, weeknights, weekends and heck even a fair few all nighters in there to get these shows on the road on top of my day to day schedule.
I guess the main reason I’m quitting is that I’m looking to get all these hours back and to put them elsewhere. I’m planning to commit these hours into focusing on my career, getting a social life back, working on personal projects, catching up on my Steam Library and my Crunchyroll and AnimeLab backlogs and heck investing time into my relationship, I promised my fiancé that we’d actually go on a holiday which we’ve never been able to do because of Neko.
The decision while announced today, it has nothing to do with any recent events it’s something that has been on my mind for 2 years and was honestly a case of not if, but when.
I realise this decision is going to upset people and I’m truly sorry that I was not able to keep it going. I feel that the person most truly upset is myself and I’m somewhat in tears here, I’ve been from Neko since the very beginning and it’s super sad to kill off my creation.
The reality is I saw two ways to keep going:
The first was to dial down working on Neko as much as possible, create as many shortcuts, do as little as it took to make the event happen, be able to do something that better works and balances with my life. For me, I don’t feel I can personally go down this route, Neko for me is an all or nothing event, I don’t believe in taking my foot of the gas.
The second is to just keep going like I always have. This is honestly the way I want it to be. However I don’t see it possible, those closest around me are starting to realise this is not the case. I feel like I’m going to eventually get to a point where I won’t be able to mentally and physically keep going and would be forced to eventually cancel a show. I don’t want it to go to this point either.
In the end, as a decision logically it was a no brainer to step down from Neko Nation, however accepting this decision was an incredibly tough and difficult emotionally. I still keep thinking I’ll never be walk away and every time I’ve thought about quitting or event taking a break, I always pretty much get that itch to keep doing another show.
Don’t get me wrong, that is still there right now, I’m still writing this thinking I’ll never quit and I have so much that I want to give but the reality is I’m also thinking about my health, my life goals and all the other stuff I’m looking at wanting to do and work on.
I realise this post is quite a bit depressing and bleak but the next two posts are going to be much brighter!
