After laboring for weeks, I finally gave birth

Now I'm suffering postpartum depression.

B-T-dubs, two things: I have a penis and by 'give birth' I mean to a piece of art I'm calling 'Debateasaurus Rex'. (Rexy for President, 2016 -- she doesn't just debate her opponents, she eats them, too!)

I've been working on a series of illustrations called Better With Dinosaurs for a few months now -- each one grows increasingly more complex than the last -- and the idea for a T. Rex looming over the two presidential candidates on the debate stage was so good, I actually preempted a half-finished triceratops piece to make it happen in a timely fashion.

The Beast wants what the Beast wants. (And by 'beast', I refer to my Creative Beast. She's some kind of mix between a T. Rex and the Incredible Hulk.)

I started Debateasaurus shortly after the first presidential debate of 2016 and worked diligently on it, nearly every day until it's completion. Now, obviously, I've always dabbled in art, but I've never gone where I went with this piece. And honestly, I surprised myself with the end result.

There's detail in this piece that I had no idea I was even able to capture.

What the fuck is THAT noise?!

Yes, when it comes to creativity, I love stretching myself and doing different things and, in most cases, making a whole ton of shit up as I go along. I don't intellectually know the proper technique on how to render the kind of detail that's in this illustration, I just played around with different brushes and colors to see what worked.

The point is that it was an experience. An obsessive experience. To the point where there were a few nights towards the end when I was going to bed, closing my eyes, and still seeing the scarred, craggy lines and shading and highlights of Rexy Dearest.

And tonight .... I finished it. Even though I saw a handful of spots that could use more detail, more depth, more time -- I put the the pencil down, exported the final image, and posted it online.

After weeks of intense labor, my baby had been birthed. Watching social media react to the piece is like -- I would assume -- watching your child grow up. You want it to do well. You want people to like it. You want it to be successful.

And then it turns out to be an abject failure that everybody hates and it turns out you wasted your time pouring your heart and soul into something that no one gives a shit about and you wonder what the fuck are you even doing with your life? Asshole.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure parenthood is something like that.

At any rate, it's done. And as I sit and wait for the inevitable crash-and-burn in the mentally-destructive inferno we call social media, I find myself enveloped in a familiar, black void.

My art has been birthed. It's no longer inside me and I have no control over it anymore.

What now? What the ever-loving-fuck now?