My Gap Year

1 year ago, I quit my job and came back home.

My original goal was to write a comic book — which I finished 1 chapter of, and then promptly realized this was a bad idea.

Also, as a Google News app addict, it was hard to turn away from the fact that the tech / AI space has been so active these days and it was hard to look away from all the action. Was I really going to spend this time trying to eek away 1 page of a comic book per day when the entire world was changing all around me?

Pandemonium

My original comic idea was called Pandemonium, and it was a fusion of several different ancient Asian classic novels. I had a really big Three Kingdoms / Journey to the West phase in 2023, so it was only natural for me that I try my hand at creating the epic story that’s always been lurking around in my head.

I got pretty far with the outline — but the experience of writing that first 40-page chapter over 1 month was a very good learning experience as to why more peple don’t attempt comics. It’s a pretty intensive operation, especially when you’re as perfectionistic as I am.

Samhan

So after a few weeks of that, I turned my attention toward another comic idea.

I’ve always loved the K-Drama Queen Seondeok, which briefly covers the Unification Wars in Korea from 642-668 AD. It’s always been a personal fascination of mine, and it seemed similar enough to my original Pandemonium idea that I thought it was worth a shot.

I did finish the concept art and story outline for the comic, and I do plan on finishing it one day.

However, I think starting it now may be a waste of effort, given how quickly AI-driven creation is taking hold. Maybe I’ll wait a few years until that technology matures and I can finally go ahead with the comic studio of my dreams.

Stanley

Yes, I did kind of end up working for Stan again. But I had two good reasons:

1) Money

Stan pays very well. I made $100,000 during my gap year in contract work, which is almost on-par with what I was making as a full-time employee.

2) AI

I had gotten tired of working on Stan Store’s “core” SaaS product, but John & Vitalii had a fun 14-day sprint where they flew to London to kick off the development of Stanley, their AI content creation product.

Rather than struggle with product development on my own, I figured it would be better to latch onto John & Vitalii since they know how to really get things off the ground.

Sketchdreamer

I also started my own little project, which I am calling Sketchdreamer.

It originally started as a project to help with AI-assisted drawing, which is still in the works.

However, the core product is now called the Portal — an infinite canvas-based generative UI for the future of AI. Built on top of the Svelte Flow library.

To be honest, I’m kinda souring on the whole infinite canvas concept as a whole. I think it’s great for actua design programs like Photoshop and Figma, but not great for normal everyday users because it requires too much manual brainpower to even understand.

Conclusions

So, what did we learn from my gap year?

1) I do like the freedom of working from home, but it does get lonely after a while.

2) It’s incredibly easy to fall back into laziness and comfort. I lost track of my goal several times while I’ve been here.

3) I’m starting to write more regularly as a method of keeping my sanity in check.