ABOUT JOHN WILKEY

My mother used to say I shouldn’t tell everyone my business. But what she never understood was that it wasn’t business. It was personal. That’s what this is. Before this site became my personal portfolio, it was going to be the home of Wilkey Way Productions. Wilkey Way Productions started as a business but revealed itself to be a personal problem, one of many. Now, as problematic as it might be to refer to myself as a problem, I would say that my propensity for problem solving has led to a path of self-improvement. For example, it turns out I suck at business. Ask any of my friends who own their own. It took years of grilling for me to realize what they were doing that I was not. They were working. Better yet, they were functioning. See, I’ve had a problem with those, and guess what? It’s not due to laziness or incompetence. My struggles with mental health began months before I graduated from high school. My primary diagnoses have always been bipolar disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, but it turns out that little to no awareness can in and of itself cause trauma. Who knew? So, for sure, panic and trauma symptoms began to show themselves over time. Those trauma symptoms may also stem from a fact I’ve known all my life: my adoption as an infant. Did I say this would be personal? Little awareness meant little to no treatment when it came to my mental illness. Sure, I’ve always been medicine compliant, but there was no context, no education. Therapy could have accomplished this but I think one needs to learn what therapy is before it can become effective. It took a little over twenty years before I learned that despite years of refraining from negative coping habits, I also had zero positive coping skills. OK, I lied about negative coping skills. It turns out that self-soothing, combined with medication, caused serious side effects and a fair amount of harm to my self-image. So, you ask after four paragraphs, what does any of this have to do with the body of work presented here? Listen to my songs. That’s where all the answers lie, to your questions as well as mine. All the years of not thriving, it turns out all I was doing was surviving. Music is how I chronicled this. Now that I’ve begun to learn how to reverse that, it turns out I’m having trouble writing songs. Go figure. Cinematic. Conceptual. Those two words will suffice when it comes to describing how I think, how I write, and how I cope(another C-word!).That explains my lifelong obsession with comics, which have more in common with my other favorite medium, film, than they do with books. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading. I love libraries. I married a librarian. There’s just something about a story where the ideal is the illusion of movement, erasing all distinction between words and images. One person with a pencil and paper limited only by his or her imagination can accomplish what film studios pay hundreds of million dollars to hundreds or thousands to adapt into billion dollar blockbusters. Doesn’t that blow your mind? Just because I suck at business doesn’t mean I’m not fascinated by it. That’s why I decided to study film production at New York Film Academy. Side note: my graphic novel, John Wilkey’s Rx, was the basis for my acceptance. My time there was a blast. Film producers have a hand in everything. So, that’s what I got to do: a little bit of everything. It’s all about managing time and money. That’s what I learned about making a movie but I also found it to be a skill I lacked in my own life. So how was that going to work? My passion for storytelling grew, my skills improved. The time and money management skills are better applied for my real life: as a husband, homeowner and pet parent. How am I doing with that? Don’t ask but what’s important is I think I’m learning where things belong, some semblance of organization, using a mind that’s not built for it. There doesn’t seem to be a conclusion to this, does there? That’s because, like you, I’m in progress. The work I’m doing is telling me that there are still plenty of questions to ask and problems to solve. That means that I am far from done with updating this website. John