I would have thought there’d be a lot more of the usual falling all over him in admiration when he posts a photo, though that doesn’t cover up all negativity. I suppose we don’t know exactly what they see or how much, or how they feel about it. It is helpful when they tell us, Phil’s Draw my Life gave us some good insight, as did Dan’s recent tumblr post, it doesn’t need to be huge. But yeah, if it’s also causing grief then they’ve got to look after themselves.
It was in that last December 2018 liveshow that Dan said the break was partly to come back with better content for us, or however he put it, so time away from all the responses is good, though we don’t know still if or how he’s actually coming back.
*snrk* on the merch timing comment
I suppose we could argue that there’s some parts of the job he’s committed to that he can’t ignore, like anyone with mental health troubles and a job, but merch is distinctly money-making where some of their interactions with us aren’t, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram, anyway, although videos and liveshows do earn them some too. They’re a different kind of work, though, and designing the merch is sitting down and doing it himself, interacting with the suppliers etc instead of us. I know I finally discovered that I’m suited to ‘sit down and do the work’ rather than ‘interact all day with everyone’.