We recently connected with Aleo Covi and have shared our conversation below.
Aleo, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
The walk has been long, complicated, and rarely linear. Schizophrenia is the worst, but thanks to a very vital combo of medication, good professionals, and above all my community of friends and family, I’m happy to say it’s been years since I’ve suffered symptoms. Yes, side effects from the meds are often a real pain, but it’s a constant conversation with the professionals in my life and I feel like I’m moving in a good direction, however bumpy the path goes.
I wouldn’t have been able to get to where I am today without all these incredible privileges I’ve been given. How many people with Schizophrenia are surrounded by incredibly supportive relatives and friends? How many have the faculties to be creative and spend time outside socializing? In fact, at one point I was so traumatized and medicated that, from what I remember, I couldn’t even enjoy listening to music. Other times, I could barely put pen to paper and draw anything. But, times have changed.
These fundamental truths around how privileged I am kind of make me want to live life more fully. I don’t want to squander my abilities, skills, talents, and whatever else I’ve been given because I’m very much aware of how many people wish to have the resources I do, but they may not have them. It feels like a big responsibility and I want to use these opportunities wisely, but sometimes I don’t know how. I think ninety nine percent of the time, I just have to remind myself of the beautiful things I have at my disposal.
Gratefulness helps me move forward without becoming too distraught, and without losing faith in the abilities I have. But it’s hard, because I’m faced with very real limitations day to day. A big concern I have is just burning out and never recovering, but so far I haven’t totally run out of gas. Making art rejuvenates me, because it’s my favorite way to convey ideas. A lot of people like my art too, which genuinely makes me happy. The tricky thing is balancing the moments where I feel like creating nonstop for fear of losing that spark of inspiration, and the other feeling, which is admitting to myself when it’s time to rest. I guess I also have to make clear to myself that giving up on my dreams isn’t an option.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
You know how every little kid draws? I was one of those kids, but I never really stopped drawing. Now I’m a grown-up (although I barely feel like one) and I draw every day. I love sharing my illustrations and stories with my online audience. I have a really great community of supportive people on social media. Pretty recently, I’ve been posting tons of lore content paired with my drawings. I like building worlds, especially ones filled with adorable monsters.
I call my little monsters “Budibaji,” which is a silly name I’ve had for my characters since I was a little kid. Some have unique mental conditions, and others don’t. I put them all together in the same setting so viewers can observe this world full of diversity, and each monster dealing with their own challenges, but all somehow living with one another in their beautiful galaxy.
The monsters may have real-world health conditions, but sometimes I shy away from directly labeling them. I like expressing a certain character’s story and seeing someone say how they see themselves in this specific character. For example, sometimes I might say, “Boji the dog has delusional Schizophrenia,” and other times I might just say, “Boji struggles with XYZ.” It really depends on the story I’m trying to tell involving each character and how I want the audience to feel.
It’s super exciting to build a whole galaxy-sized world and have other real people enjoy it to the point where they continually ask when I’m going to release a video game, film, or plushie line. I have a whole lot of ideas and I’m still building up resources to make those things possible.
I love it, I just love it.
For a little while after my homeless teenager years, I briefly worked as a biomedical research programmer. It felt like a huge accomplishment just having that job, but I was in way over my head, I didn’t know what I was doing, and back then at least, I was not happy as a programmer. Proud, sure, but not the happiest nor nicest person on the planet. When my illness struck, I had to leave that job. The path to transitioning from programming to being a full time artist has been full of joy, misery, and all flavors of surprises. I taught myself how to code back then though, which gave me a lot of courage and confidence that I can teach myself more than just that. I like to think I’ve been doing a good job of learning how to improve my own art too. It’s a path that is not steady, not predictable, and not always sustainable. But I’m figuring things out, and I feel like things may fall beautifully into place soon.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Oh boy. In terms of impact, I can say the willingness to improve and admit my own mistakes have gone very far in terms of my social confidence and my self respect. As far as skills go, I think more important than any skill is the ability to acquire new skills themselves, and I suppose that itself counts as a skill. Learning how to learn is likely the biggest asset people can gain. Especially in the era of AI, where people may forget the skill of cultivating curiosity and seeking answers in a holistic way, because knowledge is becoming something that is handed to us with little effort on our behalf. I believe critical thinking is so, so important. Full disclosure, it’s hard for me to think straight due to everything going on in my brain, so critical thinking is something I want to sharpen for myself.
I’m frequently taken aback when people sincerely ask me for advice. In my mind, I’m literally the least qualified person on the planet. I can hardly think straight half the time, and I forget things too much. I would like to recommend that people spend more time socializing and talking with friends about deep and interesting things. It doesn’t have to be super philosophical in every conversation every time, but make sure you find good people who uplift you enough where they encourage you to grow and make you think of perspectives you don’t always agree with. Maybe who even challenge your personal ideas or beliefs a little bit. Keep your eyes open for such people, because they are more common than you may think.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
Licensing my characters is for sure a huge goal of mine. My characters are designed to integrate well into video games, animation, immersive experiences, and of course merchandise. I’m always looking to partner with these sorts of studios and companies. My hope is that businesses see more and more value in the kind of work I put out there and will display more interest in working with me and my monsters. I’m reachable through my business email, [email protected] – otherwise, shoot me a message through my website, aleocovi.com.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://aleocovi.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/aleocovi
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@aleocovi
- Other: Email: [email protected]
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
