Honk honk! Caw caw!

Greetings from the end of the year.

Actually I’ll just mention the three best—as in LIFE-CHANGING—years/themes, which came all in a row. The links go to my blog, where I wrote about them in more detail:

2017: ORDER (Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. - Gustave Flaubert)
This was the year I did the whole Marie Kondo thing and my partner Jake and I downsized from a 1929 house (with garage, yard, basement, attic) to a fresh new 2-BR apartment overlooking the river. We got rid of so. much. stuff. I got my finances in order. I went to the doctor for a regular check up. And the dentist!

2018: 50 Pounds of Art (or, Make Art Every Day)
With my life in ORDER, I could focus on my ART. After publishing 3 books of…words (well, the third one had some of my art), I really wanted to focus my attention more fully on visual art and comics. I figured the best way to improve at something is practice. So I took the phrase “50 pounds of art” from a popular anecdote in the book Art and Fear that suggests that focusing on quantity is a way to experiment and learn and will thus lead to quality. Would you rather be asked to make one PERFECT something . . . or 50 POUNDS of it? My idea was to make 50 pounds of art (metaphorically) by making a painting or drawing (literally) every day of the year. AND GUESS WHAT I DID IT (both metaphorically and literally)

2019: Think Bigger
When I got promoted to full professor, I rewarded myself with a bunch of Aveda products. This felt like a splurge. Soon after, I was in my Dean’s office and I was admiring all these elephant figurines on her shelves, and she said that when she got tenure she rewarded herself with a trip to Africa. Aveda? Africa! I needed to start thinking bigger. All year I gave myself permission to think bigger and act on it: Apply for that huge grant, that competitive workshop; pitch that comics series at The Rumpus. It also meant allowing myself to imagine getting an agent and a book deal. At some point I’d started believing that was no longer possible for me. It took two years, but I got both in 2021.

I haven’t figured out 2023 yet, have you?

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*I mentioned I’d been BUSY and put an asterisk, and I can’t just leave a floating asterisk! So I’ll say that I had a busy few months of traveling for book events, the most awesome part of which was reconnecting with old friends and far-away family and meeting new folks in person and online. I’m tired but super grateful.

**These asterisks don’t actually refer back to anything other than me doing cartwheels when my graphic memoir The Keeper appeared in the holiday gift guide of the New York Times Book Review:

Readers will certainly want to linger on the beautiful depictions of birds, people and scenes from her life. She weaves in historical context in graceful and necessary ways, allowing readers to understand the origins of Title IX and some other influences in her life.