Good morning and happy Monday - a brand new set of opportunities lays before all of us!
First off, posting a couple of comics from the weekend - I find that I am deeply in love with my work and always find joy in creating it (even when it frustrates me!). A cartoonist friend of mine called my cartooning my 'soul mate' and he's not wrong. UNfortunately, while I have ambition, I lack the insight into knowing how I could earn a living off of it. I suppose that's the age-old question isn't it?
Second, thanks to my friends Dave and Alonso in LA who lent me Sarah Polley's book, RUN TOWARDS THE DANGER. It's emotional, harrowing, and I found the text so charged that I could only read a chapter a night. It will stay with me for awhile especially the part about running towards the danger - like many people who have gone through some sort of trauma, our basest instinct is to stay away from that which caused the trauma.... after a severe concussion, Polley was directed to run 'towards' the things that made her ill - avoiding those situations only rewired her brain to exist without them and thus there was a period when she became isolated.
I am reminded of a time back in 2000 when I felt my left hand and left foot begin to lose feeling. I was told that I could have a herniated disc and that I was to stay away from the gym for fear of making it worse. I went to physical therapists and chiropractors - and none of them helped me one iota. After a year of this, I was in one of the biggest depressions of my life - I had spent most of the 15 years before going to the gym religiously and, if I do say so myself, my bod was rockin',.... but then after a year, some of that went away. That really played with my head. Eventually I met a chiropractor who identified a spot just below my left shoulder blade where I collected all my stress, which had enlarged and was cutting off circulation to my arm and leg. Once he worked on that spot, feeling returned and I felt great relief. And the chiropractor made a point of telling me that I absolutely ought to have been going to the gym all along - the problem was the collected stress and working out would have relieved that. Sigh.
Anyway, the book is amazing and you don't need to know the actress' work in order to enjoy it. :)
OK here are the two comics I made over the weekend - more later this week!
