A Story of Christmas and Cartoons

Sometimes I’m a handwringing worrier, other times I just go for it. I might stay stuck in fear of the unknown, or I might jump off the cliff sans wings. If I had a recipe for what factors cause one to happen over the other, maybe I’d be rich.

It depends. It involves self-awareness and skill building. It involves practice and useful perspectives. Often, I find, it involves a friend who stands by and encourages you with kindness and honesty. This friend can be someone else, or this friend can be you — both are floating love on the salty sea of life.

I had a bunch of friends who helped me metamorphose from someone who wished she could draw cartoons to someone who draws them on a weekly basis now.

It all started years ago at Christmas time.

When my two boys were kids, each November I’d buy them the annual Trader Joe’s chocolate advent calendar — a nearly flat rectangular box that housed a small piece of chocolate behind each of 24 mini cardboard doors. On December 1st after dinner, they’d open Door #1, retrieve the tiny chocolate, and shove it in their mouths. We did this for as many years as bits of chocolate were a big deal.

Then one year nobody cared about chocolate bits. It broke my heart. I loved those cheap Trader Joe’s calendars.

I was not ready to give up the tradition, though, so I came up with an iteration on the idea. I created my own advent-type calendar comprising small inexpensive gifts each kid could open daily through December.

2014

All images by author

This worked fine for a couple Christmases until one year my kids said, “Mom, I don’t really want to do this anymore.” My oldest was seventeen — too old for such things. Maybe this fact was obvious to the rest of the world, but my plan had been to facilitate this seasonal ritual until my kids were forty years old — don’t ask me!

I tried to come up with yet another replacement December custom we could share. I decided to go simple — make a sign and try to make it funny. It was worth a try. Since I was doing this for my kids, I didn’t harbor self-doubt about my lack of sign-making skill or being funny. Love doesn’t care about that stuff.

I started on a daily whiteboard sign. It was featured in the kitchen each morning. The results were rudimentary and made with love. Lots of eye-rolling in the kitchen that December.

Sample from 2016 — My kids and husband are science-math-tech people, so I made a graph. You can see how mathematic and scientific.

The next two years, after my oldest left for college, it was just my youngest at home. I kept it up, and my masterpieces were received with a big dose of polite tolerance.

Sample from 2017 — Influenced by the latest Star Wars movie. Can you tell those are reindeer? Anybody would understand if you cannot.

Sample from 2018 — Inspired by the local raccoon and fox who regularly dined at my outdoor cat food bowl — thieves that they were.

As the days ticked by, I slowly developed drawing technique — with an emphasis on slowly. I hadn’t been thinking about honing skill back then. I only wanted to prepare an image each night for its debut at breakfast. No pressure to be “a cartoonist”. This was for fun.

Then one Christmas it happened — both kids were off at college. I was left with the decision to continue the tradition or not. By this time, I’d already become attached to the evening practice of sitting at my kitchen counter with my whiteboard, vanilla-scented candle, and holiday tunes drifting from my phone into the otherwise silent night. Considering I had a terrible case of empty nest, why would I let that go?

I didn’t.

Sample from 2019 — This was the year I bought my fake Christmas tree, at long last — given that we always travel during the holidays.

Then, Covid hit, and cartoons became highly valuable things to make. Oh, did they lighten the load. My new laptop could act as a digital drawing pad, so I started to learn a simple computer graphics app. The whiteboard cartoons transitioned to their new digital life. In retrospect, I can’t believe how I suffered all that time with a whiteboard!

Sampling from 2020 — The ability to instantly erase any mark I made on the computer helped expedite skill development. Tools and practice matter.

After Christmas of 2020, I got a bug under my skin to start a blog. I knew I wanted to write uplifting stories to include on my coaching website. I wasn’t so sure I should add my cartoons. Suddenly, I felt the need to be a real-deal cartoonist. Besides, should I add something so non-serious to my work website? What would people think of me? A jokester?

This is when my coaching buddies stepped in to help me get over the hump of self-doubt, fear, and perfectionism. It took many coaching conversations over months’ time, but eventually I decided it was worth a try. By summer of 2021 I wrote my first weekly blog article, with a cartoon, and posted it online. Amazingly, nobody ran me out of town.

By Christmas I was well into the swing of cartoon things.

After a year and a half of weekly cartoons, it’s hard to imagine I had misgivings about sharing them with others. I no longer worry whether they’re good enough. Instead, it’s about the enjoyment I get from making them, the mindful focus of drawing, the challenge of racking my brain to come up with the gag, which is the hardest part.

They say success or progress isn’t rocket science. It requires four things: starting, doing, noticing, tweaking — on repeat. Sometimes starting and doing seem like rocket science though. In this case, it helps if we have a different set of four things: knowledge about ourselves, experimentation, a little courage, and effort.

It’s doable. I speak from experience. Happy Holidays, folks!