ideas | Lucky Otters Haven

Throughout history, people have sometimes gotten their best ideas from dreams. For me, my dreams were never transferable to the real world, but I just woke up from one that could be.

Back in my early 20s, I drew cartoon panels of a young woman who was a kind of depiction of myself. I put her into exaggerated real life situations, sort of humorous “graphic novels.” I gave the main character my initials at the time “S.K.” a/k/a “The Loser.” (I had such great self esteem, didn’t I?) A couple of years ago I dug the cartoons up and actually thought they were quite good, if a little dated (they were drawn in 1981).

Here are the links to the two posts that show both “graphic novels.” There are only two of them. For some reason, this was a hobby I never pursued but perhaps I should have.

The individual pictures can be clicked on to make them larger so you can read them.

Adventures of S.K. “The Loser”: A Cartoon Diary of Myself at Age 22 (1 of 2)

Adventures of S.K. “The Loser”: A Cartoon Diary of Myself at Age 22 (2 of 2)

On occasion, even on this blog, when I couldn’t find an appropriate image, I have made my own drawings. In fact, I did this a few blog posts ago on a post called Big Changes. I didn’t work too hard on that cartoon, and I’m certainly no Charles M. Schultz, but I think it still works well on the post.

I’ve always been in awe of certain cartoonists. Schultz is one. I’ve been a Peanuts fan since childhood (I was shocked when I learned that Schultz never really intended his cartoons to be for children, and the kids seem unusually “adult” in their interactions, thinking, and reactions to things).

Back in the late 1980s and 1990s, I became a huge Roz Chast fan. I bought all her books and scoured copies of The New Yorker in waiting rooms to find her cartoons. They were seemingly deliberately badly drawn, which made them funnier. I loved their randomness and sometimes straight up absurdity, but they always seemed to home in on some great truth about life in a hilarious or absurd way. I read an article about Chast and found out she was close to my age (just a few years older), but in many ways her life seemed to parallel mine. I imagined that Chast was me without all the baggage and low self esteem that kept me from ever really pursuing any of my dreams — or even knowing what those dreams were.

A couple of one-panel Roz Chast cartoons:

a-statue-of-a-man-reading-roz-chast thereassurer

I have been losing views, and maybe adding more of my own line drawings and cartoons might bring new life to this blog. What do you think?

Credit: Paulinasaurus

You might think you have nothing interesting to say, but that’s a big fat lie you tell yourself.

Ever have those random weird thoughts that just come out of nowhere? Write about them. Even if you think they’re silly or embarrassing or insignificant or would make no sense to anyone else, blog about them anyway. You never know who might be able to relate or might have been thinking the same thing. Sometimes some damned good conversations can get started that way. At the very least, you might make someone think, and getting people to think is always good.

Sometimes your random thought could take the form of a question. If you’ve always wanted to know why you never see baby squirrels or why socks always disappear in the wash (and wire hangers tend to breed), write it down. You may get some answers.

If you don’t think you have a topic to write about, you do. Start where your mind is at right now, this very second, and go from there. I don’t care how boring you think your life is. Write about the chair you’re sitting in, or the bed you’re lounging on, what you’re eating (if anything), what time you got up, what your plans for the day are, how unpleasant that flu you have is, what the temperature in the room is like, the view outside your window (even if it’s a dark trash-filled alley), what the wall next to you looks like and what’s on it (include photos of it maybe?), or the people and animals sharing the room with you right now. If Grandpa cracking his pistachios all night in front of the TV is the equivalent of being waterboarded, by all means write about it. If you can’t stand the way your husband mouth-breathes and picks his nose in front of the mirror, write about that too. Things that irritate you always make entertaining posts. Or write about how much you love something. How about compiling a bucket list? Lists of any kind are good, and they’re easy to write too. Everyone loves lists. Listicles are a thing.

Pick any one of the things above or something you came up with on your own and elaborate on it. If you feel like being goofy, be goofy. If you feel like ranting, then go ahead and rant. Blogging gets it all out of your system. Sometimes my best posts came along when I thought I had nothing to say. You never know–you may wind up saying something someone else wants or needs to hear.