October 2025: It takes as long as it takes

In the summer of '24 I drew a picture in my journal of a smiling figure and its giant, miserable monster, labeled "you" and "also you." I was angry with someone who had seemed nice at first. I didn't want to write out the whole story, which is how I often feel when journaling, but I did want to make note of what I was going through. This little sketch did the trick.

When I finished that notebook I transferred this idea along with all the other ones in there over to my Idea Book – a separate volume where I keep track of all my starts on abstract diagrams. I have about 500 collected up now. It's nice – when I want to paint, I always have a place to begin.

For more on my process of keeping track of my ideas, see my series on creating your own Inspiration Ecosystem: part 1, part 2, and part 3. And, for an introduction to my approach to journaling, start here and then continue here.

Creative genius and cartoonist Lynda Barry wrote a note about drawing and posted it on Instagram this week. It blew my mind. Read the whole thing here. Here's a clip that has stuck with me:

"How long can we stand not knowing what something is becoming? A drawing doesn't always make itself clear at the start. If we want to know what it is too soon, the drawing will stop before it can make itself known ... and it may take its time. ... 'What are you drawing?' is a question sometimes stops everything. ... If we remember that drawing is motion, a hand in motion, responding to something that we can't see, we know to stay quiet." (emphasis mine)

She goes on to say that we can "watch" drawings, trying to be invisible as we do, the way we'd watch an animal, careful to not scare it away. I think this works while the drawing is appearing on the page for the first time, and when we revisit it. When I watched the drawing of the sweet little figure and its big monster companion over the span of months that rolled out into a year and a half it showed its true self to me. I started to love the monster just as much as the small smile. They both reminded me of people I love. They both felt like me.

Watching my drawing, I now see:

• Me, and the great balloon of my rage, which took me so long to find, which strikes me as strange and booming and thrilling whenever I catch a glimpse of it in my reflection.
• My puppy Billie, who has grown to 6 pounds in her 8 months, who will do a somersault in your lap, her touch as soft as a bunny's; whose snarl stuns and sends big dogs into retreat, whose bite draws blood. We call the latter her "gremlin mode," which we both fear and appreciate. She has taught us how she wants (and does not want) to be touched, what she is afraid of, what she needs. She is standing up for herself at a much younger age than I ever did.
• The roaring, protective parts of myself that inflate now, like emotional airbags, when I need them. My big, clear "no." My unwillingness to disappear. My commitment to trusting my self. I know they may be perceived as huge, angry monsters, but they are my friends, and I won't be made to be afraid of them too.
• Something funny. It's hard to put my finger on, but this one, which I first drew feeling full of bitterness, now makes me laugh. Even when I think of that old enemy who inspired it, I can see the humor in the ways we rear up, trying to make an impression, trying to be taken so seriously.

I ended up just scanning in the second version, the one from my idea book, and turning it into the sticker for a Patreon rewards. It's perfect for October – a little spooky, a little silly. Usually I will draw and redraw something many times before it feels complete. But this one, after so long of watching it, had shown itself to be whole on its own.

How long it took:
Drawing – 2 min + 1 min
Process – 14+ months

It takes as long as it takes.

The other new painting I made recently took me much, much longer to get on to paper. I began with my seed of an idea – a line I'd written for an essay: "This summer I saw that being sick was something I could only experience, not something I could change. Instead of sending me into despair, this hit me like freedom. My only job was to experience it, so I opened up to see what was there."

I cannot overstate how hard it was for me to turn this into a painting.

It was quite meta – me, trying to wrangle a painting into being, trying to make it happen by a deadline, running hard into the message of the painting itself: this isn't mine to control. If life is somehow slow to teach us this, art will make the point quickly.