Hello, Lovely Humans!

The post below is a repost from something I just published on Medium. But I wanted to share it here too. As you head into this weekend, a portal between spring and summer, I hope you will take time to make some kind of art.

If you need something else to get you into a summer frame of mind, here is a clip of me reading some short summer poems:

There Are No Bad Poems. There is No Bad Art

One fun thing about being a dad to four kids is watching the older ones react when they see their younger siblings say or do something that will trigger a response from me.

A few years ago, our youngest, T, made a comment about how other people were doing something to justify why she should be able to do something. K and E shook their heads and said, “Rookie mistake,” and laughed.

T got to hear my thoughts about how the standards for our conduct are not set by other people, and that she must learn to create her own standards that she holds herself accountable for.

While she was not thrilled to hear this talk from me on that occasion, or any of the other subsequent occasions, I’m happy to report she has become a very independent-minded teenager.

Around the same time, T’s older brother G announced he was horrible at poetry. He only wrote bad poems. K happened to be there for this pronouncement as well. This time she said, “Get comfortable. Dad has a lot of thoughts about this. He gets pretty passionate.”

She wasn’t wrong.

There is no such thing as a bad poem. That’s not to say all poems are good, or have the same inherent level of quality. Poems, like all art, fall into a broad range of quality, which has both subjective and objective elements. Not all poems are great. Very, very few are.

But badness isn’t something that makes sense when used to describe a poem. A poem is a sketch of your feelings. It would be like trying to evaluate an ice-skating performance using the same criteria you used for ranking the temperature of peppers.

Poetry is something you once did effortlessly. Making rhymes, singing songs, dancing, and drawing are activities every child does. As Lynda Barry puts it in her book Making Comics,

“We draw before we are taught. We also sing, dance, build things, act, and make up stories long before we are given any deliberate instructions beyond exposure to the people around us doing things.

Everything we have come to call the arts seems to be in almost every 3-year-old.”

Making poems is part of being human. Sadly, most of us stop making poems, just like we stop drawing and dancing, because we are introduced to the idea that we are bad at it. We get self-conscious. As part of “growing up,” we develop a desire to never look foolish. We become afraid of cringe.

The truth is that there is nothing more foolish about writing silly verses than there is in sitting in your car for two hours a day heading to a job you don’t like.

Most of us would never tell a child that their poem, picture, or dance is “bad”. Most of us would also genuinely believe that a child’s efforts in these endeavors were actually good. We give them grace because they are children, they are beginners.

But when we get older, we expect ourselves to be experts at everything we try. Because we are scared of doing a bad job or looking foolish, we never get good at artsy things.

Again, Barry wonders, “How old do you have to be to make a bad drawing?”

There are no bad poems. That is just not something that exists. That doesn’t mean you cannot get better at making poems.

I asked G, how many poems he had written.

He didn’t know. I asked him if it was more or less than ten. He decided the number of poems he had written was around twenty.

Twenty! That’s nothing.

I asked him, “Were you good at the trumpet after you had played twenty songs? Were you good at basketball after you took twenty shots, or even played twenty games?”

How often do we barely start doing something creative before quitting because we are bad at it?

If we desire to be good at something, and I think that is a noble and natural human impulse, we have to embrace not being good for a long time.

Also, it is normal and natural to like doing something even if you are not good at it. You don’t even have to want to be good at it to keep doing it.

Art is ultimately about self-expression. Art makes you more whole. Writing poems can be something you do to discover how you feel about something. It can be between you and your journal. It can also be something you do to connect to other people.

That conversation about poetry with G was many years ago. Since that time, he has grown into a talented musician. He plays multiple instruments, writes songs, and is in at least two bands. This past month, he also had one of his poems featured in his high school’s literary magazine.

He doesn’t remember that specific intervention, back when he had only written twenty poems. But we are both grateful he didn’t quit writing.

You do not have to like poetry (although if you don’t, I’m willing to bet the way you were taught poetry in school is at least partly to blame). But you cannot honestly say you write bad poetry because that’s not possible.

You may not write good poetry, but then again, how hard have you tried? Is it fair to say to a beginner that they’re no good? No! It’s ludicrous!

I love poetry and cartooning with all of my soul. I write a lot of poems, and I make a lot of comics. Am I good at these things? 🤷

However, I am getting better, and that’s part of the joy.

I have managed to write seven books and five zines, most involving poetry, comics, and usually both poetry and comics. Through my poetry comics efforts, I’ve become a freelance illustrator as well as a freelance writer.

I make my living by creating things. This could never have happened if I had quit because I was “bad” at these activities.

Your life would be better if you spent more time acting like you did when you were three.

Dance, sing, make up funny rhymes, and draw. Do these things not because you want to be a famous artist, or because they will make you more productive or creative. Do these things because you are a human, and they bring you joy.

I think of this clip from the movie The Dead Poets Society:

“We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race…”

Write poems to your friends and enemies. Write poems as text messages or as notes for your child’s lunch. Know that you cannot write a bad poem and that each poem you write helps you understand your place in the world a little better.

Poetry, and all art, is how we practice being human. We dance and sing and draw and write not becasue we are skilled, but becasue they make us feel good, and feeling good helps us to do good, to be good. Not good at something, but emanating goodness.

Ethan Hawke says this quite eloquently:

Most people don’t think about poetry until they need it like they need oxygen. “Art is sustenance,” is what all of us eventually learn. Not large language model-generated words and images, but words and images forged in the crucible of a human soul and bravely exposed to the world.

Write more poems, sing more songs, dance more dances, because someone else might understand their place in the world a little better because you were brave enough to look foolish.

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Cheers,

Do you enjoy my work? There are lots of ways you can support me as an independent writer and artist. Just reading and sharing my work helps a lot! If you have the means to do so, here are a few other ways you can support me:

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Hello, Haikuists!

I used to send out thoughts and ideas for writing haiku with a haiku prompt every week. I stopped doing that two or three years ago. But I’m bringing the practice back!

I miss reading your poems, and I can’t stop myself from talking about haiku.

Below, you’ll find some thoughts about combining our imagination with observation to write haiku, a few examples, and a prompt. Please share your haiku in the comments!

Apophenia is the human tendency to see patterns or connections in random things. It’s one of our most beautiful and troublesome traits.

It’s one of the reasons we are so prone to conspiracy theories. The universe serves up a ream of data demonstrating a series of random, unconnected coincidences, and our brains immediately latch onto two unrelated points and concoct a story before we are consciously aware of what we are doing.

This most human condition is also one of the reasons eyewitness testimony is often unreliable. Apophenia means we automatically find patterns and create narratives to explain the presence or absence of non-existent patterns.

However, there is also something beautiful about apophenia. This is why we see shapes in the clouds and Jesus in a piece of toast. It’s also why we anthropomorphize nature in art, poetry, and our everyday conversations.

I don’t know if I’m any more or less sensitive to seeing patterns, but I do know I love to use these unreal patterns as seasoning for my haiku comics. I love to create characters from birds, frogs, and even the ocean.

One reason my poetry tends to lean heavily on apophenia and anthropomorphization is that I came to writing haiku as a way of practicing telling very short stories. I’ve written entire books with pirate haiku, horror haiku, and sci-fi haiku, all deviations from the officially “allowed” nature poems.

But there are plenty of stories to find in nature, too!

Once I started making poetry comics, I took my storytelling and layered it on top of what I was seeing and hearing in nature during my walks and hikes. Sometimes the poem doesn’t suggest a character from nature, but the comic does.

Haiku is fundamentally the poetry of observation. These short three-line poems are meant to record what the poet has seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched from the natural world. However, we are all biased, inaccurate observers, and that is where the poetry comes from. The best haiku, the best poems of any kind, perfectly blend observation with imagination so that the reader will never truly know how much of a line of poetry is a memoir and how much is a scrap of a novel. And the poet will also be just ignorant of the truth of their source material.

In much of the West, we falsely put poetry on a pedestal. However, as our proclivity towards apophenia demonstrates, inside, we are all poets.

Now it’s your turn. Write a haiku about some false pattern you’ve seen or some story you have created with an amphropromorphized character from nature. Your haiku can either be a traditional one, with three lines using the 5-7-5 syllable pattern, or you can write a free verse haiku.

Remember, there are no poetry police. This is a place for creative expression. So take some risks with your haiku. If you’re feeling brave, share your haiku in the comments!

Do you enjoy my work? There are lots of ways you can support me as an independent writer and artist. Just reading and sharing my work helps a lot! If you have the means to do so, here are a few other ways you can support me:

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Thanks for reading! Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Hello, Friendly Folks!

School is finally out here, and that means I’m in full summer mode. Summer is my most energetic time of the year. Maybe it’s because I’m solar-powered, or that I have more time when I don’t have to get kids to and from school each day, or perhaps it’s because I’m a Leo. Whatever the reason, over the next few months, I will be experimenting and launching a bunch of stuff.

Please don’t feel like you need to keep up or participate in everything. Mostly, I use summer to see what works for me as an artist, business owner, and human being.

Here are three things I want to put on your radar:

1. Weirdo Poetry Snail Mail Club and Zine Club are the primary benefits of becoming a paid subscriber. All my newsletter posts are free thanks to these subscribers. You can join these clubs either through Substack or through my store at WeirdoPoetry.Shop.

2. I will be going live with on July 6th as part of her interview series! When the live is officially scheduled, I will send out a link.

3. For the first time in almost 2 years, I am doing some digital busking. What’s that? This is where I make custom haiku comics for anyone who asks. I send you printable digital files, and you are free to tip me whatever you like via PayPal, Venmo, or Strips. If you want one of these custom comics, all you need to do is DM me or send me an email and let me know! These make terrific gifts. Below are some examples of my commissioned work.

And now for today’s feature presentation.

The Delights of Being an Amateur Human

Right as my frontal lobe was fully developing, I chose to attend law school. During the three grueling years that followed, two concepts were drilled into my head. One, you are competing with everyone. Law school was graded on a curve, meaning a percentage of us would not make it through all three years. Second, professionalism is the most important trait for any young lawyer to demonstrate. Professionalism is how you proved yourself in school, while working as a law clerk, and most critically, it was how you got a job, and how you rose through the ranks at whatever firm you landed at.

Competing with everyone was exhausting, and in my third year, I realized I had no desire to work for someone else just so I could keep competing. Most of my work experience before being a law clerk was as a self-employed odd-jobber. My dad was a Silicon Valley engineer, and he had been self-employed most of my life.

I realized the only chance I had to make it as a lawyer, a profession I was sure that I was not cut out for, but was already in deep debt over, was to go out on my own. And so I did.

That career lasted nine years before I had a nervous breakdown. But up until the end, I was professional.

My next career was as a freelancer, something I’m still doing. Early on, I had a major advantage over most other freelance copywriters: I knew how to act like a professional. I hit deadlines, returned emails promptly, and kept on top of my invoices.

As my freelance career has ebbed and flowed over the past fifteen years, I still attend to that work with all the professionalism I can muster.

But the cutthroat competition that law school tried to instill in me never stuck.

I can succeed without anyone else failing. My failures are also all my own, not due to someone else’s successes. I’ve also learned to limit my professionalism to my professional life.

The rest of the time, I’m a giddy amateur human. I turn fifty later this summer, and I’m still learning things about the way my brain works. I’m very much still a beginner at this whole human thing.

There is so much I don’t know about myself or people in general. I’ve found that by approaching life as an amateur, I have much more patience for the shenanigans of others. After all, none of us know what we’re doing. My daily stress is so much lower when I bring curiosity instead of animosity to my human interactions. I’m not perfect. I still sometimes flip off some jackass in a big truck for trying to pass me on our narrow country road in a spot with poor visibility, as he veers back into my lane when an oncoming car suddenly appears.

But even that is part of me being an amateur human.

I’m not just an amateur psychologically, either. It seems like every day I learn something else about my physical body. It turns out I can greatly control my inflammation and all the negative things that go with that, with simple changes to my diet. Since my body is always changing, and the older I get, the faster those changes seem to be coming, there is always something new to learn about my hardware.

My eyesight has been slowly failing since I was eight years old. But now, it’s failing in new ways, and while some of my neighbors have three or four guns at the ready at all times, I need at least three different pairs of glasses within arm’s reach when writing or drawing.

Being an amateur human also allows me to notice my surroundings in greater detail than an expert might. I’ve lived in the same town for almost thirty years, yet I regularly see new plants and wildlife. They’ve been here the whole time, of course, but my attention is just now catching up to them.

Even familiar animals, like our crows, are constantly showing me new sides.

I go on almost daily walks as a kind of creative practice where I work on noticing the world and writing haiku. These walks also improve my physical and mental health. However, increasingly, my favorite part of these walks is my chance to pair my amateur human status with my hobby as an amateur photographer.

Photography is something I have no desire to be professional at. I’m content taking my weird pictures and using them as references for my comics and as a source of delight.

Here are some of my favorite recent photos from my walks:

My photos are often blurry, and the composition is usually questionable. I don’t care. I take photos with my phone and exult in my ignorance. Maybe someday I will learn the settings on my phone or buy a fancier camera. Maybe not. I’m having too much fun being an idiot photographer.

As a young man, I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be accepted. Then I saw what it took to fit in and be accepted, and knew I wanted no part of that. I would rather practice being kind and losing myself for hours in my different art projects than do what it takes to be a professional human.

The funny thing is that the more I learn about people, the more I realize that often the people who end up excelling in institutions don’t like other people at all. They’re just pros at using others.

There’s a great line in the U2 song Original of the Species that warns about this kind of person. Bono sings:

Some things you shouldn’t get too good at
Like smiling, crying, and celebrity
Some people have way too much confidence, baby

Just as being an amateur photographer leaves me unencumbered by best practices, being an amateur human allows me the freedom to live a life worth living, regardless of what anyone else thinks of me.

How about you? Are you an amateur human, too? If so, let’s go forward together with curiosity in search of wonder and whimsy!

Do you enjoy my work? There are lots of ways you can support me as an independent writer and artist. Just reading and sharing my work helps a lot! If you have the means to do so, here are a few other ways you can support me:

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Thanks for reading! Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Hello, Joy Surfers!

I just finished the last illustrations for Chad Ellis Boykins’s Kaiju Haiku. This project was a big creative challenge for me. It taught me a lot about who I am as an artist, visual storytelling, and has left me wondering where I go from here.

This is an unsettled season for me, and I’m working on seeing that as a call to adventure. Some days I succeed, and some days my anxiety wins. But most days I’m closer to the adventure side than the existential doom side of things.

Today, instead of a new essay or set of poetry comics, I’m sharing some comics, illustrations, and t-shirt designs I’ve made over the years that never went anywhere. I may still do something with these odds and ends, but I feel like they deserve to see the light of day.

But first, I want to share a few of my double-page spreads from Kaiju Haiku, which will be coming to a bookstore near you very soon!

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Now for some really goofy stuff:

Here is set of comics I was once flirting with called Zip: Tales of an Interdimensional Guinea Pig

Here are some t-shirt designs I never got around to actually making:

That’s enough nonsense for today!

Thanks for reading!

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Hello, My Lovely Weirdos!

Thank you to everyone who has followed me on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram over the past week! I’m going to keep experimenting with videos, both vertical and horizontal, as both a marketing and artistic exercise.

Before I get to the essay below, I want to let you know about one more experiment I’m running. Part of my reaction to the AI call that I’m going to describe is to step away from applying for jobs/gigs and from writing cold emails to potential clients. Instead, I’m launching a dynamic portfolio to showcase my wide range of skills and creativity in the form of a newsletter called You Need Jason.

You Need Jason

Learn how to get paid for your creativity with daily(ish) inspiration for intriguing (and cheeky) ways to showcase your capabilities as a multihyphenate, and a great way to find your perfect freelancer (me!)

By Jason McBride

I’ll be launching it later this week. Feel free to check it out, or don’t. No worries either way!

I Received a Call from a Robot, and It Broke My Brain

I froze for a moment when I heard the uncanny voice on the other end ask for my consent to use my voice for training and quality assurance purposes. There was something about the strange phrasing of the request and the not-quite-human tone of voice.

There was also the fact that the call had started with, “Hi, Jason! I’m Alex, an AI assistant who will be pre-screening you for…”

I quickly gathered my senses and hung up the phone. I wasn’t going to talk to a robot about a senior copywriting contract gig.

My phone buzzed with a follow-up text from “Alex” a moment later. I reported it as spam.

Perhaps, I’m too entitled. But I don’t want to work for a company that can’t talk to me human-to-human. If they’re willing to send a robot to talk to me, then what else are they going to use the robots for? I refuse to work for someone where I’m just an inconvenient meat sack, tolerated until the AI is finally good enough to sound like a human. (Which I don’t believe will ever happen in a scalable, relpicable way.)

I’m not desperate enough for that. As one fellow writer said in my Note about it, I’d rather dig ditches.

But the call left me feeling ugly inside. I’ve been trying to rebuild my copywriting business after taking three years off from actively recruiting new clients. I thought applying for a few contract jobs that pay lower than what my current rate might help me bridge the gap I’m facing.

Normally, I get clients through cold pitches, word-of-mouth, and my website. After the robot call, I wondered if the world had passed me by. Perhaps I just don’t have it like I used to.

I felt like the duck from this haiku comic:

I refuse to go down without a fight. My immediate reaction after I vented my thoughts in a social media post was to start making more vertical video content.

I’m a human interested in connecting with other humans. My work, in all of its varied forms, is about learning how to live a deeply human life. It’s about amping up the humanity in an inhumane world.

That call was a pivot point for me. It’s a reminder of why I started a physical newsletter based around poetry comics. I want to bring more wonder into the world. I want to celebrate beauty. I want to learn more about the link between me and nature and between you and me.

I have no interest in being a billionaire. I would like to be able to continue being able to afford groceries, gas, and healthcare. As I near my 50th birthday, I feel more emboldened to do something crazy like making a real push to make a living that is solely based on making art and words for real people, not companies.

I’ve done it before for stretches as long as a year at a time, but I’ve always used copywriting to bridge the gaps. That might not be realistic anymore.

I don’t know.

I do know that I’m going to keep fighting for my human dignity, and will not explain myself to a bot, to a clanker.

The afternoon after the call, I had another pivot moment.

I was walking in a park when I saw a toddler toddling forward with an arm full of leaf litter, sticks, and dirt. Her adult was behind her, carrying a baby, trying to gently guide the toddler to set down her bundle.

Then her huge brown eyes made contact with my eyes behind my sunglasses, and she made a beeline towards me. I could tell her adult was unsure about what was going to happen.

I squatted down to get on the toddler’s level and held out my hands.

She dumped her armful of stuff into my hands. I said, “Thank you! Wow! That’s a lot of leaves, thank you so much!” The toddler grinned and ran back, happy and proud, to her adult.

The adult thanked me, and we all parted ways.

That is what being human is about. That is the kind of life I want to live. One where strangers feel welcome sharing their stories and leaves with me.

That is how I will make my living. Being deeply human means I need to share my deeply felt emotions with other humans and try to puzzle out what it all means, together.

I’m not yet at the point of having to dig ditches. Instead, I feel reinvigorated about writing and art, about making a living from my humanity. I see that I am the real duck, and I don’t need to fall in line with a bunch of artificial copies to make my way in this world.

The one thing the call and the toddler have reminded me of is that being human is a group project.

Thanks for reading! If you’re new here, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post. Please feel free to share this post with anyone you think might resonate with it, and let me know what you think about the current employment landscape, especially for anyone over age 40!

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Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Did you know I have published seven full-length books and four zines? Most of my work is available wherever books are sold. You can always find my work at my own bookstore, WeirdoPoetry.Shop. You will also find that my hardcovers are always on sale there.

Hello, Haiku Heads!

This post is a sequel of sorts to one I posted here back in 2024.

I ended up using part of that essay and smashing it together with another post titled Daytripping to create a chapter for my book How to Create a Life You Love: No Magical Thinking Required. (Hey, Paul McCartney regularly smashes two parts of two different songs together to create one new, weirder, better song; why can’t I do the same with my essays?)

Sheryl Crow Weather is upon me again, and I have more to say about it.

One last thing. Due to increases in the cost of everything, I have to raise the prices for the Snail Mail and Zine clubs starting June 5th. Currently, the Snail Mail Club is $8 a month or $86 a year. Zine Club is $175 for the year. I’m raising the prices to $15 a month or $100 a year for the monthly Snail Mail Club, and the Zine Club will be $200 a year.

However, I am keeping the prices the same for members who join directly through my store.

If you’re already a member, you will keep paying the price from when you subscribed.

If you haven’t joined yet and want to lock in the lower price, subscribe by June 5th, and you will lock in the lower price for life.

Be sure to subscribe if you’re new to Weirdo Poetry, so you never miss an illustrated essay or set of poetry comics!

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Is This My Favorite Season?

Shrery Crow Weather II

I’ve never been able to join the secret society of serious haiku poets in part because I’m ambivalent about spring. (I’m also too weird and iconoclastic. Plus, my inner Groucho Marx doesn’t want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member.)

To me, fall is the best season for writing haiku, and summer is my favorite season for living. Winter gives me an essential period of rest. Spring is vivacious, but maybe it’s all my sneezing during the pollen storms, or perhaps it’s just my allergy to following dogmas and dictates without question, but spring doesn’t pack as much of a poetic punch for me as other times of year.

But there is one exception.

The period from early to mid-May to the end of June, when spring turns into summer, a microseason I’ve taken to calling Sheryl Crow Weather.

In terms of the weather, it’s a Goldilocks time of year. Even as I stare down the barrel of my fiftieth year, I look outside, and I feel like I’m about to graduate high school, with the whole world waiting for me to explore and conquer.

A poem I wrote six Mays ago starts to capture my feelings:

Almost in Love
After Sherly Crow

Two teens loiter
“Dangerously close to one another,”
as Sheryl once said.
One arm swing brings
their fingers within touching distance.
He pulls back, embarrassed.
She turns her head and grins.
They keep walking down the hill;
both waiting for something to happen.

This season, I’m not waiting for something to happen. I’m out here working to make things happen. As I mentioned in a reply to a comment earlier this week, I feel like the living paraphrase of one of my favorite Sondheim lyrics, one from “Into the Woods.” My newest creative and business adventures have me feeling excited, well, excited and scared.

Excited and scared is what Sheryl Crow weather is all about. It’s a time for new beginnings when anything is possible.

Here are some Sheryl Crow weather haiku comics to hopefully put you in the mood for doing something new. Something that makes you excited and scared.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed these haiku comics, head over to my store, or wherever books are sold, to find paperback, hardcover, and ebook versions of my seven books and four zines, packed with poetry comics!

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Hello, Weirdo Friends!

This is a deviation from my usual messages, but don’t worry. I will be back tomorrow with an essay and poetry comics about the transition between spring and summer!

Earlier today, I posted this note:

Then I got to thinking. I really need to triple down on my own humanity. I want to get more eyeballs on my work. So I am taking a scary plunge into vertical video. I’m going to be posting short videos on my usual themes: poetry, poetry-comics. marketing, and living a human life.

The idea is to get more attention to what I do here, as well as my books and copywriting services.

I just don’t want to deal with any more AI assistants!

Here’s a video I just posted to TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

If you are active on any of those platforms, it would be helpful if you could go over and give me a follow. I need more followers there to unlock all of the features these platforms give creators.

This is very much a ready, fire, aim move. I have a lot to learn. But I also know that people enjoy my writing and illustrations. I want to share the work with more people, and this is my current best idea for how to do that.

Plus, I really need to get over my fear of being perceived.

Here are links to my vertical video accounts.

TikTok-@weirdopoetry

Instagram-weirdo_poetry

YouTube-@weirdopoetry

Thanks for all your help!

This is my way of being the weird I want to see in the world!

Cheers,

You can find my books and ebooks in the Weirdo Poetry Shop and wherever books are sold!

Hello, Curiosity Boosters!

This week’s coay Sunday read is free for everyone thanks to the generous support of members of the Weirdo Poetry Snail Mail Club.

Click here to learn more about how you could be getting a letter and poetry comic in the mail from me every month!

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Get Out of Your Head and Head Out Into the World

My optometrist cocked her head sideways and looked at me with the same confused look as my seven-year-old Havanese when he’s trying to work out what trick I want him to do to earn a treat.

“What do you mean you’re not at your desk all day? I thought you said you were a freelance writer and illustrator.” She asked.

I explained that while I do spend a lot of time at my desk, that’s where the least important part of my work happens.

Writing and drawing are really just types of thinking. Before I know what I think, I have to go out into the world and see what’s happening. I need a lot of input before I can create any output.

“Well, because of your age and eyesight, you still need progressive lenses.” She said as we completed the rest of the eye exam, giving up on understanding how a writer works without spending every second at a desk.

In a world of remote work, isolation, loneliness, cascading mental health crises, and screens everywhere from our phones to our refrigerators, it’s never been more important for us to get outside.

One of the most toxic things about social media is that it tends to drive us further into our own minds instead of connecting us to other people. Every selfie we take, every thought we post, is first run through the social media filter in our brain.

What will people think about this? Will this get a lot of likes? Will the comments and likes make me cry?

Spending too much time only thinking your thoughts is not healthy. It leads to you overanalyzing everything. It keeps you from truly living your life.

There is loneliness everywhere. It has always been there

There’s a broad scientific consensus that social media is making most of us lonelier. There is a lot of talk about the loneliness crisis in different groups.

The truth is, loneliness has always existed. Being lonely has always been a normal, if unpleasant, part of the human experience. But something is different now.

One difference is that more and more people have decided that since their loneliness is not their fault, their loneliness isn’t their responsibility either. More and more people give up, believing their problems can only be solved by someone else.

This attitude, combined with a massive rise in being risk-averse to any form of rejection, leads to you getting trapped in a state of loneliness. You get used to your loneliness; it becomes your default state, a prison of your own construction.

When you feel trapped in loneliness, you stop noticing anything about the way other people feel and act, unless it directly impacts you. You eventually stop noticing much of anything that happens outside of your own head.

However, just like I have to get input from the outside world to create my work, you need input from the outside world to create a better life.

You have to get out of your head and head out into the world. Once you train yourself to notice what is happening on your street, or at your local park, or even just outside your window, you start to loosen the bars in your prison of loneliness and despair.

The most important work you will ever do on yourself will not come from a self-help book or even therapy. It will come when you choose to start noticing and caring about things outside of yourself.

Therapy and self-help literature can only take you so far. Therapy only works if you use the tools your therapist is trying to share with you.

Nothing will change about your life until you change something about your life

Life would be easier if you came home to a winning lottery ticket, or if a man in a trenchcoat showed up at your door with a briefcase full of cash, announcing you’d been discovered as the next star, whisking you away to your new life as a celebrity.

But nobody is coming to rescue you. You may feel like a damsel in distress, but you’re going to need to be your own hero.

Nothing in your life will ever change until you change something in your life. Every scientist knows that if you keep running the same tests, without ever changing any of the variables, you will keep getting the same results.

But if you make even a small change, over time, you can drastically improve the results you’re seeing.

You have to get out of your head. You need to interrupt the negative stories you keep telling yourself.

One of the easiest ways to interrupt your negative self-talk is to go outside and notice what you notice.

Chances are, if you walk around outside long enough, you will start to forget to listen to the mean voices in your mind. You might notice someone smiles at you. You might see a beautiful flower or leaf.

In the moment when you notice something out in the real world, you begin to work a change deep inside of yourself. You start to melt the thick ice of isolation that has kept you imprisoned inside your mind.

Taking a walk outside is only part of the remedy. You also have to pay attention to what you’re seeing. You are only able to pay attention to so much at a time. When you shift your focus from your troubles and onto the world outside, you signal to your brain that it’s time to focus on something else.

For a little while, your brain exits troubleshooting mode and enters the more mindful state of noticing.

You shift your finite mental resources away from anxiety about the future or past and into a present state of paying attention.

If you nourish a habit of going outside where you live and seeing what there is to see, hearing what there is to hear, and smelling what there is to smell, you will start to become mindful, without really trying.

You don’t need to become a Zen master or a meditation savant to achieve a sense of peace and mindfulness. All you need is to get outside of your head and head out into the world to notice what you notice.

It’s always the right time to do something a little weird

If you are unhappy with the way things are going in your life, why should you keep doing things that other people want you to do?

You will never get somewhere new until you leave the place where you’re currently at.

If you want to change your life, you need to be brave enough to get a little weird.

Most of the time, most of us are unaware of anything happening outside of our mental bubble. We go about our days doing our work, running our errands, and complaining about how nobody cares about doing a good job anymore.

We completely miss the beautiful smell of new spring grass, the beauty of a birdsong, or the stunning way the sunset looks when reflected in the windows of downtown buildings.

It takes you risking being weird to break out of your default obsession with your own life and problems.

It’s strange for a full-grown adult to stop in the middle of the sidewalk to take a picture of a sprout pushing through the concrete.

It’s weird for someone to choose to stop thinking about themselves and start noticing how everyone else is moving around town.

But it’s always the right time to be a little weird. Nothing wonderful has ever happened without someone first choosing to do something different, something a little weird.

Seeing the world around you, noticing all the things that you are noticing, is weird. It’s wonderful. It pulls you out of your problems, helps you relax, and strangely enough, gives you more ideas for how to solve your problems.

Make a record of what you’ve discovered

Have you ever solved a work problem in your dreams or had a brilliant idea in the shower?

All of us have had some kind of experience of having an insight when we stopped “thinking” about a problem.

Our brains are always working. Human problem-solving, in all of its forms, is a creative act. That means it’s a little random, a little mysterious, and one-hundred-percent dependent on gathering enough information from outside of our current collection of facts.

Going outside and noticing stuff gives your brain the raw materials to solve your problems, while also giving you enough space to put all the facts and information you already have together in a new way to generate creative solutions.

Going outside with the intention to notice things also allows you to connect more deeply with the plants, animals, people, and environment surrounding you.

One challenge is that we are all easily distracted. How do you keep your focus on observing what’s happening outside when part of your brain wants to drag you back to stressing about the things you cannot yet solve?

You need to find a way to record your observations. I do this by writing haiku after, or while, taking a walk. I also later draw some of the things I’ve seen. Sometimes, I take quick pictures with my phone that I can later look through to remember what I saw.

Lately, I’ve also experimented with keeping a weather journal. I write the time of day, the temperature (from the Weather app), and a comment or two about the weather. I also try to draw a quick sketch of the sun or clouds.

The whole process of the weather journal takes me less than five minutes. But it ensures I get outside, and it keeps me connected to the subtle changes in the seasons.

You need to find a way to record your observations as you brave heading out into the world. It doesn’t need to be art. But recording your observations is a kind of creative practice. It’s a way to meditate without meditating.

You are at your most mindful when noticing, and recording your observations forces you to keep your focus outside of yourself for longer, building your mindfulness muscles.

Ryan Holiday is fond of saying:

I’m not saying going for a walk will solve all your problems, I’m just saying there’s no problem that’s going to be made worse by going for a walk.

I take things a step further. I’m not saying taking a walk will solve all of your problems, but taking regular walks and noticing what you notice will solve some of your problems.

Your life changes when you start noticing what is happening outside your window, and you spend less time focused on what’s happening in your head.

Thanks for reading!

Go outside and be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Greetings, Wonderful Humans!

Today’s illustrated essay was originally going to be the first episode of my podcast. But while I was producing it, I realized this wasn’t quite what I wanted for the podcast. The podcast is still on track to debut next month with a new episode that I’ll be teasing soon!

Looking at Myself Dead

Mortars and mustard gas rain down all along the western front between Germany and France. Bits of shrapnel rip limbs free from bodies. Men are dying miserable deaths and battlefield doctors are stuck guessing where to operate, often guessing wrong and killing or further maiming their patients.

It’s 1915, and the war that did not, in fact, end all wars is in full swing.

Just behind the front lines, close enough to still be in danger of dying from a poorly targeted artillery strike, a wealthy widow and her teenage daughter are working a miracle of battlefield medicine. The widow is one of France’s most famous citizens.

Two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and her daughter Irene operate a mobile X-ray laboratory, which the French lovingly call a petite Curie. It’s part of a fleet of such vehicles that Curie is responsible for funding and organizing.

You may have learned in school that the X-ray was invented by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. That’s true.

But what you probably didn’t learn was that his discovery was enhanced by Marie Curie’s experiments with radium, and that Curie revolutionized medicine, first on the battlefield and later in hospitals.

What you definitely didn’t learn in school is that Marie Curie saved my daughter’s life.

Let’s leave the Western Front of 1915 for now and move forward to a pediatrician’s office in Salem, Oregon, circa 2011. My second daughter, we’ll call her Char, short for Charlotte, is three years old and has been unusually lethargic. Her pediatrician listens to her chest and suggests she get an X-ray.

Dr. Marlow is also a family friend. He does not recommend shooting cosmic rays into a child’s chest lightly. That’s when I start to think Char has more than just a stubborn cold.

Char, her mother, and I head down to imaging. We wait. Char sits between us, laying her head on her mother’s lap.

When Char’s name is called, we learn that only one parent can go back. I pick up Char and carry her back.

Have you ever seen how they X-ray a toddler? It’s not for the faint of heart.

Char, despite being very good at being still, is placed on a chair and a transparent tube, something that looks like it’s out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, is closed around her body, with her arms outstretched above her head.

My usually vivacious Char doesn’t even cry. She slightly whimpers once at the discomfort.

I watch around a lead-lined corner as the technician does her job with precision and compassion.

It’s all over in a few minutes.

An hour later, Mike, Dr. Marlow, gives us a call. Char has pneumonia and needs to go on antibiotics right away. If her lungs don’t start to clear in the next few days, Char will need to go up to Portland to the children’s hospital.

Thanks to modern medicine, including antibiotics and the X-ray machine, Char’s malady was diagnosed, and she recovered swiftly, returning to laughing and teasing her siblings with an impish grin.

I’m recording this in May of 2026, and X-rays are boring, commonplace even, something far from miraculous. They aren’t anywhere near the most advanced imaging technology we have. Nuclear medicine makes the early and easy diagnosis of everything from cancer to infections feel routine.

But if Char had been born 150 years earlier, she likely would’ve died from her pneumonia. Children used to die, and tragically, in many parts of the world, still do, from easily treated diseases and illnesses all the time. The combination of antibiotics and imaging technology has transformed medicine.

Even if Char had been born after the X-ray machine was invented in 1895, she would never have had the benefit of it because taking X-rays was expensive and required a large apparatus.

But Marie Curie pioneered mobile X-ray technology, shrinking the machines and the lab space needed to develop the X-ray films during the First World War.

That technology saved my daughter’s life. But for our family, and everyone working at the clinic that day, it was all a matter of routine. Just another Wednesday.

Just another Wednesday for Marie Curie between 1897 and 1902 included cooking dinner for her husband Pierre and their young daughter Irene, and progressing through seven tons of black rock purchased from a Bavarian mine called pitchblende, boiling the rocks in a thick iron cauldron with different solutions and acids to try and extract an element new to science: radium.

In 1885, Wilhelm Röntgen would take the world’s first image of a human hand, the hand of his wife, Bertha, using a mysterious thing called X-rays. When first seeing the image, he blurted out, “I have seen my death!” It was Bertha who immediately saw the medical utility of the discovery.

Today, we often use the phrase X-ray to refer to the image produced by shooting X-rays at an object (or body part) placed against a photographic plate, and we use the same word for the beam of electromagnetic energy that creates the image. X-rays are used to create X-rays.

A radiologist is a doctor who specializes in interpreting images such as X-rays. Radiologist comes from radioactive, a term coined by Marie Curie to describe the atomic characteristic of some elements where the atoms emit different kinds of electromagnetic energy.

The Curies knew of Röntgen’s work, which overlapped their early investigations into radioactivity. Röntgen would discover X-rays, and the Curies, mostly Marie, would discover how radioactivity worked and explain its elemental nature, meaning some elements were radioactive because of their atomic structure, not due to any chemical reaction.

Marie & Pierre Curie would share the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with Antoine Henri Becquerel. Pierre insisted that Marie be included in the prize even though the mucky-mucks at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences wanted to exclude her for being a woman.

Pierre was killed in a carriage accident in 1906.

Marie would be awarded a second Nobel Prize in 1911, this one in chemistry, making her the only person to ever win two Nobel Prizes in two categories.

By the time Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated while touring Sarajevo, ushering in war all across Europe in 1914, Marie Curie had taken over her late husband’s position at the prestigious Sorbonne, and had become a fixture in Paris society as well as the international scientific community.

Marie Curie had already done enough remarkable things for anyone by early 20th-century standards, especially for a woman who had immigrated from Russian-occupied Poland to France when still in her early twenties.

But Curie wasn’t done creating material for future biographers yet.

As German forces seemed poised to seize Paris, Curie took her rare sample of radium, placed it in a lead-lined box, and left Paris for Bordeaux to keep the precious element out of enemy hands.

Curie placed the radium sample in a safety deposit box at a Bordeaux bank and then returned to a Paris in chaos.

When Curie returned home, she began her career as an ambulance influencer. She paused all her research and began pestering and cajoling friends to donate money and vehicles to her pet project. French soldiers were dying at alarming rates all along the front because of inadequate access to modern medical care.

Battlefield doctors couldn’t run X-rays. Those were only available in the big cities. This meant many soldiers died because surgeons couldn’t find all the shrapnel in their bodies.

Using her wealth and the donations from her friends and contacts in elite Paris society, Curie assembled a fleet of vehicles that she took to a team of auto mechanics to convert into mobile x-ray laboratories of Curie’s own design.

Many influential and wealthy Parisians were fleeing to the countryside and preparing to preserve their assets. Curie and her teenage daughter Irene went to war.

Creating a fleet of mobile X-ray labs, vehicles that soldiers would lovingly dub petites Curie, might have been enough heroics for most wealthy and influential 47-year-old women in 1915 Paris.

But it was not enough for Marie Curie. Instead, Marie took her 17-year-old daughter Irene and headed with her fleet of petites Curie to the front lines, where they operated a mobile X-ray lab and trained others on how to use this new technology to help doctors save lives.

After the war, Curie refused to slow down. Instead, she founded two cutting-edge medical research institutions. One in Paris and one in her native Poland.

In the years since Char’s chest X-ray, I’ve lost count of the X-rays the members of my family have needed. Getting an X-ray is not a big deal in the 21^st century.

Of course, medical imaging technology has advanced so much that X-rays seem kind of crude these days. Every bit of medical imaging technology we take for granted, things like MRIs and CT scans, owe their existence to the work of Marie Curie.

It was a CT scan that revealed a malignant tumor on one of my kidneys seven years ago. And it was a series of CT scans over two years that showed that my surgeon had successfully removed all of the tumor (along with 1/3 of my right kidney, a sacrifice I’m happy to have made), and that I was cancer-free.

I count my daughter and myself among the millions of people whose lives Marie Curie has saved through her research and work on radiation and the medical applications of this terrible power.

Curie was already famous when she went to war. But in the decades after the war, she became a bona fide global celebrity. Curie was never keen on being famous, but she tolerated it to advance her research.

During a fundraising trip to the United States for her medical institutes, where she dined at the White House, Curie wrote a friend, “When they talk about my ‘splendid work’ it seems to me that I’m already dead—that I’m looking at myself dead.”

I was not nearly as poetic as the scientists Curie or Röntgen when hearing about my daughter’s X-ray. I mostly felt hope that we knew the problem and how to solve it.

Years later, when looking at the film of my tumor, even as my nephrologist told me that it was very early-stage cancer and would likely be easily removed with surgery, I felt, but could not articulate, “I have seen my death! I’m looking at myself dead.”

Life is a weird bit of poetry like that. The research that would save millions of lives, including my daughter’s and mine, and likely many people you know, also makes us apprehend our own inevitable death with stark clarity.

I consulted the following sources for this essay:

Public domain images of Marie Curie, Wilhelm Röntgen, and Bertha Röntgen courtesy of Wikipedia.

Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout, Lauren Redniss (2010)

Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie, Barbara Goldsmith (2005)

The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science, Dava Sobel (2024)

Marie Curie: A Life, Susan Quinn (1995)

Thanks for reading! Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at me putting together the monthly Snail Mail Club letter. I love sending real, physical mail to real, physical people!

Watch out for a more traditional illustrated essay post tomorrow!

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Want your own physical letter? Learn more about the Snail Mail Club here:

Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli repeatedly assures us that time does not exist throughout his beautifully crafted books. He explains that what we experience as time is actually entropy. We are witnessing the movement from order to disorder. Your sensation of the passage of time is your brain making sense of your gradual decay into disorder. Some people find this idea disturbing.

I find it liberating.

Metaphysically speaking, whether time exists or not is irrelevant to our everyday life because we are finite beings. There will come a point when we will cease to exist in the same form as we are now. What happens after that point is the great mystery.

Because time is not real, it cannot be saved. It also cannot be wasted. All we can do with the time before we succumb to entropy is to be. The secret to solving the problem of time is to be ever-present.

Nostalgia is to live in a past that didn’t exist, and anxiety is to live in a future that will not exist. Being present is to exist.

With our wonderful, powerful minds, we often futilely attempt to defy the laws of the universe by traveling back and forth through time. Nostalgia and anxiety are our feeble attempts at time travel.

We can free ourselves from the tyranny of time, because it exists only in our minds. However, we cannot escape the inevitability of entropy.

You are going to die. And so am I.

Being present is often the most difficult thing we can do. It also happens to be the most important if you are interested in making the most of your finite life.

What are we to do with our lives? The clock is ticking, isn’t it? That’s the great paradox. Even if we accept that time is a construct of our feeble mortal minds, it still influences how we understand the world.

Read more

Hello, Spring Blossoms!

My favorite thing about Oregonians is that we almost never use umbrellas. This is kind of a strange thing since in Western Oregon, it rains almost every day from the middle of October through the middle of April, and some years deep into June. But it’s a source of pride for us.

We would rather get a little wet than have to worry about carrying around one more thing.

Comfort is overrated.

In life, you have to choose between being comfortable and being interesting. I chose to pursue an interesting life, and that has meant I have taken a lot of walks in the rain.

Walking in the rain is an intentional activity for me. I love grabbing my jacket and mud boots and heading out onto rainy trails because I know I will have nature to myself. There is something glorious about seeing the raindrops fall through the leaves and onto the ground, creating fresh, temporary ecosystems with hundreds of tiny puddles.

I sometimes stand and watch rain splash down on the river and lose all sense of time. Between the flow of the river and the pitter-pat-pat of the rain, I fall into a trance while the water carries away all of my stress and anxiety. It’s better than any meditation app or psychotropic drug.

Mindfulness comes in many forms. Standard meditation practices don’t work for me. But walking in a good, strong rainstorm quiets my mind and allows me to be in the present, without judgment.

However, it’s not all bliss. When the rain is especially fierce, it starts to soak my jeans and penetrate my all-weather boots. My socks get soaked, and a sense of cold will sometimes snap me out of the spell I’ve fallen under.

It’s then that I usually return to the car, change my clothes if I was smart enough to remember to bring a spare set, or I crank up the car heater and dry out while writing poetry in my notebook and jotting down what I noticed during my rain walk.

While it’s impossible to quantify, I’m certain that I write my best poetry after having been out in the elements long enough to be deeply uncomfortable.

So often in life, we miss out on great stories and life-altering experiences because we are afraid of being uncomfortable. We avoid trying new things out of fear of looking stupid, and we dodge any challenges that might require us to ask someone else for help. We fail to pitch magazines because we are scared of being rejected.

We confuse comfort for safety and refuse to take any risks.

Life gets better when you learn to be content with discomfort. No matter how many daring things you do, you will never fully outrun fear. That feeling you get in your stomach when things get scary can either be your signal to push through, or it can be your excuse to back out.

Bruce Springsteen still gets stage fright, more than 50 years into his music career. But he sees that anxiety as a good omen. It means he still cares about the work. He is content with that discomfort.

Being uncomfortable is not the same as being unsafe. The sooner you learn to distinguish between comfort and safety, the sooner your life will become more interesting.

I have been self-employed my entire adult life. I have lots of great stories. I’ve been shot at while driving down a highway in San Jose, California, on my way to pass out flyers for a low-flush toilet company, closed a deal to license an illustration for a book cover while playing in the snow with my kids, and written sales copy while watching the sun slink behind the Pacific Ocean from a seaside coffee shop.

Behind every great story, there are years of muddling and floundering. I have had to endure a lot of emotional discomfort as I’ve blazed a trail in search of an unconventional life. However, I have also done things most people only ever dream of.

Perhaps the hardest thing about living an interesting life is the constant questioning of your choices by extended family members who think you should settle down and live a normal life.

But I don’t want to settle in any sense of the word.

I’ve learned to be content not knowing what will happen next. The truth is nobody knows the future. Being human is living moment to moment. I’ve seen family members lose secure jobs and watched friends travel through South America while freelancing for a summer.

You are only promised this moment. Don’t live in fear of a future that may never come, and don’t fall in love with a future that might fall through. Focus on what is happening around you right now because now is the time for living.

You don’t have to be self-employed to live an interesting life, though it does help. You also don’t have to be an artist to live an interesting life. However, you cannot be an artist if you always choose comfort over adventure.

Art is made from stories, and the most interesting stories start when things go wrong.

The key to living an interesting life is to challenge yourself to do things you’re scared of. Discomfort comes in many shapes and sizes, but emotionally it’s always rooted in fear. That is why it’s so easy to mistake discomfort for danger. Our lizard brains would much rather we never change anything.

An interesting life happens when you take the stairs instead of the elevator, when you make small talk with the person behind you in line at the grocery store, and when you choose to wear the fedora instead of the baseball cap.

If you’re paying attention, life will give you plenty of opportunities to do the interesting thing. The question is, are you willing to get a little wet, or are you going to cling to your umbrella when it starts to rain?

When you choose to walk in the rain, the world comes alive in a new way. Rainstorms are when the frogs and snails come out. It’s also when insights and ideas usually show up.

You are free to settle for a normal life.

But if you sometimes hear a voice telling you there is more to life than dry socks and spreadsheets, you might be happier living an interesting life. You’ll never know until you let go of being comfortable and dare to take a walk in the rain.

I’ll be out jumping in puddles, waiting for you!

Thank you for reading!

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

If you enjoyed this post, you will love my book of illustrated essays, How to Create a Life You Love, available everywhere you buy books, including in my Weirdo Poetry Shop.

Jason McBride is a freelance writer, poet-cartoonist, and essayist. He’s also the author of several weird, beautiful books.

Hello, Wild Geese!

I was planning on launching my new Weirdo Poetry podcast today. But due to some technical issues and health issues, I’m postponing the launch until June 17th. While I know the podcast won’t be perfect, heaven knows I’ve shipped plenty of imperfect work in my life 🤣, I do need it to be something worth your time to watch and/or listen to.

Instead, today I’m posting an essay that I originally published on Medium, where it went viral, was read by at least one billionaire who reached out to me for a conversation, and led to the publication of my latest book. I don’t know why I have never posted it here. I’m in the process of moving away from Medium as the place where I give my work its first run. Instead, I’m posting most free stuff to my blog and this newsletter simultaneously, and paywalled content to this newsletter first. I then publish much of my work on Medium as a kind of syndication.

If you’re a regular reader of Weirdo Poetry, you know I work to take the business of art as seriously as I take my art, without ever taking myself seriously at all. I hope you find today’s essay useful and enjoyable.

If you subscribed to this newsletter because I mused about the sci-fi side of Johnny Cash’s discography, rest assured, the essay version will be forthcoming.

How to Create a Life You Love

No magical thinking required

When I was working as an attorney, I threw up almost every day before work. So many mornings, I would vomit in the sink and then look at myself in the mirror. I looked awful. I was miserable. That career path was slowly killing me.

That life was another lifetime ago. I closed the doors of my small law firm more than thirteen years ago.

These days, I wake up excited. I sing in the shower. I annoy my teenagers with my energy getting ready for the day, and I’m not even a morning person.

I have built a life I love, not through manifestation or magical thinking. I have built my current life through trial and error.

Happiness doesn’t come from vision boards or birthday wishes. Happiness comes from intentionally creating a life you love. It comes from taking responsibility for your life.

While I don’t believe in magical thinking or manifesting, I do believe our brains have far more power than we understand. But changing anything in your life requires you to take action, not just vibes. It requires you to take responsibility.

Bad things happen. Sometimes those things are your fault, and sometimes they’re not. Often, things happen to you because of complex systems you have no control over or voice in. However, if you want a life filled with joy, you have to take responsibility for all of it. What happens to you may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility.

The only alternative is to live life as a permanent victim of your circumstances.

Taking responsibility doesn’t mean trying to control everything. Much of what happens to you, maybe most of what happens, is beyond your control. If you want to be miserable, spend all of your time trying to control everything.

Taking responsibility means taking charge of solving your problems without worrying about who is to blame.

I have some mental health issues, including an anxiety disorder. It’s not my fault that I have an anxiety disorder, but it’s my responsibility to deal with it. Taking responsibility has meant working with therapists and doctors. It has meant developing coping mechanisms.

I take long daily walks because it helps regulate my nervous system, and it allows me to manage my mental health without medication, for now.

Last year, my main source of income, freelance writing, was under serious threat. In one week, I lost three clients to AI. My contacts for two of the clients told me AI was cheaper, and even though my work outperformed AI, the price difference was so steep that their bosses wanted to eliminate all freelancers and internal marketing team members.

In that case, the problem was partly my fault. I had gotten lazy and let those three clients believe that all I did was write for them, making me easy to replace.

I took responsibility and retooled that part of my business. Today, freelancing is more profitable than ever for me. I love working with my clients, and I’ve taken the time to make the way I freelance AI-proof.

What you can control

You cannot control much in this world. Technological advancements, political upheavals, and natural disasters are all outside your control.

But if you adopt a posture of radical responsibility, you will find you can always control three things. You can control your attitude, your effort, and you can choose to love. With a good attitude and a willingness to work through hard things, you can build a life that you love.

Attitude

The first step is to control your attitude.

Emotions are complicated, especially if you have a mental illness.

Even though I live with anxiety, I can still control my attitude. It isn’t easy. Everything from social media to my own broken brain is pulling on my emotions, trying to get me to freak out, become enraged, or get discouraged.

Learning to be calm doesn’t mean becoming a robot. You’re allowed to feel your feelings. You should feel upset when you go through upsetting things. But it’s up to you to learn how to get back to a state of calm. You cannot make good decisions when you’re upset.

The more you practice calmness, the easier it becomes.

After years of trying to stay calm and focused on the present, I have learned to stabilize my mood. I still have anxiety attacks from time to time. My anxiety still gets the better of me, but I have learned how to have a better attitude even while I’m a puddle of anxiety.

If you want to love your life, you have to be the kind of person you want to be around. Complaining about everything that is going wrong will not change your circumstances. It won’t even make you feel better.

Chronic complaining is a form of self-sabotage. It’s the opposite of taking radical responsibility for your life.

When you are annoyed with something, instead of complaining, you should ask yourself if it is under your control. If you can change whatever is annoying you, put your energy towards fixing the problem instead of complaining.

If you cannot change what is annoying you, you need to let go of your frustration, accept the situation for what it is, and move on to making other areas of your life better.

Building a life you love isn’t about being happy all the time. It’s about deciding what you allow to influence your mood and direction.

Choose someone to serve

It is up to you to create a life you love; nobody else can do it for you. But you also cannot create a life you love on your own.

I’m an introvert. I consider myself a happy hermit. But even I need other people to help create the life I love.

The good news is that this doesn’t mean being in a relationship. You can create a life you love if you’re single, married, divorced, living with someone else, or living with several other people.

The key isn’t your relationship status. The key is finding someone to serve.

You cannot create a life you love by being selfish all the time. You need one or more people you love to serve. This means you do something for someone without remuneration and without expecting recognition.

There are no rules for who you can serve — that’s up to you.

A life of fulfillment requires you to give of your time and talents to make someone else’s life better.

Service has a way of putting your problems into perspective. It increases your sense of gratitude and allows you to build connections with other people. We are a social species. Connecting with other people helps our brains work more efficiently.

So many people need your help. Service doesn’t have to be anything big. You can help your elderly neighbor by taking out their garbage. You can pick up litter in a local park.

Life gets better when it’s not all about you.

If you want to create a life you love, you have to be willing to screw up. You won’t get it right the first time. You probably won’t get it right the tenth time. Often, we only find the right path in life because of our mistakes.

I would never have found a career as a writer and illustrator who makes money online if I hadn’t made a spectacular failure out of previous businesses.

You can’t let a few mistakes keep you from continuing to strive for a better life.

If you aren’t willing to crash a few times, you’ll never learn to ride a bike. If one skinned knee is going to stop you from trying, you will never experience the joy of racing downhill under your own power as the wind rushes past your face.

Creating a life that you love isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being open and honest with yourself.

Decide you love your life

The last step is the hardest for most people. You have to consciously decide that you love your life. This is as close to magical thinking as I get. Having a good attitude makes your life more pleasant, even if it doesn’t change your external circumstances.

Most of us struggle with believing we love our life because we obsess over all of the things that are going wrong, and we obsess over all of the things we haven’t done yet.

If you decide you love your life, you will find it easier to make other decisions that make your life even better.

You have to decide that you have created a life you love, even if you don’t like many of the past decisions you’ve made. This isn’t fake it until you make it.

This is giving up on perfectionism and choosing to love yourself.

Creating a life that you love means focusing on the present and learning that the past and the future are out of your control.

Even after you’ve created a life that you love, you will still have bad days. Some days you will wake up and won’t be feeling it. Some days, someone will rear-end you because they are on their cell phone.

You get to decide if these are simple speed bumps or if they’re off-ramps to a life of anger, bitterness, and frustration.

Having a life that you love is not about having a dream job, the right income, or being in a relationship. Building a life you love is about learning to be the kind of person you want to be around. It’s about choosing to be someone who solves problems instead of complaining about them.

I know you have what it takes to build the kind of life that fills you with joy.

What are you going to do today to start creating a life that you love?

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you will love my book of illustrated essays, How to Create a Life You Love, available everywhere you buy books, including in my Weirdo Poetry Shop.

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

This post was also published on my blog.

Hello, Beautiful, Flawed, Full-Color People!

Before we get into today’s essay, I wanted to make two announcements.

1. I’ve made some tweaks to the membership benefits. Starting this month, every monthly and annual subscriber is enrolled in the Weirdo Poetry Snail Mail Club. Instead of getting a postcard every four months or so, you are going to start getting a physical letter every month with a 4x6-inch poetry comic on cardstock. Members of the Founders level are now in the Weirdo Poetry Zine Club and will get an exclusive zine four times a year, along with the monthly letters. At some point, these zines might make their way into other stores, but Zine Club members will get them at least a month before they go on sale anywhere else, and some zines will never go on sale.
   
   The first Snail Mail letters and comics, as well as the first zines, will be sent out at the end of this month (May). If you want to get in on the physical mail action upgrade today! The first zine will be a collection of 40 abstract poetry comics, including a healthy dose of haiku comics. Most of these comics have never been previously published as part of any of my poetry comic collections, and half of them have never been published anywhere!

   

   Upgrade Today!

2. I am launching the Weirdo Poetry Podcast next Wednesday, May 13th. Podcast episodes will go out about every two weeks. You will be able to listen and watch the podcast here on Substack, over on my site WeirdoPoetry.com, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Each episode will be free and come with a full essay-style post with illustrations. I will also be sending out paywalled posts that I’m calling Side Quests, in between episodes of the podcast that have stories that I couldn’t fit into the episode or that I just found too interesting not to share.
   
   You can hear a short preview of the first episode here:
   

The Colors of Life

While sitting at a traffic light today, I was struck by how bland all of the franchise logos were. This is nothing new. For years, we have been experiencing a kind of reverse Pleasantville, where the beautiful colors have been slowly leached out of our world. The new houses I passed on the way home after the light changed were also mostly fifty shades of beige, but these houses all stood against a backdrop of stunning dogwood trees. Their pink petals carpeted the sides of the road.

The dogwoods have been on the street for more than twenty years, while the houses are almost all freshly built or still under construction.

The powers that be can try to take the color from our built world, but nature’s chromatic spectacle refuses to fade away.

Every flower, leaf, and vine I encounter in suburbia feels like a small bit of resistance. A reminder that humans are a part of nature and nature is not homogeneous. Nature comes in a nearly infinite set of shapes and colors; no single flower, berry, or leaf is perfect. They are all wabi-sabi. They are all beautiful in their imperfections.

Just like you. Just like me.

The high school my children attend is in an old neighborhood. I love to get out of the car and look for poems, strolling through the neighborhood while waiting for them to get out. The houses there are all distinct. There are purple houses, turquoise houses, houses with bright red doors, and no two houses are the same shape or size. One house is decked out with cacti all over the porch and yard. In Los Angeles, many of these houses would be called bungalows, a splendid word that brings to mind cozy adventures, book clubs, and garden railroads.

Sometimes when I drive through newer neighborhoods in town, I feel like I’m on the planet Camazotz from A Wrinkle in Time, a place where everything is uniform because everything is under the control of IT.

We have our own very real dark force working to spread across our world, trying to force all of us to conform, to become more bland, to live normal lives. A bland life is easier to control.

I don’t want to live in a bland, beige world. I want to be surrounded by all the colors I can. Nature is full of color because it is alive and it is dying, an endless cycle where each stage has its own beauty.

I sometimes wonder why I work as a poet-cartoonist. Life seems like it would be easier if I could just get a normal job and live a normal life. But I am not a normal person.

I think I make art, poetry comics specifically, because I cannot live in black-and-white. I cannot abide bland. I dream in color, and I want to share the colors of life with everyone. I want a world of whimsy, and I know I’m not the only one.

My work is to bring both color and calm into your life, dear reader. I am not good at schedules or editorial calendars. I bring you random bits of whimsy decorated with shocks of color, maybe not regularly or consistently, but persistently.

I refuse to stop writing essays and making poetry comics because if I do, IT wins, and beige drains even more of the colors from our lives.

Thanks for reading!

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

The haiku comic in today’s post is from my best-selling book Haiku Comics from the Anthropocene, available everywhere books are sold, including in my own shop.

Hello, Lovers of Peace!

Before I get to today’s post, I wanted to let you know I’m making some changes to my business model. I am not leaving Substack. But I am building a parallel membership structure on my website where I have more control over pricing and other stuff. If you love reading me on Substack, great! You don’t have to do anything. The only change you will see is that posts will have a link like this one:

This post was originally published on WeirdoPoetry.com.

Not everything is ready yet on my new site. I’ll let you know as I slowly roll out new stuff over there. If you want to read more about the what and why of the recent changes, I wrote a chonky 3,500-word post about it on my website.

Are We That Different?

When my children were younger, they would often point to the night sky and ask me about a star or light. Sometimes it was an airplane, often it was not really a star at all but a planet like Venus or Mars. Sometimes, I didn’t know the answer, and we would look up a star together.

Half of my children are adults now, and the younger two are in high school. They all still have their childlike wonder at the night sky. As we move through spring and into summer, all of us are looking up at the night sky more often.

My children and I have seen solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, meteor showers, comets, and rare planetary conjunctions. We have also seen the International Space Station, drones, and lots of airplanes.

Last night, one of my children stopped by my studio to look out the high, half-circle window above my desk that lets you see the stars on clear nights. They’re nineteen now, but when they asked me about a star, it felt for a moment like they were nine again. We looked up the star and found it was Arcturus.

In the scope of the entire history of the universe, that moment was not even a blip. In the scope of the history of my universe, that moment was precious.

How many parents look at the night sky with their children?

That question immediately brought to mind all the families afraid to look at the sky at night because that’s often when the bombs fall, and the missiles come streaking into buildings.

You and I are not that different from the parents in Iran or Lebanon or Palestine. We love our children. We work hard to provide for them. All of our children are looking up at the same set of stars.

Pope Leo describes the warmongers among us as thieves. They steal the future of families and the lives of children. I’m not religious, but I agree with the Pope.

The question that haunts me as someone who studied law and political theory is, what is my responsibility for my country’s war-making?

What can a poet-cartoonist in a democracy on the ropes do to stop yet another senseless war?

Voting doesn’t seem adequate.

Right now, all I can do is remind the world that all of our children wonder at the same set of stars and gaze up at the same moon.

We aren’t really all that different.

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Hello, Weirdos!

“Everyone else can sit here, why can’t you?” This is what my then mother-in-law asked me when I got up from my seat, after the church meeting was supposed to be over, and when the speaker began a new story.

I’ve been asked some version of this question regularly ever since I was a child. As a child and a young adolescent, I had no answer. I just knew I was defective in some way. I was different.

As a teenager, I gave up trying to find a satisfying answer. But I had an answer for my mother-in-law that Sunday afternoon. I’m not like everyone else.

I don’t mean that I’m somehow better than everyone else. It’s a simple fact. Just like gravity is holding us down on the Earth’s surface, I’m not like everyone else.

I hate having my time wasted, and I have no problem leaving a meeting on time, even when it’s not over. I see people stare at me when I get up. The truth is, I don’t care. While everyone else sits there bored and wishing they could get up and leave, I actually do get up and leave.

When I was a kid, all I wanted was to fit in. I did not want to be weird. It was hell. I was bullied at home, school, and church. Teachers wanted me to be normal. I often found myself in conflict with adults and peers because I felt compelled to do what I thought was right, even when it wasn’t popular, or when it wasn’t what “we’ve” always done.

The harder I worked to fit in, the more miserable I became. Even when I did manage to contain my weirdness, I still never managed to make any real friends.

The true friends I did make accepted me for who I was and never pressured me to be anything but my true, weird self. I’m fortunate to still be friends with people I first met when I was eleven.

By the time I was graduating from high school, I was in my full weird glory. I had learned that you could do anything in life if you’re willing to live with the consequences. Once I stopped performing for the crowd, I found it easy to make genuine friends, and I began to enjoy life. Most of my friends were fellow outcasts. Punks, goths, and other weirdos.

Adults and my peers still wanted to regulate me, but my indifference to their opinions made life much more pleasant, at least for me.

I will be fifty this year, and I keep getting the same questions from other adults that I was getting when I was sixteen. Why are you like this? Why do you have to push the boundaries? Why can’t you just let this go? When will you get a real job?

I’m just wired that way.

I’ve come to understand that most of the people who are doing the “normal” things are not very happy. They still feel the peer pressure to conform that almost ruined me when I was thirteen. They will continue to be miserable until they are willing to be weird and stop looking for acceptance from others.

The crowd can only ever give you conditional acceptance. If you want to be seen and loved for who you truly are, you have to be your true self, even if it means being weird.

There’s a Rick and Morty quote I think about all the time. Rick says, “Your boos mean nothing. I’ve seen what makes you cheer.”

Do you really want approval from people who act like the proverbial crabs, always pulling down anyone who gets too close to escaping the tank?

I haven’t been to church in more than seven years. But when I occasionally run into someone around town that I used to go to church with, they always mention how they remember me leaving meetings that went over time. More often than not, they also tell me they were jealous of my willingness to stand up and leave.

Nothing makes me happier than being remembered as the guy who refused to tolerate meetings running late.

I don’t have a perfect track record of following my internal compass. I pursued a legal education and a career in law despite so many signs that I was not built for that life. I had to ruin a business and career before finding an occupation that I enjoyed and was good at.

All of my biggest mistakes and regrets in life have happened because I failed to listen to my gut or because I was trying to make someone else happy.

It didn’t fully sink in for me until I was in my forties that I can’t make someone else happy. You can’t either. The strange paradox is that you can make others miserable, just not happy. We are each in control of our own happiness.

Many of the well-meaning people in my life shake their heads when they see I’ve released another book or when I post a poetry comic on social media. They keep waiting for me to get a real job.

They’ll be waiting a long time. I’ve worked for myself for almost my entire adult life. I’ve learned how to adapt. I can’t imagine having to ask someone else for permission to take a vacation or needing a note to go see the doctor. Besides, not many companies want someone pushing 50 who questions everything.

In my professional and personal life, I don’t need the approval of anyone else to do anything. I follow my curiosity. But I do so with the knowledge that I am part of a community. My actions do matter beyond myself. My job is to do the right thing and follow my curiosity in a way that makes my corner of the world better for others, not worse.

I make weird, beautiful books for weird, beautiful people. It’s not all that I do, but it’s the primary focus of my creative business. Working on my books is when I’m at my happiest.

There are real consequences to my unorthodox life choices. I may never retire. I now have to deal with finding the right health care package each year. But I have unlimited vacation days. I get to work from wherever I want. I never miss any of my children’s events. I rarely have to wear shoes, and I get to walk my dog in the middle of the day.

If you enjoy this newsletter, you will love my 11 books and zines. They’re available in ebook and physical formats everywhere books are sold. You can also buy ebooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers directly from my Weirdo Poetry Shop.

Tomorrow, I may wake up and be curious about something I’ve never written about before. I get to chase that curiosity and see where it ends up. Chances are, I will turn that chase into something people will pay to read. How amazing is that?

Your best life probably looks very different from mine. You might be well-suited for an office job. But chances are that your best life is also weirder than what you’ve been told your life is “supposed” to be like.

If you want to be truly happy, you have to get to the point where you’re willing to be weird, no matter what anyone else thinks. Once you begin to chase your own curiosity and live your weird life, you will find that some of the people who judge you the most harshly are the most jealous of your freedom.

You only have one shot at this life. Why not live it for yourself instead of for anyone else?

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Want to get a brand new poetry comic in the physical mail each month? Check out the Weirdo Poetry Snail Mail Club! The inaugural issue is going out the door soon!

Hello, Haikuists!

April 17th is World Haiku Day! To celebrate this wonderful day, I’m having a special flash sale! When you become a paid subscriber today, you save 20% on your first year of membership.

Get 20% Off

Here are some haiku comics to help get you in the haiku mood!

Kobayashi Issa

Richard Wright

Jack Kerouac

Three of My Haiku

What You Get When You Become a Member of Weirdo Poetry

There are two tiers of Weirdo Poetry membership. Here’s exactly what you get with each tier:

Monthly/Annual [Asynchronous Poetry Society]

🌅 A haiku comic postcard is mailed to you each season

📱 Access to free ebook versions of all my books and zines

💪 Access to free courses and workshops

📅 A monthly Zoom salon where we talk about art, poetry, and life

% Discounts on services like my custom haiku comics

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🧺 Everything in the Asynchronous Poetry Society

📬 A monthly physical newsletter on deluxe linen paper, hand-signed by me, and a full-color poetry comic on archival-quality cardstock as part of the Weirdo Poetry Snail Mail Club.

🤓 Online meetups to read poetry and exchange feedback

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Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Hello, Friends & Neighbors!

I’m trying something new here. On Thursdays, I’m going to be resurfacing older posts from the archives or sharing something originally published over on Medium that feels like it fits into the weirdness here.

I hope you enjoy this look into my notebooks and my creative process, a process that’s always changing, evolving, and devolving as my life changes. This post is full of pictures and might be cut off by your email provider. You can always read the full thing in the Substack app or on the website.

I used to have a love-hate relationship with notebooks.

I loved scrolling through social media to see the beautiful sketchbooks and notebooks of writers and artists. I hated seeing my chicken scratch handwriting and awkward doodles. “Real” artists and writers had stunning notebooks. I made ugly notebooks.

Gradually, I came to understand that my ugly notebooks were part of my creative process. My notebooks are not content-ready masterpieces like the ones I gawk at online. My notebooks are extremely rough drafts. They’re a physical space where I think on the page.

When you commit to keeping an ugly notebook, you get to stop worrying about what other people will think about your work and use that energy to write and draw things that interest you.

The best writing and the most intriguing art always come from a place of curiosity.

My notebooks are not art. Instead, they are a place where I practice my art. They are a place where I experiment and play, and a place where I dump ideas for safekeeping until I can decide what to do with them. Most importantly, my ugly notebooks are a place to store my observations and narrow my focus.

Ugly Notebooks as a Place to Practice

I have no formal training as a poet or illustrator. That doesn’t mean I’m just winging it. I take these disciplines very seriously while working to make sure I never take myself too seriously.

Ugly notebooks are a great place to practice your craft. Here are some pages from past notebooks where I practiced line control and writing haiku.

If I were to post these pages on Instagram or Pinterest, they would not go viral. These pages are not beautiful pieces of content. They are pages from a working artist’s notebook, and they are kind of ugly. But they are useful.

I look at the abstract designs and see where I need to improve my line control and my color blending. I can also see that there is some possibility in the idea of these abstract designs.

I look at the messy haiku and see some stuff that could be worked into decent poems.

The imperfection is the point of these pages. Practice is messy.

I have stacks of notebooks filled with all kinds of doodles and scraps of thought. When I look back at my earliest notebooks, I can see the progress I’ve made as a poet and illustrator. The proof of my growth is right there on the page.

Ugly Notebooks as a Place to Experiment and Play

When you commit to not caring how your notebooks look to other people, it frees you up to experiment. You are free to be your true, weird self in the pages of your notebook.

You can make bad doodles, cross things out, and make mind maps that only you understand. You can try new things.

Your notebook is a place to make things for your eyes only. You are free to play like when you were a child.

I once made a murder board in a notebook about a scrap of paper containing a grocery list I found under a shopping cart in a parking lot. I went all out by using different materials and techniques, including burning the edges of a piece of paper I glued onto the page.

This two-page spread in a notebook was not made as part of drafting a book, to move a client project forward, or for a blog post. I made it for fun. I didn’t need a reason. It was time well spent.

Playing in the pages of my notebook helps me remember that I got into writing and illustration because they are fun. They make me feel human.

Playing and experimenting in a private notebook keeps the creative part of my brain healthy and active and helps me avoid burnout.

I often make mixed-media collages in my notebooks as a form of play. Some are much more aesthetically pleasing than others, but they are all fun to make.

When you allow yourself to make ugly things, you tap into your childlike sense of wonder. You open yourself up to greater creativity. The more you play, the more you stumble onto good ideas.

Ugly Notebooks as a Place to Dump Ideas

My brain is a mess. My anxiety and ADHD mean my brain is always buzzing. Sometimes the only way to quiet my thoughts is to dump them somewhere.

Having my thoughts safely stored in the pages of my notebook allows me to move on to other things.

Often, these ideas go nowhere.

But sometimes, these ideas turn into something interesting. Many haiku comics from my published books started as parts of a brain dump in an ugly notebook.

A memory of some koi I saw in Taiwan almost thirty years ago was hastily recorded in a notebook as haiku and doodles.

This later became a page in my book Haiku Comics from the Anthropocene.

Another time, I couldn’t stop thinking about sea turtles. I spent a few hours making a mixed-media collage, hoping this would allow me to get back to focusing on a client project. I thought this was going to be the final version of the turtle idea.

It worked. After I finished this weird turtle thing in my notebook, I was able to complete a complex email ghostwriting project for a CEO.

But months later, I came back to the sea turtles, and this weird collage became the basis for an entire post about how I saw sea turtles as a metaphor for my career journey.

Most of the time when I’m dumping ideas into my notebooks, I’m just making ugly mind maps or pasting in bits of stuff I found on the ground.

Sometimes I come back to these ideas, and sometimes I don’t. The simple act of putting ideas down in physical form helps me think more clearly. Often, only after I write down an idea do I realize what a mistake it would be to pursue it in that form.

Other times, something I thought was just a random, weird idea turns into something much bigger and more refined.

Ugly Notebooks as Attention Engines

The most valuable part of keeping an ugly notebook is that it allows you to notice what you notice. Flipping through the pages of a notebook where you record your observations allows you to see that themes continue to capture your attention, week after week.

Sometimes I go through streaks of keeping notebook pages in the style of author and illustrator Lynda Barry. In her books Syllabus, Making Comics, and What It Is, Barry talks about an exercise where you divide a page into four sections to record what you saw, heard, and did each day, as well as to make a small drawing.

When I do this exercise for a few weeks, it helps me see what my imagination is obsessing over. That is often a good way of discovering things that will not only be interesting to me, but will also be interesting to my readers.

I like to think of my notebooks as attention engines. They help me see what I should be paying more attention to in my daily life and in my creative work.

When you keep an ugly notebook, you are not only making space to practice and play, but you are also creating a log of your journey as a person and writer. Just like a ship’s log will tell you about the happenings of the ship and crew, your notebooks tell you where you’ve been and where you’re going.

There is something special about making something physical and real in a world where everything is digital and virtual.

You can’t use AI to help you cut and paste things. Using your hands to draw and write connects you to your full humanity. It doesn’t matter how “good” the stuff you put in your notebook is. It’s yours, it’s a record of you in one particular moment.

Young children don’t worry about the beauty of their scribbles or stories. They just enjoy the process of making.

Keeping an ugly notebook will help you become more childlike in your love of creativity. It will power your imagination and increase your courage.

Most importantly, an ugly notebook is a place to have fun and remember what you love about your life. It’s hard to feel miserable when you spend time each day creating for the sake of creating.

Your notebook doesn’t need to be social media-beautiful. Ugly notebooks are more real and honest.

If you’re looking for a way to be more mindful, creative, or relaxed, start an ugly notebook today.

Thanks as always for reading!

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Check out the Weirdo Poetry Shop to order my books in physical form or as ebooks. You will also find a listing for my monthly physical newsletter that I send out all over the world!

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Hello, Life Livers!

I did not attend my mother’s funeral. She died on December 25, 2018. My father was comforted that his wife died on her favorite holiday, feeling like God gave her the gift of release from her suffering for Christmas.

She was not buried by her people. She was buried by my father’s people. There was no obituary in the paper for her. Whether that was because of an oversight, indifference, or a lack of knowledge about her life, it doesn’t matter now.

I do not have any guilt about skipping the interring of my mother’s mortal remains into the cold Idaho ground. She’s buried in a rural cemetery in a place that’s barely a name on the map. View. The place is pleasant enough, I’ve been there before — for the burials of my paternal grandparents.

The place is dotted with the graves of McBrides. I’m confident she would hate the idea of being buried there.

It doesn’t matter now.

I should have written her obituary. I’m the writer of the family.

It did not occur to me that nobody would write even a basic life sketch for her. I have tried every month since Christmas of 2018 to write an obituary for my mother. Every month, I have failed.

The problem is, I have to write more than an obituary for my mother. While I can easily pinpoint the specific day of my mother’s death, I do not know the date my mom died. But the woman who was my mom, the woman who nurtured me, was long gone by the time my mother died.

She was born Sandra Mickey Fowler on August 1, 1955. She and I were born in the same hospital in Pocatello, Idaho. She hated the name Sandra; everyone except her mother called her Sandy.

The biographic details of Sandy’s life, like those of most of us, are not very interesting.

She and her older brother, Keith, grew up in Blackfoot, Idaho. Her unique middle name came from her mother’s nickname. Esther Myrtle Gray Fowler also hated her name. Everyone called her Mickey.

Sandy’s father, Nestor Milton Fowler, went by Bud and was in charge of the Idaho State Psychiatric Hospital in Blackfoot. He hated his given name, too.

Sandy attended Idaho State University in Pocatello, where she met my father, Jay McBride, and got married before her 21st birthday. They had four children. I’m the oldest.

Even this last detail doesn’t matter much now. They are both dead. My father died five months after my mother passed, while I was awaiting surgery to remove the malignant tumour from my kidney. These biographic bullet points can’t tell you much about Sandy.

What does matter?

It matters that Sandy loved to dance and sing. She took ballet and voice lessons. While her parents’ Baptist congregation frowned upon dancing in general and musicals in particular, Sandy’s mom made sure she had the opportunity to participate in both.

Her favorite flower was the lilac, but she was also fond of lavender, even though she was horribly allergic to it. (I inherited this inconvenient allergy and passed it on to my son as well.)

It matters that Sandy was a gifted visual artist, a gift she also shared with her mother.

In my lifetime, Sandy was several different people. She was my mom. She loved, nurtured, and doted on me and my three siblings.

But, gradually, Sandy became a character we kids referred to as The Reverend. The Reverend saw and conversed with angels and demons with increasingly regularity. The Reverend was a bitter woman who saw evil in everyone and once chased my youngest brother with a knife.

The Reverend stole packages from doorways and hoarded vases, clothes, and tchotchkes of every type imaginable.

I don’t know exactly when my mom completely disappeared, but it was around the time I left home for college.

After years of untreated mental illness, Sandy was hospitalized with heart valve complications. She had a heart murmur as a result of a bout of childhood scarlet fever. It was during this stay that she was given antipsychotics. The Reverend faded away, mostly, but Mom never returned. Instead, she became the woman I call my mother.

My mother was different from my mom. Mother mostly sat quietly and rocked back and forth in a quasi-catatonic state. She was mostly indifferent to me, my wife, and our four children, her only grandchildren for all of her life.

Mother would sometimes give way to a muted version of The Reverend. It was frightening. Because of her instability and my father’s penchant for emotional abuse, my children rarely saw my parents.

Mom was dead, but there was no funeral. No closure. I miss my mom.

It matters that when Sandy died, my youngest brother also declined to attend the funeral. Both of us were estranged from our parents, putting up barriers for our own well-being.

It also matters that Mom loved music. The only instrument she played was the record player. I loved to listen to her sing along with the Carpenters. Mom would blast music while Dad was at work, and sometimes she would plié, pirouette, and chassé as she vacuumed and mopped.

Her favorite music was Christmas music. Mom would listen to Christmas records all year round. Dad had made a rule that Christmas music was only allowed between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. But when he wasn’t around, Mom would put on a Bing Crosby or an Andy Williams album and glide through the house. It didn’t matter what month it was. Mom was a different person when my father wasn’t around.

If I close my eyes, I am in the living room on a sweltering July day. The windows are all open, and Mom is singing Silver Bells along with Bing while she mops the kitchen floor.

Father’s Christmas music fatwah also extended to Christmas decorations. On Thanksgiving night, after cleaning up the dinner she had made, she would stay up and decorate the whole house in Christmas splendor. Waking up the day after Thanksgiving was like being transported to Santa’s workshop. Every year, she decorated differently. Every year, it was a new Christmas miracle.

When mom wasn’t singing Christmas carols or dancing to the Carpenters with a canister vacuum in her hands, she was watching, listening, and singing to musicals.

Thanks to my mom, I have Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, Guys & Dolls, and The King & I memorized.

Mom was good at keeping secrets and drank a glass of chocolate milk for breakfast and before bed almost every day of her life.

I have other memories of Mom. Things that she said and did that changed my life. But those are still far too tender for me to share. If I possess any empathy, courage, or creativity, it is because of Mom. She really believed I could do anything.

I wish it didn’t matter that my mom was stolen from me before I was ready to lose her. But who is ever ready to lose their mom?

The hole I have in my heart, the heartache I feel for the loss of her kindness and mirth in my life, far predates Christmas 2018. That pain is decades old, but still feels fresh.

When someone who matters to us dies, we never get over it. All we can do is move forward and try to use that pain as a pathway to help heal others.

I did not go to my mother’s funeral because I had been grieving the loss of my mom for two decades.

When it comes to writing about someone who has died, I don’t think the dates and resume details count for much. What matters is the love the deceased left behind.

Every day, I keep her legacy alive by loving my four children the same tender way she loved my siblings and me before she morphed into The Reverend and before she decayed into our quasi-catatonic Mother.

Sometimes, I blast music in the kitchen and dance as I do dishes and clean the counters and floor. I love Christmas as much now as I did as a child, and I mourn her passing by decorating the hell out of our house and listening to Christmas music whenever I miss Mom, regardless of the time of the year.

Much to my surprise, I became a visual artist in my forties, after Sandy died. That too is a tribute to my Mom, and a product of her love of beauty and her indomitable belief in me.

I can’t think of a better eulogy to give Mom than this:

Sandy Mickey Fowler McBride loved and was loved.

Thanks for reading!

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Hello, Fellow Travelers!

They say you’re supposed to write what you know. But I mostly write what I need to remember.

As a work-from-home father of four, life is always busy. Sometimes it’s easier to let the momentum of rushing around carry me through instead of doing the work of staying in the moment. My default disposition is anxious, and my ADHD means that object permanence is often elusive.

I used to just power through, working myself to exhaustion, and then berating myself for failing to meet the impossible standards I set for myself. But as I close in on a half-century on this planet, I’ve learned to be kinder to myself, to create systems that work with my anxiety and ADHD instead of trying to force myself into doing things the “normal” way.

One of my coping mechanisms is to create haiku comics about the key lessons I need to remember. Instead of lecturing myself, I can look back on the art I’ve created. This helps me avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. I’m always making new comics as I continue to learn and grow. Below are some of the life lessons I’m currently having the hardest time retaining.

Maybe these will help you remember to slow down and live life instead of rushing through it.

life is heavy, kid
carry the weight of the world
lift with your knees

I once worked in a warehouse and had to go through three days of safety training. I didn’t last a month at that job, but I still remember the importance of lifting with my knees.

You are supposed to lift heavy objects with your knees to avoid putting undue strain on your lower back. When you lift with your knees, you engage your leg muscles, which are built to better handle the torque of heavy lifting.

The same principle applies to lifting and carrying emotional loads. If you just suffer with sadness in silence, it has a way of metastasizing into despair. There’s no way to avoid sadness and grief in our human existence. But we must learn how to safely lift these burdens. For me, that means using my physical knees to go on long walks and allowing myself to feel the full range of my emotions. This helps me avoid putting undue strain on my soul.

While I don’t do a lot of physical lifting these days, unless I’m cleaning out the garage, I do spend a lot of time lifting emotional burdens with my knees.

daring cobalt sky
I can do anything, but
can’t do everything

One of my greatest strengths is that I believe I can learn how to do anything. I know how to figure things out. However, this also gets me into a lot of trouble because while I believe I can learn an infinite number of things, I only have a finite amount of time.

I frequently overcommit, and that leads to overwhelm. I’ve been a caregiver most of my life. I was the oldest child, and my parents had their own issues, leaving me to do a lot of the cooking, cleaning, and parenting for my younger siblings, starting when I was eleven.

I’ve always seen myself as capable and want to do anything I can to help others.

But this has frequently sabotaged my growth, leaving me burnt out.

I still believe with all my heart that I can do anything. But this comic reminds me that I cannot do everything. I have to choose my actions with intention. I must ask for help, and sometimes, I just have to say no.

want to be happy?
live the impossible life
make love your lodestar

After growing up in an extremely religious household, I’ve become a non-religious adult. I’m an absurdist.

That means I don’t believe life has any inherent meaning. Instead, we get to create our own meaning. What we choose to find meaningful allows us to live lives of joy or anger. It’s up to us.

It might sound corny, but I’ve chosen to make my focus love. When I’m making choices out of love instead of fear or greed, life goes smoother, I feel better, and the people closest to me enjoy me more.

But it’s hard to stay focused on love. (For me, it’s hard to stay focused on anything.)

I make haiku comics to help cultivate a habit of wonder and curiosity, the precursors to love. The more I get to know a bird, river, or person, the more I come to love them.

That makes for a wonderful life.

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