The Tunnel

How, how are you doing?

Hello,

How, how are you doing? I️ hope OK.

I’m beyond grateful-overwhelmed-amazed for the kindness you’ve shown the book. A little more about it and then essays + drawings for you.

Number 1 in Humor?

Which seems strange because I don’t think the book is actually funny, but there we are. right next to Banana Bop, hello there!

Lofty Pigeon

What a warm celebration at Lofty Pigeon. I love that bookstore (the books, the people who work there, the beautiful floor) and the people who live in the neighborhood (my neighborhood). You can order a signed and/or personalized copy of Mixed Feelings from Lofty Pigeon here. Or call them at (347) 240-3816. Thank you to everyone who came.

Bad at Keeping Secrets with Carissa Potter

What a joy it was to talk to Carissa Potter, whose art is so deep and so deeply kind, on her podcast, Bad at Keeping Secrets. We talked about making things while being a mother and many other things.

Thank you, Carissa. I absolutely love talking with you.

Essential Knowledge with Colin Matthes

Flattered to be the first interview for Colin Matthes’ Essential Knowledge, which I’ve been delving into these past few days. You should, too - it’s great. You can read the interview here.

See you in the Sunday New York Times

I’ll have a New York Times illustrated opinion piece out this weekend. It’s about how my marriage transformed after I stopped trying to think of it as a – what’s that phrase we learn in high school? – a small fragment of a larger system. The piece makes more sense than the elevator pitch.

Synechdoche.

Also, I just fell while running because apparently gravity is one of the things we need to keep track of while overwhelmed, especially while pregnant. Typing with band-aid-hands. This is always how it happens:

And now, on to the essay.

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Essay

I wrote this in little bits of time the week of January 13^th.

Jamie was sick this week. I got a call from his school Thursday morning. I’d had a revelation a few days before. Whenever I have a revelation, it tends to always be the same one: that the secret to art (which is much more interesting than life) is wasting time and defiantly not prioritizing being productive. The difference between this philosophy and something more hardcore—Zen Buddhism, say, or Jenny Odell’s wonderful books—is that I personally think a little eternity goes a long way and that, although the secret to art is wasting time, the point of life is making art, nose to the grindstone.

This is to say that I’d spent what later turned out to be my only two free hours of the day last Thursday taking a much longer walk than I’d normally allow myself (now that I think of it, it was actually a bike ride: glorious luxury) to a Park Slope, sitting in a café a few miles from home and doodling for a bit, and wandering back. I was feeling blissfully associative (a feeling I always regret after I fail to meet some artistic benchmark—selling a cartoon, getting a gig, pleasing an editor—but that’s me being an idiot). I’d just eased back into my apartment, made a thermos of tea, hugged my insatiably loving pit bull for eight minutes (a chore, like all worldly things), and was getting down to work when the phone rang. The school nurse asked, “How are you?” It felt like a trick question.