Journal

Pondering Nine Years of Daily Cartooning

30 Comments

I’m musing upon this pursuit I embarked upon nine years ago.

It’s kind of weird in that I don’t really feel like what came before it was real. Maybe that’s just me getting old (I’m only 41, folks, don’t panic or send me prune-juice), but the past seems to be further away than it used to. Not in the obvious, “duh” sense. I mean, of course events that happened in 2000 are further away now than they were five years ago. No I mean it’s like it’s accelerating. As if I’m moving faster forward through time than I used to, and the events of five years ago feel much more distant than events five years previous to a ten-years-younger me felt.

If you followed all that, congratulations. Maybe this post isn’t about musing upon my cartooning career. Maybe it’s about musing upon musing upon the past. It’s a meta-muse.

Which sounds like “Metamucil” when I say it out loud.

And that makes me laugh and think of prune juice.

This is what happens when I try to write my thoughts down before I’m done thinking them.

30 thoughts on “Pondering Nine Years of Daily Cartooning”

  1. Time travelling.

    Well you are moving faster. At 41, the last 5 years represented a little over an eighth of your life, while at 36, the previous five years represented a sixth of your life. That is to say, you’re moving through time faster because you’re experiencing it as a smaller percentage of your life.

    That makes more sense in my head and on paper with charts and graphs.

  2. Time travelling.

    Well you are moving faster. At 41, the last 5 years represented a little over an eighth of your life, while at 36, the previous five years represented a sixth of your life. That is to say, you’re moving through time faster because you’re experiencing it as a smaller percentage of your life.

    That makes more sense in my head and on paper with charts and graphs.

  3. I recall a story on NPR a few years back in which it was reported that our perception of time does, in fact, change as we age. The dangerous chicken’s mathematical model is part of it, but apparently neurologists actually found changes in the brain over time that at least partially explain it…

    Thank you for nine years’ worth of wonderful stories, and I hope for nine times nine more to come.

  4. I recall a story on NPR a few years back in which it was reported that our perception of time does, in fact, change as we age. The dangerous chicken’s mathematical model is part of it, but apparently neurologists actually found changes in the brain over time that at least partially explain it…

    Thank you for nine years’ worth of wonderful stories, and I hope for nine times nine more to come.

  5. The natural state of the universe causes time to elapse faster the older we get.

    For example, when you’re a kid and you’re waiting for Christmas ( and it’s December )or the final month before school gets out–that month takes forever. For an adult those moments happen in a split second.

    Children think they have forever. Adults don’t.

    So time moves differently for each.

    At least that’s my take. 😉

  6. The natural state of the universe causes time to elapse faster the older we get.

    For example, when you’re a kid and you’re waiting for Christmas ( and it’s December )or the final month before school gets out–that month takes forever. For an adult those moments happen in a split second.

    Children think they have forever. Adults don’t.

    So time moves differently for each.

    At least that’s my take. 😉

  7. Hmmm…how to work a reference to Ravioli Rail Guns into this…

    Something relativistic.

    Well, congratulations on the milestone.

  8. Hmmm…how to work a reference to Ravioli Rail Guns into this…

    Something relativistic.

    Well, congratulations on the milestone.

  9. You have an intellicual readership..
    and the likes of me.
    They say it better.
    As you get older, time seems to accelerate, kids grow at a frightening pace, familiar places evolve rapidly beyond recognition or else decay to oblivion unobserved and usually unmourned, policemen get younger and politicians more juvenile, as we watch them going through the same old same old same old hoops.
    And the bulk of lifes experience becomes obsolete, unneccessary and unwanted by those with their own mistakes to make.
    Only the core remains unchanged although growing.

    *sigh*
    And the days seem to flow, like a precious brew…..September, November…

  10. You have an intellicual readership..
    and the likes of me.
    They say it better.
    As you get older, time seems to accelerate, kids grow at a frightening pace, familiar places evolve rapidly beyond recognition or else decay to oblivion unobserved and usually unmourned, policemen get younger and politicians more juvenile, as we watch them going through the same old same old same old hoops.
    And the bulk of lifes experience becomes obsolete, unneccessary and unwanted by those with their own mistakes to make.
    Only the core remains unchanged although growing.

    *sigh*
    And the days seem to flow, like a precious brew…..September, November…

  11. It’s proportional time. For my 7-year old, waiting a month to, say, his birthday is the same to him as waiting more than half a year for me.

    You have managed those years without ONE SINGLE BREAK — 7 days a week. If that isn’t a record for a webcomic, it MUST be very, very close. Are there ANY other webcomics out there that have managed nine years — every day of the year — without fail?

  12. It’s proportional time. For my 7-year old, waiting a month to, say, his birthday is the same to him as waiting more than half a year for me.

    You have managed those years without ONE SINGLE BREAK — 7 days a week. If that isn’t a record for a webcomic, it MUST be very, very close. Are there ANY other webcomics out there that have managed nine years — every day of the year — without fail?

  13. The comments above are all good, but I think there’s something else to it, too. Our perception of past time is built upon the memories that fill it. The more dense those memories, the longer the remembered time will seem.

    Ultimately, I think the reason the last nine years have seemed so much longer than those prior is you have more of it worth remembering. Your life has become fuller and richer and thus takes up more long-term storage per year experienced.

  14. The comments above are all good, but I think there’s something else to it, too. Our perception of past time is built upon the memories that fill it. The more dense those memories, the longer the remembered time will seem.

    Ultimately, I think the reason the last nine years have seemed so much longer than those prior is you have more of it worth remembering. Your life has become fuller and richer and thus takes up more long-term storage per year experienced.

  15. Actually, I think it’s the opposite effect from the one y’all are describing. As we age, there are fewer new things to commit to long-term memory. As a result time seems to pass faster, and the events of five years ago seem like “just yesterday.”

    For me, however, there have been so many NEW things in the last five years (a time period that includes the last three months of my day job, fifteen months of scratching by on nothing for a living, and about three and a half years of building a successful business) that the process has been briefly reversed.

    The result is that five years ago seems like forever but ten years ago seems like yesterday. Does that make sense?

    1. does it have to?
      We do recall things by “milestone” though, so the more milestones in a given period the slower it seems in retrospect, I suppose.

    2. I distinctly remember on my mission feeling that the weeks felt like days and the days felt like weeks. 🙂 I’ve had a few more experiences along those lines when faced with the same types of situations that you have described.

      So yes, it makes tons of sense.

    3. I think a lot of it is active, on your part. I mean, you really seem to enjoy doing this, and you’ve certainly invested a lot into it over the past few years. That makes the time a lot more memorable.

      (“Muse” just makes me think of 8/24/2008…)

  16. Actually, I think it’s the opposite effect from the one y’all are describing. As we age, there are fewer new things to commit to long-term memory. As a result time seems to pass faster, and the events of five years ago seem like “just yesterday.”

    For me, however, there have been so many NEW things in the last five years (a time period that includes the last three months of my day job, fifteen months of scratching by on nothing for a living, and about three and a half years of building a successful business) that the process has been briefly reversed.

    The result is that five years ago seems like forever but ten years ago seems like yesterday. Does that make sense?

    1. does it have to?
      We do recall things by “milestone” though, so the more milestones in a given period the slower it seems in retrospect, I suppose.

    2. I distinctly remember on my mission feeling that the weeks felt like days and the days felt like weeks. 🙂 I’ve had a few more experiences along those lines when faced with the same types of situations that you have described.

      So yes, it makes tons of sense.

    3. I think a lot of it is active, on your part. I mean, you really seem to enjoy doing this, and you’ve certainly invested a lot into it over the past few years. That makes the time a lot more memorable.

      (“Muse” just makes me think of 8/24/2008…)

  19. Congrats on nine fantastic years! May you contiunue to do this happily and successfully for as long as you want to.

    See, Einstein showed that time passes more slowly the faster you move. Therefore the converse must be true. And as everyone knows, the older we get, the more slowly we move. Therefore time passes more quickly the older we get.

  20. Congrats on nine fantastic years! May you contiunue to do this happily and successfully for as long as you want to.

    See, Einstein showed that time passes more slowly the faster you move. Therefore the converse must be true. And as everyone knows, the older we get, the more slowly we move. Therefore time passes more quickly the older we get.

Comments are closed.