Yesterday was Valentine's Day. More importantly, yesterday was the halfway point of create-a-thing-a-day month. Fourteen strips down, fourteen strips to go.
Of those fourteen strips, yesterday's edition caused me the most anxiety. Even as I type this, I have the urge to pull it and replace it with something else. I feel this way for a number of reasons:- The strip involves politics. I'm nagged by the conventional wisdom that says one shouldn't talk about religion or politics in polite company. Maybe if I pretended you (a.k.a. my audience) weren't polite company, I would be better off. Or maybe thinking of you as polite, but not easily offended, company would help.
- I could have expressed myself more efficiently. It shouldn't have taken as many panels as it did to make my point. And even then...
- I didn't make my point very well. That's because I had a vague idea of what my point was, but I couldn't find the right words to make that point. I wanted to say it's annoying when I pay more attention to the messenger than the message, but I didn't.
- It isn't funny. Taking a cheap shot at the President is overdone and yet I took it. And I still managed to miss.
Those are four good reasons to yank the strip, yet those four reasons shouldn't matter because this is create-a-thing-a-day month and not create-a-classic-comic-strip-a-day month. If it were, I doubt I would have even attempted it. Sometimes it's easier to create something when there isn't the expectation of what that something should look like.
The point is to create, not censor or critique. Sure, yesterday's strip wasn't perfect or all I wanted it to be, but that doesn't mean I remove, reword, or replace it. I learn from it and try harder today (and tomorrow). And maybe if I keep that in mind, the next two weeks will be as fun as the past two weeks.
