I Still Post the Stupid Cartoons

I post stupid cartoons on my website.

Sometimes I look at them and think, yeah, this is great. This is just my stupid inner self getting to make things.

There’s something quite liberating about it. I’m a bit of a child in an adult’s body, and for a while that feels perfectly fine.

Then the adult judge comes in.

What the fuck am I doing?

What will people think? That I’m a fucking lunatic?

Most of the time, I don’t care much. Certainly less than I used to. But occasionally there’s a flicker. I’m enjoying the thing, then suddenly I’m looking at it through the eyes of somebody who might find me embarrassing.

And if I’m honest, I do have a slight preference for people liking me.

There. Very advanced confession.

I’d quite like to be liked.

But how much am I willing to edit myself to improve the chances?

Somewhere in this is a picture of what an entrepreneur is supposed to look like. Serious. Competent. Building something important. Cultivating a personal brand.

I’m trying to build a business too. I care whether it works. I can put a lot into figuring something out.

I’d also rather be a bit of a joker.

Can I put myself fully into something, then detach enough to laugh at it? Laugh at myself doing it?

The cartoons help with that.

I make something stupid, laugh, and feel myself relax. Whatever I’m building still needs building. But I don’t have to sit inside the whole thing taking myself so fucking seriously.

For me, that seriousness can become a disease. Everything starts carrying the weight of who I am.

Even a cartoon apparently needs to answer questions about my credibility.

This sent me down a rabbit hole about eccentricity.

Maybe an eccentric person is just somebody being themselves more visibly. Maybe plenty of us are strange, and we’ve learned which bits to keep behind the social mask.

I don’t know how far that idea holds. But I recognise the little negotiation in myself.

I like this. Will I still let myself like it if somebody else thinks it’s stupid?

That’s where the need for admiration becomes interesting.

Enjoying praise seems fairly harmless. Needing to arrange myself around the possibility of receiving it feels more restrictive.

And I’m curious what happens if I let some of that need go.

Do I become more myself by default? Is there less to manage? Do I just make the thing I wanted to make?

I could turn this into another achievement, obviously. Become completely immune to praise and criticism. Let every opinion pass through while my inner bliss remains untouched.

Sounds lovely. I have no idea whether that’s possible.

What I can notice is the occasional flicker. The judge arrives. I start wondering how I look.

Then I remember that I was quite enjoying myself before this became an inspection.

Can admiration and freedom exist together?

Maybe. I’d happily accept both.

But for now, I’m still posting the stupid cartoons.