Making Myself Irrelevant

a color photo of acorn seed in green grass

May we exist like a lotus,

at home in muddy water.

Thus we bow to life as it is.: Charlotte Joko Beck

I recently blank slated this site as a desire to more closely align this site with who I am today. Part of that realignment includes closing my twitter and facebook accounts at the end of September.

Yesterday I realized that I had included neither my cartoon site nor my gender revolution site in this process.

This raises the all too obvious question of why.

Incorporating the material/attitude from gender revolution seemed easier to me than the material from the cartoon site. As I pondered the answer to this new why question, I realized that I have not blank slated my cartoon site out of a fear that I will not be able to draw another cartoon again, ever.

Blanking this site is easy. I trust my own writing process. I trust the place from which the words flow. The opposite is true for my cartooning.

I do not trust my creative process around cartoons. In fact, I fear the whole process now. Many of these cartoons were born out of a tremendous frustration I felt towards feminists and their sometimes inability to accept gender variance as a natural, human and welcome practice. My frustration all too often became a kind of humor that gets a laugh at others’ expense. (Justified anger does that for me. Look at what a moron s/he is! I am glad I’m not that person!)

Today I desire to choose different words. Laughter is good. At another’s expense for me sets up a dynamic where I become a person I really don’t like.

Can I can create cartoons without this anger? Maybe not. Then again, maybe I can. If I can abide in these muddy waters and create cartoons any way possible, that is enough, I think.

As I re/imagine my cartoons, I envision using them for extended written pieces on experience telling. Without this re/imagination, I fear I will make myself irrelevant, some z-list equivalent of those oldie shows that make the circuit every summer.

What I can say is that I am happy to know that I am pushing forward for myself; that despite my fear of making myself irrelevant as a cartoonist, I’d rather risk not being able to create anything than rely on cartoons that are two, three or more years old.