- (part of a longer essay about origins) I turned 33 this week. I love the “fresh start” feeling that a new calendar year brings, but I usually let birthdays slip past unnoticed, because for a long time, they were miserable occasions that only served to remind me of all the things I didn’t like about my life. I don’t write or draw much about those days because they aren’t funny and feel like a totally different life, but you know, I’m trying to do new and difficult things!
My 30s were hard because I had to figure out who I was, since I'd spent all of my 20s doing the Right Thing As Told To Me By Other People. But my 30s were also an exciting time of... figuring out who I was. Happy birthday! It's a big thing to face the sadness and own it.
You may not like writing about this, but boy is it powerful! I have saved several of your newsletters to show my young adult children. I'll include this. Life gets better, I promise (though I'm 48 and still have a great deal of angst about, well, just about everything...maybe that's what helps us find our bliss :) Ah, to live. Thank you, thank you. This is real and true.
30s are great and not great. Great because I feel I know myself more but not great because I'm so much more self aware! Maybe we should make that into our own webcomic... lol happy belated birthday!
Love the vulnerability in this so much, and it connected me to my own sad teens / early 20s (albeit for different reasons), and how I used to love celebrating my birthday but how that shifted in the past few years to an anxiety-inducing loneliness… I felt less alone reading this.
Birthday
My 30s were hard because I had to figure out who I was, since I'd spent all of my 20s doing the Right Thing As Told To Me By Other People. But my 30s were also an exciting time of... figuring out who I was. Happy birthday! It's a big thing to face the sadness and own it.
You may not like writing about this, but boy is it powerful! I have saved several of your newsletters to show my young adult children. I'll include this. Life gets better, I promise (though I'm 48 and still have a great deal of angst about, well, just about everything...maybe that's what helps us find our bliss :) Ah, to live. Thank you, thank you. This is real and true.
30s are great and not great. Great because I feel I know myself more but not great because I'm so much more self aware! Maybe we should make that into our own webcomic... lol happy belated birthday!
Happy belated! I love these memoir comics, they're very relatable.
I re-read my old diaries from my college/post-college years recently and was shocked to remember/realize how depressed I was at this age too.
Thank goodness we learned to lean into cartooning: The solution to all things, lol.
Can't wait to read the rest of this. Very relatable. Thanks for sharing Zoe.
Wonderful! Happy birthday, and thankyou for sharing.
Love the vulnerability in this so much, and it connected me to my own sad teens / early 20s (albeit for different reasons), and how I used to love celebrating my birthday but how that shifted in the past few years to an anxiety-inducing loneliness… I felt less alone reading this.
Happy birthday! Keep going!
Cheers to you for accepting and drawing out the difficult phases of life. Happy Birthday 🎈!
Shared reality in so many panels, I have needs met of authenticity, truth, discovery, dreams, and determination.