I can empathise, but I’m not going to say things will get better because it is more likely that they won’t. Just gotta keep on keepin on.
An usually personal & revealing strip.Unusually introspective.
Makes a nice change of pace.
Been a fan for several months after running across the strip by chance. Keep it up & thanks.
Where’s the “more like this” button on this here page? :-)
Terrifically wonderful strip.
The third “panel” reminds me of some lines from a song by stew: Boomy Guitar Song:
she never had to work you see
i gotta say that bothered me
never will have what it takes
cause she been handed the breaks
trust fund’s a form of love
nothing to be ashamed of
Anyway, figuring out your place in the world is harder for creatives, which you are.
Look on the bright side. Neither of us are part of the vast majority of people who don’t live in the West.
Hell, we have regular access to the *internet*. That alone puts us in a tiny minority. Our problems are ridiculous to billions of people.
That’s not to say we can’t resent those more privileged than us. It’s tricky, I’m not sure how to feel about that. I can’t afford $14 cocktails either. But it helps me get out of bed; I lead a charmed life compared to the average human being.
It’s a real shame privilege is randomly distributed.
O.k. so I’m not solution guy, but I’m a secretary so I have to deal with this shit too. This is what I do.
Walk in alone.
Order one beer at the bar and pay for it.
Go to where everyone is sitting and make an entrance.
Enjoy till the one beer is gone.
Fake a phone call or remember an obligation.
GTFO.
Party like Marty.
It may feel insincere, but fFuckem. If they didn’t offer to buy you a round for showing up to their “event” they clearly don’t rate a personal appearance. You should also invite everyone to your next public reading as you leave.
Don’t you sit around and listen to NPR and drink coffee all day? And you’re a published comic artist? You live my dream life, you’ve succeeded in getting your work out there. If you’re depressed about lack of money, sell out, by all means.
I’m just so jealous of you I don’t know where to begin.
I didn’t think this strip was about money or lack of it
The thing is there are people you know who have means. The Koan is how do you hang out with them w/o setting fire to your comfort zones? Some times you can’t. (take damage -7) Sometimes there are ways. (+81 healing)
However you always want to be able to come back to where you live and enjoy it. That should always be the goal.
Wow.
I think the thing is, the sort of people who live in New York, or at least the sort of people who used to live in New York, can’t anymore.
You do have many things to feel good about, but I still sympathize heartily. It’s a question of identity. It’s the same kind of underlying thing as a midlife crisis — am I the sort of person I think I am, or should be?
Anyway, thank you for sharing so eloquently.
thanks for the angst, miss dorothy.
it helped me to get through the day, in new york, where i prepare basic email ‘blasts’ then go home at night to my crappy railroad in bushwick to work on my portfolio… or pretend im doing that.
This comic was great. Cheer up?
This is profound. I wonder about this kind of thing myself…
I’m reminded of something Joe Dominguez wrote about in Your Money or Your Life that relates to this… If I can track it down, I will let you know. For now, I can say that we all make those choices based on what supports (and is supported by) our values, but not everyone is so conscious about it.
Yea for figuring out ones place in the world. It’s both sacred and mundane work.
Not where, how. But where can determine how, so we are turned back to the internal landscape. Friends do get new and better friends, and that–ouch, but there are the new and better (hope!) friends you get too. Don’t wonder why people change, they just do. Stay! Grow! Sweat! Get a bike! GABA Swap Meet is soon. Maybe you’re also the sort of person who lives in the desert.
You switched on the lights when you came home, but you NEVER SWITCHED THEM OFF WHEN YOU LEFT! LOOK OUT! THERE’S SOMEONE ELSE THERE!
I have a love hate relationship with the two places I grew up. Texas and New York. I used to say “I love Texas, but I hate the people!” Ha ha! Because they’re all republicans! But then, I love the people in Austin. And suddenly, even though I know New York like the back of my hand, I only ever hang out at my mom’s apartment or my friends apartment when I’m in town. But that’s enough. I have my few friends, and I have my cheap, falling down apartment that I’ll be taking back over soon enough. New York isn’t the one that doesn’t want you, it’s the other people there. Maybe a few friends leave, maybe a few bar close up. If you can swing it, fuck the assholes. Pardon my language, but I mean, if that’s where you love to be, and that’s where people you still care about are, then who needs the rest of the city. Do what I do, and pretend you’re the last gang in town. And if you don’t love it, then it’s time to find something else. It doesn’t change who you are.
BUT I DO WANT YOU. COME BACK.
Greenpoint wants you back!
And if all else fails, there are always the wilds of not-so-upstate NY. It’s pretty, cheaper, and a train ride away from NYC.
Portland, Oregon wants you too!
Mo makes a good point. I am not the sort of person New York City wants — I’m here for school, and that’s one of the things I’ve learned. New York wants my classmates, not a shut-in like me. ‘Course, upstate’s just my personal preference, because it’s Home now. Michigan used to be. Now it’s just depressing.
Though, in the end, I don’t think New York defines a lot fht epeople who live there. Some, yeah — but what do they have beyond that, then? Others just fall in there because there are so many other places they DON’T belong.
Least, that’s my feeling on it.
…And of course, by a good point, what I meant was HEY UPSTATE NEW YORK.
Thanks … though it may feel like internal “meh” externalized, this rings so true.
Also, reminds me of an “aha” moment I had after watching MR. Mom (don’t ask, it was free) … realizing that he turned his hell into his ideal… we can all dream. Sometimes there is some value in a little 80’s Kitsch.
Growing up middle class in America is more advantage than most of the world’s population will ever see. Which is why I can’t place easy blame on people for having more advantage than I do. I may already be a winner.
New York – I suspect you are not the real New York, but a smaller city posting in New York’s name. Are you New Paltz? Utica? Troy?
Do people extolling the virtues of not-so-upstate New York have any specific cities, towns or areas in mind?
I didn’t post about US, but I wana play too so…
Poughkeepsie.
Detroit needs you but is undeserving. We’ll appreciate you from a distance.
What, you have no job? I thought you were an artist. That counts. Big time. Gregory Corso once said something in the line of “be aware that being a poet will mean suffering for all your life”. I think this expands to all kinds of artists, essentially to all kinds of sensible people. Seeing things does not often make you happy, quite on the contrary. But you do see things, and you are able to communicate them in the most impressive manner. That is a gift, if one that comes at a price. Yet in the end, everything in life comes at a price, for everyone.
I wish I had a NY city to recommend, I have heard people extol the virtues of NY that is not NYC.
I have a few friends that are in a higher income bracket than myself. If invited to something I can not afford; I whip out my uncouthness, decline and state that it’s because I can’t afford the outing. The ones who truly want me along offer to cover me, which in the past I had a hard time accepting graciously*, but if they want to share with me, that’s true friendship as I share what I have with them in return. Alternatively I invite them to things I can afford (i.e. BYOB to my house and play board games).
*This is extremely difficult. You have to overcome the extreme self consciousness that you don’t want to be ‘the mooch’. You have to realize that they genuinely don’t mind and don’t expect you owe them. It helps if you think about how you’d feel in if the roles are reversed. Of course I’d be generous as hell if I could afford to be! (i.e. I would have set up a foundation and grant in your honor by now.)
Haha, this one got the most comments ever! If you did more like this one I bet they’d eventually peter out and become zero, as some of the others.
You mentioned TROY? Troy, New York?
After a thorough, 12 year long inspection of this particular region I gathered up my bitter notes and swore never to return.
And I didn’t.
What about Canada? You could be a Winnipegan.
I’ve felt that way, too. I’m leaving Tucson for Seattle in two weeks.
I’ll miss my Metalhead Tuesdays.
I could offer up a specific recommendation of My Home Town, NY, but I think I’m probably more than a little biased and also the price of moving there is constantly going up, so. Someone not from there would probably be bored and thinking, “Why am I here? Why did it cost so much to come to such a nothing-happens place?”
But, if that doesn’t discourage you… Clifton Park. I’m a fan. Or just the Saratoga/Albany area, anyway.
I guess I think you should stay in Tucson. I’ve never been there, but judging from your comics I think you are in an OK place. The content of the donation derby makes it look like you lead a fairly interesting social life, and the fact that you are making it work – producing stuff that is personal yet important to other people, while listening to NPR and drinking coffee? You’re my hero.
I say this having lived in Brooklyn for years, having moved to a smaller, cheaper city, and still being regularly haunted by NOT living in New York.
All that being said, how about western Mass. North Adams or Northahmpton, maybe? Slightly less crippling post-industrial blight than the corresponding small cities in upstate New York, but the same distance from New York.
I’ve known a few people whose parents paid for everything while they wrote poetry and designed clothes, and it is frustrating. But I prefer to support myself, because I feel like I can take complete credit for everything I do. Still, sometimes I think about how fun it would be to say things like “you’re the people the revolutionaries were decapitating!”
For a long time I lived in/around SF (which I never particularly liked although it did turn into home), and I wanted to be the kind of person who lives in NY. Then one day when I was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, I realized that if I lived in NY I would have neither the time nor the money to do the things that I did when I visited, the things I thought of as “things the kind of person who lives in NY does.”
Now I live in Portland, OR. I like it much better than I ever liked California. I feel at home here. And even though I still sometimes wish I were the kind of person who lives in NY, I’ve learned to be content with being the kind of person who lives in Portland.
My friend still lives in Brooklyn. She came to visit me at the end of last summer and she said it made her want to move here. But she also kept asking, “where are all the people?”.
Also: you’re returning to 3 comics a week on my birthday! So I’m donating as a birthday present to me.
I have these moments regularly in Portland. I try to comfort myself by thinking home is eventually supposed to find you.
I also recommend that you not move to Utica or Syracuse, NY. Probably better to look at the Hudson valley or western Mass.
Northampton, MA, is great if you don’t plan on getting a properly paying “day job,” because you will either have to take one in a box factory or commute to Springfield or Hartford, CT, two of the worst places on the face of the earth. (Not-properly-paying “day jobs” in restaurants and retail outlets abound, but you will have to compete for proper hours with five campuses worth of exploitable youth.)
It’s also great if what you really miss about New York City is that it is cold in the winter, but you kind of always wished that it were much more so.
Do not move to Clifton Park. My parents live there.
Come to Chicago. Cheap mass transit.
I don’t live there, but have you looked into Portland, OR? It’s cheap (though probably not as cheap as Tucson), very arty, pleasant, and livable. It feels a lot like Brooklyn, but with less people.
perspective has always paralyzed me. it definitely is the same someone though.
This is New York City, and I do want you back! The life is being sucked out of me by these undeserving, over-privileged yuppies, whose only crisis in life is how to keep themselves looking pretty so that they can ignore the black tarnish on their souls. I lament losing talent like you to less cooler cities!
Well its nice to see this but am looking what the people saying about this.
I can empathise, but I’m not going to say things will get better because it is more likely that they won’t. Just gotta keep on keepin on.
An usually personal & revealing strip.Unusually introspective.
Makes a nice change of pace.
Been a fan for several months after running across the strip by chance. Keep it up & thanks.
Where’s the “more like this” button on this here page? :-)
Terrifically wonderful strip.
The third “panel” reminds me of some lines from a song by stew: Boomy Guitar Song:
she never had to work you see
i gotta say that bothered me
never will have what it takes
cause she been handed the breaks
trust fund’s a form of love
nothing to be ashamed of
Anyway, figuring out your place in the world is harder for creatives, which you are.
Look on the bright side. Neither of us are part of the vast majority of people who don’t live in the West.
Hell, we have regular access to the *internet*. That alone puts us in a tiny minority. Our problems are ridiculous to billions of people.
That’s not to say we can’t resent those more privileged than us. It’s tricky, I’m not sure how to feel about that. I can’t afford $14 cocktails either. But it helps me get out of bed; I lead a charmed life compared to the average human being.
It’s a real shame privilege is randomly distributed.
O.k. so I’m not solution guy, but I’m a secretary so I have to deal with this shit too. This is what I do.
Walk in alone.
Order one beer at the bar and pay for it.
Go to where everyone is sitting and make an entrance.
Enjoy till the one beer is gone.
Fake a phone call or remember an obligation.
GTFO.
Party like Marty.
It may feel insincere, but fFuckem. If they didn’t offer to buy you a round for showing up to their “event” they clearly don’t rate a personal appearance. You should also invite everyone to your next public reading as you leave.
Don’t you sit around and listen to NPR and drink coffee all day? And you’re a published comic artist? You live my dream life, you’ve succeeded in getting your work out there. If you’re depressed about lack of money, sell out, by all means.
I’m just so jealous of you I don’t know where to begin.
I didn’t think this strip was about money or lack of it
The thing is there are people you know who have means. The Koan is how do you hang out with them w/o setting fire to your comfort zones? Some times you can’t. (take damage -7) Sometimes there are ways. (+81 healing)
However you always want to be able to come back to where you live and enjoy it. That should always be the goal.
Wow.
I think the thing is, the sort of people who live in New York, or at least the sort of people who used to live in New York, can’t anymore.
You do have many things to feel good about, but I still sympathize heartily. It’s a question of identity. It’s the same kind of underlying thing as a midlife crisis — am I the sort of person I think I am, or should be?
Anyway, thank you for sharing so eloquently.
thanks for the angst, miss dorothy.
it helped me to get through the day, in new york, where i prepare basic email ‘blasts’ then go home at night to my crappy railroad in bushwick to work on my portfolio… or pretend im doing that.
This comic was great. Cheer up?
This is profound. I wonder about this kind of thing myself…
I’m reminded of something Joe Dominguez wrote about in Your Money or Your Life that relates to this… If I can track it down, I will let you know. For now, I can say that we all make those choices based on what supports (and is supported by) our values, but not everyone is so conscious about it.
Yea for figuring out ones place in the world. It’s both sacred and mundane work.
Not where, how. But where can determine how, so we are turned back to the internal landscape. Friends do get new and better friends, and that–ouch, but there are the new and better (hope!) friends you get too. Don’t wonder why people change, they just do. Stay! Grow! Sweat! Get a bike! GABA Swap Meet is soon. Maybe you’re also the sort of person who lives in the desert.
You switched on the lights when you came home, but you NEVER SWITCHED THEM OFF WHEN YOU LEFT! LOOK OUT! THERE’S SOMEONE ELSE THERE!
I have a love hate relationship with the two places I grew up. Texas and New York. I used to say “I love Texas, but I hate the people!” Ha ha! Because they’re all republicans! But then, I love the people in Austin. And suddenly, even though I know New York like the back of my hand, I only ever hang out at my mom’s apartment or my friends apartment when I’m in town. But that’s enough. I have my few friends, and I have my cheap, falling down apartment that I’ll be taking back over soon enough. New York isn’t the one that doesn’t want you, it’s the other people there. Maybe a few friends leave, maybe a few bar close up. If you can swing it, fuck the assholes. Pardon my language, but I mean, if that’s where you love to be, and that’s where people you still care about are, then who needs the rest of the city. Do what I do, and pretend you’re the last gang in town. And if you don’t love it, then it’s time to find something else. It doesn’t change who you are.
BUT I DO WANT YOU. COME BACK.
Greenpoint wants you back!
And if all else fails, there are always the wilds of not-so-upstate NY. It’s pretty, cheaper, and a train ride away from NYC.
Portland, Oregon wants you too!
Mo makes a good point. I am not the sort of person New York City wants — I’m here for school, and that’s one of the things I’ve learned. New York wants my classmates, not a shut-in like me. ‘Course, upstate’s just my personal preference, because it’s Home now. Michigan used to be. Now it’s just depressing.
Though, in the end, I don’t think New York defines a lot fht epeople who live there. Some, yeah — but what do they have beyond that, then? Others just fall in there because there are so many other places they DON’T belong.
Least, that’s my feeling on it.
…And of course, by a good point, what I meant was HEY UPSTATE NEW YORK.
Thanks … though it may feel like internal “meh” externalized, this rings so true.
Also, reminds me of an “aha” moment I had after watching MR. Mom (don’t ask, it was free) … realizing that he turned his hell into his ideal… we can all dream. Sometimes there is some value in a little 80’s Kitsch.
Growing up middle class in America is more advantage than most of the world’s population will ever see. Which is why I can’t place easy blame on people for having more advantage than I do. I may already be a winner.
New York – I suspect you are not the real New York, but a smaller city posting in New York’s name. Are you New Paltz? Utica? Troy?
Do people extolling the virtues of not-so-upstate New York have any specific cities, towns or areas in mind?
I didn’t post about US, but I wana play too so…
Poughkeepsie.
Detroit needs you but is undeserving. We’ll appreciate you from a distance.
What, you have no job? I thought you were an artist. That counts. Big time. Gregory Corso once said something in the line of “be aware that being a poet will mean suffering for all your life”. I think this expands to all kinds of artists, essentially to all kinds of sensible people. Seeing things does not often make you happy, quite on the contrary. But you do see things, and you are able to communicate them in the most impressive manner. That is a gift, if one that comes at a price. Yet in the end, everything in life comes at a price, for everyone.
I wish I had a NY city to recommend, I have heard people extol the virtues of NY that is not NYC.
I have a few friends that are in a higher income bracket than myself. If invited to something I can not afford; I whip out my uncouthness, decline and state that it’s because I can’t afford the outing. The ones who truly want me along offer to cover me, which in the past I had a hard time accepting graciously*, but if they want to share with me, that’s true friendship as I share what I have with them in return. Alternatively I invite them to things I can afford (i.e. BYOB to my house and play board games).
*This is extremely difficult. You have to overcome the extreme self consciousness that you don’t want to be ‘the mooch’. You have to realize that they genuinely don’t mind and don’t expect you owe them. It helps if you think about how you’d feel in if the roles are reversed. Of course I’d be generous as hell if I could afford to be! (i.e. I would have set up a foundation and grant in your honor by now.)
Haha, this one got the most comments ever! If you did more like this one I bet they’d eventually peter out and become zero, as some of the others.
You mentioned TROY? Troy, New York?
After a thorough, 12 year long inspection of this particular region I gathered up my bitter notes and swore never to return.
And I didn’t.
What about Canada? You could be a Winnipegan.
I’ve felt that way, too. I’m leaving Tucson for Seattle in two weeks.
I’ll miss my Metalhead Tuesdays.
I could offer up a specific recommendation of My Home Town, NY, but I think I’m probably more than a little biased and also the price of moving there is constantly going up, so. Someone not from there would probably be bored and thinking, “Why am I here? Why did it cost so much to come to such a nothing-happens place?”
But, if that doesn’t discourage you… Clifton Park. I’m a fan. Or just the Saratoga/Albany area, anyway.
I guess I think you should stay in Tucson. I’ve never been there, but judging from your comics I think you are in an OK place. The content of the donation derby makes it look like you lead a fairly interesting social life, and the fact that you are making it work – producing stuff that is personal yet important to other people, while listening to NPR and drinking coffee? You’re my hero.
I say this having lived in Brooklyn for years, having moved to a smaller, cheaper city, and still being regularly haunted by NOT living in New York.
All that being said, how about western Mass. North Adams or Northahmpton, maybe? Slightly less crippling post-industrial blight than the corresponding small cities in upstate New York, but the same distance from New York.
I’ve known a few people whose parents paid for everything while they wrote poetry and designed clothes, and it is frustrating. But I prefer to support myself, because I feel like I can take complete credit for everything I do. Still, sometimes I think about how fun it would be to say things like “you’re the people the revolutionaries were decapitating!”
For a long time I lived in/around SF (which I never particularly liked although it did turn into home), and I wanted to be the kind of person who lives in NY. Then one day when I was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, I realized that if I lived in NY I would have neither the time nor the money to do the things that I did when I visited, the things I thought of as “things the kind of person who lives in NY does.”
Now I live in Portland, OR. I like it much better than I ever liked California. I feel at home here. And even though I still sometimes wish I were the kind of person who lives in NY, I’ve learned to be content with being the kind of person who lives in Portland.
My friend still lives in Brooklyn. She came to visit me at the end of last summer and she said it made her want to move here. But she also kept asking, “where are all the people?”.
Also: you’re returning to 3 comics a week on my birthday! So I’m donating as a birthday present to me.
I have these moments regularly in Portland. I try to comfort myself by thinking home is eventually supposed to find you.
I also recommend that you not move to Utica or Syracuse, NY. Probably better to look at the Hudson valley or western Mass.
Northampton, MA, is great if you don’t plan on getting a properly paying “day job,” because you will either have to take one in a box factory or commute to Springfield or Hartford, CT, two of the worst places on the face of the earth. (Not-properly-paying “day jobs” in restaurants and retail outlets abound, but you will have to compete for proper hours with five campuses worth of exploitable youth.)
It’s also great if what you really miss about New York City is that it is cold in the winter, but you kind of always wished that it were much more so.
Do not move to Clifton Park. My parents live there.
Come to Chicago. Cheap mass transit.
I don’t live there, but have you looked into Portland, OR? It’s cheap (though probably not as cheap as Tucson), very arty, pleasant, and livable. It feels a lot like Brooklyn, but with less people.
perspective has always paralyzed me. it definitely is the same someone though.
This is New York City, and I do want you back! The life is being sucked out of me by these undeserving, over-privileged yuppies, whose only crisis in life is how to keep themselves looking pretty so that they can ignore the black tarnish on their souls. I lament losing talent like you to less cooler cities!
Well its nice to see this but am looking what the people saying about this.
Hey nice funny story. Some one without the job.