Do You Have A Crush On It?

Inspiration, motivation, and deciding what's next.

I did a little sketching outside this past weekend. I’m trying to get back into Daily Sketches, but I’m finding it more difficult these days. There’s so much going on — between my books, business here at Stupid Fresh Mess, kids, and, you know, trying to take a little downtime to be an actual human — and I haven’t been feeling inspired to scratch that “fan art” itch as much as I used to. But I grabbed all my gear, set up on my deck, and got excited about the challenge of taking on Happy Gilmore, with full plans to tackle at least 3 or 4 more sketches.

Well, I did a Happy Gilmore…and that was it. haha.

That brings me to this question my friend Scott Mosier said we have to ask ourselves when we’re deciding what to work on:

“DO YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON IT?”

He told me a friend of his brought this up to him when he was trying to choose what he wanted to give his time to. She said, “If you’re going to spend the next year or years on something, you have to have a crush on it.” That made so much sense to me. There are so many things that come along that I can work on that look very attractive in the moment. But being attracted to something isn’t the same as having a crush. Attraction can be fleeting. Momentary. A crush…well, we’ve all had crushes. They tend to stick around for the long run. It’s the kind of feeling that you just can’t shake, no matter what you try. It’s there in the morning and it’s with you at night, and all the hours in between. If I’m going to spend my days and nights with a project, I better be crushin' on it!

I had to remind myself of that when I felt uninspired to keep stacking up sketches this past weekend. Or why it’s been nearly a year since I really carved out time each day to do a sketch like I did for over a decade. I don’t think I have a crush on it.

So, what do I have a crush on? I don’t know that I can pick just one quite yet, but I have my eye on a few potential crushes. I can tell you that I will be writing and drawing a project or two in the coming year. I miss that old crush!

I’ve been spending more time in the studio getting bored. (For more on “getting bored”, you can read this piece I wrote in July.) I put a stack of index cards on my desk and whenever an idea hits me, I write it down with a quick title. Some of these are probably terrible, some are 10 years old, and some may be the next big project. But I don’t care about any of that. The point at the moment is just throwing things up in front me and waiting to see if I start crushing on any of them.

By this photo, you can clearly tell there is at least one crush happening, and that’s BOY AT THE END. My longtime question mark of a project/idea/my id/subject of many talks amongst me, my friend, and fans…Boy. I’m making my way towards it, everyone. I really am! I won’t go into much detail yet, but I will show you the lettering test that Nate did for me on an old sketch. Nate created some balloons that look like my hand-drawn style and a font that really matches the tone of what I plan to do with him. More on that plan soon. For now, look at one of my crushes.

Well, there’s a little of what’s rattling around in my head today. Thanks for playing therapist and letting me talk through it. You all are always good like that.