Day in the Life of an Idiot

I've been thinking that one of the ways I want to live my life is as if I were in a slice-of-life manga. You know, something like Laid-Back Camp or Super Cub.

But, because I am also like this, I actually started drawing it. I am, because I am a weirdo, drawing it as if you should read it right to left. I started on the last page of a book that I was already using for doodling and other art projects. Because I'm pretending this is a manga, I'm also including translator's notes, as though you are stumbling across this on some pirate site.

Because I'm not sure if this will be a one-shot or a full volume, there is no cover or title yet. I may continue in full-color, though I should really, if I want to be manga-like only have a few opening color splash pages and then move into black and white.

I kind of like coloring, though.

So perhaps this is an imaginary collected webtoon or manhua.



Image: a rendition of my actual kitchen in most of its actual colors and me (a little skinnier than I really am) doing the dishes, while looking out the window.

The narration starts, as manga often do, with the main's full name, age and occupation. So the first panel of this this reads: "I'm Lyda Morehouse, 56, a not very successful self-employed writer." Now before you yell at me for not talking up my successes (and I do actually think I'm VERY successful, thank you very much!), this often the type of main character you find in slice-of-life. They're doing OKAY. They're usually not on the fast-track at their job. Sometimes they're not-very-popular high schoolers, FREETs (someone who is content to live off a parttime salary,) or other people who are mildly out of step with the larger, fast-paced society. Not always? Like, I read a very delightful slice-of-life called Sweetness & Lightning that is about a single working dad trying to find the time and energy to make meals for himself and his only daughter.

The lower panel reads, "One day, I decided to imagine what it might be like if I lived my life as if I was in a slice-of-life manga."

Very self-referential so far! Very meta!

The next page looks like this:


Image: second page of the manga -- lots of outdoor images, no people.

So, remember, you're reading this top, right panel, then left. This page's narration says: "Outside of the kitchen window, the black-eyed susans and golden glows were a riot of color against the grey siding of our neighbor's house. All of my gardens are like this. Wild, out of control." Then you see the cicada who has a very Japanese cameo here, signaling not only that it is summer, but that today is VERY hot. The next panels read, "The weather forecast said there would be a be a heat index of 100 degrees.* We could tell. The cicadas were singing at 10 am. I hoped to harvest some chives before it got too hot." The bottom dialogue box is from the supposed translator and it reads, "T/N: America uses Fahrenheit. To most of the rest of us, this is 37."

I'm pretty impressed with my cicada:



Image: cicada hanging on a tree. She sings: "Bzzzt! Bzzzt!"

So, yeah, this is what I do in my copious free time when I should really be starting on the next novel. I mean, to be fair this did not actually take all that much time. I probably spend more time playing Solitaire, so, I mean, look forward to that chapter! ;-)

I started this in part, in response to a conversation I had with pegkerr over Zoom about what other people find boring. She's been doing a weekly visual journal and has been feeling like her life is boring, as if no one would care about the little things she gets up to every day. First of all, please!  I will point the gentle reader to the above. There is an entire deeply successful manga genre devoted to people reading about people's boring lives. 

Also, I have long resisted the idea that life is EVER truly boring. I mean, part of what I love about slice-of-life manga is that they often call to the reader to slow down, look outside their window, and revel in the fact that eating good food nourishes the soul. This is literally the stuff of life. Hear the cicadas. Feel the heat. Consider the wildness of the flowers outside your kitchen window. Do the dishes. Tidy up. These are all GOOD and valuable things!

So we got into a bit and so I have now dedicated my life to being as f*cking mundane as possible it and drawing beautiful images about my utterly plain life to prove that dullness is in the eye of the beholder. 

Maybe you wouldn't read 57 volumes of this, but maybe I can give you an interesting peek into my day-to-day life. 

 
Image: a geode-like rock. 

I have always picked up rocks. I have a rock collection going back to my tween years. Several years ago, Shawn bought me a rock tumbler, because, I guess, I needed one more hobby. But, so, when we stopped at Cutface Creek on our way back from Bearskin, I picked p a bunch of rocks that I thought it would be fun to see what the tumbler made of them. When I first pulled them out this morning (after almost of month's worth of grinding and polishing,) I was, initially, disappointed. But, on closer inspection, I think some of these are actually fairly spectacular.









Now, I just have to find a nice place for these beauties....