Update: I went with number 7.

For your consideration, an anti-Rorschach.

It's not missing a caption. It has a surplus of captions.

This is typical of most of my cartoons. The captions that occur to me are like the tangled roots beneath a plant. I need a few days to tease them apart; decide which ones to toss.  Right now I'm inclined to break the plant into two, saving the third and fifth caption.

(though I'm now considering a number six: "I'll do it. I'll quit. Starting this spring.")

Another dozen or so cartoons uploaded, if you're in the mood to verify it.

This cartoon was originally about scrapbooking unpaid bills from past vacations. Mary asked why they would paste away bills that still had to be paid. And wasn't that kind of depressing? So I turned the premise around for a better caption. Mary doesn't usually write finished captions, but she often steers mine around until they're out of the ditch and back on the road.

A new cartoon is on the hook at American Scientist.

I've revamped the shopping cart. You can now download your cartoon without the bother of a credit card. I'll send along an invoice.

Everyone likes to get mail.

I mentioned a few posts back that I was diagnosed with ADHD. This shouldn't startle anyone who knows me.

• I promised something and didn't finish it? 
• I repeatedly ask for an address you've provided a dozen times before? 
• I forget appointments? 
• I spout dreams like a fish on top of a fountain, only to have them fall back into the pool, unrealized?

My latest public display of ADD was my plan to rerun a Christmas Spot the Frog story from 2004. I think I got as far as posting six, maybe seven strips, out of twenty-eight. That's six or seven strips better than my usual record — running none of the strips, while flogging myself because I couldn't complete this simple thing; letting my disgust cascade into memories of other failures; every failure leading to the same conclusion: I'm a failure as well.

I'll try not to talk about my ADD too much here (since I'm already talking about it here.) But it's amazing how much of my career finally makes sense. The lack of follow-through, the abundance of laziness*, the mind as composed as a dandelion in the wind. The self-loathing, the crippling perfectionism, the familiar weight of inertia as I contemplate everything that needs to be done, unable to find the strength to bull through it.

There's a slogan that finds its way into many offices: you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.

After 49 years of employing my share of crazy, I can report that it doesn't.

*That is, the perception of laziness — if you can't fight the ennui and inertia that results from a distracted mind, you're not getting things done — de facto laziness. 

I loved the ending of this episode. After 20 years of character development and family dynamics, the writers create something new out of something old — in a way familiar to most families. 

Homer and Grandpa have always been the same person in my eyes.* With this episode, Homer becomes more so. 

*Are Homer's adventures more outlandish than the tales Grandpa tells? The only difference is that we know Homer's stories are true, as improbable as they are. And since Homer is Grandpa, Q.E.D.

I know you're feeling blue at the lack of posting here. What's Christmas without Mark Heath, you're thinking. Where's the jolly fat man?*

For me, a Mark Heathless holiday would be a sad thing indeed. But for the rest of you, I have an idea that one fat bearded man is more than enough.

Wishing you the best.

*Lately he's been posting about the joys of ADHD at his blog, Another Fine Mess.

Update: You can read more about my ADD at Another Fine Mess.

A few months ago I was diagnosed with ADD. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I'm still not sure. It's one thing to put a name to my distracted behavior. It's another to make use of it. I'm ADD. What now?

Mostly I feel embarrassed.  I know that I drive my business with the skill of a cat at the wheel, going off-road to follow dust motes and birds and anything else that catches my fancy. I know I have the paradoxical ability to focus on some things while spacing out on others. I know that deadlines can surprise me, along with doctor appointments, car inspections, bills. I know that the start of each day is generally a grand thing, with bold plans scribbled on mental Post-It notes — today I'll begin a picture book, a new strip, a batch for a magazine —  and then I take my first step and discover that the distance between a Post-It note and a finished project is exhausting.

I don't mean the exhaustion of a full day's work. I mean the exhaustion of moving forward, taking that first step, then the second, then the third and the fourth and a few hundred more, all in my head while I sit in my office as numb as a statue. 

As the saying goes, the longest journey begins with a single step. It's meant to be reassuring.  But offered the same encouragement, my knees buckle as I imagine ten thousand steps all at once.

There are days when drawing a cartoon is akin to pushing a boulder uphill.

There are days when I can't budge the boulder.

There are days when I'm sitting under the boulder.

For most of my life, I've described these feelings as depression.  If you asked, I'd confess to depression from crib to chair and most likely coffin. 

My glass wasn't half full, it was leaking. At best it was a dribble glass, inspiring a laugh and my life in comedy.

That's why I was seeing a new psychiatrist a few months ago. My daily medication was punching the clock, showing up for work, but I had the feeling it was interviewing for a new job. I had a position to fill.

I needed a new dose, or a new pill. I began with a new psychiatrist.

The first session is like an interview for a job you don't want. The goal is to make a bad impression. Confess secrets. Throw open the closet door and rattle the skeletons, work the jaws like an evil ventriloquist's doll. 

I tell her I'm lazy. Moody. Irresponsible. Undisciplined. I tell her I have a hard time focusing, except for those times when I don't. My life is like Dial M for Murder, without the murder part, and I'm struggling to understand the plot twist with the keys. I tell her I'm depressed, but not really depressed. It's more like I'm tired, baffled, disappointed, ashamed. 

I keep talking like I'm on the phone and the police need time to trace the call.

Several minutes in, she leans forward. The call's been traced.  "You have ADD," she says.

I've been carrying my diagnosis for months now. I feel like I've moved into a new house, and my books are unpacked and my furniture settled. But I'm still lugging my ADD from room to room — it's like a pillow stuffed with marbles, always changing shape, not especially comfortable — wondering where to put it down.

This morning I decided to put it down here.

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

I've never done this before, and I can't vouch for the product because I just uploaded the design on a whim* — it was that, or pull on my winter gear and snowblow the driveway (I may wash the cat next; anything to delay my snowblower reunion) — and I haven't seen a finished sample. But if you believe in holiday miracles and happy endings, here's your chance to test it. (If you're not satisfied with the item, however, I see that Zazzle has a money-back guarantee.** )

This was the final strip of a month-long series I wrote when Spot was first syndicated. You can find the story in my book It's Hard to Comb a Grass Toupee.

*My thanks to Brian Whitmer for rescuing my lost files.

**The punchline, however, is non-refundable.