Challenge Day 9 (of 30) – Gastro no

I preface a lot of these emails with “this is a short one” but this really is a short one.

I’d say today was a rest day — the bits where I took the kids to the playground were fun if not strictly restful —but My Wife was sick with what is now quite clearly gastro, and it would seem the children have a dose too, and as I write this I’m really not feeling too hot. There’s a rumbling reminiscent of magma, or perhaps Rotorua or Yellowstone in the immediate pre-geyser phase. Fun fact: tummy rumbles are called “borborygmi!” Such a great name; I’m sure I’ll be able to reflect on it at length while I’m up tonight having all kinds of fun. The upshot is that the regular Cynic’s Guide subscribers can wait until tomorrow for their epistle, whilst you, lucky 30 Day Challenge subscribers, get to hear about my bowel movements. I’m sure you’re thrilled.

Meanwhile, my painting Moby Duck, which I’m sure you’re very sick of hearing about by now, hit the front page of Reddit, via a post I composed hastily while looking after a sleeping baby in the car (I didn’t want to move her and wake her up, so I hung out in the front seat for an hour or so) and didn’t check until hours later to find it had gone proper viral. At the time of writing it is just shy of a million views. No, wait, let me check. Yup, over a million now. Of course, this initial distractedness meant that I forgot to attach information about where Redditors might acquire prints, and had to add it later via an edit once most folk had probably already seen it. Oops.

This isn’t the disaster you might suppose. The knowledge that a million views means precisely dick when it comes to people actually buying your work — the comments can be full of people posting gifs of SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY and yet mysteriously no money materialises — is hard earned. It can be a little grating to know that your work is simultaneously good enough to get seen by a million or few people and not good enough to buy. But such is the way of the world! I am genuinely happy that people like the art, and that people posted about it cheering them up. That is after all what my anti-doom anti-slop art-posting is all about. But man, it’d be sweet if I could eat upvotes. Or convert them into precious dollarydoos.

Anyway, here is today’s video, which — now I’ve looked at it here — I realise I have screwed up the thumbnail for. OH WELL.

And now I’m off to bed.¹ Thank you, as always — but perhaps especially after this yucky episode — for reading.

1. Not bed.