Winter Sucks, But At Least I Got My Doodles

East bound and down, loaded up and truckin'
We gonna do what they say can't be done…

Hey ya’ll… look, man, I freakin’ hate winter. Always have. I grew up at the beach, and lemme tell ya, if you think winter is a drag, you ain’t seen nothin’ ‘til you’ve seen winter at the beach.

A beach town in the summer? AWESOME. The air is thick with salt and sunscreen, there’s music spillin’ out of every dive bar, and people are just happy to be alive... And mostly drunk. Anyway, a beach town in winter? Depressing as hell. Everything’s shut down, the wind is violent and cuts through all your clothes like you owe it money or something, the ocean turns an unsettling shade of nope, and even the seagulls look like they’re reconsidering all their life choices.

And that whole leaving for work in the dark and getting home in the dark thing? Man, that’s some soul-draining nonsense. I swear, by the time February rolls around, I don’t even wanna offer my library kids any cool-awesome Mr. Riggs good ol’ life advice anymore. Normally, I’m all about helpin’ ‘em figure things out, but in winter? Nah. I just want ‘em to shut up, quit talking so loud, or—at all.

But hey, we’re climbing outta that now. Warmer days are ahead. Soon, I can stop feelin’ like a grumpy old dude.

Wait… Mysterious People Like My Sketches? (according to Elise)

So, in the midst of all this winter misery, my friend Elise—who, for the record, lives in freakin’ Colorado where winter is basically a way of life—drops this shocking piece of information on me: Her friends are actually interested in my sketches.

Don’t know what that means, she was pretty vague…

And I was like, “Who are you? What? These?”

We’re talking about the same doodles I mostly put online just to show I can draw? The ones that, if you found ‘em in the margins of some 14-year-old kid’s math notebook, you’d think, “Yep, this kid is definitely failing algebra but might have a future in album covers”?

Man, that blew my mind.

Astronaut Girl’s Descent into Dumb Comedy

Anyway, like most artsy folks, I get hung up on ideas. I go through these phases where I just can’t stop drawing one specific thing. Earlier this year, it was Astronaut Girl (shoutout to my library assistant for naming her with all the creativity of a person naming their new cat Cat).

At first, I was leanin’ into the cosmic horror vibe. Y’know, real existential dread type stuff. Cold, infinite space. Monsters lurkin’ in the void. All that moody, serious sci-fi business.

Then… well, that didn’t last.

Somewhere along the way, it turned into Leslie Nielsen in space. Now, Astronaut Girl’s survival isn’t so much about grit and resilience—it’s more about dumb luck and slapstick misadventure.

Example? She leans on the wrong switch, crash-lands on a hostile alien planet, and survives only because she bounces off a giant space trampoline. Meanwhile, the aliens that were tryin’ to eat her get crushed under the landing gear of some massive star cruiser piloted by alien frat bros who just stopped for directions… wow… I was just spitballing there but it would make a cool picture…

High-brow stuff, folks.

But hey—don’t worry. She always gets away. And at some point, I even gave her a giant brute of a robot to protect her, ‘cause every slapstick hero needs a straight man to do the heavy lifting.

Nostalgia and Bad 90s Soundtrack Associations

After I finally climbed outta that rabbit hole, I took a little nostalgia detour. Lately, I’ve been workin’ out an idea for a painting inspired by Hey Jealousy by the Gin Blossoms.

Now, if you’re my age, you know that song. And if you know that song, you probably got a very specific memory attached to it.

For me? It’s sittin’ in a parking lot at Wrightsville Beach, gettin’ dumped by my totally-cute-and-not-at-all-hooking-up-with-this-dude-on-the-football-team girlfriend. You know—peak teen drama.

But that’s not the only song from that era that immediately makes me time-travel to something stupid. Take Mr. Jones by Counting Crows, for example. That song? Forever tied to my freshman year of college—specifically, my first dorm roommate, who drank way too much Jäger on a Thursday evening and spent the rest of the night throwing up in the sink, and then peed his pants while dry-heaving and all while Mr. Jones played in the background…

Now, anytime I hear that song, I also hear some idiot kid desperately trying to breathe between retches, while I stand there thinkin’, “Hang on to these moments.”

Good times, man… Good times… Hey any college buddies out there that read this… Ya’ll remember that guy’s name? Cus I sure don’t…

Mermaids, Pelicans, and the Short Attention Span of an Artist

At some point, I was also workin’ on a mermaid piece. She was comin’ along alright, but then I just… got sick of lookin’ at it. Happens sometimes. Rather than overwork it ‘til she started lookin’ like she makes bad life choices and smokes two packs a day, I just put it away.

And what did I start workin’ on instead?

A pelican.

Because everybody loves a big, goofy, floppy-necked dinosaur. And because, apparently, my art process is just one long string of completely unrelated obsessions.

So What’s the Point of All This?

Hell if I know, man.

What I do know is that I spent all winter feelin’ like a grouchy old dude, complainin’ about the cold, doodlin’ dumb things, and somehow—somehow—people actually wanna buy prints of these things. So hey, if you see something that speaks to you—whether it’s Astronaut Girl, my Hey Jealousy nostalgia piece, or even my grumpy, judgmental pelican—grab a print. Put it on your wall. Confuse your guests.

Or don’t. Either way, I’ll still be over here, drawing whatever ridiculous thing pops into my head next.

P.S. I Need a Summer Gig… and That One Time I Was a Low-Budget Smokey and the Bandit (But With Shrimp)

So, look—I need a summer gig. Not tryna get rich, just tryna keep the lights on, keep my fridge stocked, and not have to sell my soul for something horrible. So… does anybody want to commission something weird that’ll make your in-laws question your mental health?

Because trust me, I do not want to go back to the kind of jobs I had in my younger, dumber years(five years ago). Case in point: The Summer of the Fish Truck.

Back in the day, I found myself driving a questionable refrigerated fish truck across South Carolina, hauling shrimp, oysters, and other oceanic creatures definitely not meant to be traveling that far inland. And, man, if you’ve ever driven a real POS truck loaded with seafood in the middle of a Carolina summer… well, lemme tell ya—you don’t forget that smell.

Now, in my head, I was Smokey and the Bandit—tearin’ up the highways, outrunnin’ imaginary lawmen, a seafood-slingin’ outlaw with Eastbound and Down blaring and fuzzy dice… The reality? That truck was one hard sneeze away from total mechanical failure. Every stoplight was a roll of the dice. My fuzzy dice was a Glade deodorizer shaped like a shoe(a freakin SHOE!!!), and the speakers were blown. I’d be flooring it and gettin’ absolutely dusted by minivans.

But I did catch air one time.

See, I was followin’ Google Maps (a terrible life choice in rural South Carolina), and the paved road just ended. No warning—just straight-up dropped onto a dirt road like someone ripped the last page outta the highway planner’s book. I hit that transition fast—faster than you should when hauling questionable seafood—and next thing I know, the truck launched.

For one glorious moment, I was airborne. A flying fish truck.

Landed hard. Probably lost a few years off my spine. Definitely lost some of the shrimp. But hey, we made it. And the truck only smelled marginally worse by the end of the run.

So yeah. Support my art. Keep me outta another low-budget seafood car chase movie. I’ll keep makin’ weird drawings, you keep enjoyin’ ‘em, and we’ll all stay off dirt roads at high speeds… maybe…