Sometimes I feel like I am a split personality with my designs. At times I'm John Lennon coming up with edgy stuff that has deeper meaning. Other times I'm Paul McCartney, pandering to the pop music crowd and creating what I think will sell.
Bees are cute and I assume there will be a certain segment of the market that will like the cuteness and order the design for a t-shirt or a sticker.
But it isn't profound.
I still struggle with the idea that I'm trying to impress the world with how clever I am. This is ironic because the world, or my blog world, seems to comprise about three to five people tops. And I only know two people who have read my blog regularly for the past few years. I am convinced that if there is any other traffic here, it it s from bots cataloging my stuff for random Google searches.
I can't quite wrap my aged brain around the concept that people don't consume media or blogs or whatever it is I'm creating, in a linear fashion. They don't start at the beginning from when I started blogging and progress through the 20 years of post to reach this one. They Google something and it may or may not hit on something I wrote about and bring them to that post. But that is usually the extent of it.
I just don't produce content that most people feel compelled to come back on a regular basis to read. I thought maybe it was because I wasn't consistent in my posts. Then this year I've posted every day and still the same 3-5 bots drop by, scan, catalog and move on. And the two actual people I know have actually read my blog in the past three years probably drop in now and then and say, "Oh look, he came up with a new t-shirt design" and then move on.
I have written more that 1600 posts in the past 20 years. And now I've created more than 800 too clever by half t-shirt designs. And still I feel like the Whos in "Horton Hears a Who" screaming "I am here, I am here, I am here." And the Wickersham brothers are closer and closer to boiling my world on a dust speck in Beezle-Nut oil because no one knows I'm here.
I went through a phase thinking if people just saw how clever and funny I am they would tell others and I'd be a hot commodity. I thought if the people I work with really knew another side of me that they don't see at work or knew my history they would be fascinated. I thought if all of the people I knew in the past knew who I was now and how amazingly creative I am, they'd want to reconnect and know me again.
But I finally realized that for the most part no one really cares how clever I am or think I am. No one at work thinks I'm fascinating. No one I knew in the past really wants to reconnect with me because they realized what they've been missing by not knowing me.
Perhaps everyone is on their own world on their own dust speck on their own strand of clover to busy crying out, "I am here, I am here, I am here," to hear anyone else crying out, "I am here, I am here, I am here."
And somehow I still hold out hope that someone like Horton will finally step in and acknowledge me because, "A person's a person no matter how small."
What? Is that a new t-shirt design I hear calling?
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