Dealing with late-night stress | fun things | kicking toast

September 25, 2022

In This Issue:

• Dealing With Late-Night Stress

• Three Fun Things

• Drawing the Kicking Toasts

• Top Cartoons

Dealing With Late-Night Stress

We all know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night and lie there in bed, worrying.

Well, I tried something the other night—a mental trick to cut down on this worrying. It helped me, so I wanted to share it with you.
 
Here’s what you do: When you wake up in the middle of the night, instead of being pulled into your worries, I want you to immediately picture your brain as a cartoon. It is saying:

Then a sidekick enters the scene. The sidekick is the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that processes fear and threats.

(Technically there's more than one amygdala and of course it wouldn't be outside the brain, but don’t worry about any of that. Just go with it.)

So these little characters are humorously freaking out. And you mentally say to them, “Calm down, you two. Let’s just relax.” They do not appreciate this.

Ok, now that we have the characters set up, you can follow this formula: Take whatever you're worried about... 

... transfer it onto those two characters... 

... and then, just for amusement, dial the whole thing up to an absurd level. Meanwhile, you remain the level-headed person telling them to calm down. 

So that's one way you can use them. Or you could just picture these stressed-out characters saying or doing funny things.

Maybe you could imagine them printing up t-shirts about all your worries. Or maybe they try to write a poem or song to convince you to start worrying.

The point is that you're redirecting your attention to the characters instead of focusing on your worries.
 
Now, I’m not saying this will put you back to sleep. You may still need to read a book or listen to music or whatever. And it might not always work. Maybe sometimes you're just too stressed to engage with imaginary cartoons. But even if it helps a little bit, sometimes, it's worth it, right? 
 
Let me know if it helps at all!

Three Fun Things

As you may know, I'm someone who loves maps. Behold:

Well, if you're like that too you might want to check out the Epic Maps account on Twitter. They post some pretty cool images. 
 

If you know of other map-related accounts or websites, books, etc. that you think I would like, reply and let me know! I'll share any suggestions in a future newsletter. 

Second fun thing: If you subscribe to Disney Plus and you like dogs, I must insist that you watch the short animated series called Dug Days. 

Yes, technically it's made for kids, but trust me, it's great. There are only five episodes and each one is like 10 - 12 minutes long. It's about the dog from the movie Up, and it's so good.
 
And the third fun thing is that some of my cartoons were featured on Bored Panda last week. You can check them out here. Maybe there are some cartoons you haven't seen before!

Drawing the Kicking Toasts

Shout out to reader Ana and her kids Tom and Isabela! They created a series of funny and delightful drawings of the toast characters from The Bowl Game (where I pull words from bowls then draw what it says).
 
Here is The Bowl Game where the kicking toast idea was born. The words were "crazy piece of toast performing a roundhouse kick."

From there, the toast characters went on to appear in a story I created called "Chauncey the Space Chicken." If you want to see that, go to Instagram and search the hashtag #ChaunceyTheSpaceChicken. The first post will appear at the bottom and you can work up from there. 

And, as you may have noticed, the kicking toasts are now recurring characters in Bowl Game stories.
 
So let's look at the drawings! Tom was 7 when he drew these and Isabela was 9. Ana helped with some of the drawings too. Amazing job all around! I feel like each toast here has its own personality and backstory. 

Tom even made some cards with the toasts. Here’s one:

Brilliant! Ana, Tom and Isabela, you’re all hired as my back-up illustrators!
 
If you or someone you know wants to draw some kicking toasts, I created this sheet of sketches that you can use as inspiration. Click here or on the file below to download it! Then you can print it (or just look at it on a screen) and use it to draw your own toast characters. 

And let's not forget there is some toast-inspired merchandise over at my online store! 

Me, wearing a kicking toast shirt while eating non-kicking toast.

In Case You Missed It... 

I'm back on a Friday schedule with The Bowl Game stories, so here are the ones I've posted in the past month. Each one seems to get crazier than the last! 

Super-duper strong librarian chasing a seagull

Vivacious Jack-in-the-Box running out of toilet paper

Cheerful Chihuahua folding a fitted sheet

Frantic apple fritter sewing up a very torn pair of jeans

Top Cartoons

And now, let's take a look at the most popular cartoons since the last newsletter. 

First, we have my exercise routine. 

This is coming from the same disciplined mind that brought you this cartoon:

So, yeah, let me know if you want me to be your exercise coach. 

This cartoon from the archives was also popular.

Actually, I made a slight change to this one before I posted it. In the original, one of the squares was about eating the corner brownie.

But it turns out that the corner brownie is NOT universally loved. Some people hate the corner and prefer the inner brownies! There was much debate about this the last time I posted the cartoon.

Personally, I will eat ANY part of a brownie. And I think chewing that brownie counts as exercise. 

Again, contact me if you're looking for a workout consulant. 

OK, that's it for this time. Let's all gather here next month. I'm putting together my Holiday Gift Guide for you! 

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