I tried another variety of drawing daily comics from Lynda Barrys book Drawing Comics: to draw my self as Batman in 4 panels each day. 5 mins per panel, things I did.

This was very fun, to add the batman signifiers to myself in my daily doings – to give my everyday life a super hero flavour. It was a bit daunting too: it felt like a lot do draw four panels. Even if the instruction is to make it short – to only spend five minutes per panel – it still felt difficult. 

Two thoughts helped me do it anyway: 

1) that it is the process that is important, not the product. 

2) a poem by Emily Dickinson where the gist is that you don’t know what is behind a hill unless you climb it. Before climbing, it is not possible to know if it was “worth” the effort. But if you don’t climb it, you will never know. 

Some days the results were abysmal, but some days the drawing exercise took me to places that were fun and surprising. I tried to be kind to myself: accepting that some days I did not have the peace of mind to do the exercise properly – I didn’t draw myself in to all the panels for example, and sometimes not as Batman either. 

To have a timer for the diary exercises is a mixed bag for me. The good thing is that the timer keeps the diary-process down to about half an hour – hence, I can squeeze it in during the day. The bad bit is that the timer stresses me, but I’m thinking I need to learn to go into the “zone” even if there is a timer ticking. Omitting the timer is not good – then I spend too much time on it. With “too much” I mean that it eats up too much of the day, and other necessary to-do’s get less time. 

Here are my batman diary panels.