How to Accept Your Own Fallibility

NOTE: I have a new novel out! It's called Brute Force, and I am quite proud of it! Please consider checking it out!

The situation described in this comic is actually slight oversimplification of what really happened.

I wrote a comic, which ran just recently, about my hometown. I had a related joke I thought I had come up with in conversation a few months ago, but didn’t use, because it felt too mean. I did include a joke about claiming to be from Sunnyside, the larger, more well-known town where I graduated High School.

When the strip went out to you, my beloved Patreon patrons, (to whom, I continue to be grateful) someone commented something about Outlook’s Wikipedia page that made me go look at it again, and on a whim, I followed the link in the “references” section to my comic.

The commentary beneath the linked comic included a similar bit about telling people I’m from Sunnyside, not Outlook. That would be enough to make me worry about repeating myself, but the comic itself included the joke I thought I’d come up with recently, which was too mean to use in a comic.* The comic was written in 2013.

This bothered me for three reasons.

1. I had re-used a subject without realizing it, which is understandable, but not great.

2. I had thought I’d recently written a brand new joke, but I wrote and used it a decade ago. This could have been a real problem if I’d used the joke again, or used a joke I thought I’d written, but instead heard someone else say.

3. I am clearly less mean than I was a decade ago. Most people call this “mellowing with age,” but we humorists call it “losing your edge,” and it is NOT considered a good thing.

The only way I can see to make myself feel better is to double down on writing new, original, deliberately mean material. Buckle up, Rick!

*The joke is that of all the former citizens of Sunnyside, we all honor the astronaut Bonnie Dunbar the most highly, because she’s the one who managed to get the farthest away.