Cross-post: You're Doing Great
The Better Trap
Sometimes, we at Toonstack central need to take a little break. Just a little one. Two shakes of a rabbit’s tail, nothing major.
This week, in lieu of your regularly scheduled programming, please enjoy a post from Sofia’s advice column, You’re Doing Great (that’s me; I am Sofia. It is my advice column. I should just tell you that now, before this gets weird. Is it too late? Is it weird? Sigh).
Advice below!
The Better Trap
So, you’ve come back to feed at my codswallop trough, have you? Good, good.
This week I went to The Cloisters to visit my favorite demon, and I’m happy to report that he’s looking impish as ever. I also got waylaid by the teeny-tiny Book of Hours— did you know a book could be so wee? I’m desperate to make one for myself (not for prayers, but for hefty nonsense, words to live by) so I can thrust it in a deep pocket, tromp around the city, and worry it between my index and my thumb. When I haven’t got a Book of Hours (which, historically, has been always; I’ve never had a Book of Hours), I wind up worrying the pad of my index against the pad of my thumb, and at this point I’ve fairly worked them down to nubs. My thumb in particular is quite unhappy with this state of affairs, and rightly so. No longer merely opposable, this thumb is now thoroughly opposed, and has become the leader of la résistance.
Enough about me: what of you? As always, you can sing your laments into my digital ear, anonymously, here.
This week’s column is about nails. No, no, that’s not right: it’s about selves, better or otherwise.
Dear Sofia,
I have dormant neck pain that acts up at night and I am unable to fall asleep cause of it, and also cause of it I am unable to be the better version of myself I envisioned to be
Thanks for reading!
ToonStack NewsStack
Amy Kurzweil’s new book, Artificial: A Love Story, is available for preorder!
So is Navied Mahdavian’s graphic memoir, This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America
Bob Mankoff’s Cartoon Collections is now CartoonStock. Order prints of all your favorite cartoons today!
Check out Jason Katzenstein’s NEW PATREON!
Amy Kurzweil teaches cartoon classes on Patreon! Sign up now to get the recording of every past class!
Be sure to check out Shelby Lorman’s newsletter, Please Clap!
The same goes for Sofia Warren’s advice newsletter, You’re Doing Great!
Order Hilary’s guided journal, What Did I Do Today?
See more cartoons from Ellis Rosen’s weekly Junk Drawer!
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I related to this more than I'm comfortable to admit. My take on the marshmallow game was slightly different though. I imagined that if I waited another five minutes (in addition to the prescribed five minutes) then I'd get three marshmallows, or maybe even four (depending on whether the number of marshmallows was increased incrementally or doubled). Either way, the longer I waited, the more marshmallows I'd get, right? No. They just take the plate away and assume that you don't like marshmallows. It's a veritable lose-lose situation.
😎👍