How to move on, demons, and bad art

You're Doing Great #2

It’s that time again! Time for me to tell you what to do.

Did you know?
I created You’re Doing Great to procrastinate working on my book! The scheme is going how I like my synthetic-meat burgers: medium well. Don’t tell my editor. If you, do, I’ll have no choice but to go public with all the scandalous things I know about you. You think I don’t know about those deep, dark, shameful things? I know everything. I’m a cartoon-advice columnist.

Also, even if you DO tell my editor, I have a whole response prepared about how actually this column is a joy and I do it on the side and it makes me feel creatively invigorated, which is only good for the book, which I care very much about and am still working very hard on blah blah blah. . . and that might even be true, which is the real kicker.

Sheesh. You try to make the world a better place by selflessly telling people what to do, and you wind up on the defense against blackmail. Life’s a real kick in the pants, isn’t it. Life can really throw you some -balls, which, straight- or curve-, you would be unable to catch because you hate sports, can’t it. Life can really scream in your ear and call it an opera, can’t it. Life can. . . Well, you get it.

Speaking abstractly of life (how’s that for a segue?): how’s yours? Need advice? Pour your heart out, anonymously, here.

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Dear Sofia,
The guy I was seeing for the past six months broke up with me because he's "not sure if he wants to date." He was the funniest and nicest person I'd ever dated. And I think I learnt to be a better person because of him. So it kinda hurts that he's not there anymore. How do I get over him?
- Just-got-its-not-you-its-me-d

A bit more on this one: years ago, I made a series of woodcuts on a similar theme called How To Be Alone, which you can read here. They look like this (but I promise they get less moody at the end) :

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Is karma actually responsible for my ruined life? Or are demons an actual thing?

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What to do with gifted art by family that isn’t your style?

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Some links:

• Comedian, writer, and clinical psychologist-in-training Allison Raskin has a mental health project called Emotional Support Lady. She is nicer and funnier than I am.

• I am not the only game in town! Emily Writes Back is another advice column by essayist and fellow New Yorker cartoonist Emily Sanders Hopkins.

• If you live in New York: two of my favorite legislators, State Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou and State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, just launched a podcast breaking down state politics in an accessible, digestible, and relevant-to-normies way. They’re best friends, which you cannot help but love. The first series is about Cuomo’s Covid power grab.

In the manual for complete global takeover, it tells me this is the point to encourage you to Like, Subscribe (if you haven’t yet), Comment, Share, and so forth. . . but I am a demure kind of bossy, so I’m going with this passive-aggressive, asking-not-asking technique instead. Did it work?