I learned a valuable lesson about not getting too comfy too quickly with success at a pretty young age. Most people who know me now don’t know that I had a brief career as a cartoonist when I was in junior high. I drew a lot, and I thought I was pretty funny, so I sent 30 single-panel cartoons to the local-ish paper. Because that’s how that works, right? I thought I was going to be published right alongside Garfield and Family Circus.
I got a letter a few weeks later praising my artistic genius. They said they would run my cartoon in the Wednesday kids insert. I was a little insulted that my work of genius was being relegated to the kiddie section, but they were going to pay me $25 every time they published a cartoon. That was five allowances, so how could I say no? I used my first check to get my ears double-pierced. And I figured since I sent them 30 brilliant cartoons, I was good for a while. Why would I need to keep sending them new material, right?