My Mid-Life Crisis; will write or draw for food

I turned 38 today. Happy birthday to me.

I've wanted to be a cartoonist since I was 10.

Okay, so I AM a cartoonist, just not a widely published one and certainly not what most people would consider a professional one, let a lone a successful, widely published, professional one.

Today I finally started searching for addresses to send my PDF to. Most syndicates have submission guidelines, which will mean printing the cartoons out and composing a cover letter- which I knew but the lazy part of me and the coward part of me would just assume skip. Emailing is much more passive. There's so much less emotional investment and less risk. No formal rejection letter, they just don't email you back.

Meanwhile, I stumbled on Daryl Cagle's email address- or at least a "contact me" type of hotlink on his website. So I attached the PDF and sent it. Of course, I'm sure he gets hundreds of submissions every week and probably doesn't even consider the ones that didn't follow his official submission guidelines. But who knows, at least it's out there in the universe- what God decides to do with it is up to Him.

Of course, the words of America's first political cartoonist, Ben Franklin ring in my ears "God helps them that..." you know the rest. It's just that I'm so busy with school work and yearbook, and school website and currently our home repair and remodeling crap and next week parent/teacher conferences and our tax appointment... etc. etc.

In short, reality has a way of being an obstacle to spending the time and effort to follow the official submission guidelines for pursuing a dream. Which has enough obstacles already created by neuroses.

Wish me luck.