Part One is here.

In fairness to me, I also didn’t practice. I preferred to draw whatever I wanted and publish it, regardless of quality or theme. I fear, though, that I have so beaten down the visually creative part of me that draws cartoons that I won’t do it anymore.

Then again perhaps it hasn’t stuck. I had dinner with a friend a few weeks who described her process of finding a hobby she stuck with. “I tried motorcycles for awhile,” she said. “That didn’t stick.” “Then I tried making my own wines, and that stuck.” Maybe I’m done cartooning as single panel works or and maybe they only work as part of a story book or two or maybe I’m done with cartooning.

Another factor that makes it difficult for me to cartoon is that I’m no longer in that same rageful place as I was three, four, five years ago. I am attempting to shift my voice from one of exposing other’s flaws and to one where I share my experiences as simply as I can. I feel less interested in a laugh at other people’s expense.

I think I also shied away from cartooning because I received very little in the way of positive feedback from all but a few people. I don’t blame my communities so much as acknowledge the importance for me of having a strong, supportive group of like-minded and like-practicing individuals to support me and my work. I do wonder, though, how much queer art dies on the vine for lack of a kind word. It gets tough to put stuff out there with nothing back. But then again maybe I was performing in front of people instead of with them. All very strange and fun, at the same time.

A final issue is that I have had is two seemingly competing interests in cartoons. On the one hand very specific to trans communities and on the other ones that are concerned with the human existence and the human desire to feel good about our bodies.

A note about the above cartoon: I have intentionally left the pencil marks. This is scanned from a penciled sketch that I then went over with black marker. I don’t believe I’ve ever published a cartoon that is so process obvious. For me pencil marks are a healthy dose of humility, realism and an antidote to perfectionism.

How have you addressed a loss of interest in your artistic/creative practices? How do you know when it is time to put down a particular style or method or practice?

Jay Sennett -

My rage gave a lilt to my step. Perhaps I even glowed incandescent with it.

At this point I remember reading Hugh McLeod’s cartoons and forwarding them on to someone else. She wrote back and said, “Ho hum. You could do better because you are funnier.” I was shocked. I hadn’t intended to be a cartoonist.  (In fact I couldn’t and still can’t draw realistically well, at all.) But something about her words and my rage combined to create the concoction that became my very first cartoon. Hardly legible, it spoke to a particular sentiment by those feminists (who-wanted-me-dead-or-so-I-thought) that having a so-called female body in no way detracted from my male privilege. That cartoon lead to another and another and another. Suddenly I drew “transgender cartoons.”

Hypocrisy seemed to provide a groundswell of creative, cartoon output for me. I continued creating cartoons for number of years, then in 2010 I hit a wall. My output sputtered. Today I’ve all but walked away from cartooning as a practice. I wrote here about my fears: That I won’t be able to cartoon again, that I won’t/can’t access the place from which I created these cartoons, some of which, I must say, are quite magnificent. As I write these words I realize that I hit a wall in part because I no longer trusted my own style and voice. I felt that my style wasn’t good enough, that I needed to take art classes because I wasn’t a real cartoonist (whatever that is). [to be continued]

Jay Sennett -

In May I completed my first story for the Art House Coop, the virtual extension of the Brooklyn Art Library.

We were allowed to choose a topic for our story book. I chose “Things That Change Other Things” and titled the story, “A Transsexual Attempts to Make His Name Change Court Appearance.”

I’m grateful for the opportunity to have written this story and to include some of my cartoons. The entire book has been scanned here.

(If this story book moves you or you think you might want to forward a link to a friend, please do so! I no longer promote my work on Twitter or Facebook and so rely on readers like you to share my work, if you feel moved to do so. Thank you in advance for your support. ~ Jay)

Jay Sennett -

I received a question in my inbox this morning.

If I wrote my own eulogy, what would it say?

I don’t do enough work around my own death. There is always tomorrow. But tomorrow may not come. Natural disasters, automobile accidents, nuclear bombs or just a plain slip and fall in the shower. One minute from now or now, death can come for me.

If I am lucky, I’ll get 36500 days on this blue orb. I have no idea, really, when I will die. But there is always tomorrow. What is tomorrow, exactly. Where is tomorrow?

That muddle is gauze I wrap around my consciousness. But I can pull that gauze off and choose to live today like it might be my last.

Then my eulogy might be, “He seized every moment and made each one his own.”

What might your eulogy be?

Jay Sennett -

May we exist like a lotus,
at home in muddy water.
Thus we bow to life as it is.
~ Charlotte Joko Beck

I recently blank slated this site as a desire to more closely align this site with who I am today. Part of that realignment includes closing my twitter and facebook accounts at the end of September.

Yesterday I realized that I had included neither my cartoon site nor my gender revolution site in this process.

This raises the all too obvious question of why.

Incorporating the material/attitude from gender revolution seemed easier to me than the material from the cartoon site. As I pondered the answer to this new why question, I realized that I have not blank slated my cartoon site out of a fear that I will not be able to draw another cartoon again, ever.

Blanking this site is easy. I trust my own writing process. I trust the place from which the words flow. The opposite is true for my cartooning.

I do not trust my creative process around cartoons. In fact, I fear the whole process now. Many of these cartoons were born out of a tremendous frustration I felt towards feminists and their sometimes inability to accept gender variance as a natural, human and welcome practice. My frustration all too often became a kind of humor that gets a laugh at others’ expense. (Justified anger does that for me. Look at what a moron s/he is! I am glad I’m not that person!)

Today I desire to choose different words. Laughter is good. At another’s expense for me sets up a dynamic where I become a person I really don’t like.

Can I can create cartoons without this anger? Maybe not. Then again, maybe I can. If I can abide in these muddy waters and create cartoons any way possible, that is enough, I think.

As I re/imagine my cartoons, I envision using them for extended written pieces on experience telling. Without this re/imagination, I fear I will make myself irrelevant, some z-list equivalent of those oldie shows that make the circuit every summer.

What I can say is that I am happy to know that I am pushing forward for myself; that despite my fear of making myself irrelevant as a cartoonist, I’d rather risk not being able to create anything than rely on cartoons that are two, three or more years old.

Jay Sennett -

Of late I’ve returned to the cushion, where each day (though not every day) I sit for ten minutes and count my breaths. I count seven breaths (one inhalation and one exhalation counts as one). How difficult this journey is!

I have yet to make it to seven without encountering detours in my mind. Barely have I counted “one” and my mind is off to somewhere, anywhere but here.

Here seems to a problematic place for me, given how much I am unable to be here. But with the sitting and a little additional help from a mindfulness bell app on my iphone I’m learning to pause throughout the day and breath.

The focus on the breath leads me back to here. Here is place where I find my own heart. Here is now. You and me. No past or present. Here I excavate my own heart and begin to find out what is underneath.

Despite all my fears, what I find underneath is joy and calm. This is has been the biggest surprise of all.

Jay Sennett -

Today at work through all the busy-ness, I pondered the odds of me being born human, then the odds of me being born in america, then the odds of me being born at time when medical technologies and social awareness allow bodies like mine to exist, then the odds of all my privileges.

I felt enormous gratitude for such an incomprehensible thing as me in this place and time, then felt even greater gratitude that such gratitude works as an antidote to much of my negative thinking.

Jay Sennett -

For several years I’ve been caught up in feeling bad about myself. After getting sucked into buying more than a few ebooks by internet blogging geniuses touting productivity solutions like “only work on what you want to work on,” I found myself frustrated and resentful at my jobs.

I am not in a position to only work on what I want. In order to manage the cyclical nature of my workload (I work in academia, so September can be absolute mayhem and madness), I’ve tried ten or more productivity systems, trimmed my to-do lists, delegated and sometimes just hated it all.

“I can’t only work on what I want!” I yelled in my head. “I’ll never have that life! There must be something wrong with me, that I can’t work on only the things I want to work on” Then it came to me yesterday. I don’t have to work only on what I want, I just have to remember to breath.

This breath, the one I’m breathing now, is the one that helps guide me through the tasks I don’t like. The same breath I try to count almost every morning in mediation, the same breath I often forget I’m breathing.

This breath.

I failed miserably yesterday at focusing on my breath. Perhaps 1% or less of my day I remembered to focus. But the astonishing consequence of that 1% was a feeling of tender hearted vulnerability so strong, I just had to see Ms. H. right away (after work) so I could be really close to her.

The fact that I wasn’t working on only things I love was beside the point. I was alive and breathing.

Today ended differently. I focused a few times but mostly I got caught up in the drama of my customers’ needs. Like most customer service jobs, there are a few true buddhas, a lot of just average people and few real number one winners. The longer I forgot to focus on my breath, the shittier my mood got. I left work really grumped out.

But here again, the seemingly insignificant number of times I focused on my breath helped me to realize that negativity is a narcotic for me. I left work in a shitty mood. The thoughts in my head were either “Those customers are assholes!”  or “Why can’t I control my emotions better on the job??”

Self-aggrandizement and self-pity: two sides of the same “it’s-all-about-me” coin.

Counting my breaths as I walked to my car, I came to understand that change is hard, that I resist embracing my breath because the drama of negativity allures me. Embracing this breath is profound change for me.

I am amazed I can remember it at all. That I can, even once, is a miracle.

Jay Sennett -

Today I’ve pondered what does peace look like for me when I am at war within myself?

I know there is a correlation between sitting and simply focusing on my breath and a greater ease in my waking hours. But I can’t even count seven full breaths without my thoughts taking over. That is how quickly I lose peace within.

Then the war within begins again. I used to be frightened of that war. Now I see that war as a path to awe and wonder.

Jay Sennett -

Today I have much on my mind yet not much to say, or so it seems.

On August 30, I was asked to experiment writing every day in this space. I hesitate to call this space a blog, since it is not a blog now, and I’ve yet to find out what it will be.

I made an intention that I wanted to write from my heart, everyday. The last few days I’ve found it easier to write. Today, though, I’ve struggled with an old, glib, cynical voice that I told myself was “my public voice.”

This voice is sometimes observant, sometimes angy, but mostly I experience that voice as really mean. Mean to others and mean to me. That voice would rather write anything here – no matter how angry, hurtful or ridiculous – rather than admit that I don’t have anything much to say.

Getting okay with not having anything to say is hard for me. From the time I was young, I recall being rewarded for having something to say. Silence and discerning speech were neither taught nor actually understood. I’m not sure I understand what discerning speech means for me, since I am compelled to fill a void with the sound of my voice. I have something to say, so surely you must want to hear it!?! The story I tell to myself about me is that I am talker.

What to do, though, with the parts of me that aren’t talkers?

There is fear for me in admitting that I have nothing to say, though the previous sentences suggest I do have something to say, and at least on saying nothing, it seems, I have something to say.

Perhaps what I mean to say is that on saying nothing, while fearful for me, will become easier to more I can admit when it is true for me.

Jay Sennett -