I did what people always think they should do but rarely actually do: I tacked on two extra vacation days after my actual vacation to ease back into regular life and celebrate a birthday without meetings. It was great. Highly recommended.

If you keep reading and find yourself thinking, “Wait, where’s Monday??” “What kind of scam is Marcel running here???” “I subscribed for a full week of comics!!!”, then I can warmly recommend meditation and a couple of mindfulness exercises. Please relax. The reason is simple: I ended my travel journal with the last day of travel, which happened to be that allegedly missing Monday:

United Kingdom #2: London
My first time in my new favourite city.
UARRRMarcel Wichmann

That being said, let’s dive in!

Tuesday

I mentioned the quality of beds in the UK to a few friends, and many agreed that modern sleep technology doesn’t seem to have made it across the Channel. See if you can guess when I was in the UK based on my Health Sleep Score data:

I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but I’m kind of proud of this newsletter. It’s fun, personal, and visually interesting. You never quite know what you’re going to get, but it’s always a glimpse into my life.

And I mean what I said above: I’d love subscribing to this. You don’t have to. I’m just saying I’m making something I genuinely want to exist in the world, and that feels great.

Wednesday

I turned 37 on that day! That number doesn’t remotely reflect the age I feel I should be, but who am I to argue with Chronos? It’s my age now, and as I’ve said before, I’m not going through any kind of quarter-life crisis. Everything is great. That day was too.

That last panel is one of my favorites, not just from this day, but from the whole year of painting a visual journal. There’s something about the colors, the contrast, and the scene that completely speaks to me. Oh, and I’m rather fond of that little vacuum cleaning drawing as well. I’m really happy with this page.

Here’s what I painted while sitting by the Alster, the giant lake that runs through Hamburg:

This little painting doesn’t do it justice. Hamburg is a truly beautiful city—the best Germany has to offer. It’s such a privilege to have two vast rivers running through the heart of it. No matter where you are, you always end up by the water.

Thursday

Running intervals offers an interesting contrast. I never want to do them, even less than a classic run. But once I get going, they’re so much more fun. There’s something deeply life-affirming about sprinting through a forest. It feels almost primal.

Friday

You probably neither noticed nor cared, but this newsletter has moved platforms. I started on Substack, and now it lives on Ghost. There are a few reasons for the switch.

  1. Substack is a social network, and I don’t need another one of those.
  2. Substack also forced me to charge at least $5/month, and I don’t think that’s a fair price for this newsletter. It’s $1.50/month now. I did all this to ask for less money! This must be how Robin Hood felt.
  3. I’m picky about web design, and Ghost gave me the freedom to build a site I actually like.

Making the move was fun, and I’m happy with how it turned out. It feels great to have my own little corner of the internet for this newsletter instead of relying on some venture-funded platform.

Saturday

Please don’t cancel me for mentioning vibe coding. Folks over on the Art Journaling subreddit probably won’t see this comic, because they can’t handle the fact that I’m an artist who doesn’t hate every single use of AI. I’ve actually got a whole newsletter in the works about this, which I’ll share at some point.

If you want to recreate that delicious Marry Me tortellini, here’s the recipe I use. They're genuinely delicious.

Sunday

My journal entry from two years ago (just a classic text-based journal) ended with me promising myself I wouldn’t spend my birthday alone the following year. And I didn’t.

Last year, I invited my friends over on the evening of my birthday, and it was wonderful. Now many of them have babies, so this year I invited them over on Sunday afternoon for coffee and cake instead. It was great.

I went to bed blissful and full of gratitude.

By the way: see how I didn’t paint my living room full of friends? I couldn’t be arsed to draw all of them, so I focused on me cleaning up after they’d left. And somehow that little scene captures my very positive feelings about the day better than anything else. I was just so happy in that moment. I had to put every single dish into the dishwasher because I’m surrounded by enough people who want to celebrate my birthday with me that I needed all of them. What a privilege.

That's it for those of you leaving us here. Thank you for subscribing and reading, I really appreciate it. If you want to share your favorite one-pot recipes with me, I'm all ears. I despise having to use a lot of tools when cooking, so anything that requires as little stuff as possible would be right up my alley.

🤠
If you're a paying subscriber (just $1.50 per month now! What a steal!), you can read on to find out how I think about posting art on Instagram, my relationship with Reels, and my goals when it comes to social media.

Trying Not to Want the Wrong Thing

"The only winning move is not to play" might be especially true of social media. It’s a bottomless pit you don’t want to get sucked into.

But there’s hope.

A couple of years ago, I managed to stay off social media entirely for two years, and it seems to have given me a little more distance from it. Do I still long for recognition from total strangers for what I’m doing? Of course. I’d even say it’s somewhat necessary in my line of work, because being visible online means not being forgotten when people need someone to hire. What I no longer long for, though, is viral success. Quite the opposite. I want to be visible to those willing to look in my direction, but the part of me that tried to produce content just to increase my chances of succeeding on social media died off somewhere along the way.

A few years ago, I drew “funny” cartoons and posted them on Instagram and Reddit with a fair amount of success. My follower count never grew faster than it did during that period. It was a theoretical success.