Author: hamishmacdonald

https://www.youtube.com/@hamishmacdonald

I’m at the mall (“The Towers Mall”, as true Charlottetonians will call it, even though Towers hasn’t been here in decades, superseded by Zellers, Target, then a bunch of little stores).

The mall is next to our new “medical home”, the teaching hospital connected to UPEI, where I had an appointment this morning: We finally got a doctor!

Okay, well, not a doctor (PEI can’t hold onto doctors), but there’s a team of LPNs, RNs, physios, and social workers available to us. Good enough: I’m pushing 60 and have had nothing approaching a medical in over a decade, so having blood drawn this morning was such a relief — not in a medieval blood-letting sense, but because I know there’s a host of maladies that can be detected by a blood test. Hopefully I don’t have any of them, but better to be informed, right?

The person who took my blood asked me what I do for a living, and I thought of my mom as I waded into telling her my life story. (She seemed interested and kept asking questions, so…)

I’m sat in the food court with a coffee. Grey-haired people keep doing laps around me. I guess this is how folks get their exercise these days! It’s like Day of the Dead but with sports footwear.

This week we adopted our foster son.

Nothing has changed. But this changes everything.

It’s just January 15th, and I suspect I’ve just read the best writing about productivity I’ll see all year.

I wanted to quote from Oliver Burkeman’s latest piece for The Guardian, but… there’s too much. With his usual wit and calm-headed reason, he keeps landing hits that make me think “Wow! Yes!”

When so many articles are simply stating yawningly, annoyingly obvious truisms, and AI is delivering foamy chicken nuggets of averaged thought, it’s an utter delight to encounter a writer like Burkeman, who not only has an incisive mind but also writes with such personality.

I highly recommend this piece:

The secret to being happy in 2026? It’s far, far simpler than you think…

I guess I believe in serendipity.

I moved back to Prince Edward Island when my dad’s health was failing, but rather than being a personal sacrifice, this move has given me so, so much — time with my mom, old friendships rekindled, a beautiful home we’d never have afforded elsewhere, and, most recently, the chance to cross paths with the young man who’s about to become our son.

Another amazing side-effect has been meeting The Charlottetown Comics Club. I’ve grown so much as an artist because of the support, feedback, and challenges I’ve received from this funny, wicked, wonderful group of talented artists.

(I’ve seen the power of a peer community throughout my years of being around Strategic Coach, and the Club gave me a group tailored specifically to the things I want to get better at. Plus they don’t fall asleep when I talk about pens — they give me recommendations!)

Next week the Club is doing a “comics reading” to mark the close of our exhibit at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, and it chokes me up to think about how much I love and admire this group of people. And, MAN, do they make me laugh!

Now I just have to figure out how the heck to do a “comics reading”.

Here’s the gallery’s Instagram post about the event. (Y’know, just in case you happen to be coming to the east coast of Canada next week.) You’ll see my pal Christian Southgate speaking, and a bunch of work by the Club.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTQk4c8Dod_/

On Saturday night, we watched a movie set in 1970, and the spot-on art direction gave me a comforting sense of nostalgia for the period, the homely simplicity of everything.

This inspired me to spend all of yesterday pretending it was that year — which meant not using any technology that hadn’t been invented yet.

Okay, the heat pumps were running, our house has solar panels, I drove our electric car, and I made popcorn in the microwave and ate that while we watched a television that’s connected to an infinite stream of content choices.

But you and I both know what really mattered: the devices. I kept mine turned off for the whole day, and I got so much done!

Good-intention project materials that have been sitting in my basement studio for months suddenly turned into finished objects. Time elongated, and my day felt centered on me, instead of me being caught in the orbit of an infinite galactic garbage island.

It was a workout for my mind, which kept reflexively wanting to turn on the dopamine firehose whenever I hit an in-between moment. But instead, I read, worked on things, and — heavens! — paid attention to my family.

I want to make a practice of this — not as ascetic self-flagellation or one-upmanship, but just because it felt really healthy and was so darned nice.

(Well, except I’ll make it 1976, because I actually have memories of that, and it’s before my imagination got swallowed whole by Star Wars.)

I recently made a smug comment to my son about growing up in a time before mobile phones, but looking at this page from the 1979 Sears Wish Book… I can see how we got here.

What the heck is #4?! Space-sled-monitor-helmet-soda-siphon… I bet Elon had one of those.

For the longest time, I went to book fairs and zine fests to meet other creative folk. But recently the penny finally dropped: Starving artists are not my audience.

Where does my money come from? Doing illustration for a successful entrepreneur who coaches thousands of other successful entrepreneurs.

Notice the word “starving” is nowhere to be seen in this description.

Last month was the Charlottetown Zine Fest. I’ve loved taking part in this event, but I nearly skipped it this year: With fostering, I just haven’t had the time to make another comic book.

At the last minute, though, I decided I didn’t want to miss out. I would do it.
So I created two little zine-games, which didn’t involve a lot of illustration, but did include dice, so I could charge a bit more for them.

I also sewed a dozen pencil cases, filled them with my favourite art supplies, packaged them up with a notebook, and called it a “Comics Kit.” I swung out and priced it at $30. (Inside voice: “But no! Zines are cheap, like a dollar. What are you thinking?”)

And?

I cleaned up!

Everything sold, and I raked in nearly $500 that afternoon, when other years I’d be lucky to break the $100 mark.

For the longest time I’ve given away my advice and teaching in hopes that the loss-leader would — I dunno, guilt people into buying my creative work.

It doesn’t, and they don’t.

So this time I sold fellow artists what they wanted (capability), and the readers who came along bought the stories.

I’m about to ruin your life.

Okay, maybe not your life, but certainly your enjoyment of a lot of popular media, because once you see this principle I’m about to mention, you can’t un-see it.

I’ve called it Hame’s Law of Media Adjacency, and it goes like this:

When a story makes reference to its own or a similar media form, it jars the reader/viewer out of the story-world and into an awareness of its unreality.

Case in point, the latest series of “Stranger Things”: Okay, I get that the whole thing is a nostalgic love-letter to the stories and games that we GenXers hold dear. But it’s one thing to be inspired and entirely another to have characters constantly speak your influences out loud in the story.

I present Exhibit A:

Max: “Only, I wasn’t actually there. Not really. I was just… an observer. And that’s when I understood. I was trapped inside Henry’s mind, his memories. Like a nightmare prison world ruled by an evil, psychopathic piece of sh*t.”

Holly: “Like Camazotz.”

Max: “What?”

Holly: “Camazotz. From A Wrinkle in Time.”

Max: “Never read it.”

Holly: “You should. It’s amazing. Camazotz is like this dark planet that’s under the control of IT, which is this giant, disembodied, evil brain. Anyway, Meg’s dad, Meg’s the main character, he gets taken prisoner there. So, Henry’s kinda like IT, and you’re kinda like Meg’s dad.”

This sort of thing kills the vibe dead for me, instantly, every time.

Credit to the makers of this show that they still managed to get me back, particularly with THAT ENDING (zips lips) which surely gave a thrill of satisfaction to every one of us bullied nerds.

But it was awfully close.

So if you tell stories, please don’t do this!