As I stare down the barrel of the inevitable, I’m wrestling with it a lot. I’ve got like 50 some odd days of still being in my 30s. Part of me doesn’t give a shit, but part of me has been conditioned to see this next birthday as The Age. I am single, no kids, never married. As a 39 year old that feels okay; it feels like there are still possibilities available to me; I can go back to school, I can change careers, I can still consider having children. 40 feels set in stone; whatever you’re doing now is whatever you’ll be doing for the rest of your life, forever and ever amen. I know none of this is true, and I also know the difference between 39 and 40 is one day. One year.

In a lot of ways I feel really great… Better than I ever have, honestly. I know how to take care of myself, I have boundaries now. I kind of have an idea of what’s going on, generally speaking. Yes, I have random wiry gray hairs and I have officially reached the age where I say things like, “I remember when…” or, “When I was growing up…”. I also have seen a handful of my compatriots get sick and die. Some suddenly and by accident, some finally after years of battling insidious diseases like alcoholism and crippling poor mental health. That’s something I am sure I’ll never get used to.

By in large, though, I have enjoyed 39. And I think I’ll enjoy 40 too as long as I learn to let myself. Will I ever have a houseful of children? Will I ever have a husband or partner? Will I ever feel like I’m secure in my career and bank account? Will my student loans ever get forgiven? Will I ever be able to afford to purchase a home? I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but I do know that 39 is the youngest I’ve ever felt.

Yep. I did that. The year was 2012, I was 25 going on 26. Fresh off a break up of a 6 year long relationship, I was knee deep in chaos of my own making… but it was a blast. I’m sure everyone around me would disagree - drinking too much, recreational drug use, sleeping around, working a job that provided me too much money to fuck around with. Again, a blast, but definitely not a long term plan. Whatever! Huzzah! We all go through this stage… right?!!? RIGHT GUYS!?!

I was dating a guy at the time who was in a band (classic). He was coming back into town from being on tour (classic). So naturally, i needed to freshen the hell up!

oh my god, i cant believe i’m telling this story.

I didn’t have time to get into my estheticians chair, so I figured I’d take the shortcut - I walked into the grocery store and grabbed those premade leg wax kits. What could possibly go wrong?

Let me paint the picture for you: its a little after midnight, which is the perfect time to do anything. I’ve taken a mirror from the entry way and put it on the floor in my bedroom. My plan is to spread eagle and use the leg waxing strips all over. And I got RIGHT to the point; the first strip I put on was right smack dab in the center of the action. For scientific purposes, it was the space between my inner and outer labia. Is that a space that has hair? IDK, but not on me. Why did I put it there? Well… ya know. That’s a question that can only be answered now: because I had no fucking idea what I was doing.

One quick rip of the waxing strip and I’m immediately bleeding onto the floor. My first thought was Oh, I’ll just wash that out, lemme go squat in the tub and let some water run over it. Come to find out, that’s not an effective way to make a 3 inch gash dissapear.

Shit… next line of action — involve my roommate. My sweet, beautiful, amazing, caring roommate, Jo. She was and still is a national treasure. I knocked on her door, at this point we’re nearing 1am, and said, “Jo, for science I need you to look at my vagina and tell me if I need stitches” I spread eagle and I’ll never forget her face.

She looked up at me with a flat affect and said, “Where are your shoes?”

I put a on my dirty vans with no socks, in a dress that I never saw again after that day (see: covered in blood) and a washcloth between my legs to keep the blood from going everywhere. We checked into the emergency room a little after 1:30am.

After 4 hours in the emergency room, I was the newest owner of five stitches running the length of my vagina. And a story I’ve tried to bury with every passing day until then. I still have scars: both physical, and emotional. And the guy and I ended up splitting directly after that anyway. Maybe I used it as an excuse to break up with him.

Anyway, the lesson is to trust your esthetician. Or maybe the lesson is you can’t be an expert in everything.

Or maybe its just go full bush, dude, no one cares.

after a pretty gnarly break up in cambodia in february of 2020, i came home and decided i needed to change my entire life. as one does, presumably. i was in my early 30s, fresh off a break up and a trip to south east asia. yeah, i’m either about to cut my bangs, get into yoga and meditation.

its march 2020, the entire world is told to social distance. i take that shit SERIOUSLY. too seriously, probably.

this is the moment when i decided to isolate. i dont mean just social distancing, i mean i dont call anyone, i lose track of social interactions, yadda yadda. you know what isolation is. im alone in so many different ways.

i start to believe this story i tell myself that this is how i really work on myself … being alone, working quietly on getting better at.. whatever the fuck my problem du jour is.

6 years go by, and we’re caught up. what a boring story, right?

i didn’t allow any room for meeting new people, making or building friendships and relationships. falling in love. getting into arguments.

passion, baby, the shit you only feel when you are interacting with the world and the people around you.

i’m learning that the only way to work on my shit is within the community i surround myself.

i don’t regret that time spent alone. i feel sorry for the sarah that felt like thats what i needed to do to “get better” - falling into a spiral of Sisyphean “self optimization”.

measuring and observing myself in an effort to optimize my productivity. thats the goal of self-help, isn’t it? to make myself into a machine, prioritizing morning routines, cold showers, self-help books, hours and hours of exercise. doing it alone until i’ve finally reached the point of being a marketable commodity by making sure i’m in shape, have a career, am making enough money, insert goal here.

ya see, self-help only works in a vacuum, and ultimately leads to excessive self-reference. if i see myself as a project to be worked on, there will always be work to do.

i don’t live in a vacuum anymore. i think i’m writing all of this because i’m just now realizing, after moving back to my hometown, that i have not been interactive with my life in the last six years. i thought i was improving, but lets call it like it is - it was a rat race i was having with myself, eating away at what makes a life worth living.

oh, and i didn’t cut my bangs. but i did get into yoga and meditation.

when was the last time i watched a movie? listened to an entire album with my eyes closed? read a book for hours and hours? really let myself experience the art in the world around me? you know, enjoy anything that doesn’t make my phone and my to-do list the main character of my life?

these things feel like an act of resistance in the war with constant consumption that I have spent the last few years losing.

That changes this year.

Creativity is an act of political warfare, and i’m claiming my seat.

but what the fuck is going on and how am i supposed to just keep creating? i feel overwhelmed.

i keep finding that i put this immense pressure on myself to remain relevant, on theme, and poignant. should i talk about the issues happening in LA? is this the time that i share my opinions on gaza and the ethnic cleansing we’re watching live streamed? i dont think my opinion needs to be yelled into the ether today. i freeze when i think about what i would say and how my opinion isn’t new or noteworthy.

to be honest, i dont want to be that illustrator. i just want to make dumb cartoons that are little pockets of joy - both in my day and (hopefully) in yours too. is it wrong to take attention away from those events? i don’t know. what do you think?

anyway, heres shermp.

I got the chance to briefly foster a dog a few weeks ago, and despite having spent her life in a crate, malnourished to the point of starvation, and living in her own excrement- she still chose to trust everyone (after a little convincing, and a lot of treats, of course). she’s now living with a different foster mom (one with a yard and a house) and still available for adoption but has really blossomed in the last month and a true delight to any home she steps into. shes goofy, curious, a hoarder, a quick learner, a snorer (cute though), and incredibly determined.

thank you rescue atx dogs (RAD) for finding jolene and nursing her back to health!

her weight when found- 12.8 pounds

currently sitting at 22 pounds!

alright you little freaks, listen up. there was a time a few summers ago where i because obsessed with world war 1. yeah, i watched all quiet on the western front and fell down a wikipedia rabbit hole- whatever! it was fun to learn something new. so, come with me for a second and let me explain the title.

its 1914. its the turn of the century. put a lil rag time music on if you really wanna go there.

theres a bunch of technological innovations are happening around this time - i’m talking about the invention of cars, planes, assembly lines, railroads, telephone, radio. shit is popping off to say the least! now, unfortunately this also means theres also the invention of mass warfare. stuff we’ve never seen or had the chance to experiment with - machine guns, tanks, aerial bombs, mustard gas. i mean, this was brutal shit dude.

now lets say youre a 16 year old living in… i guess for the sake of the argument, you’re in the UK. you’re pressured to “join up” from your peers, your parents, your government. We want YOU! type shit. theres a fervent nationalism so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife.

so you go, you do your civic duty and enlist. at 16? isnt that against the law? not when your government is encouraging you to just change the number to 18 haha why not, right?? everyone else is doing it? that’s what MEN do, right?? and i’m a man now… right? whats that even mean, anyway? i think it gets defined by this time period and what happened to men, but thats just like… my opinion.

now just a reminder about the warfare bit. we’re fighting this war with 19th century tactics, but with 20th century technology. i mean i cant stress enough how fucking crazy this must have been to fight in. you’re in the trenches day in day out, constantly wet (hey… trench foot? what the fuck???), covered in lice, rats everywhere, the latrines are overflowing, there are bodies of men you were just speaking to moments ago dead right next to you. and its just a thursday. this war went on for FOUR years. FOUR FUCKING YEARS, that’s a lifetime for you bitches that went to college (i am bitches).

to really demonstrate the feeling i’m trying to get at i’m going to include and talk about my favorite painting from this time period, its called gassed and its by john singer sargent

first of all, this painting is huge. you can’t escape it if you see it in person, its the size of a movie screen. it’s a bunch of kids with cloth around their eyes leading their own into some kind of medical tent i’m assuming. no one can see because of said cloth, so its literally the blind leading the blind. in the foreground there are a bunch of soldiers (kids) laying around each other. are they dead? are the resting? who knows. and if you look up close, like get reeeally close to it you see in the background of the painting there are kids playing soccer. errr, or football. whatever.

it gives this feeling that these kids, while going through the most horrific experience worthy of LIFETIMES of trauma based therapy- they were still DESPERATELY trying to find some sense of normalcy.

so this is where my hair brained theory comes in. 4 years of trench warfare and you’re (un)lucky enough to make it home. its an estimated 9 to 11 million military personnel died in this war- we’re not including civilians. you’re hardened. you’re shell shocked, but what does that even mean? its a term that was just invented in 1915 for gods sake. and i joked about therapy, because therapy? THERAPY? common treatments for therapy at the time were to “rest" *lol* or even more aggressive methods like electrotherapy which was generally seen as torturous.

then the prohibition. oh, you wanted to drink those four years worth of memories away? good fucking luck.

okay, fine you’re a fighter you can deal with this, you’ve “been through way worse”

you do the thing, you start a family.

then WW2, your children have to go to war. they learn these same behaviors which gets passed down to the next generation which goes into the Cold war and round and round it goes until we get to where we are today. your every day men who have been raised into ways of thinking around emotional suppression, rigid societal expectations, aggression and dominance… just to mention a safe few.

anyway, i dont know if this theory is based in ANY reality. and i want to stress, yet again, how unqualified i am to talk about this kind of thing. i color for a living…. i am a professional 3rd grader.

it’s literally just a thought i had and needed something to write about today.

(just want to clarify for you bitches looking to find something to argue about… this isnt a rip on masculinity, but more where i think the idea of TOXIC masculinity spawned)

i’ll go first- my friend paulette sent me the nicest gift ever. 9 different kinds of tea from this place called club magic hour. with a tea steeper and tea bags and a bunch of other goodies. i am a huge slut for teas so this is big to me.

now tell me yours in the comments! or don’t!!! do whatever!

you may or may not know who i am, but i might as well introduce myself.

my name is sarah. im from the outer banks of north carolina. no, i never watched the tv show.

i’m 38 and will be 39 this year. i dont know how i got to be 38. i cant figure out if i love it or if im terrified, if i’m being honest.

i think this was 2010?

i started bartending at 18. i worked behind an all beer bar until i was 21 and then worked from 21 to 33 as a full service, high volume bartender. i was miserable and hated my job but had no idea how to get out of it.

until 2020.

january 2020 i take a trip with my then-boyfriend to SE asia. we had a whole plan to do the Ha Giang Loop but realized shortly after getting there that that wasn’t happening for me - the roads were too congested and scary for me to truly consider that an option for travel.

covered his face with respect for his privacy, not because he’s ugly and i hate him. cause neither of those things are true.

we broke up on that trip actually. i think we had actually broken up a few weeks before that, but decided to stay together because we had tickets to do this rad thing we had planned. instead we annoyed each other the whole time and had petty arguments about travel. we did not do well together. it was a bummer of a trip

february 2020

we get back from this SE asia trip and actually break up. no communication. fine.

march 2020

the world hits the pause button

april 2020

what the hell am i doing? might as well start painting. i’ll commit to 100 paintings and assess my growth at painting 100. until then i paint without judgement. covering the canvas in paint was the only requirement.

may-october 2020

i paint. a lot. i was so desperate to not go back to bartending that i would do anything. i started selling my paintings.

i was drawn to more illustration than traditional fine oil painting so i decided to add in another medium to learn. I focused on painting one character every day. i did it bad. i did it a lot. i did it every day for close to a year.

october 2020-april 2025

i kept doing it. this character, this little frog illustration has taken me further than i EVER considered possible.

i’m currently writing my first book and have a publishing deal with Andrews McMeel! i feel so honored that someone is interested in me enough to ask me to…. write a book?

Heres what I’m trying to say - i trusted the process, i did it bad and i did it a lot. in fact! i still do it bad, and i still do it a lot.

i learned to prioritize the process over the product and I believe I reap the rewards of that daily and continue to be rewarding the more effort i put in.

i currently feel a little stuck in the illustrated character that ive created and want to explore other avenues of my creativity and see where it takes me. i’m not quitting the frog, i’ll probably post the frog over here as well.

i just would like to do something else bad, and a lot. plus something feels off about being a slave to the algorithm and i can rewrite my story any time i want. so i’m committing to posting bad stuff twice a week for the next 3 months and see where it takes me. hope you guys are along for the ride!!

(i warned you)

it’s been two years since my dog, Ruby, the love of my life, passed away. i haven’t been able to look back on my time with her and what it really meant to me until today.

ya know what? hell, let’s make a short story long because i can do whatever i want.

theres no question about it, i grew up in chaos and uncertainty. like, thats just the objective truth. growing up in an alcoholic home it felt like everyone had either left, is leaving, or the looming threat of abandonment encircled everyone and everything constantly.

(i’ve worked/am working through all this, so you can turn the volume down on your empathy if you’re feeling it right now)

my mom adopted a total of two dogs when i was a kid - buddy and izzy. they were probably in the home less than a year before my mom gave them away. buddy went to a neighbor down the street and his husband. izzy went to a “farm”. at that time my life was so chaotic that i couldn’t see past my own nose long enough to retain a memory. i’ll abstain from the gory details, but will say that being the only person in the home with an alcoholic in active addiction is crazy and not something a 13 year old should have to endure. nothing was certain, not even the dogs.

cut to 2008- obama was just elected president, vibes are high, i’m 22 with my first real boyfriend. i got a job at an antique shop thats a stones throw away from my house. my landlord owned the store, so i worked a few days a week to pay off my portion of the rent.

you can imagine the antique shop was pretty sleepy. i would count down the hours by staring at my apartment out of the front window and endlessly reading books. one day i was staring longingly, minutes away from being able to turn the sign to CLOSED and here comes these two dogs, trotting down castle st. one was red, one was black and white. i just whistled and they came right inside- i took them both home. wasn’t even a second thought. in the biz, we call this the dog distribution system… maybe you’ve heard of it.

i called the animal shelter the next day and said i found a dog. “it’s black and white and you gotta come get it.”, i said.

i dont know why i did that, but i did it with a confidence i certainly lack today.

it was either going to be ruby or barron, and we all know how that story goes. shortly after finding her, maybe a few months, i decided to move to new zealand for a year. my boyfriends parents said they would watch her, and i really think they taught her how to be a good dog. when i got back from new zealand she barely recognized me, and could you blame her? but there she was. waiting. constant.

she was the string that held my life together through my 20s and to my mid 30s. she was with me through every break up, every move, every job, every major (and minor) life event- just by needing me. she gave me purpose, and taught me how to take care of myself through taking care of her. it didn’t matter what i had going on, she needed to be fed you know what i’m saying? she brought me down to earth.

this morning i realized why i’m so obsessed with dogs- because ruby gave me something i’ve never had before. she gave me a constant, something to orbit. something to love without fear.

i started to volunteer at the local animal shelter shortly after ruby “went to college” and i realized this feeling transferred to any dog i gave myself to, not just ruby. i realized that dogs heal something in the deepest darkest shadows of my life that i’m too ashamed to even really get into with this post.

they remind me that life is happening in my body, life is not happening in my head.

they remind me to be open and willing more often, and that by helping others i help myself.

they remind of how good it feels to just love without question, and how ABSOLUTELY REMARKABLE it is to be able to spend some time outside.

they remind me to keep it simple.

each dog i meet opens a piece of my heart i had spent years tucking away for the sake of safety and survival. dogs remind me that i’m safe with myself, and that i have the power to create that safety for others.

dogs remind me that i’m human.

since rubys passing i’ve been able to foster 3 dogs, foster failing on the 3rd. i’ve spent countless hours at the local shelter hanging out with the dogs- walking them, cuddling with em, cleaning out their kennels. its as messy and as challenging as it is rewarding, but each dog i meet opens up my heart in a new way i didn’t know i needed.

anyway. yeah. thats why i fucking love dogs.