In 1997 while working as an artist at Hallmark Cards I was given the opportunity to present a design project to Charles Schulz. I was privileged to spend the day at his studio talking comics, artwork (and hockey) with the man whose work I’d grown up loving and admiring. As any aspiring cartoonist would do, I asked him for advice. He told me, “Write what you know.”

Nearly a decade later, while reading several books about him and his life, it dawned on me. “Peanuts” WAS the story of his life. The characters were loosely based on him and those in his life. He was, as he’d said, “Writing what he knew.”

Realizing this, it became simple to me and I began writing and drawing a daily comic based on my daily life. At first, they were just for myself then shared to family and friends on Facebook and eventually on this blog. It’s my goal to not only write about my life, the good times and bad, but to also give each strip an entertaining twist, whether it’s a punchline or a quiet moment, for the reader to enjoy.

So, beginning in February, 2010 I began this strip.

I gave myself a few rules:

1. ) Write about what happened that day (and hopefully in an entertaining way), fit it within only one panel (though I began breaking that rule and would expand to 2 or 3 panels when I needed more room to tell the story).

2.) Don’t spend too much time on the piece (it’s a comic, not a painting) and use only Micron pens and Markers.

So, this Blog, with my Daily Comic Journal “My Life (and Welcome To It”) was born.