I was noticing in the server logs this morning that someone came in from an ip address at the University of Maryland on the following Google search string:

coming out comic garrett

Well…that made my day right there.  Someone went looking Specifically for my cartoon series, A Coming Out Story. They didn’t know or couldn’t remember the title exactly, but they knew what it was about and at least the last name of the guy who did it. 

Nice.  Cartooning was the first love.  I gave up hope that I’d ever make a living at it for pretty much the same reason I gave up on being a professional photographer.  I’m just not competitive enough, and when I was younger too timid, shy and scared to try making a go of things as a freelancer.  Ironically, I ended up spending most of my life freelancing in other fields, only one of which, architectural modelmaking, even remotely touched on my artistic skills.  But there it is.  I gave up dreaming about seeing my cartoons in print anywhere.  Then along came the internet and I could just put up my own web site and see if my stuff attracted anyone.

It does.  I have put zero effort into advertising anything I do here and yet after just a few years I get hits on my cartoons from all over the world.  Not a torrent of hits.  But the steady nature of what I do get is more rewarding then you can imagine. 

Which is why I’ll be spending the weekend down in the art room…