Here I Am

• posted January 20, 2025

I’m kicking things off here with a photo of a small bronze statue of a reading chimp that sits on my desk. I found this about a year ago at an antique store in Gardnerville, NV. It has become one of my favorite things.

He is a rather dignified fellow. This is the only one I have seen that looks like this. I’ve seen quite a few other statues or carvings of reading chimps, but they usually look more like this:

Here is why I like having a dignified chimp on my desk. Perfectionism often locks me up when I’m trying to make something. I get frustrated when I feel my skills are lacking. And then there are the unhealthy comparisons of my work to the amazing work of others. When this happens, my face scrunches up and become that tragic character, chimp #2.

When I sift through old doodles, I don’t have to go too far to find something like this:

I call these insecurity doodles. But I don’t think these are bad things, necessarily. If I ever feel out of my depth, I will try to be a dignified chimp about it. We can all learn things, no matter what our station is in life.

So yeah. That’s it. This blog and the stuff you’ll likely see on this site is just me trying to be a dignified chimp. Here is one more of these for the road: