The end... for now.

Today was the first day bag to school for my kids. And for the first time, they took their lunches not in brown paper bags decorated with dad's drawings, but in standard, reusable canvas box, bags pre-printed with characters of their choice.

This has been a fun activity for the last two years. But for now, it's time to take an extended hiatus on lunch-baggery.

There are two reasons for me abandoning the kid's lunch bag drawings.

One is that the kids requested it. Not that they are embarrassed by dad's goofy bags (anything but!). But, believe it or not, they both expressed desire for reusable lunch bags, expressly for environmental reasons. They are kids with big hearts and minds and I couldn't be prouder. I experimented with making reusable, washable bags out of chalkboard cloth or oilcloth that I could draw on, but the medium wasn't going to work for me.

The other reason is that, in the second half of last school year, I was becoming decreasingly less motivated, and finding the process less fulfilling. Maybe the story-telling effort of the Baglands was just a little too much. Maybe having twice as many bags in year two caught up with me. Maybe I became anxious about other things that I wanted to accomplish, and this just became one more obligation keeping me from other projects. Maybe I was just burned out. Whatever the reason, I found that instead of being happy to draw a bag, I was happy to not have to draw a bag. And I didn't miss it once school let out. Even the lagging of my posting the bags online (it was two and a half months by the time I got caught up) demonstrates how I'd become disinterested.

But it's been a fun experiment while it lasted. The kids enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, and some people out in the world whom I've never met have enjoyed it. So much good has come out of this little lark. I've grown a little artistically. And I've grown a lot in my ability to stick to a routine schedule. I've always been horrendously bad and sticking to something on a regular, sustained basis when it wasn't required by some higher authority. That fact that I more or less kept up with this for two months, let alone two years, kind of astounds me.

So what's filling the whole left behind by brown paper bags and markers? I have been meaning to direct my attention to some professional development goals for a few years now, so I'm hoping I can find the same diligence with that that I did with the lunch bags. And once I become comfortable with my progress there, perhaps I'll finally dig in on a sustained effort for an ongoing webcomic. Or I'll produce one of the several children's books floating through my head. Or something else. Or, next year, I'll pick up this blog where it left off with more lunch bag drawings. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, feel free to stop by, have a look around, and drop me a line.