The below images are part of an ongoing cartooning project called Everyday Hugs. You can find updated illustrations at http://instagram.com/everyday_hugs

A well-crafted 30-Day Challenge (set yourself a daily goal and stick to it for a month) can be a powerful life-improvement tools. They are how I started flossing daily, started making the bed every morning, stopped biting my nails, and ended the vicious alarm-snooze-alarm-snooze cycle.

The past 30 days were devoted to improving my illustration skills by drawing at least one cartoon per day. To reduce decision fatigue, they were all to be of the same subject — you guessed it!— Hugs. It seemed like an easy enough goal, but between working and parenting a toddler, the challenge lived up its name.

The above images are the uncomplicated, unsophisticated, and relatively unprofessional result. But I don’t think they are unimportant, especially in our current historical moment.

You’ll notice that I chose to omit certain things. There are no phones, no internet, no pandemic, no masks nor social distancing, no guns nor violence. Yet these people are not living in utopia. They aren’t all happy.

These thirty cartoons are a purely selfish project, which means their outward message may be limited. But I was, in fact, trying to say something. And as with any message you try to convey, the question is alway: How many times must it be repeated before it’s heard? How many more until it’s understood? How many more beyond that until it’s lost once again? For every listener there is a different voice; for every voice there is a different threshold.