I Deal With Rejection Very Well Because I Am a Lizard (2022 Wrapup)

I eat bugs. I'll eat your bugs. I am a lizard. Here's my 2022.

One of the things I spent this year doing is testing out Substack. I’ve had fun with it and it hasn’t killed me, so, as Friedrich Nietzche so famously said from beneath his objectively dumb mustache, “Heck it.”

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Things What I Did This Year of 2022

Most of this year was spent making my animated show, Grievance Gulch, a reality. I’m intensely proud of it and I’m thrilled to say that some of the finest film festivals in the land are already tendering their rejections.

In these moments it is tempting to descend into self doubt. But I am incapable of such feelings because I am a scaly lizard who, in addition to having very tough skin which is a fetching shade of golden brown, does not give a hoot.¹

If you’d like to watch Grievance Gulch, most of it is on Youtube.

Standing Up Comedy

This year I also wrote and performed an hour of standup comedy then cut some of it together into a short video to submit to a comedy festival. They never let me know whether I got in or not. But, given that it took place weeks ago without me, optimism has begun to ebb.

You might regard such callousness as being cold blooded. I take offense to that because, as a scaly lizard, I am literally and biologically cold-blooded and I resent your figurative appropriation of my internal doings, you insensitive teat.

I do feel good about performing an hour of comedy though. Yet another thing I always wanted to do. Box: checked.

The Wine Documentary

I also continued to work on my documentary about wine, The Mostly Serious History of Wine.

I should be getting that wrapped up in the first few weeks of 2023. Then I’ll spend the rest of the year submitting to festivals and receiving their indifference as a breeze upon my fetching scales and a small but very real dent to my bank account.

Here’s the latest trailer.

Car Documentary

Most recently, I connected with some people I admire who are doing interesting work in electric race cars. I agreed to make a documentary about their project and so far I’ve traveled to Pennsylvania and California to do a couple of weeks of shooting.

As you can see above, another fun thing that happened this year is my eyes ceased to concern themselves with certain types of images. But, my eyes being part of my body, they elected to do it in a dumb way.

I can see fine close up — reading, computering, carving my memoirs into grains of rice — but not far away. The result is that I am constantly irritated because my glasses are either on and I don’t need them or off when I do.

The current working title is Charlie’s Electric Car but I reserve the right to potentially think of something better.

Do you have a better title idea? Comment below.

Here’s the teaser trailer.

Goals for 2023

1. Finish the wine doc

2. Finish the electric car doc

3. Lose 20lbs

4. Write two articles per week here: one comedy and one more bloggish (like this).

5. Do more live shows.

6. Get better at oil painting

7. Improve my French

Thanks again for your attention and an extra special thanks to those of you who are paid subscribers. It makes a huge difference having all of you on board.

Do you make a list of year-end goals like this? Are you a lizard too? Scurry into my comments below.

1. Absorb this hoot figuratively.