I used to write about politics more

So this morning, some guy wrote me a breakup fan letter.

Do other artists get these? This was someone who had, a couple months ago or something, written me an effusive, even hyperbolic, fan letter. It was one of those I get sometimes where the person is clearly trying very hard to sound smart. (If you find yourself typing that something is "best expressed in German" and you aren't trying to be funny, please stop. And I say this as the daughter of a high school German teacher.)

But an enthusiastic, pretentious fan letter can be a thing of joy, and so it was to me. I even forwarded it to my editor, as I sometimes do fan letters.

But today this same person broke up with me. This has happened a few times. I mean, I always assume people start and stop reading my work for all kinds of reasons, which are their business and not mine. An audience for a comic strip, or any other kind of serial fiction, is an ever-changing thing, sometimes growing and sometimes (ideally not often) shrinking, with people drifting away and other people arriving at all times. So I have no particular reason to care when any one person leaves, unless it's my editor. And you're not my editor. (Unless you are. Hi Shena!)

But a handful of times, somebody's felt entitled/obligated/compelled to write me a breakup letter. And if my memory is accurate, it's been politics every time.

That used to happen more than it does now because my work has stopped being political. It used to be quite political sometimes. Longtime fans, and new fans who've done their research, know that, for five years, I did a political comic called "I Drew This":

IDT was born in the Daily Evergreen, at Washington State University, during my one-year stint in graduate school, and for the next five years it was how I coped with the Bush administration, which, as a liberal atheist, I really really hated. (It almost got syndicated in 2005; United Media telephoned me and offered me a contract, and I said yes and then I never heard from them again. In hindsight I'm actually glad, for a bunch of reasons.)

Even before that--even before Bush was president--I never kept my politics to myself. For years I talked politics on my LiveJournal, and it even crept into Ozy and Millie a lot. (Sometimes that worked and sometimes not. I will never regret the sock puppet.)

Heavenly Nostrils is the most utterly nonpolitical thing I've ever done. (I like to think of it as subtly feminist, if anything, but I see no reason anyone else needs to think of it that way unless it pleases them.)

People ask me why I don't write about politics anymore. The answer is, I don't really know. I continue to hold the same political views, more or less, I've always held. (I was for gay marriage WAY before it was cool.) But at a certain point I just got sick of being political in public. It meant spending a lot of my time arguing. Some time around age 30, I was just finished doing that. I had a lot else I felt like doing with my time besides arguing.

Another thing is, as the liberal blogosphere (ugh, that's such an unattractive word, but we're stuck with it) grew, and as more people on TV were expressing the ideas I wanted expressed, I just stopped feeling like I had anything to add. You wanna know what I think? Read Tom Tomorrow, Jen Sorensen, Charlie Pierce. You wanna know why I think that? Well, tough. I don't go around making you explain your opinions to me. I have unicorns to draw!

In the end, the answer to the question of why I don't write about politics anymore is, doing so wasn't contributing to my happiness. And I want to be happy. My life is pretty good. I'm happily married, and I really, really like doing Heavenly Nostrils. So I put my energy into what makes me happy, instead of arguing about the aspects of the world I don't like.

As for this person who broke up with me--with a heavy heart and not in anger, so you know he's not a total prick!--I didn't read his letter in full. I skimmed it, skipping through the flowery field of his prose and picking the important flowers. Michael Moore! Obamacare! Benghazi!

So, you know. If it turns out that the world is not ready for a comic strip about a unicorn DRAWN BY SOMEONE WHO ADMITS VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS I'm a little bit screwed, but I'm not losing any sleep over the possibility.