Wrapping Up 52 Diary List Comics for 2024

Finishing up a year-long weekly series, but I think I’ll do it again.

Today’s letter is a summary look at a 52 weeks project, a simple digital documentation project that created a colorful view of the year.

“On the snowy morning of Christmas Eve as Charlotte Cooper set out her 37th snow globe, trying to create the perfect Christmas for her family, she remembered a moment she hoped she could hold onto forever. Meanwhile, her husband, Sam Cooper, who I can read pretty well, was recalling the moment just after that moment, trying to remember if he knew he was happy at the same time the happiness was going on.” — The Family Stone

Optional: Skip the personal intro and jump to the art recap.

Happy Sunday!

I hope your week and your December have been warm, peaceful, and laced with a quiet gratitude and a willingness to give in to the flow of the passing days. I hope there has been plenty of laughter.

Despite being a bit scattered, it was a good week.

I never found the stockings. They are one of my favorite traditions and symbols of the holiday. I found two boxes in the basement that say stockings in my hasty scrawl. Both were close to the stairs (which might suggest they were recent and which was where I found other things I stored after last Christmas), but both boxes were empty. Maybe it was for the best this year, really.

Making do without a stove/oven, I made something with rice that looked suspiciously like cafeteria food, white and thick and mushy, a crockpot meal gone wrong as I tried to supersize it. Admittedly, I also winged the recipe a bit, having looked at several. I think we were lucky it was edible.

Everyone was a good sport about it, and despite the appearance, it tasted pretty good. It was just a bit of a textural mess. Coming from the land of grits, there was something almost familiar about it, which worked. (I sliced the leftovers a few days later and put the slices in the air fryer. It was even better the second time around. Served a bit crispy and with butter, it reminded me of fried polenta.)

That same night, hurrying to get dinner on the table after a candlelight service, the microwave threw a fireworks party. It did this last month when I tried to melt butter, and I didn’t use it again, but no one else seemed to have any trouble.¹ It almost seemed like I had imagined the light show, until it happened again. On Christmas Eve, I put in microwavable bacon (to crumble on top of the “crack” meal). Within a few seconds, the sparking and arcing started. Some googling suggested this might not be an end-of-life problem for a microwave. I ordered a replacement wave plate. We’ll see what happens.

I always hope I will manage these days with more calm, more grace, and more aplomb. I think sometimes we just really need to just let go and accept the way things happen and unfold. Sometimes we really need to lean into things not going to plan and things not being the way we might envision them in our heads. We need to embrace what we do have and what is.

Last year, we had to call 911 on Christmas Day, which resulted in a week in the hospital. A determined attempt to open presents with the family went unexpectedly downhill and downhill fast. Sepsis is like a flash flood, a systemic shutdown that, once triggered, washes through like a tsunami. We looked into that wave again and again and again. I was always trying to determine when to call, always trying to get consent to call, always watching the ambulance leave and then waiting for a call.

It was in my head this week, a specter of Christmas past. It is hard to realize that so much has changed.

I think about the snow globe show, about images of snow globes, and about the overlay of snow globes onto real life. I imagine a shelf of snow globes as a literal memory palace, a gateway to isolated moments of memory brought to life again with a gentle shake, or as a wish, an encapsulation of the heart’s deepest desires, known or unknown, a scene that may or may not make sense beyond the whisper of wind in the trees.

”A snow globe holds a story frozen in time. It cycles through periods of snow, but it isn’t a story that changes. Maybe it is a house, a Christmas tree, a pair of deer off to the side. Maybe it is a lighthouse with holiday lights, a line of trees, a small boat anchored to a pier. Maybe it is a small cottage in the woods, a circle of trees, a cardinal in the snow, or a small rabbit. Maybe it is a woman in a simple house, a wreath on the door, a small gray dog in the window. Whatever the story, it is a frozen moment, a beautiful moment made more beautiful by a softly falling snow.” — from an Illustrated Life post, December 2023

Several years ago, I suggested you think about what your snow globe would look like. What would go in that frozen scene? What moment or scene do you want to look in on as the snow quietly falls? What scene would bring calm, or relief, or hope, the feeling of being loved, or the memory of being warm and content and knowing you matter, the tinkle of laughter in the air.

Today, a retrospective look at a weekly list project, now complete. Stay tuned later this week for the next prompt in the postcard series and the first set of Illustrate Your Week prompts for the new year.

Assorted panels from the 52 weeks of diary list comics series in 2024. A. Cowen

On a weekly diary list comic panel, the details above might be recorded as “lost the stockings,” “cafeteria-style mush for Christmas Eve,” and “microwave arcing.” Those details provide contours for the week that, later, might help bring the week back to life in memory. This process is an act of reduction and simplification. This is a minimalist approach to life documentation.

I might resolve this year to write shorter Sunday emails, but it probably won’t happen.

Thank you for reading.

Amy

🎯 The Sunday post is free to all readers. Thank you to readers who have upgraded their subscriptions, sent a wish list treat, or left a tip. An annual subscription is 25% off for a few more days (through the end of 2024).

We all benefit from strong creative habits and routines, and I look forward to documenting life alongside you in the coming year in our illustrated journals.

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Finishing

As we approach the end of the year, I have multiple projects that are all drawing to a close:

• In a few days, I will be finishing a second month of tracking morning light. Amazingly, I continued this through December, even though many, many, many of the days were very gray.

• I have been doing digital drawings of my mother during her visit. I am really enjoying the process, even though the drawings are not realistic and don’t really look like her. Somehow, this is much less about capturing a true likeness and more about capturing a gist and a moment.

• I have now finished 52 weeks of diary list comics for 2024.

52 Weeks of Diary List Comics

The weekly list comic was a project that I didn’t plan to do. It feels like I sort of stumbled into this weekly snapshot or check-in. Looking back, this probably emerged from my interest in diary comics. I didn’t have time for a daily, but doing something weekly was a toe in the water. (Week two set the stage for the format I used.)

Basically, I documented each week with a really simple, really fragmented, really staccato list using a flexible and colorful “chiclet” format. If you’re old enough to remember Chiclets, little squares of gum with a crunchy candy coating, maybe the analogy makes sense.

Visually these weekly snapshots are stacks of daily details, sometimes interconnected, sometimes disparate, all happening in tandem, overlapping, pushing and pulling, the concrete and the abstract jumbled together.

At the core, these are lists.²

There is something about balance lurking in the spaces and in the stacking and fitting in. These panels are visual maps, the scatter plot of a week. They are puzzles. Early on, one of you referenced these weekly lists as cairns, a structure that always mesmerizes me and a metaphor for this project that continues to be captivating.

52 weekly diary list comics from 2024. A. Cowen

Week by Week

Each week I filled this simple square panel with bread crumbs from the week and attempted to add some kind of image, a way of forcing and reinforcing some practice with digital art (which had been a goal last year).

Initially, the images went with the weekly post (connections sometimes apparent only to me), so things like the sock creature and the Girl Scout vest covered in patches are related to actual posts, as are the crossed-out lighthouse, the individual birds, and the orange chair with the pirate pillow. At other times, the image in the list panel was related to the week but not to the Sunday post.

The art is always fairly flat, which is my digital style. There is always some pick and choose, too. How much energy do I have? How much space is left? What can I actually draw in this simplified form?

This week, I could have drawn a carousel figure, or a snow globe, or something more clearly related to the holiday. But I chose something simple from the week, and that is enough.

As the year went along, I started to feel awkward about having these weekly diary panels in the Sunday letter. (They were never mentioned, and they didn’t necessarily provide the best graphic for each week’s post.) Maintaining the timeline to finish them to post as part of the Sunday letter was also sometimes a logistical challenge. I stopped including them in the Sunday letter, but I continued to do this weekly snapshot as another way of recording my year. I posted them on a running list that I updated throughout the year.

Bottom line: I stuck with the project.

There were a few weeks where I was late pulling the panel together or didn’t have an image to include. There were two weeks that I tried to fill in after the fact, which proved to be difficult. Even looking at my planner, flipping through my illustrated journal, and checking for any daily typed notes (the true journal) didn’t turn up anything to give meaningful contour to one of the weeks. The details are sketchy or outright missing.

The simple reality is if we don’t write these things down and don’t document our lives, the details tend to just go right out the window.

None of us can remember every detail. I can’t even think back to what I ate for dinner over the course of a week if I don’t jot it down every few days. The same is true with what I watched.

I don’t think this is just me.

So I completed this project, and it is a project I really, really loved (and love). It is not a project that claims to be to be high art. It is not a project that is going to wow anyone in terms of the writing. It is not a project that is going to inspire anyone by the limited scope of existence it conveys. That’s okay. The diary list comic project isn’t intended to do any of those things.

It’s personal, as a journal should be. There is something in the aggregate set of images that ground and contain the reality of a year in a way that nothing else I did manages so succinctly, clearly, and visually.

Overall, I am really proud of myself for sticking with this series. Looking at the finished set of 52 images, it seems to me that even though I had a clear and repeatable format, and even though the project didn’t ask for a lot, there is still some degree of evolution and growth evidenced in the progression of the year. Maybe I see it because that’s what I want to see. There are clearly some red herrings, weeks with little or no art, weeks that echo exhaustion or overwhelm or loss in their sparseness, but I still think I see some growth and a freer approach emerging between the opening and the closing.³

I see enough… to want to do it again.

Maybe you are inspired to do your own weekly project alongside your other creative projects?

On Privacy and Intent

As a general reminder: when people share journal pages, or life lists of any form, the goal of the sharing isn’t always to have someone read every single word or take out a magnifying glass and dive into the nooks and crannies. I had to stop and really think about whether or not I wanted to post these (and whether or not I was willing to send the composite grid in email). But part of me says there is nothing here that needs to really be hidden. (I’m aware of a potential reader/viewer when I make them.)

Does that mean it’s a very superficial record of a year? Maybe. These panels contain mostly concrete details that map the surface of the weeks. I’m good with that.

I tend to share this kind of work and images of journals in this way simply because of the overall appearance of the work as a whole. I like to see the full set, the full series, the collection of pieces, the evolution and unfolding of an idea repeated week to week. I share with that “big picture” view in mind. I hope you as readers and viewers can appreciate the work on that level.

I hope, too, that you might be inspired to keep your own weekly record in your own way.

I feel like this is probably a project I will continue. Will I figure out changes to make or ways to make it different or ways to shake it up? I don’t know. Should I change the frame? Maybe. I just don’t know that I have time to sort out my starting points for the coming year, but I think it might be a weekly that I do again for 2025. I really appreciate having this series of snapshots of the year, and the project was a comforting touchstone throughout the year.

Finding art projects one can count on, projects that feel cozy or calming or mindful or meditative, is worth the search. When you find them, hold them close for as long as they continue to support and enchant you.

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Be Gentle with Yourself

I am glad that there will be finished projects like the diary list comics on my year-end sketchnote. There are, of course, some things that have fallen away or that I didn’t get to. There are always choices made, and we are always creating within the context of everything else happening in our lives. Be gentle with yourself.

Last year, I wrote about not finishing projects. Last year was a banner year for dropping projects by the wayside. Years ago, I talked about resilience and persistence, about being flexible with rules about determining what counts.

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Weekly Bits and Pieces

• Prompts for Illustrate Your Week - Week 1/2025 will be posted mid-week.

• I plan to post the next postcard prompt (#4) this week.

• If you are planning to spend some time wrapping up your creative year or thinking about the new year, I do have a few question sets you can use (year-end / planning), and I do recommend the sketchnote your year project.

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Made It?

Thank you for reading! I always enjoy your comments and invite you to chime in. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.

I am truly grateful for those who read and comment. Maybe it hasn’t been easy sticking with me through this year, but some of you did. Your gentle support has been helpful as I’ve continued to show up on the page, simultaneously an open and closed book.

I have “word of the year” thinking to do and some book list planning (although I think I am mostly set for a long read). I would like to at least have a bit of a project list as I move into the new year, but it may or may not happen. I know the basic contours. I don’t anticipate much changing right now. I haven’t cued up anything new. I enjoy the things I have been doing — and writing here at Illustrated Life rounds things out and uses all the available time (outside of work) and more.

I hope your year ends smoothly. Despite all the posts you might see that suggest otherwise, you don’t have to have things ironed out for the new year on day 1. It really doesn’t matter if you have all your ducks in a row or not. The next day is simply the next day.

If you are planning a new project and want to share, please do.

The illustrated journal is the one project that is always in play. It is the anchor and the lifeline. I will always encourage you to start your own. Maybe this is the project you need for 2025?

💡As a reminder, I draw with a small group of women on most weekends via Zoom. We draw, and we chat (although chatting is optional). I’m shy, but I find that drawing while we gather keeps our hands busy and avoids everyone simply staring at each other. We are also drawing on New Year’s Eve. If you are interested in joining for some easy year-end community to help close out the year, let me know. You are invited.

I tried this year to reach out, to cultivate, and to be open to new connections and collaborations. These will continue to be goals next year.

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Thank you for reading Illustrated Life. Writers need readers, and I am grateful for every reader!

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All images in this post are ©️ A. Cowen. All rights reserved.

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1. In my book, it only had to happen once. I expected to replace the microwave at that point, but my son forgot and used the microwave later that same night without a problem.

2. While not technically related, it is worth mentioning the popular “Currently List” that many people do as a weekly check-in at Instagram, led by rukristin.

3. I like panels from all points of the year, so maybe there is no upward trajectory, just a flat line of repetition, a steadfastness. I think that is true for much of what I do.