Badges, Lumberjanes, and Gamification

A badge-gathering approach to life and a few fun comics and graphic novels

"…fitting in is a test of its value—a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity." T.S. Eliot

Happy Sunday! 

Last week, one of the prompts for Illustrate Your Week was related to “badges.” Based on the calendar, the literal context was Girl Scouts, but when it comes to our illustrated journals, we can (and should) take a kernel of a prompt and run with it, making it our own. Keeping an illustrated journal can be rewarding and fulfilling precisely because it is rooted in our own lives, real or imagined, experienced or desired, remembered or forgotten.

It is interesting how a simple prompt can set us off, flashlight in hand, down trails of memory, where books, songs, shows, and bits of conversation float to the surface, a series of dominoes lining up, colored filters sliding into place, a simple twist of a kaleidoscope, tissue paper collage.

What badges would you want to earn? Do you gamify your systems?

The weekly diary list comic image above is obviously connected this week. A generic scout vest covered in patches made sense, but it took an unexpected turn. I finished putting all the patches on. It was done, but then the unicorn appeared. It had to be there. Somehow it explains a lot. It breaks the mold of the vest. It insists on something different, magical, less quantifiable. It is outside the rules. I can’t start a fire with sticks. I don’t camp. I am more and more hesitant to leave my house. I have never pitched a tent.

After writing today’s post, I feel nostalgic for the things mentioned, including podcasting. I feel like I need to reread the Lumberjanes, and Hilda, and read Moomin, and sew a patch on a bag or a pillow. Some of those things, I’ll probably do in coming months. For now, I’m signing off. I’m going to sit and read a space opera for a bit and then I have a self portrait to draw to finish up my week.

Are we ready to write letters?

Thank you for reading.

Amy

(This will be cut off in email because there are a number of images. You can click through to read in the app or a browser. I think it probably looks better that way, too.)

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Badge Mentality

I know (cognitively) that I was a Brownie at some point. It probably wasn’t for long. I wouldn’t remember anyway. Those years are lost. The years after are lost. Pretty much all of it is lost. But, I know it as a “detail.” At some point I was a Brownie. Somewhere, there are a few badges. I might be wrong about that. It’s probably good I don’t know or remember, because I can imagine I didn’t earn all the badges I wanted.

Because of the Illustrate Your Week prompt, I spent time looking at badges on the Girl Scouts site. The list of badges reflects the times, of course. Scouting is not all about being outdoorsy and survivalist savvy now. There are still nature-oriented and outdoorsy badges, but there are lots of STEM badges to encourage and celebrate science and engineering. There are coding badges at all levels. There are badges to encourage tinkering and innovation. There is a mechanical engineering badge for designing a board game, a model car, or a roller coaster. You can earn all three! There are badges for robotics, automotive engineering, letterboxing, book binding, and more. There are a few “artsy” ones, maybe less than I expected (or hoped), but I was surprised to see that there is a Comic Artist badge (grades 6-8)! There is a science of happiness badge, too.

When looking at the current badges, I kept scrolling, trying to find the writing badges. I finally found a screenwriter badge (grades 6-8) and a novelist badge (grades 9-10). Going more slowly back through the list, I found the “scribe” badge (grades 4-5). You earn the badge by trying five different written forms: poetry, short story, an article, an opinion piece, and something that approaches autobiography. So, yes, there are a few writerly badges, but the writing and art badges seemed scant. Where is the nature journaling badge? What about regular journaling? Surely there should be a poetry or haiku badge (it has nature built in)? What about philosophy? Minimalism? Fountain pen maintenance?

I get the strong sense I still would not be good scout material.

(Maybe I overlooked the nature journaling one. It does seem like that should be there. I did find this great guide, which includes nature journaling. And I did find the “Loves the Outdoors Challenge,” which includes a big checklist and does include a nature journal, some sketching, and writing a haiku.)

Thinking about the badges made me think of the Lumberjanes.

A Summer Camp for Hardcore Lady Types

The Lumberjanes comic book series (by Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Gus Allen, ND Stevenson, and others) first came out in 2014. My kids, at that point, were in double digits, and they had been reading manga (more than comics) and graphic novels forever. Bakuman, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Naruto, Pokémon, Fairy Tail, Bleach, and so many more…. backwards, forwards, it didn’t matter. How many times, really, did the oldest read the Bone series? We might have missed Lumberjanes anyway, but we weren’t even looking by the time it came out.

I stumbled over the Eisner Award–winning Lumberjanes comic, published by BOOM! Studios, in 2020. I was more than halfway through my “50 Before 50” list, which I had to edit in the final months because of the pandemic. At some point that winter, I found Lumberjanes and decided to read the whole series—and make that a list item I could check off. There are 75 issues, and, thankfully, they were all available in ebook format from the library (especially helpful since libraries were closed).

I devoured the Lumberjanes.

I remember it so fondly from early 2020 and the early months of the pandemic that it makes me want to start the series all over again.

More and more I realize I want to just line my days with things I know made me smile somewhere along the way.

Not Your Ordinary Camp

Lumberjanes takes place at a summer camp. Each issue is linked to a new badge. This is not your ordinary summer camp. With a motto of friendship to the max, the series follows a core group of lumberjanes campers—Molly (with her raccoon hat), Jo, Ripley, April, and May—who are attending Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Girls Hardcore Lady Types. They have a by-the-book camp counselor, Jen, and a Rosie-the-Riveter-inspired, no-nonsense, ax-wielding, flannel wearing, head of camp, aptly named Rosie. (She makes me think of Lynda Barry’s character from books like Syllabus and Making Comics.)

Covers of a few of the 75 issues of the Lumberjanes comic from BOOM! Studios.

Again, this is not your ordinary camp, at least not for the five Roanoke cabin campers in the comic. There are yetis and three-eyed foxes, merpeople, a bear-woman, jackalopes, dinosaurs, magical kittens, and a host of other magical, supernatural, mythological, and fantastical creatures and cryptids the girls encounter, earning badges along the way.

Each issue of the Lumberjanes comic centers around a badge and starts with a page from the Lumberjanes scouting manual that describes the purpose of the badge, its applicability to life, and what earning it means. The badge provides a framework; the story then fulfills the spirit (and skills) of the badge in unexpected ways. The final page in each issue is a scrapbook-style page that shows memorabilia from the story and the earned badge (in color).

The badges are quirky, but cool. In rereading just a few issues this week, I laughed at the “Everything Under the Sum” badge in Issue 3, subtitled “Math leads to a basic understanding of life.” In this issue, the Fibonacci sequence provides the key to safely navigating a series of stepping stones across a cavern. The girls also decipher a cave wall message by realizing it is an anagram that needs to be unscrambled.

Issue 5 (contained in Vol 2) is “Friendship to the Craft” and includes the making of friendship bracelets. In this issue, Jen, unexpectedly in charge, plans friendship bracelet making as an alternative to the “raccoon rodeo” because she thinks it will be innocuous and safe. Things rarely go as planned.

The Lumberjanes series, bundled in 4-issue volumes, was available from my library, so I recommend checking your library. If you enjoy comics with a bit of girl power or read with younger readers, you should take a look.

Rereading the first few issues for today has me really thinking of a full re-read… with some badge tracking and sketchnoting.

Hilda with the Blue Hair

I read the Hilda books, a series by Luke Pearson, last fall. Like Lumberjanes, we missed Hilda completely. (The books came out between 2010 and 2019.) I first heard about Hilda in a post by Maple Lam, which was a look at the flow of panels in comics and the importance of clearly guiding the viewer. (My favorite books for thinking about panel structure and the philosophy of comics are books by Scott McCloud.)

Hilda is a fascinating series. It is full of whimsy and a little girl’s sensitivity to the world around her and to things others don’t see.

Covers of Hilda book series by Luke Pearson

The Hilda books are surprisingly dense in terms of how much there is in each book. There is a lot of story in each one and a ton of illustration. The stories themselves are fantastical. There is extensive world building, a charming world full of creatures that humans don’t always see or that are unexpectedly sentient (like the mountain trolls). This is a world in which many beings are misunderstood. But Hilda, with her blue hair, red boots, and yellow scarf, has a good heart. She’s a gentle soul but also determined. She’s smart, creative, spunky, fearless, and, with her companion deer-fox, Twig, a lot of fun to follow along. The first books are set in a wilderness house where she and her mother live, but then they move to the city of Trolberg.

Hilda came to mind for today because there is a small “badges” storyline woven in.

I don’t have these books checked out right now, but I know there is a story thread about Hilda wanting to earn badges as part of the Sparrow Scouts (and conversation with her mother about the badges). Like in the Lumberjanes, she earns a badge (or demonstrates the equivalent skills) in a completely different way in Hilda and the Bird Parade.

Because each Hilda book is long, I feel like these are books to read again and see what new things one picks up in the rereading, what additional clues and threads one discovers in the art. This is a series I definitely will read again, and it made me want to do a deep dive into the Moomin books, too.

I reviewed a great pair of graphic novels last year by Elizabeth Haidle that contain short biographies of artists and writers. I remember being intrigued by the Tove Jansson one.

• Before They Were Authors: Famous Writers As Kids

• Before They Were Artists: Famous Illustrators As Kids

(I thought I’d written about these excellent books here, but it looks like I talked about them in a podcast last year. If you are the “listening” type, you’ll find them in Episode 485: Invite the Unexpected. Aaaah….and they are mentioned here on the substack last April in “Captain Kangaroo, Sophrosyne, Red Quill.”)

(Note: Hilda is now an animated Netflix series. I did try an episode or two back when I was first reading the books. At the time, the voice wasn’t the same as I was hearing when I read the books on the page, so there was a huge disjunct. Hilda came across differently to me than she did in the books. I should probably try the series again someday.)

Gamifying Life

Badges are an interesting motivational tool. For some personality types, I can imagine that trying to earn badges is a really effective gamification system. It is an interesting one in that while it is an incentive system, it isn’t the same as saying, if you do this or accomplish that you will get a reward. Instead, if you do this or accomplish that, you get a visible token of your accomplishment. What you earn is not just “something you want.” Instead, you get a badge.

I do think gamification systems can be helpful. We often tried to gamify things for the boys, giving things point values and setting incentive levels. I don’t know how well it worked. It was often an attempt to get things done or to make things seem more exciting when there wasn’t really a lot to be excited about, but I tried.

I wish I had a gamification system these days. I don’t need a badge system, but I can imagine an incentive plan:

• Reach 50 of the 100 and win a coffee

• Get back behind the microphone three times and win a half pan from the paint store (that I can’t seem to make myself go to alone)

• Continue hitting weekly posts…

• File our taxes on time…

• Find a way to connect with humans in real life one time….

• Schedule the appointment that is really important and way overdue….

• Lose x pounds (and then x more)…

• Hit x milestone…

• Leave the house…

It becomes a slippery slope. Plus, I try not to set goals that are out of my control.

Gamification sounds nice, but most of what I’m doing, I don’t need to gamify. I do the things I have to do simply because I have to do them. I just think it would be nice sometimes to earn a reward, to level-up, to acknowledge consistent and hard work.

What could I do to earn (self justify) a new fountain pen (a good one of my choosing that I can’t just buy on a whim)? Obviously….win a lottery.

But would it really make me happy? (That’s always the kicker.)

I don’t need to earn them, but metaphorically I would like a jacket covered in life badges. I’ve talked about patches before (and I find it fun to do drawings of patch jackets). Thinking specifically of these badges for life exploration and achievement, I wonder what badges I might have earned (or should value).

I think I need (or should aspire to) badges like:

• Appreciates sunset

• Stares out the window

• Likes quiet time in the morning

• Notices birds

• Breaks the mold

• Enjoys coffee and tea

• Prioritizes creative life

• Weaves words

• Draws what she sees

• Has strong self-accountability

• Runs a good drawing group

• Master of bird walking

• Uses timers

• Loves black and white photos

• Makes lists

• Remembers credit card number and nothing else

• Follows through

• Appreciates a good database

• Makes do

• Practices gratitude

• Forgives

• Supports others

• Values diversity

• Finds something to smile about each day

• Goes for walks

• Laughs often

• Wears many hats

The friendship badge? I’m never gonna earn that one.

Maybe I’ll earn the “Masters public transit” badge so that I can figure out how to get to appointments in the future.

There are a lot of badges I need to earn and skills and traits I wish somewhere along the way I had mastered. But that’s not a list I want to consider right now.

I definitely won’t earn any tidy house badges.

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Illustrated Journal Week 11 for 2024

This is a glimpse of part of my pages for Week 11 for Illustrate Your Week 2024. The portrait was from our drawing group last Sunday. My pages are showing the toll of the digital affirmations project, but it’s okay.

Portion of Week 11 in illustrated journal for 2024. ©️ A. Cowen

I also participated in the Downton Abbey draw along this week.

I am not a “timed drawing” artist, so this was way out of my comfort zone, but I really enjoyed it. This was during my work day, but I took a small break and did several drawings from the prompts Kaly Quarles offered. I usually draw from photos on my phone. It was a strange sensation to be looking at the computer for the reference and not being able to zoom in and get close.

I started out with the intent of using a fude nib and working in ink, but it just doesn’t work with my approach to drawing. After the first three timed drawings (not shown), I shifted to sketching in pencil. I had fun. I share these not because they are great, but because they aren’t. They’re quick sketches, but I am glad I logged in. I did leave my camera off, and I was frustrated with myself for that.

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The Weekly Bits and Pieces

💭 100 Day Project / Comic Affirmations 22-28

🎯🖋️ Week 12 prompts for your illustrated journal

🎧 Old podcasts: Quirky: 390 (2020; discovered Lumberjanes) & Drawing Group: 391 (2020; still reading Lumberjanes during the pandemic)

📗 List of the Lumberjanes volumes (each volume contains multiple issues)

📘 List of the Hilda graphic novel/comics

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Writers to Read

Here are some posts from other writers and artists that I enjoyed in the last week or so:

• 7 things I loved on the first week of March (

  Carolyn Yoo
  )

• The far shore of a too-wide river (

  Elizabeth Beggins
  )

• Sandwiches, Piles, Collages & My Notes (

  Jason McBride
  )

• Oscars 2024 (Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell)

• An Interview with Ellen O'Grady (Autobiographix)

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Made It?

Thank you for reading.

I always invite your comments about the post. You are also welcome to play with any of the following:

• What badge would you want to earn?

• Favorite type of bean?

• What one thing could you stretch or loosen this week — as a positive?

Thank you to those who continue to read and support this space. It means so much.

If you enjoy Illustrated Life, I hope you will restack, share, or recommend.

PS: I try not to make what I write about the writing itself…. because that’s not why you are here…. but I did have a moment last week. I woke up Sunday really wishing I’d cut more from the post (than I did at midnight when I did my final read, which is often fairly generous with the hacksaw). By morning, I had an overwhelming case of writer’s regret. That’s not uncommon. I often fear I say too much or don’t spin the world positively enough or don’t get out of my head enough to meet you where you are. I often look back and wonder where my filters are. But I felt so strongly about it last week that I immediately opened the post and made some edits, cut some of the truth, pulled the shell back over the turtle. I saved the post and felt better. I sat back with my cup of coffee, relieved to have thought better of things and intervened before most of you read the post.

Then I realized that, unlike other spaces, most of you read in email. My changes didn’t do anything about the fact that the words were sitting, as they were, in your inboxes. This is something about the “newsletter” concept that I struggle with. I read in the app or a browser. I’m always surprised at how many of you read “in email.” I would rather just send an email that makes you open a page in a browser. That approach is not perfectly suited to Substack. There are ways though to make it work. Maybe I’ll think about it. I find it strangely uncomfortable that you get “all” my words in email. I’m writing an ongoing letter, not a finished piece. There is always the sense of shifting and aligning and realigning as pieces shape, reshape, and fall into place.

Thank you to those who showed up last week with words that made it clear…it was fine. No one overreacted. No one seemed to read too much into it. Maybe everyone skimmed over all the too-much spots. Thank you to those who commented.

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