My life is like a rollercoaster!

Comics from the summer of 1999

Hello! It’s been a busy week and I haven’t had time to post anything before today. This one will have to be short and sweet!

When I look at The Drawing Book, my old sketchnoting journal from twenty-five-ish years ago, I see that we’ve reached the summer of 1999. This was a pretty happy time. Although my immediate family lived in Calgary, my parents were from Ontario, and all our relatives were out there. So in the summer, we often travelled back to visit them. Because I was a flight attendant with Air Canada, it was easy for me to hop on a plane and join the holiday. At my grandparents’ cottage, I could sit and draw about random stuff like “smells I love!”

But first, I had to think about painting a picture on a big wall. Back in Calgary, I’d been hired to paint a really bit exterior mural. You’ll find out a lot more about that adventure in some Drawing Book pages that lie ahead. For now, here are my notes from the summer holiday.

Back in Calgary, I wondered about music (I was a big fan of Roger Daltrey, less so of Celine), and I made some predictions for the future.

The Planet, an excellent Calgary coffee establishment, is, alas, long gone.

As for my predictions? I did get my hair cut (a few years later). I did have a little boy (two, in fact), but I did not name either of them Silvio. For a long time, though, I used that name as kind of a placeholder name for my future child, because the Bob Dylan song “Silvio” always sounded to me as though it was full of good parental advice for a young person. (Of course, the song was co-written, or maybe entirely written, by Robert Hunter - but regardless, it’s a great and catchy song which you can listen to here).

And by the way, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve blurred out all the names of everybody who appears in the drawing book, but I left in my brother John’s name. John said he didn’t mind. (Also, he never did quite succeed in growing quite as bushy of a beard as the one we imagined.)

This last page speaks for itself. 1999, when I was 25 years old and single, was a rollercoaster of a year. Looking back at these pages now, it seems as though the summer was actually kind of a peaceful time, in the middle of all the ups and downs. And as the summer of 1999 drew to an end, I started to work on my plan to “go north” - you’ll have to read about that in the next installment of the Drawing Book.

Thanks for reading and hope all is well with you, whether you are in the middle of a peaceful time… or riding a rollercoaster!