As I outlined previously (Deciding on my way forward), I need a short-term 30-day solution where I ignore any messages coming from the universe that’s stopping me from doing stuff I want to do. Astronomy is on the list, and I’ll come back to that in subsequent posts, but for now, I need something small and symbolic for myself.

Like memes.

I have done some memes several times over the last few years in concentrated bursts. I share comics on FB, sure, but I’m talking more about my “own” creations — quotes, jokes, lunch notes for kids. I loved the idea of having my own little brand that gets shared around. So when I did them, I focused a lot on the design, aka branding, but never really got anywhere:

• For quotes, I tried out a few designs on people and ended up with a vertical design that looked like a coil bound notepad, used a italicized font like it was handwritten/printed (not cursive), added a picture of a pencil with someone hugging it, and of course, included my frog logo;
• The jokes/humour design was simple enough…vertical design, a solid background, a picture of a jester, and my frog logo;
• For lunch notes, I put a banner across the top that said Lunch Notes, kept the background white and horizontal, added a pic of a kid talking to a frog standing on a lunchbox, and again, included my frog logo;

I did about 50 of each type and while I got a few likes, they were rarely shared, i.e. little take up, insufficient resonance or critical mass, and so I felt like I was shouting into the abyss. It happens. And with little response, I did my 50 and kind of stalled. I have thousands of quotes I want to use; hundreds of jokes saved; and ideas for a few hundred lunch notes. But, as I said, I stalled.

Yet I like MAKING them, and while there is no “productive reason” to keep doing them, I’ve rebooted my memes with a non-branded brand. I decided I don’t much care about the consistency of the look and feel, I’ll put something together that I like, and BAM!, out the door it goes. I did a quick bit of research to see what was the best recommended size slide in Powerpoint for sharing with FB (11.25 x 6.25 inches) and Twitter (14.2 x 7.1 inches), found the recommended FB size will work with both without resizing or overlap, and so I started doing the memes again. Mostly so far I’m just redoing the previous ones with simpler non-branding/branding.

For the quotes, I kept my frog logo, added in my website address (just the default polywogg.ca part), and the rest is whatever strikes my fancy. For humour, the court jester is present with my website address, the rest is freeform. And for lunch notes, I’m doing solid backgrounds or borders, centred text with graphics, and I kept the lunchbox image with my website address. I’ve done 10 so far, 9 do-overs and 1 new, and I’ll keep going. I’m also switching over the images and quotes on my website — previously I kept the text so that it would index itself, now I’m just going with the image.

Maybe the universe will like them, maybe it won’t. But I don’t care.

The universe can go meme itself.