Cubicle Art

Well, as I noted yesterday, things have been a bit... odd this week. Coupled with a few other occurrences, the week on the whole had a lot of potential in dragging down one's spirits. Well, my spirits, at least. (I still can't the shake the mental imagery associated with those Superman briefs, though!)

Rather than yielding to depression, though, I'm trying to keep a positive, forward-thinking outlook. And one of the ways to do that is by surrounding oneself with positivity. If you, for example, try to fake a good temper while talking with friends and co-workers, it's likely to rub off a bit and help improve your mood. So, what's an anti-social comic book geek's approach to keeping things up-beat? Why, comics, of course!

I've actually spent probably too much time at work the past day or two looking through the archives of comic strips online. Some strips that I regularly enjoy, some I know of but don't see that often, and some that I've never even seen before. The best ones -- the ones that I actually laugh out loud at -- are getting printed and hung up in my cubicle here at work. I've only got about a half dozen hung up so far, but I've also been making it something of a point to keep some variety going. Today's "Non-Sequitur", a "PvP" from back in January, a "Peanuts" from 1960, a "Krazy Kat" from 1919... All different types of strips from all periods. Whatever speaks to me for whatever reason.

The office -- any office -- has a penchant for office style humor. It's not hard to walk around and find "Dilbert" pinned up somewhere. And many of those strips are funny and poignant, to be sure, but they've become ubiquitous enough with office culture that it doesn't say much about the person hanging the comic up. I figure that if I'm going to hang up a comic in my cubicle, it ought to be something that speaks to my personality in some manner. I'd actually like to get enough comics hanging up that a person casually walking by can make a fair assessment of who I am, just by reading the comics I have posted.

Heck, even just posting those cartoons, I think, says something about me. And maybe it'll help invite people into my cube and put them in a mood more conducive to getting to know me. Even if they don't find each and every one of the strips funny, I hope to have enough of them posted soon that there'll be a little something for everyone. And that will provide a means by which I can put people at ease around me, and maybe -- just maybe -- get me to open up around them.

But, if nothing else, they make me smile. And what better way to spend your day than working in an environment that makes you smile?

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