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.