My Awesome Awful Life

In grad school, I took a web design class. I’m not a visual person, but wanted to learn how the internet worked. The teacher was an earnest, older Asian dude who assigned a mock website, for each of us to create, called “My Awesome Life.” But at the time my life was not awesome. In the middle of a breakup, drinking too much, with insomnia, I would spend nights at my writing desk, with wine, drawing stick figure cartoons, and finding them greatly amusing.. My 3 stick figures were a guy, his girlfriend and her dog having silly arguments, but the dog was the only logical one, so he would always break the tie, usually for her. I thought these cartoons would make an awesome mock website. The teacher was horrified.. poorly-drawn stick figures, a painful relationship… Why?! He suggested a cheery website, with a future wind-surfing trip I might take, would be better. Our culture clash began to amuse the students so he let me be. And, at that time, despite his disappointment, a solid B- did make my life more awesome.