Four Things I Learned This Year: Explained in Comics
Dear readers,
Where does my mind go at the end of the year? Instead of new year’s resolutions I know I won’t follow through, I like to reflect on what happened this year and what I have learned from it.
Here are four things I learned this year, presented in a countdown fashion, from funny to more serious lessons. And each lesson is accompanied by my comics that were most liked on social media this year. You can also read this post on Medium.
4. Olympics can be fun even when you don’t care about them
As a fairly non-sporty person, I didn’t even know the Olympics were happening in 2024 until all the memes started. And oh boy, did they deliver. From the gearless Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec to the sloppy moves of Raygun, I laughed my heart out and I would be lying if I didn’t admit these were my favorite Olympics ever.
With the Olympics being the meme highlight of the summer, I also wanted to join in on the social media craze. And I did it the only way I know how: By imagining how my neurodivergent clumsy ass would do at the Olympics. The result was the following comic.
3. Memes about neurodivergence keep on giving
While ADHD and neurodivergence content was trending in 2022 and 2023, I felt like this trend was slowly dying down in 2024. However, the success of my neurodivergent Olympics comic proved me wrong! It did well above my average, which can only mean neurodivergent humor is here to stay.
My newly found self-confidence in creating neurodivergent humor blossomed again around Halloween. Here is the result.
And there is my Substack post that goes with the comics from the last two points:
2. The science of comics can reveal how we think
Now we turn to a discovery I made in my scientific research of comics. And yes, that’s a real job!
Together with my colleagues Neil Cohn and Irmak Hacımusaoğlu at Tilburg University, we analyzed over 300 comics. We looked at motion lines in comics and asked whether they influence how we know what is alive in a comic.
We found that animates (entities perceived as alive) get less motion lines in comics than inanimates (objects perceived as not alive, like a ball). Why is that? We propose the following answer.
If you are curious to learn more about this, or wonder how comics relate to cognitive science, you can read my post below.
1. Love is the only antidote to war
This year I completed a comic about my grandma’s journey through a war zone to come and visit me soon after I was born.
You can read the comic “Brave Hearts” here:
Despite the difficult revisiting of my traumatic family history and grappling with emotions I didn’t even know I had about war, I learned an important lesson that I want to shout from the bottom of my lungs:
Love is the only antidote to war!
There is really nothing else worth saying that could summarize my year better than this message. If you read Brave Hearts, you will know and feel just how love and not violence can be the only way forward.
In fact, this message and Brave Hearts marked my year so much that I also talked about it in my Medium Day talk. So many attendees felt seen and shared their stories and struggles that can only be solved through empathy and love. Thank you for being there!
While I am grateful for all the opportunities and successes this year has brought me, I need to acknowledge the most difficult truth of all.
2024 was a gruesome year. We want and deserve better.
We all deserve peace.
I will finish with my most liked comic this year and plead that humanity does better next year.
