Notice Me Senpai

This actually happened to me once.

But what went down was a bit too complicated to fit into 4 panels. So here’s a bit of extra story-time.

I was a manager at the time delivering a particularly complex project with particularly ambiguous requirements. Oh, and it was particularly undersold, too. As in 2x, maybe 3x undersold - no joke. But I had the confidence that I could deliver and the Partners voiced their confidence in me, too.

At the same time, the account I was delivering this project for was up for a contract renewal. Winning the renewal would mean another several years of employment for hundreds of people. All the Senior Partners at our office went into all-hands-on-deck mode to strategize our proposal response. And when there are partners, there are also managers who take notes, say yes, and do the brunt of the late-night proposal writing. I was asked to join as well and naturally my response was, “Absolutely I would love to contribute.”

Not wanting to take any chances, the C-level executives also summoned a Super-Super Senior Partner to check-in on our progress. But not just any Super-Super Senior Partner, the Super-Super Senior Partner - the one who helped win this contract the first time. Allegedly, he was a god.

The God Partner allowed the Senior Partners to bask in his presence, to speak of ideas and suggestions to him. And after each breath, the God Partner smote each and every one of their ideas. Needless to say, the God Partner paid no quarter to us lowly managers who were scrambling to capture the essence of every word that left his lips and scribe them onto our peasant note taking tools we called laptops.

But one particular meeting was different. During one of our weekly tribunals, I found myself standing between the God Partner, the disheveled Senior Partners, and the whiteboard. I was capturing the discussion points on the whiteboard so the group could follow along, blue dry erase marker in hand scribbling as quickly as possible summarized notes and diagrams.

Maybe it was the sweat on my brow or maybe it was the frantic dance I had been performing all meeting long but the God Partner noticed me. He interrupted his very own thought mid-sentence and said, “Hey, before I move on…”

The God Partner paused before continuing. The sweat on my brow turned into several puddles everywhere else. What could he have been so dissatisfied about? Was he disappointed with how the action items I captured were not actionable? Was it that the on-the-fly diagrams I had drawn did not convey our values appropriately? How was I about to be smote? Dozens of thoughts ran through my head as I anticipated his reaction.

Finally, the God Partner looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I just have to say you’re really good at taking meeting minutes.”

I was in shock. It seemed like the other partners and managers were as well since no one said anything for several long seconds. Eventually I was able to summon the strength to move my vocal cords and responded with the only appropriate response, “Oh, thank you so much.”

And then we moved on as if nothing had happened. That late evening, I was answering emails that I missed from my project team all day long thanks to that meeting. I kept reliving that moment with the God Partner and thought, “Thanks dude… I’m managing a multi-million dollar project for you, too you know?”

Anyway, I never told anyone this story and I’m sure many of the people that shared that moment with me probably have since forgotten it. I wanted to share anyway, especially now that some time has passed and I’ve since left that world.

I wanted to try to capture how I felt in that moment through this comic strip. I changed quite a bit of it and made it much simpler so that its more relatable. I hope I captured the essence of the moment appropriately.

Artistically - if I’m allowed to say that - this strip is really important for me in many ways. I hadn’t drawn anything in nearly 20 years. Its due to many factors but much of it boils down to self-doubt. I’ve been standing in my own way for decades and I wanted to make a change.

The members of the Super Mochi Team have been in my head for about a year and they only existed in a few napkin scribbles. I’ve been too scared to materialize them into anything else. But after a lot of self-discovery, therapy, and talking to myself in the mirror, I was able to scrounge up the courage to draw them out.

I made as many choices as possible to get out of my own damn way. I picked this joke since it was the easiest to convey over some of my other ideas. Also, the cat was the easiest to draw for me. I had originally planned for the cat to never smile as I depict him in the other comic strips. But I just had to break “character” and “consistency” for the sake of just getting something on paper. Also, I made sure to paint outside the lines just to force me to be comfortable with it. Perfectionism and high standards served me well back when I was a consultant, but its been nothing but a major disservice to me creatively.

This dumb joke and the smiling happy cat got me past my 20 year “slump” and I’m glad I did it. I was able to gain the confidence for the next three comic strips and they materialized much more easily.

Ok, novella over (my old creative writing professor used to always tease me that I wrote too much). I don’t plan on making future posts this long. If you made it this far, you’re amazing. Make sure to tell yourself that the next time you look at yourself in the mirror.

Ramen