Are the Squirbles from Florida?

*Part of an early* *comic* *I made in Delray Beach.*

I think a lot about my move to Florida in 2015 and how it affected my creative life. And since Squirbles are at the heart of my creative life in the Sunshine State, I think a lot about whether squirbles are a tropical species that live here amidst the palm trees and the scampering lizards.

The short answer is no. Squirbles are not from Florida.

Squirbles live in Squirbledom, and Squirbledom lives in children. That probably sounds slightly disappointing—it’s nice to think that Squirbledom is a real place with specific, earthly coordinates.

*There is nothing so noble as spending an afternoon building a world—among childhood friends or one’s own delusional noggin.*

But I think of the mind of a child as a special, universal place—with an emphasis on universe. When I was a kid, I was very much steeped and steady in my own world, with little concern about the realtime limits of geography. The make-believe was so much realer than the made-believe.

Still, The Squirbles have an important connection to Florida, and it’s worth mentioning here.

When I lived in New York, I worked in television and advertising, and while I genuinely liked my jobs, I certainly didn’t love them. I longed for a creative independence that felt, always, like it was eluding me.

By the time Christoph and I knew we were ready to move out of the city, my creativity had shriveled to nothing. I was analytical and a bit snarky, and I valued intellect over intelligence.

Florida immediately struck me as a place for dropouts.

It probably is, let’s be honest, but Florida has a life-saving effect on an over-thinking brain. It melts it. I felt like a 21st century glacier, with entire swaths of my mind breaking away into nothing.

The change was destabilizing to say the least, and I resented it. I longed for book groups and Brooklyn-y cafes and debates about German philosophy, even though I despised all these when I was up north.

Two years into my migration south, Florida got the best of me. I gave up the fight, and I let go.

And just like that, I began to experience a joy that my over-thinking brain simply couldn’t achieve.

It was around this time that the Squirbles were born.

They emerged in full Florida color. Bright and utterly un-cynical. I wondered sometimes if they were a little too bright and uncynical. But they wanted to be who they wanted to be: an antidote to all the anger, grief, and irony in me—and in America.

So sure, in this sense, the Squirbles are from Florida.

Recently my mom and I were talking about the political problems around the world. She shared with me an article about how there is a huge demand for children’s books about trauma. She asked, “How do the Squirbles deal with everything happening in the world?”

“They ignore it,” I said flatly.

And that’s just it. Sometimes, I think, it really is ok to be a dropout. To live in your own world. To live steeped and steady in the make-believe. To live with the heart of a child.