There's a reason I cook when I'm stuck.

Not because it's relaxing, exactly. It's more that cooking is one of the things I can do where the feedback is immediate and honest. You taste it. It needs salt. You add salt. Problem identified, problem solved, move on. The stew doesn't care about your feelings. It just needs more time or more heat or more of something, and you figure out which one and you do it.

Creative work almost never works like that. You can stare at a half-finished comic for two hours and have no idea if it needs more time or more heat or just needs to be thrown out and started over. You can spend a afternoon editing a sequence in a video and realize it’s trash and it’s now time to evening chores. The feedback loop is slow and unreliable and mostly happens inside your own head, which is the least trustworthy place to do quality control.

So I like to cook. It’s a thing I do where my hands know what to do and the result clearly apparent. It helps my brain work in different ways. And then I can go back to the drawing table with a fresh brain.

Farm Beef Stew Recipe: chicken stock, carrots, onions, celery, garlic, Joey Ramone, head of garlic, potatoes, tomato paste, dried herbs, random spices.