Sometime a week or so ago Alexis of The Church Of St Felicia, started a thread about something. I don't remember what it was, only that it was totally needed and every single comment on it was an accurate calling of bullshit. I read through it and commented that I wished I had an award I could give out to everyone involved because I felt strongly that they deserved the "calling bullshit award" for the day.

Some discussion ensued and it was decided that it should be a ribbon. This I can do, I thought. I have been wanting to make more coloring book pages so I said I would make a colorable pdf.

So I did, and now you can download it right here.

Feel free to download this, print it out, color it, and share it with others. If you see someone calling some bullshit, you now have an appropriate award to give.

If you enjoy this coloring page, you are welcome to send me some dollars through paypal but it's also cool if you don't.

And now for some meandering musings.

As I was drawing this, I was listing to an audio of a somewhat old school book on self esteem called The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. I would probably never have gotten this book, had it not come highly recommended by someone who's recommendations I take seriously.

So I'm listing to this book and the author is talking about how when building self esteem is treated superficially, it runs the risk of doing much more damage than if we just left it alone. Which makes me think back to my younger years. We had a weird self esteem class in middle school and got "participation awards" in gymnastics.

It's funny that so many people make fun of my generation for getting participation awards even though we never asked for them.

I remember thinking the first one was cool, but by the 5th (I did a lot of gymnastics) it was embarrassing because I knew I hadn't done anything to earn it. Eventually I threw them all out and I never really knew what to do with awards I actually earned. My graduation "honor society cords" got incorporated into an art project that later got tossed. A fellow student asked, "don't you want to save those?" and I had no answer. I just wondered why I would save them? They didn't really mean anything.

So I'm thinking I want to make more awards. Awards that are needed and can be given out to people who are doing things that matter. Maybe it's calling bullshit on something, maybe it's getting out of bed when you are having a rough time. I know Emily McDowell already does this, but I think there's room for more.

Bullshit Caller