Why

This page could also be titled "Where" or "How"

• Where did the story of Sophie the Time Traveling Mouse come from?
• How did it get made?

The idea of Sophie, the Time Traveling Mouse, had been a story I'd been kicking around in my head and playing with for over well 20 years.

The earliest journal entry I could find for my time traveling mouse were these two from 2003:

October 14 2003
The mouse was back today.  Or at least I think it was back.  Hell, for that matter, I think it is a mouse.  It is hard to say.  I didn’t see the ceiling dematerialize in front of me though, so maybe it wasn’t the mouse or at the very least perhaps this time it was an ordinary mouse and not my time traveling mouse.  I thought about setting up a system of sensors and cameras in my apartment to track movement.  That way, I figure even if I’m not around, if the mouse materializes again I’ll be ready for him.

 Then I began thinking more realistically.  I mean obviously if a mouse is advanced enough to travel through time, it would be advanced enough to avoid detection by motion activated sensors.  Assuming it wants to avoid detection, that is.  Perhaps, just perhaps, my mouse is looking for me to detect it.  Ah, it gets so tricky, once you start going down that road.  Then you don’t know what you can and can’t believe anymore.

 October 15 2003
The mouse ate through a plant of mine.  Or at least I think it did.  I didn’t think that mice liked to eat plants so it could just be that I have a diseased plant.  

So clearly Sophie was on my mind, even back then. Though I didn't know her like I do today. (You'll notice, for instance, that I was misgendering her. 2003 was a different time!)

By 2004, I had registered the domain name "einsteinsmouse.com" with the idea that I was going to write and publish her story there. That didn't happen. I did get about 50 or so pages into writing the story back then. I was exploring just what the story of Sophie should be about back then. There were some clever ideas, a few of them which actually survived to today. Mostly, though, it was madness.

A few of things things that I hated:

• The story was too wordy. I was personally in love with this little mouse I'd invented but I worried that no one else would have the patience to weed though all the damn words needed to tell the story. A better writer than me might have been able to get away with it. But I knew who I was.
• The story needed to be visual. This much as clear to me. I was pretty convinced for a dozen or so years that the story absolutely had to be a graphic novel. But as I couldn't draw anything, I got more and more despondent.

Every year or two I would write a chapter or two, expand the universe, if only in my own mind. Meanwhile, I was collecting whatever stock art clip art I could have cartoon mice and sheepishly (mousily?) realizing that the creation of this story would forever escape me. It was too big for me, needed to be visual and I had neither the eye to create something like that nor the brain that was able to think that way.

Then on April 10, 2023, I had a stroke.

Couldn't move the left side of my body.

Had to relearn typing.

Had to go to speech therapy.

SO much got scrambled. BUT...I also ended up having this newfound