Greetings Programs!

So let's see...it's been a year since my last journal entry, and two years since my last proper entry. Needless to say, in that two years a lot has happened. Two years ago I was working what was essentially a dead end job. For those who don't know, I spent eight years working in the student loan industry. Now, if you read the news with any frequency, you know that student loans are a debt that is becoming more and more unmanageable for many people and I was right in the heart of that problem. You see I was the person (along with many more) who would call (and take calls from) people who were having a difficult time paying back their loans. In fact, many of them were in danger of defaulting (I often dealt with the most extreme cases). This meant talking to people who didn't want to talk to me, dealing with people who wanted nothing to do with me, and dealing with stresses that extended far beyond their student loans.

One day (about two years ago, though I don't remember the exact date) I had a particularly bad day at work. In fact, it was one of the worst. I don't remember the details but I remember it was terrible. After one call, I took off my headset and took a five minute breather. During that time I thought back to May when three of my best friends (including my partner's husband...we're a polyamorous family) all graduated from the same technical school that I had graduated from back in 1999. I decided at that moment that I was going to go back to school and get a degree that I can actually use (I currently have a Associates Degree in Graphic Design but was never able to develop the proper skills to make it a career).

So, with a little research and a lot of encouragement from my friends, I quit my full-time job that was paying well and had excellent benefits (but was killing my soul and stressing me out beyond what I could manage), and returned to school as a full-time student. I decided to do this because the first time I went to school after HS, I worked a lot and didn't focus as much on my studies as I should have. I refused to make that same mistake. Thankfully, it seems to be paying off in spades! When I originally graduated back in '99, I had a 2.65 GPA. In the two semesters I've been back to school, my fall semester I finished with a 3.89 GPA, and in the Spring I achieved a 4.00 GPA for the first time ever in my life. I'm incredibly proud of this because I was never a good student in school, and would have rather watched TV or play video games instead of studying. I could never achieve what I wanted if I continued that mindset.

Now, for those of you who are curious, I'm currently studying Visual Communications at Madison College here in Madison, WI. I'm working on focusing my skills on video production (editing in particular) as well as post production and motion graphics. I have all my videos posted on my production Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu.....TJqqfMFBw/feed

I certainly encourage you to visit the page and watch my videos. There isn't any furry-centric content there, but as I continue to practice my puppeteering, I expect that to change hopefully in the near future!

I think I've gone on long enough for now. As you can see, despite my lack of activity on here, I've been quite busy! The future is looking a little uncertain, but I'm excited to see what it brings!