Hello everyone,

I suppose a lot of things have taken place the last...9 years? Wow, time really does fly. I'll not try to summarize everything that has happened in the last decade; I'm sure you're more interested in where I'm going musically anyway.

So, early 2024 I finally got COVID. Amongst other serious things, I lost my voice for almost a month. It was a scary time for me. Despite having not done very much vocally before, it had always been my dream to sing and do voice acting. I thought that dream had, like so many others before it, finally fallen into the realm of impossibility. However, I not only recovered my voice, but I had a Tom Jones moment that catapulted me beyond my wildest dreams. I can now sing in a higher register than ever before.

While I'm still trying to learn how to use my voice, to have gone so long without the hope of ever singing like I wanted to, it's been like suddenly finding a superpower to be able to hit higher notes and sing with power I never dreamed possible. I'm stoked beyond words to begin learning how to use my voice for bigger and better projects; I have a lot of lost time to make up for.

In terms of music, while I'm still learning how to use my voice, the things I post will be less polished and more experimental, pushing me to take higher and higher risks and forcing me to improve. I do feel sad at times that I didn't have this voice 10 years ago (or 20, for that matter), but I'm thankful and it's better late than never. I feel so infantile and vulnerable during this time that it's really amazing to me from an existential point of view. Despite learning stage performance (solo and band) for almost twenty years, I feel completely exposed with my underdeveloped, exciting voice.

I do hope these years have been gentle to you, my friends. I am glad to be some small part of your journeys once again.

Sincerely,
Nev

Being a novice fursuiter (celebrating my first anniversary in 5 days!!!), I have noticed that I am incapable of making visual memories while in fursuit. I can remember other sensory elements (like what people said to me, how someone hugged me, etc.), but I literally cannot remember a single thing I have seen while in fursuit.

Is this a common thing? Do others experience fursuiting in this way? It leaves me with a very, very strange sense of craving more suiting events as they become a "only enjoyable in the moment" sort of thing.

Oh dear, it looks like someone _was_ videoing :P~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUEdCvL8W9s#t=654

I'll just leave this here.

First and foremost, a big thank you to all my new watchers!

I have had lots and lots of notes, comments, and shouts from all you wonderful fuzzies about Shawshank.

Just so there is no confusion, Shawshank is a character that belongs to  nevermint. The current Shawshank fursuit also belongs to Nevermint. The character already has a bit of history and lots of art, so I don't really need to say much in terms of an introduction.

I was originally given the opportunity to step into Shawshank's paws at RMFC 2014. After a rather unexpectedly spectacular response, I was given a second opportunity to suit at MFF 2014. Once again, everyone's response was far better than I could have ever expected. Shawshank might be visiting BLFC 2015, but we'll have to see what the future holds!

I will most likely be revamping my FA to account for my new escapades. Believe it or not, I have only been fursuiting for 10 months, but I will probably continue doing it forever ^.^

Best wishes to everyone over their holidays and see all of you in the New Year!!

Hey everyone!

So after having a few people ask and after posting a picture that confused everyone, no, my Birthday hasn't happened yet!

My Birthday is the 22nd of October, so it's still a ways out there.

Also, because even more people have been asking (omg, you guys give me the warm fuzzies like I can't even describe!), here is a link to my Amazon wishlist: http://amzn.com/w/1HP88X818BLEX

Seriously, you all are the best friends and I so do not deserve any of you!

Catch ya on the dance floor!

das woof

Come say hi!!! Room 430, or in all the dances.

EDIT:

Well, we got moved to room 440!! Come say hi there xD

Sure, I'll do this one too!

Any assumptions (or I'll even open it up to general questions you never thought you could ask) about me you want answered?

I would imagine probably no-one will even see this journal XD~

Hello everyone!

It sure has been a long time since I last posted here! I don't even know where to start with how many things have taken place in my life. I suppose I'll just list the more prominent events that stick out to me:

I got a new job
I bought my first house
I got radically outed by a member of my own family (causing half my life to promptly crash)
I gained more new friends than I can begin to count
I got a fursuit and am working on designs for my next one

If anyone has real specific questions on things that have taken place/thing that will be taking place going forward, please feel free to ask questions. My biggest problem right now is the lack of free time to do much hobby-craft of any type. Once I get my house and job in better order, I will probably resume posting music and pictures of my new inventions here!

Blessing and cheers to you all, my friends (even though I don't know why you all stick with me :D),
the wolf

Warmest Season's Greetings!

As I look back through this year, I count myself truly blessed to have so many wonderful and faithful friends. Thank you all for how you have contributed to enriching my life.

And to those who have especially touched my life, please forgive the lateness of the presents I have for you all; believe me, it will be worth the wait!

I hope everyone is warm and well this Eve of Christmas!

dragonwolfcreations

---

ryoken and I have decided to officially launch our business!

...a business in which we will be offering too many things to enumerate at this point!


---

I suppose, you could say we will be offering imagineering...

Stay tuned!

Hey everyone!

While I am not at 100% just yet, it does seem that I will be attending Rocky Mountain Fur Con this year. If you're going to be attending as well, you can find me on Twitter NevirWolf. Come around and say hello =D

Hey everyone,

I can't type very long because looking at my cellphone overwhelms my eyes petty quick, but I did want to at least set the record straight so you know what happened to me:

On Sunday night I struck my head while playing softball. I suffered a rather large concussion. 1/2 hr after the injury, in the parking lot, I had a massive seizure. My left side went haywire with my leg and arm tightening to the point that the EMTs's couldn't unfold my limbs. My heart shrank to 21bpm and I could barely inhale as 1/2 my abs were crushing my gut against my lungs. I spent all night in the trauma ward ICU paralyzed on the left side of my body and unable to speak or focus/use my eyes. Some time later Monday morning, I slowly started being able to see again and speak again. My left arm came back sometime around 6 am and my leg followed. Monday evening I was discharged from the hospital after a whole day of tests determined I was well enough to leave. I am currently at my parents' house as I have to be woken up every 2hrs to make sure I'm still alive.

Sorry this is only the short version, but I have to put the cellphone down every few minutes because my eyes hurt looking at it. I wanted to thank everyone who has prayed, sent well-wishes, or encouraged me during this very distressing time of my life. I think I understand what the phrase "valley of the shadow of death" means a little bit better now. I hope the worst is over, but I have a very long and very slow recovery schedule ahead.

My biggest thank-you goes out to my beloved Ryoken who held my paw as I fell into nothingness; that was the last loving sense I had before my horrifying journey.

Please tell everyone that Nevir is going to be ok.

Take care, my friends.
Nev

Cheers everyone.

So, it appears that I will be attending my very first AC this year! My album will most likely not be finished by the time I have to leave for AC, but who knows with how work has been up in the air recently.

Will be spending most of my time hanging out and meeting friends and such. I'll probably be doing the whole Twitter-announcements for where I'll be the different days if anyone wants to drop by and say "Hi".

Take care out there!

Greetings everyone ^^

So I have been working on re-booting my music streaming for a long time now and am curious if there is even any interest anymore after so long a hiatus. My format will probably remain the same with random performances of finished song along with some songs I am working on mixed with some improvisation. My new setup affords me much greater flexibility with the instruments and design, and I may even be able to do audio too (so you can all be assaulted by my "new" voice...).

However, while I am starting this thing back up (and with work being literally as unpredictable as the weather), the only way I have to tell anyone that I will be broadcasting live is via Twitter. If you are interested in getting updates on when I will be streaming (as well as random one-liners you can use to make everyone in the room stop talking and stare at you), follow me on NevirWolf (original, I know...).

While this year may have started out harsh and rocky, I am at a place where I can start picking things back up again.

I am finding that losing someone in your life changes you in ways you cannot expect.

I know it seems that I have been musically dormant for a long time now, yet in real life, that is not the case. The truth is, no matter what I start to play, or have determined to practice, I always somehow default to three very cutting and particular songs that reduce me to tears. After that, I cannot play anything else, and I have to stop. It is a childish thing to say, but I don't want these feelings anymore; it has become deeply troubling to me.

I know she is gone.

But then again, I see her when I play; she dances to my songs, just as my paws dance over the keys. I am no longer in control of myself; the music happens of its own accord. I sit there, amazed and dumbstruck, while I watch my own paws move by themselves to entreat melodies and flourishes that I cannot consciously conceive.

I believe she is living in my music.

I am a scientist, and even worse, an American applied-scientist; I have been trained for countless years to ignore intangible feelings and use cold, unsympathetic facts to determine what I know. I cannot explain anything that I have just said about my beloved girl, but I know. I just know.

She speaks through me now, through my music, her message of love and cheerfulness.

I was afraid of letting go at first, but now... maybe I won't have to...

I can still hear her.

I swear, she's panting, and I turn around to ruffle her ears and...there's nothing there.

I hear the sound of her paws on the carpet; she's coming to see what I'm doing. I look down and...she's not there.

She sighs...I turn to tell her it's ok, that Ryo will be home from work soon...and my corner-chair is empty.



I swear to god, if you love someone, even a little, tell them right now, don't wait another moment. I have never felt this type of pain before. Part of me is missing now.

Well, that's the end of it.

I was just sitting there, like before, but somehow it was all different. This was the end. Nothing was written beyond this point; I am now in the undiscovered country. There is no tomorrow but what I make of it; my path, defined and restraining, has opened up to the sky of endless possibilities. Seven years late, six visits to the emergency room, five heart-breaks, four beats in the measure, three life-changing events, two martial arts gold medals, and one dragon later, I have graduated college.

Hell, it's about time.

I am thankful,

for my dear dragon, who loves, comforts, and encourages me;

for my friends, who bring cheer, warmth, and happiness to me;

for my parents, who have supported me through numerous trials, and who did not abandon me.


I am thankful,

that I can stand, even after breaking my back at work and requiring numerous procedures to correct it;

that I can walk, even after i destroyed my right knee skiing and the surgery made it worse;

that I can talk, even when my throat hurts enough to make me crazy most of the day;

that I can think, even after years and years of prescription drugs reduced me to a marshmallow;

that I can play piano, even after all my repeated accidental attempts of digit amputation through stupidity.


I am thankful,

that my music can be heard by others;

that my message can be felt by others;

that my purpose is secured.


I am thankful,

that my God has not abandoned me. This would be what I am most thankful for.


Happiness is not the goal; it is the natural result of practicing contentment.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!

Following up from my last journal (at the request of a few concerned friends), I have been to a couple specialists, and the general consensus is that I do not have throat cancer. Also, in the spirit of good-news first, my voicebox looks "really good" (they put a camera tube up your nose so they can watch your throat...feels like someone's poking around inside your brain).

However, part of my throat responsible for swallowing keeps breaking and bleeding for some unknown reason. It also pulls on my vocal chords funny (sort of like a leg with a limp, but in the throat), so I have lost my ability to control a significant portion of my singing voice. No-one knows what is happening to my throat or why this is the way it is. One doctor even said it could be like this for "many months"...which is disconcerting at best.

Thank you to everyone who sent me notes of encouragement; I am still hanging in there.

This is very difficult and humbling for me to do, but I feel you all at least deserve an explanation:

So, as many of my more regular listeners have noticed, I have been musically dormant for awhile now. I haven’t really even been doing music on any level. Truth be told, my spirit is breaking and I already feel a downward spiral beginning as my health declines yet again.

They say you don’t appreciate something until it’s gone; I say you only understand why you truly appreciate something after it’s ripped from you. I have been struck by a mystery affliction which has compromised my throat, causing me to spontaneously bleed from my larynx. There is also an accompanying pain that sears my voice when I talk which I now have to mentally block out to appear normal on the outside. Multiple rounds of doctors has led to a determination that some sort of non-standard infection is attacking my throat, but no-one is certain what this is or how long it will be here. Now I wait...again.

I am no stranger to having my life interrupted by massive injuries; three years are gone from shredding a disc in my spine. I am no stranger to living with pain for very, _very_ long periods of time; my knee reconstruction in ‘01 hurt for almost seven years and still has troubles today. I absolutely hate complaining or being weak over anything...but I am beginning to realize my own limits.

So, if I were completely honest with everyone, I haven’t been doing music because I don’t feel like it. I just can’t. I just don’t. And I am sorry to everyone who listens to me and enjoys my music and expects to hear more things from me. Believe me, you are not the only ones disappointed in me.

I didn't want to write this journal as a pity-party nonsense piece; that’s not how I do things. However, if you are so inclined, encouragement would be very welcome.

My days are turning gray.

Cheers everyone!

RMFC 2012 was a massive hit, but now it's time to get back to work. Loads of new music and fun (ie. goofy) projects coming down from my little studio.

My results with streaming live music MWF for an hour in the evenings was a mixed result. While it was quite enjoyable, and a few people came out to listen (and offered great feedback!), my other schedules kept conflicting with my streaming schedule and made for some long breaks. I am looking into other sharing formats and other streaming services (u-stream made it _very_ hard to set appropriate levels for audio and test them before going live), so if anyone has ideas for what to try next, please let me know! My only real stipulation is that the format be live as there is great magic in a live performance that does not happen during just a recording.

I've also been looking at resurrecting one of my jewelry projects...

Take care everyone and enjoy your summer days!

Looks like I might be in attendance!

But I probably won't have my CDs or even business cards on paw. Probably just hanging out and general stuff.

Anyone else going to be there?

So, I have made a rather interesting discovery as of late. But that might need a little backstory:

Rewind a couple decades. I was always told that I had a bad singing voice and was asked (usually not politely) not to sing. Ever. Listening to the radio, I was always mystified by the fact that some guys could sing high pitched notes while I could do nothing of the sort. I decided that some people must just be able to sing because their bodies work a certain way, and that other people can't sing because their bodies don't work that same way. And that I was in the latter category. And that was the end.

Fast forward into puberty and I decided the only way I could sing was to mimic operatic singers in the baritone range. I called it my "fake opera" voice. I figured as long as I could hide behind the fact that it was a fake voice, people might leave me alone and let me sing. This went on for some time.

When the late 90s rolled around, I was re-visited by this notion that some people could sing and that I really still couldn't. The (now classic) boy-bands of Backstreet Boys and N*sync (both of which annoyed the crap out of me at the time) had guys singing in higher pitched voices. Many of my friends could sing in those exact ranges as well which further perturbed my situation; it struck me as a matter of fairness that my friends could do something I couldn't because they were gifted and I wasn't.

A few years later, when I was first starting to record music instead of just performing music, I came to the realization that people always like singers better than musicians. A couple incidents in a row, where I had performed a great piece of music, followed by someone else who performed (in all objective honesty) a mediocre piece of music but had a singer involved with it, demonstrated to me with painful clarity that regardless of how much I improved my musical talent I would never amount to much.

Move up to the semi-present, and we have last year. It was an amazing time for me, as I filled my free time with composing and arranging music with a freedom I hadn't previously experienced with music. Some of my best works and greatest accomplishments of all time took place during that period. But as time went on, the demons of the past came back to haunt me. I hit a glass ceiling with my music as I could not do what I wanted to do yet again: I had no voice to put the most important emotions into my music. There was one musical project in particular which, after 4 and a half months of working on it, I scrapped because it was trash. It was a bit heartbreaking because I had finally hit the "I can't" wall where I was physically prevented from improving because I still had no voice to sing with.

Needless to say, my musical momentum halted on a dime. I haven't been posting music with anywhere near the frequency I once had; I felt like a musical sham, a fake. I continued playing and to this day have amassed a frightening number of songs I play live, but I didn't feel like recording any of them because there was no point; I couldn't do with them what I wanted so why would anyone else want to hear them?

Now, as these things usually happen, by complete mistake, I made a very important discovery. In the car driving back from the mountains one evening, I was listening to "Stoned in Love" by Chicane & Tom Jones. As is usually the case when I'm alone, I was singing along with the music (and if you know the song, the range that Mr. Jones possesses is incredible), when I suddenly had a moment when I realized I could develop resonance while singing super high by modifying how my throat constricted. In a flash, I suddenly understood how guys can sing high and maintain good vocal quality.

So, this probably doesn't (necessarily) mean that much for the future. I still have years and years and years of psychological stuff to get over to improve my confidence in singing, and I'm inferring that I suddenly have this awesome Tom Jones-style voice. I don't. But I'd like to think this might be a rather important turning point in my music and in my life as a musician.

I guess the TLDR is:
Keep on trying: you never know what you will learn tomorrow that might change the rest of your life. It took me 30 years to find this out; it's never too late to have a game-changer.

I will not be there!!!

So sad, I know...

But if you would have come up to say hi to me, go say hi to Ryoken instead! He will look like this!

Maybe one of these years I'll make an appearance...

Cheers everyone!

Seems as I'm not dead yet, I have taken a respit from recording music. I have found myself playing the same song over and over again, but not really for practice. It seems that just when you think you have exhausted a song of everything you can learn from playing it, something brand new occurs, and you begin to learn more again.

I think this learning is helping keep me from stressing during these crazy times during the run-up to graduation. I will be returning to recording music soon enough.