So yeah. Money. It's a pain. No internet or phone for a while. I'm dealing with it. I'd open for commissions but I can't do business over the internet without reliable access to the internet, so fuck it, I'll just have to wait it out.

I'll try to check in periodically till I can get the bill paid. I'm doing fine.

Later!

Perspective.

Massive amounts of Perspective.

I can honestly say that I am a little wiser than I was at this time last year. I get things on a level that I didn't get them before, and I feel more hopeful now than I ever have that in spite of my many challenges I can have what I've always wanted. I can have a life in which I live, not merely exist.

You see, I've been applying some spiritual principles that some would dismiss as cultish wishful thinking, but that in my observation have plenty of merit. This ties into some artwork I'll be posting as I finish it. These particular pieces are the culmination of a lesson I've learned, and that lesson is this.

There is nothing more important than feeling good. Every human pursuit is ultimately for the purpose of feeling better, enjoying life more, improving life for others or for oneself. Feeling good is GOOD, and that flies in the face of much of what we're taught about life I think.
That's true in my case anyway; I was always taught that Life was hard work, sacrifice, misery, and that if I did everything right by a little black book with embossed letters on the cover that once I was dead I could start enjoying myself. I think that sucks, personally.

You see, all of the best work I do, all the things that enlighten, uplift, inspire and generally make other people happy, and make me happy in the process, feel great while I'm doing them. If I don't feel good, I can't flow my energy into my artwork and it turns out horrible. Nothing motivates me to flow like feeling good does; even money, the highest pursuit many people will ever know, just isn't worth it. Nothing I ever did just for the money ever wound up being satisfying, and on occasions when I've done things I hated for the promise of a little gold and didn't get paid for them, what did I have in the end?

Now, there are some practices, theories in metaphysics related to a concept called the law of attraction. I can say with certainty that this works in theory: Typically what my attention is on for a long time, or very intensely, ends up popping up at some point. Now, most people who try this stuff miss some key elements that, for whatever reason, make all the difference in my experience. It's incredibly important to meditate on what you want to bring to your experience from a place of positive emotional state. When you really want something, and you feel awesome every time you think about it, and you feel at least a state of contentment most of the time you're not thinking about it, it RACES into your life. My evidence for this is anecdotal, but I had a thought related to this.

Most people seem to have a life of very conditional happiness, if they have any happiness at all. It's based on the conditions of " If I have this thing, this person, this whatever, then I can be happy." But those are nothing but stories that could be summed up this way: " My lack of X is why I cannot be happy now."

So I thought: If feeling good is the most important thing, and all the other awesome stuff I want just seems to come hurtling out of the blue at me when I'm in a place of peace or exhileration or any of a list of my very favorite feelings.... Then why not just focus on the feelings themselves? Why not just do meditations, affirmations, sigils, whatever it takes for me to drop into my groove as quickly as possible every day when I get up and every time something rattles me out of it so I'm in that place of continuous flow for as great a percentage of my time as I possibly can?

And you know what?

It works.

My dominant intention for the last month has been to be in a good mood as much as I possibly can. And I'm noticing that I still have bad moods, bouts of frustration, fury, even rage or despair. But they dissolve so much faster now. I can't stay in a state of fury for more than an hour or two. Something distracts me, I look at it objectively and see how silly it is, and I just... I get over it as quickly as it shows up.
That's not to say there aren't mitigating factors; I do take supplements to help support mood regulation. But for the most part, My mood has been placid or elevated with very brief intervals of frustration for usually very legitimate reasons.

I feel like I'm onto something, I really do, because I think this is what a person is supposed to feel like, for one thing. And for another, I just don't think you can feel this good and not have good things coming up on the horizon. I can see a few of them. Things keep popping up that I expected or didn't expect and they end up being awesome, even when they're frustrating in the moment they keep working in my favor. It's just mind blowing.

I'm not really exercising much, but I'm stretching a lot more. I'm breathing like I used to when I was sparring all the time. I'm sleeping deeply and restfully, I'm finding myself unable to eat enough to gain weight. I'm satisfied with less food, where normally I have a habit of binging when I'm upset. I'm craving movement and healthy things I enjoy. I keep side-eying the trashy parts of my house and feeling compelled to do something about them, and sometimes I do.

This is very unusual for me. And I'm still incredibly frustrated (and rightly so) with many of my circumstances. But I'm finally getting that whole thing where there's nothing I can do, so quit worrying about it, work on what you CAN work on, and let it work itself out with time.

This has been quite an impressive ramble. And what's funny is I spent a large amount of my time this year in a state of profound despair. I realize now that that whole time I was just focused with almost laser-like precision on doing a whole bunch of shit that I either didn't care about, or wasn't interesting to me at all, or worse, that I legitimately didn't want to do. I was doing things that made me miserable, when i was doing anything. Most of it was not productive at all. And during the period of time when I didn't really have a functional computer I realized, " Isn't it funny how we chain ourselves to these little obligations and than use them as excuses for wasting time with what we don't want to do, and act like we don't have the key to unlocking ourselves?" Tumblr, for example. I mean I was spending like ten hours a day shuffling through pointless shit on tumblr. I liked a lot of it but I was letting it suck away my life in favor of not doing other things I was dreading.

And another thing.

Ten years ago today, I bought my first pack of cigarettes. They were Sampoerna X-Tras if anyone's ever heard of them, and they were clove cigarettes. A year or so later I was mostly smoking Marlboro 27's, and then as my income began declining eventually I was smoking cheaper and nastier things at an astonishing (to me) rate, until I was shackled to something I felt like I couldn't put down. My self-image was formed around my smoking habit, and the level to which I mentally destabilized in the absence of my drug had me convinced that I would never be able to quit 'em. I even convinced myself of the medicinal benefits of the cigars and cigarettes, which were legitimate but they were excuses, they were skins of reasons stuffed with lies. I bought a pack of cloves today, and it's the first pack I've bought in a month. I've had about five cigarettes or so in the last thirty days, and I haven't been buying them even though I've had the money, and wanted them pretty badly at times. I know I don't need them to get through the tough times anymore; so I can enjoy them occasionally, and buy good ones that I enjoy on rare occasions. I'm at that point now, and I think I could even turn one down if I had a suitable alternative now. I am using an e-cig, which some people will say isn't really quitting, and those people can go on thinking that because I don't exist to please them and my behavior is for my benefit, not theirs. I got sucked into this on my quirky, eccentric terms and I'm happy to say that I'm ending a ten year long habit on my own quirky, eccentric terms. It's a hell of a ride and I wouldn't have it any other way, as much as I may kick and scream and bitch about it at times.

So here's to another trip around the sun, and may it be even more interesting and enjoyable than the last.

Till then, Now.

Nominus Expers

I just turned 28. Hurray!

I have this big speech thing I wanna do later about some cool life changes and perspective stuff that's been going on with me lately, but I'll do that when I'm less tired x3

Cross-Posted from Tumblr:

http://www.indiegogo.com/PeSla-LakotaHeartland

Pe’ Sla is an area in the Black Hills of South Dakota (just west of Rapid City) that is considered by the Lakota people to be the Center and heart of everything that is. It is part of our creation story. It is a sacred place. We perform certain ceremonies at Pe’ Sla which sustain the Lakota way of life and keep the universe in harmony. This area is currently owned by the Reynolds family. They plan to auction off almost 2,000 acres on August 25, 2012 to the highest bidder. It is likely that the state of South Dakota will put a road directly through Pe’ Sla and open up this sacred place for development.

Tweet celebrities. Submit to news watch blogs. Post on Facebook. Reblog, reblog, reblog. Spread this EVERYWHERE. This cannot stand. They would never bulldoze and build a road through the Vatican. Please, respect all sacred sites. Help keep this place of worship safe!

And it still took me like four whole days to get around to posting a journal about it x3

Shout out to:
 carenath
 pentax
 wildmark

For helping me get this shit taken care of =3

My laptop's HDD is failing. I need to back it up and replace it. But since I can't do that, I'm shutting it down and storing it until such time as I can afford to deal with it: THIS SHOULD NOT BE MORE THAN A WEEK OR TWO, unless I have to edit this again. A suitable replacement should be in the mail.

Meanwhile, I'm using my frankenbook, an acer with no hard drive booting ubuntu from a thumbrdrive. It's about as bare bones as it gets, and it's buggy as hell, but relatively stable. It's sort of like going from a sports car to a moped, and it means the following things are out the window:
-SKYPE
-IM of ANY KIND
-TUMBLR
-SAVING DATA OF ANY KIND

I don't have skype or enough space for it on this thing. Can you even do skype in linux?

I can't get the IM client to cooperate with me. I'm still signed in on yahoo through my cell phone, so I can send and receive messages that way.

Tumblr will not cooperate at all. Nothing I do will allow me to login and view my dashboard. This is a browser issue and I can't remember what I had to do to solve it last time, which is what I get for not paying attention when my lion does his gadget-voodoo to keep my machines safe and running smoothly. There's a bunch of firefox add-ons and one of them conflicts with Tumblr's interface; I think it's probably Ghostery.

And the thumbdrive that functions as this thing's boot drive is not very big. The SD memory doesn't work, the internal SSD has been removed because of fatal malfunction, and if it's really that important I have a little space on an external hdd but nothing else. When i get my laptop back up and running, I swear I'm gonna make it a priority to get a nice, roomy flash drive to use as the frankenbook's new boot drive; like, at least 16gb if I can swing it. Back to school is on so who knows, I might be able to find a good one on sale. I don't really mind having to use a more limited computer sometimes, but the lack of update/software space is pretty uncomfortable, and constant disk-space warnings are a pain x3

So yeah, kinda lame, but not as bad as it could be. I'll just have to focus on getting other shit done.

21 TRILLION dollars found in tax havens around the world

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/.....fshore-economy

21 TRILLION dollars found in tax havens around the world.

21 *trillion*.

Think about that. Can you even fathom it? That number borders on the incomprehensible!

Put it this way:

World population in 2011: 7,021,836,029

21,000,000,000,000 / 7,021,836,029 = $2990.67, per person in the world, is hidden away, tax free, in banks around the world where the laws permit money to gather interest without significant taxation.

There are more than a billion people in the world today who live on less than one U.S. Dollar PER DAY.


So, a few combined people (.001% of population) have roughly $3,000 for every single living person on the planet.

THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER PERSON ALIVE.

It literally is more than Japan and America’s GDPs put together.

Are you angry yet? I sure as fuck am.

If your fursona had to be a primate, it'd be: An Orangutan

If your fursona had to be a feline, it'd be: North American Cave Lion (P. Leo Atrox which it already is), a clouded leopard, a melanistic savannah cat, or a Chartreux.

If your fursona had to be a canine, it'd be: A Tibetan Mastiff

If your fursona had to be a hoofed animal, it'd be: A mountain goat. Or maybe a unicorn goat.

If your fursona had to be a rodent, it'd be: A squirrel

If your fursona had to be reptile, it'd be: An Alligator Snapping Turtle

If your fursona had to be a marsupial, it'd be: Thylacoleo Carnifex or Tazmanian Devil

If your fursona had to be a fish, it'd be: A Moray Eel or an Electric Eel

If your fursona had to be an amphibian, it'd be: A chinese Giant Salamander

If your fursona had to be an avian/bird, it'd be: Barn Owl

If your fursona had to be a creepy crawly, it'd be: Hermit Crab.

If your fursona had to be a hybrid, it'd be: A mothbat =3

If your fursona had to be a mythical creature, it'd be: It already is, sorta. An Eldritch Horror. But a Genius Locii would also be awesome.

If your fursona had to be a Pokémon, it'd be: A Haunter!

If your fursona had to be a plant, it'd be: a Chinese Tallow tree.

http://austin.culturemap.com/newsde.....ed-rape-jokes/

This article has an excellent perspective. It's possibly the most sane, collected, articulate and reasonably argued response to this incident I have yet seen, and it totally addresses the issue. 100% relevant. Trigger Warning for discussion of rape/mutilation.

It flips the perspective and brings it to bear on the people arguing in favor of the jokes, while also presenting a profound opinion. It's not a popular one but please hear me out.

It's not a joke if it hurts. But you can make those jokes not only about rape, but about any other sensitive subject, ONLY if you can deal with them with subtlety, sensitivity, and deal with them in such a way that the laughter is medicine. Comedy is a form of therapy, and it should help us to work through the hard things about our lives. If you can do that then for the love of God DO IT, because you're part of the change we need in this world.

If you cannot do it though, then sit down, shut up, and listen to this quote from the article- "But causing pain is quite a different fucking matter. Your job as a comedian is to take us through pain, transcend pain, transform pain. And if you don't get that, you are a fucking bully, and I've got zero time for bullies."- Curtis Luciani

*clicks, reads* HE. DID. W H A T ? !

Oh no. No no no. This shit is ON.

If you don’t go sign this I do not know you.

Maybe it’s only a petition with limited impact, but just fucking do it.

https://www.change.org/petitions/ce.....sh-off-the-air

One Monster energy drink

One cherry cheese danish pocket from Publix

and 800mg of ibuprofen made everything aaaaaalllllll beeeetteeeer.

^_____^ <3

I woke up in so much pain I could barely move. Add to that that I woke up late, with all my morning stuff to do (feed dogs, feed cat, let dogs out, make tea, empty and refill ice trays, pour up tea for mom at work, drive mom to work since she can't drive with a broken right shoulder). Uggghhhhh >.< And then she beat me to the car, and I was just in a massive fog from pain, so I hadn't unlocked it yet, and she set of the car alarm. And then yelled at me. And I couldn't stop myself from shouting back. And then she shouted at me for shouting at her. I mean for fuck's sake I didn't MEAN to snap at her but she knew I was having a morning from hell; I mean seriously, this was an eight on the pain scale for me, which is for me the equivalent of spending an entire day getting my ass kicked by seasoned fighters wielding oak practice weapons. Every muscle, and my back, hips, and hands were screaming at me to just go lay back down.

But painkillers and my favorite not-so-healthy breakfast just cleared me right up and I feel pretty accomplished that the first hour or so of my day isn't ruining the rest of it =3

So, here's the thing.

Up until now, the overwhelming majority of my dreams have been horrible nightmares. Good or bad, most of my dreams are totally indistinguishable from reality while i am dreaming, but sometimes in that strange space between dreaming and waking, I can know that I was dreaming and choose to lucidly change the dream and drop back into it. It's also worth pointing out that all normal sensation is present in my dreams, including the capacity for intense pain. If I were to consciously "pinch myself", I'm certain that I would feel it. I've experienced death repeatedly, sometimes several times in one night. I've witnessed the horrific deaths of everyone I love. The unifying theme is that I have no power, no control, and no one will ever help me. I am alone.


But lately, something has been very different.

The overall content is the same. Usually terrifying, horrific, bizarre. Circumstances that would never be particularly likely in reality.

But when the dream reaches a climax, lately I've become prescient within the dream. I can see the outcomes of a sequence of events, with each dominant decision I make ending with a different outcome, leaving me free to choose which outcome I believe is the correct one.

I live through (or die through) every outcome side by side, like fractals or like being continuously aware of your many selves of the many worlds theory. The first time it happened I was attacked by a friend. In one outcome I was killed. In the other two, I overcame him and killed him. The worst of them was actually snapping his neck under my foot while he begged for mercy, knowing he was trying to deceive me.

Last night in several of the dreams I had, I again received three options at the critical moment, which boiled down to
1) Give up, and die.
2) Call for help, and someone will save you.
3) Save yourself.

To demonstrate that these options were available at the critical moment, and believable, I had circumstantial evidence that someone would help me if I asked, but also that I would be able to save myself.

The first dream I had was a dream version of the house where I live. There were Velociraptors. They had chased my cat into a tree outside my window, and I was afraid to rescue my cat. A relative in victorian safari garb with an over-under shotgun blew one of them away so I could retrieve my cat. Later, they got inside the house. I don't know how, but the front door was open. I was worried about the cat again but I had bigger fish to fry; There were two raptors in the front room. In one, they caught me unawares and obviously I died. In the second outcome, I had grabbed a baseball bat and held them off long enough for my aunt to come in with the gun. In the third, I grabbed my sling-blade and neatly dispatched both intruders with only a scratch or two.

I remember only the vaguest of details from the next two dreams; they blended elements from road trips I've had with the bizarre, and involved my father, sister, and stepmother in the first place, and in the second, imagine living in the world of Super Mario Galaxy if it were also the setting for Dead Space. Yeah, makes no sense at all. Probably because I was with Mitso in this one. Either way I get the sense that the multiple outcomes thing happened there, but I only remember one outcome each, the one where I accept help and go exploring.

The last one involves one of the alien worlds in the previous dream, but much richer and more expansive. I'm on a roadtrip with my mom, at a campground of some kind. There's an alien plant, that looks like a bromeliad or similar, very large. I examine it and it's home to a nest of hpyer-aggressive, extremely mobile viper-like snakes. One of them latches onto my arm and I wrestle it down the length of my arm, to my palm, where it locks around one of the bones in my hand. It's pumping incredible amounts of venom into me, and I can feel it burning into my bloodstream. I have two choices now: Do more of what isn't working, and die. Find some way to pry it off, and call out for help. I go into a cabin nearby, find a kitchen utensil (it was a spoon for some reason) and pry the thing off. My heart skips a beat, painfully. It hurts like hell. The places where the venom wound up on my skin as the fangs scratched down my arm are blistering. I have the snake managed, though, and I call for help. And as I do so, I realize I have another set of choices. Rest, and give in before help arrives. Stay conscious, active but calm, and help will arrive. Or, I'm tougher than this thing, and I think I can neutralize the venom if I concentrate. I tried the third one, and I transmuted the venom into something more drug-like, but not deadly; Help arrives, I toss the snake elsewhere, and the paramedic checks me out and decides that I'm miraculously fine.

That last outcome might not seem like anything major, but for someone who's invariably lost, scared, alone, or powerless in his subconscious mind's nightly sojourns.... This feels like an amazing breakthrough. It's like my subconscious is finally getting the message about all of the positive, affirmative inner work I've been doing, and it's challenging me.

It's like it's asking, " Are you sure? This is very different from what we're used to; what exactly are you asking for?"

Anyone have any thoughts on this weirdness?

If you weren't there, you totally missed out!

When I heard that my sweetie and one of my friends were going, I dug up the band and listened to their material. I recognized exactly one song (Illusion), and I based my decision to go on that and the fact that they sounded okay (not 100% my thing) and the tickets were surprisingly affordable. I have no idea why.

And once again a concert for a band I'd never heard of before turns me into a fan. This keeps happening, and it's awesome.

I also ran into a bunch of my old friends there. That was cool.

The opening band was a german group called Straftanz. They were fun, but I found the fact that they were generally very amusing people after their show, mingling around the crowd, to be more memorable than their music, at least for now. I might get into them for no other reason than that one of the members sat behind me and to my right for one of the last of VNV's set, blowing bubbles from a bubble wand out over the crowd, which had a very surreal reaction to the intense lighting effects. It was random, and very cool.

The high points of the concert for me were the numbers with the most audience participation, from my perspective, which was a table at the back of the room. I couldn't have been more than fifty or sixty feet from the stage. I'll link them here, along with names so if the link for some reason goes dead you should still be able to dig up the song if you want.

Illusion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVf2EeTMNJo

Nemesis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAMu8EIOVIw

Nova
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCIg3UbjNg

Perpetual
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikRbKhbvees


It's not unusual for me to have had a blast with anything involving loud music, but those attending gave as good as they got I dare say. I can quote Ronan Harris, the lead singer- "We've never done a show like this before. You guys are awesome!" I think he meant it, and I've never seen any performers as excited and exhausted at the end of their set as these guys. They EASILY had as much fun as the audience.


TL;DR- Click the links, listen to music, if you like them, see one of the shows in this tour. You're missing out massively if you don't <3

Also, I may update later with links to pics/vids from the actual show.

Check it out =3

 shuigetsu
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3179629/

http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/snooping/?akid=1218.450086.bz0DHb&rd=1&t=3


Lame journal is lame. Click the link, read, do what you feel compelled to do. I just found out about this, but I'm too tired to do much more right this second.

Okay so for the first time literally ever, I have changed my avatar. You can blame/thank  jillibeanz for this craziness.

Cuuuuupcaaaaaaaaaaakes xD

As I was driving back from Tallahassee, feeling kinda bummed, this drifted into my mind. I stopped and wrote it down, and felt better. It stems from the fact that my New Year's resolution is nothing more than this: That 2012 will be the best year I have ever lived, whatever it takes. I'll share my writing with you now.

Today is a new day.
And this is the eve of a new year.
I would like to propose that we act like it. Often, we let the years run together, one into the next. Let's let this one be a truly new year.
Forgive the last year's injuries.
Release its burdens and set them down at last.
Bless its kindnesses.
Thank it for its many lessons, and opportunities to grow.
Think of it as a friend; it has passed, and now you must part ways. And as you would with a departed friend, choose to think fondly of it. If you must dwell on its memory, dwell on the laughter, the good times. Speak of them, for it it is good to speak well of the dead.
And we have cause to celebrate. We celebrate a year that was, in part, spent well; and we celebrate the birth of a new year, too. If this new year were a newborn child, how would we welcome it?
With awe? Admiration? Joy, or wonder? Would we welcome it with hope?
Or would we dread the coming of this new life into our experience? Would we great it with loathing and disgust, doubts and fears?
May it ever be that we look on a new year with the first list of sentiments. It can, like a child, enrich our lives and help us to develop as it matures. Bless it, celebrate it, and decide right now that this year will be the best year of your life so far. You have never had a better chance than this one. Choose now to say that, at the end of the next year, you have never lived a better year than 2012.
If it is to be the end of anything, let it be the end of what is holding you back from following your dreams, from being who you know in your heart that person who you truly are. Look at what is lacking in your life and decide to change it for the better, right now.
Happy New Year, and may it bring you better than the last.

"What's the world's greatest lie?... It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.”
― Paulo Coelho


I've been learning a lot. Facing a lot of personal challenges, and the Holiday season brings yet another one upon me.

I'll spare you the details, but imagine for a moment that every Christmas, every single one you'd ever had, brought you face to face with the worst life has to offer?
That's been the case with me. And yet, perhaps for the first time ever, I'm....
*dramatic pause*
Optimistic.

I'm not naturally inclined toward a positive outlook. If you know me well, you know I have plenty of reason to be anything but. However, this year more than any other, I have been brought face to face with the other side of my life, the side that gets me out of every sticky situation, agonizing gauntlet, and formidable challenge I've ever faced. Because no matter how dark things get... I never stopped thinking that something had to give. Even if I didn't know what, something would give way and I'd be able to get through what was blocking me.

I've been tremendously fortunate, and I could never see it because of one crisis after another. And more importantly, I couldn't believe that I was worth any of the fortune that came my way. I still remember the amazing things I can do when I believe in myself. Compared with some of the things I've accomplished, much of what I want to do now is child's play.

Today is a new day, and we're coming up on a new year. I'm excited to see what I can do with it. Today is a new day, and I can choose to be greater than what my past has been. I can choose to be bound by a ponderous chain of events; But my aspirations are different.
I can choose to climb that chain and see where it leads.

I was always very good at climbing....


Merry Christmas, everyone, and a Happy New Year.

I'm going to quote  [koh] here, because he said it better than me:

"You know when a topic comes up and someone eventually says "Stop making journals about this!" ?

This is *not* one of those times. Every single one of us should have a SOPA journal up. Even if you agree with it, you should get your opinions out there and spark conversation because this deserves the world's attention and all it has received is a media blackout."


I will admit that I haven't read the actual language of the bill itself. It's enough, for me, to have it explained. Legal-ese is byzantine to me, I have had enough of reading it trying to deal with our broken social security system, and if you know me you know why.

As for my opinion on this bill, I think its evidence of a bigger problem. I'm not as militant as I have been in the past about certain ideas, and that's probably for the better as aggression combined with misinformation is dangerous even if it is well-intentioned. Even so, this needs to be stopped. Most of modern economics, unless I'm much mistaken, fails to look at things in the long term. Big business has been using tactics to expand for quite sometime now that focus on immediate gratification with little attention to long term consequences, which is in my opinion why we're looking at something like this bill now. This is a long term consequence of the internet renaissance, and it's not even that long term; we saw the beginnings of why this bill exists what, ten, twelve years ago? Surely not much more than that. The notion of instant gratification regardless of the consequences needs to be done away with.


Also, This video was recommended to me. Go watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2964659/ <--Go there, follow the instructions, get a shot at a free custom tail =D

Anyone know someplace I can post large, mature images at no cost? Totally open to suggestions here, because the ref I just posted ( http://www.furaffinity.net/view/6995282) is only really intelligible at its original resolution which is about twice what FA will allow.

I can foresee this becoming a problem; maybe I need to learn to be less verbose?

Because I have no idea what I'm doing, and I have a project I'd like to complete.

You see, art happened, and it happened on paper that is too thin to tolerate my usual means of coloring. So I want to take the inked sketch I've got and turn it into a flat colored piece. It's an updated ref for Nomi. Can anyone help me out?

Okay, I'm back in Pensacola.

I am, however, rather badly hurt. I'm not sure what did it, probably moving a lot of boxes that are at the upper end of my lifting capacity, but I'm not going to be useful for very much the next couple of days x.x

My side of the house is also in pretty desperate need of airing out. Mom closed off all the ventilation after I left, so it's pretty stale and muggy. I have sooooo much to do, and I'm gonna need like a week before I can get started on any of it. My right shoulder and left forearm are pretty badly strained. I'm going to have to take it easy.

So, I got  mitsozuka equipped as best I could, and he looks pretty good considering the limitations I was working under. And now that the faire and its fun have come and gone, I have no tension holding me together and I think it's time for a well deserved break.

I worked for two periods in excess of 24 hours separated by five hours of sleep to get together everything I did. But the faire was productive; I made some new friends and may in fact have made some new customers if I can get some good work done before too much longer. This armor-smithing stuff is fun =D I can apparently use making chainmaille as a means to drop into a meditative state, which has been doing no end of good for me lately. As for the rest of it, it's satisfying on a level I can't quite describe to have, at the end of the project, something tangible. Something that is not merely pleasant in form, but which has function as well. It can be worn and admired through more than just the one sense.

Not only that but I can reliably create tangible objects in exchange for money, something I haven't had the motivation to do in two dimensional art lately. I haven't been doing much drawing or painting lately that wasn't related to design. As much as I hate to say it, I just don't know if I'm ever going to be able to find it in me to do art by commission at this point. Just saying that makes me feel like a disappointment to others, which makes me sad, but it is equally disheartening to think of charging money for my drawings and paintings. It's so hard to judge their value, and there is no willingness to pay what I think is fair for the time and effort that go into these pieces, whereas people seem more than willing to fairly compensate me for the tangible things I make. I just don't know. I've had next to no motivation to do serious art since I got to New Mexico, but I've been making chainmaille (among other things) non-stop.

I'm at a very critical and precarious stage of personal evolution. I don't know where I'm going exactly, but I thought you all deserved to know that wherever I'm going, I'm hauling ass in getting there. Things are getting better all the time, even as they're falling apart all around me. They always have been; the difference is that now, i can see it like I never could before.

Terraria is a game I've gotten hooked on. If you haven't heard of it, google it. It's pretty good.

The basic premise is you create a little 2d sprite character and drop him in the middle of a (mostly) randomly generated world consisting almost entirely of 2ftx2ft blocks made of various materials. You have a pickaxe and some other tools. There are trees you can harvest for wood, plants that can be turned into potions, and NPCs you can eventually meet to buy supplies you need.

Your first task is to build a house. Cut down every tree in sight, and when you've finished that...

Start digging.

You can take the world apart block by block and reconfigure it as you like, even converting materials you find, such as metal ores, sand, and stone into things like glass, bricks, and ingots that let you craft more and more items.

I've had the game for nearly a month and it's taken 87 hours of my time. I can't tell if I'm just bored, addicted, or am operating under the impression that I have nothing better to do. But since I can reconfigure my artificial world in every conceivable way as long as I'm willing to devote the time to it, and I have swarms of nasty bothersome creatures in my artificial world that are open for wholesale slaughter if I get pissed off, and I can't do any of that out here, well, the choice seems kind of natural lately.


Edit: There are also cute little messages that pop up in the upper left corner of the game window after the game's name. Today's message is "Terraria: The Grass is Greener on This Side"

I giggled.