Hello again. I am back again with more resolve to post here more often. Life has been kicking my butt. However I have renewed motivation and plan to try to keep this thing going. In order for that to happen, I have made a plan. Bwuahahaha.
So...

Plan 1 - Post here 2x a week, no matter where I am at.
I am hoping by making myself stick to a pre planned schedule, things won’t fall through the cracks. I have several SCA events to get ready for this summer, as well as Norwescon in April (if it isn’t cancelled) and Rose City Comic Con in September. I also have some stop mo’s I want to complete. They are all written, I just have to construct the puppets, sets, props etc and film. Hwat I work on will be dependent on time, energy, joint flare ups and money for the pieces I need.

Plan 2 - Post a vlog on You Tube either once a week or every other week.
I set up a YouTube channel for bloggy things that are not actual stop mo things. I will embed the videos here. We shall see how that goes.

For now, let me get you caught up.

I have so many projects. I think I will just list them here and break them down into the different parts.

1. SCA
I am going to just concentrate on getting a set of camping event garbs to wear to events this summer. This is going to consist of
-Elizabethan peasant garb
-1 or 2 chemises
-2 or 3 kirtles
​-an apron
-2 or 3 coifs with forehead kercheifs
-a tie on collared partlet
- Possibly either a flat cap, straw hat or both

Elizabethan peasant garb seems fairly straight forward. I am basing my basic design on this:

Basically the blue one. I don’t want to mess with back lacing while camping alone. This is also slightly earlier than my period, but it is the basic jist of what I am going for. I also want to make fake padded braids to wear under the coif to make it fit right. Cause my hair is sparce at the moment.


2. Cosplays
I want to get Talleg done (yes, STILL), and I need to fix Aoifa. I am thinking of just leaving it at those. Because I don’t have a lot of spare money right now, and Norwescon is in a month, I am just going to concentrate and those two for now.

Aoifa
-Fix her corset. Either try to make it a real corset or figure out how to sew the cardboard together so it won’t pop
-Remake her horns
-Make a padded circlet to go under the wig, so the horns look like they are growing kut of her head. Seriously that circlet is a joke.
-Figure out how to incorporate the dragon eye from the current circlet
-Sew the fur collar to the cloak. It is currently hot glued, very badly
-Repaint the spider broaches so the black doesn’t chip off
-Figure out a better sleeve configuration. Or learn how to glue them to my skin so they stay
-Figure out how to install the ears, and how to makeup them

Not much. 😒

Talleg
-Finish breastplate
-leg armor and arm armor
-Gauntlets
-Finish +1 mace.....MAKE IT LIGHT UP

​I think I will break this down futher in my video. When I get that done.

 So today I got up the courage to actually work on the project itself. I first took out a couple of old paper grocery bags and created a pattern. I used a corset that doesn't really fit me to get the basic idea of the shape of the pieces. Then I measured down my front from between my boobs to where I want the center of the front to stop. Then I drew curves for boobs from the center line to the outside, and created a curve on the bottom. Then I drafted out the side pieces. Next I measured out a back middle piece. I started with the same measurement for the longest part of the front, then I slowly cut it down until it was the right height. Then I taped all my pieces together and tried em on. I discovered I was about 4 inches short in size, so I made 2- 2 inch rectangle pieces to add to the back. Yeah, I am a big woman. I repeated the taping together, altering and taping again until I got to the size and shape I wanted. Then I pinned it to the foam.....

The next part was the hardest for me. Tracing the patterns on the foam and cutting out the pieces. I suck at tracing, and I doubly suck at cutting out. I can't cut a straight edge with a thick metal ruler. I tried. I tried hard. I broke a retractable knife, an exacto knife and a pair of scissors trying to get good cuts. Did not succeed. I ended up having to use my flimsy exacto knife, which bent and sagged as I cut, making funny curves and/or 45 ish degree angles, instead of 90. Note to self: get a better retractable knife than just a dollar tree one. That broke quickly. As the lines were so unclean, I could not use anything but hot glue to put the pieces together.

Slightly daunted, but determined to continue, I then pulled out my heat gun and warped the foam pieces. That was kind of fun. My gun works best on level 1, setting the dial to 7. I am unsure what tempurature that is, but it works.

As I mentioned earlier, my pieces did not lay flush when places edge to edge. SO I pulled out my hot glue gun and put the pieces together. That is something I apparently suck at as well. I am still getting used to useing a hot glue gun. When I was a teenage crafter, all you could find int he craft stores was low temp glue guns, so nothing held together very well. Anything like body tempurature, leaving it in the sun for a minute, would make your project come completely undone. As such I completely rejected it as a good mode of glueing. Now there are higher temp guns, with stronger glues. I have been impressed with what I found. However, I still need to refine my technique. Heavy drips, uneven edges, burned fingers are just a few of the issues I had. But, nonetheless, I got it basically together. Yeah, this will not be my final product. Once I figure out where I am going wrong throughout, I will start over again. That seems to be my M.O. anyway. I generally totally suck the first time round, get it right the second. To see how well it fit me and to see if I needed to make any design changes, I hot glued velcro straps in. That is the worst way to put together your corset. Just saying. I have some black stretchy fabric I am planning on attaching to each side, so I can just slip it on over my head. The sleeves will be made of drapy halloween fabric in green and black and grey, and sewn to a piece of cotton. I can't wear this stuff against my skin, so I figured it would probably simplify things if I didn't attach the sleeves directly to the EVA foam lower part.

Next step is to make the boobs. I have ordered some 6mm foam for those pieces. I plan to either try to use a heat tool to carve leaves so it looks like layered leaves, or scaled elaves, or cut and paste individual leaves out of foam on them. Then they will be painted green and brown. Then I will glue them to the curves at the top of the..um..corset seems the wrong word to use here. There is also a skirt. Am considering greaves as well. I also want to make bracers. I am thinking of using the 6mm foam to make a base, then I have this 2mm stuff that if heated I can make look like wrinkly leather fabric. I also found a round spider felt piece that I plan to use on the front of this thing. Put a skull in the middle of it. I will integrate spiders and leaves and stuff all through out. It will look awesome.

Well....I don't have a whole lot to post about. I have been busy and sick and tired and allerging. I have not completed the video yet, nor have I had time to do any real shooting. My computer had issues yesterday. It crashed 3 times, the 3rd time I had to recover it. I am glad I set restore points and backup images. It has been teetering for months now. About once a week it crashes and tells me it can't recognize the BIOS. Well, duh...mainly that is because it does not have a BIOS. It's firmware, as it is for most 64 bit machines, is EFI. If I open the computer in safe mode, then restart it from safe mode, it has been able to fix tiself. I am not really sure "fix" is the word I want to use here. This is a refurbished laptop. I am sure someone probably flashed a BIOS machine with an EFI, and now the workarounds to make that work are crumbling down. When I go to the system window, it says I have a BIOS installed. I have been in the firmware...it is most definitely not BIOS, it is EFI. Computers is usually my job. I know how to tell. What I don't know is why the discrepentcy. Even if it was flashed with EFI, Windows should read it as an EFI, not a BIOS. And yup...people who thought EFI and BIOS were the same thing...they are very different. A BIOS uses a master boot record table to tell your computer how to load the OS. EFI uses a GPT table to tell your computer how to load the OS. If it is looking for a MBR table, and it ia an EFI firmware, it will not find it and think it can't load. Because it is getting the wrong instructions. Probably more than you wanted to know, but this is my blog and I wanted to impart my knowledge. :P

Anyway...so after months of this happening, yesterday it finally crashed enough times in a row that I had to recover it, which is not a good thing. As I am unsure how to fix the workaround, I can't really fix this permanently. As I am worried about my cmputer quitting completely on me, I hesitate to use it for anything heavy duty, like filming.

I bit the bullet and decided I needed to replace this mess. I don't have a lot of money, as I am still unemployed, but I have been socking a little bit away every month so I can have deposit money for when I get a job and am ready to get my own place again. Through my school I get a discount on Dells, and Dell is currently in addition running a back to school discount. I was able to find a gaming laptop with all the bells and whistles I want and need for $750. I checked the Dell site not logged into the school's portal or using the student discount. It would have cost me $1000. So I decided that it was worth it to make sure I have a laptop I can use for school, and something I can use afterward. If I wait until I have a job, which may be after I am done with school, I would have to pay the full price for it. And I wouldn't have something to use when this one finally is unrecoverable. It will have a dedicated graphics card, 12GB of RAM, and 1 TB of storage. And the processor is good enough I can up it to 32GB of RAM if I want to later. So when that arrives I will do some more filming, and post it up here. But it will have to wait now until that is possible. I don't dare kill this thing before I have something else to do school with. And the new laptop probably will work with Dragonframe. Extra bonus. So why do I feel so guilty about spending money on it? :P

I also have been writing and perfecting some songs, which I intend to record and put up on Soundcloud when I get the new computer. I will link them in my music tab. I am excited to play music at Orycon again this year. Last year I was newly laid off and trying to figure out how  to make ends meet and how to get schooling. This year I am still unemployed, but living in town so I don't have to worry about where to stay. I was already planning on going...bought my membership a few months ago. This will just be the icing on the cake. I love doing panels too. We'll see if they allow me to do any. I put in to do a few at Anglicon too. We'll see if they want me. I am not a Seattlite, and don't know any of the concom, so probably not. But I thought I would throw my hat in there anyway.

Ok...back to homework and research paper. Will post back here when I have more to report.

So this year I was able to attend Sasquan, this year's Worldcon. I and a few Eugenites did a concert. It was only 30 minutes, and it was on Thursday, so most people weren't even there yet....

Anyway, concert went well. Usually at cons you get a riser in a conferance room for a stage. There we had a REAL LIVE STAGE STAGE!!! That was probably one of the best things to happen to me in years. Let me explain...

My mother was a performer and music teacher and vocal coach, etc etc etc. I started getting up on stage when I was 3 years old, singing Practice Makes Perfect from the Christian kids song album Welcome To Agape Land, with a cardboard keyboard slung around my neck. And from then until I was 20, it never stopped. I played cello and piano, I was in choirs and musicals and talent shows. I never had stage fright ever. I used to love the stage. LOVE IT.

There is a certain high you get when you and the people on stage with you are in sync and rocking it, and the audience has caught that energy and amplified it and flung it back at you. It is the BEST high ever.

When I was married, the bastard filled my head with soundtracks like "what makes you think people want to hear that" and "if you have to practice then you aren't very good, are you". 8 years of that, and for some reason stage fright started creeping in. I wasn't able to get that high, because I wasn't able to relax and enjoy being on stage any more. I was petrified that everyone in the audience was thinking what my ex voiced on a regular basis. Every mistep on my part petrified me then, and instead of continuing on like it didn't happen, I would break down in tears and not able to do anything. Sometimes I couldn't even leave the stage. But I worked on it, and worked on it, and slowly I have been getting back to where I was. Up till now, I haven't been able to completely get back to that comfort on stage I used to have.

At this con, I did. Being on a real stage, with a mic and lights and amphitheater style seating....it was like a switch was flipped, and none of the last 20 years happened. I relaxed. I enjoyed myself. I had FUN! I felt the change in the audience when I sang Big Blue Box. And it was EXHILERATING!!!! I NEED more. The stage has turned into a Siren, and I am unable to resist her song. I get excited just thinking back on that performance. I know it wasn't perfect. But it was transformative.

It also helped that when we were doing mic check, after I sang Rose, Rose, someone if the first row said "Oh...she's a singer." That made me feel good. Cause I AM a singer. My voice is not opera level, but it is not a bad singing voice, when I can breathe and don't think too much about what I am doing wrong. When I was on that stage, I felt everything relax, and my voice sounded the best it has in years. And it just corroborated what I have felt all along....my brain gets in my way.

I wish I had a video fo that performance. It would have been nice to see it from the audience point of view.

But....maybe not. Maybe it is best that I remember this performance as it is. If I watched video of it, I would start tearing it apart and anylizing it. What could I have done better? What should I do differently next time? And that would maybe erase all the feel goods I have about it.

I just....I can't help feeling that if I can just hold onto that feeling until my next performance, I will be OK. That maybe be magical thinking, but I really, really, really just want to hold on to that. Hard and tightly. And carry it on stage with me everytime I perform, no matter what kind of stage it is.

So the creative bug had been biting me pretty hard lately. I really want to do some cool stuff, though I know a lot of it I just will need to learn how to do and it will be crap. I made a list of everything I want to do, and looking at it (it is pretty long) I think I am going to need to make a plan if I am ever going to get any of it done.

Warning: LONG post! Lots of bullshit! A bunch of pics! Feel free to read or skip as appropriate.

First thing, I have been working on a new stop mo. My camera has pretty much crapped out on me, so I am going to have to figure out how to do it without the camera. I have my iPad. I have figured out how to get pics from my iPad to my computer. I have found a few camera control apps for the iPad, though nothing that lets me control the focus the way I want. Also I need to anchor that sucker down somehow so it doesn't look like my characters are in an earthquake all the time.

So I have designed a frame thing that is made of PVC piping and foam insulation tape. I had planned on cutting the PVC with my hacksaw and mitre box. The box is missing. I packed them together, because I usually do not use either one by themselves. One of these days I will either go get another one or find a friend who has power tools to help me cut them at a 45 degree angle and cut a slot in the top for the foam insulation and a place to rest the iPad. Then I will drill a 1/4inch hole in the bottom for mounting to the tripod platform. Project number one. :)

So last weekend I helped a friend move. As per usual she wanted to get rid of stuff, and as per usual I accommodated her and took it off her hands. The first thing was this awesome globe thing that lights up.

Now I have to figure out how to costume this bad boy. I can't sew, and I have other sewing projects I want to do. So I will need to find a place to find South Korean looking jackets and grey slacks. And of course the mask. I HAVE to take a shot at making a mask of that face. I have no mask making experience. I do have liquid latex. I have been looking online and if I do it in 3 pieces I may actually be able to pull it off. One piece for the face, another piece for the tentacles, and a final piece for the head. I am currently researching the cost of latex foam. I also need to get myself a few styrofoam heads to use as bases. I think I would make a thin latex mask for the face, a molded latex foam for the head, then attach the tentacles to a large mesh frame that attaches to the mask. that will make it easier to breath. It would also be awesome if I can find a cheap voice modulator.

On the latex mask front, I decided if I am going to do an Ood, I also need to make a Vastra mask.

This is Madame Vastra (picture property of BBC and Doctor Who). She is strong and beautiful and a warrior and everything I wish I could be. She is one of my favorite fictional characters ever. She is married to Jenny, the lady behind her in this picture. If you don't watch any other Doctor Who, it is worth watching the episodes she is in just to bask is this dazzling character. I have been waiting out the last few years of less than stellar storylines and Moffet's version of Psych! and a Doctor who doesn't really feel like the Doctor, but her alone has made this wait worth it. As masks go, this one looks like the most comfortable one to wear for long periods at a time. I would do her Victorian outfits, though. She has some gorgeous black dresses I really want. Though, my next project could conceivably be used for her character.

I also got a green leather coat. It is HUGE. It is very 80's. The shoulder pads are gone, but thiey have left thier mark in the shoulders of this coat. there is enough leather fabric in that coat to make a steampunky vest or two. A vest that would go with the brown leather coat I found last winter. It would also go with the Vastra mask. I also want to sew some aviator pants to use with steampunk.


 

I want this look, pants boots and all. Except I want to make them black. These pants could go with steampunk and Vastra.

I also was given several sets of vampire fangs. So....I can do regular vampire, steampunk vampire, or vampire Silurian (Vastra is a Silurian). OR Vampire Steampunk Silurian! Oh this is going to be awesome. :)

I can't sew worth a damn, so I will have to find someone to supervise.

So the list....

Not in priority order...

1. Latex Ood mask
2. Latex Madame Vastra mask
3. Build a more interactable stop mo set
4.Leather steampunk vest or two, depending
5.iPad frame with foam insulation
6.Button over aviator pants
7.Steampunk goggles
8.Crochet sweater and vests out of mounds of yarn I have laying around
9.Spin the fleece I have sitting around
10.Play with armatures and different materials to decide on puppets for stop mo.
11. Finish all writing projects (web series, 10 minute short, play, novel)
12.Finish filming current stop mo

I once told someone I am never bored. If I had a bajillion dollars, I would have plenty to do. They didn't believe me. :)

So now I have to decide what needs to be done with each of these projects, when I want to have them done by, and what I need in order to finish them. Then I will make a general plan to get them done.

And once again, after vowing not to, I have dropped the ball. For the most part I have been writing, though not as much as I vowed to in my last post, and I have not completed my script yet. This last month has been hectic. At work I did my very first ever real life server upgrade. It took way more of my energy than I anticipated. I spent my days looking up info, gathering the information I needed, ordering hardware and prepping my coworkers for the jolting change. I spent my evenings reading up on Windows Server 2012, how to install and manage it, and making list after list to make sure I planned for every contingency. That left very little time or energy for writing or doing anything else, really. Now that it is done, I can breathe a little better and relax a little more.

So now I am prepping to perform at OryCon with a filk group. I am really excited about this. It is going to be fun. And it has had an unintended consequence. When talking to the concom about our group, our illustrious leader was asked "Is that THE Eleanor Stokes, the animator?" I must admit I squeed a bit when he told me that. Another admission - I didn't think anyone really knew who I was. Well, beyond friends and family. It also shocks me because I am not the first Eleanor Stokes that comes up when you Google me. There is a romance author with my name. She is published and so usually comes up first. In fact, a date from OK Cupid renegged on their offer after Googling me and finding her. But I guess I did get minor coverage on i09 (though they posted someone else's video with my name) and some promotion from the Towel Day site for the winning video I did last year. (If you don't know what I am talking about, you must have just stumbled on this blog, as for most of last year it was all I posted about.)

So now I am excited, and feel the need to do another animation. Need to square away more of real life first, but I definitely feel the itch. I have for a while, I have just not had the energy. Now that work has settled down somewhat I can clean up my space and do some animating. And writing. And Stuff. :)

Well, it has been a very productive weekend. I haven't finished recording and posting stories yet, but it still has been very productive.  

     I spent several hours yesterday rewriting the story arc for the webseries. This is re-write number 3. Re-write because the direction it was going has changed so dramatically I had to go back and change the first few episodes and reconfigure the story arc. For some reason this time my characters are telling me where they want go with it, and it is not what I had in mind at all. However, it is truer to the characters themselves, so I guess I don't mind the rewrite. It is also necessitating the addition of more great characters, so I starting losing track of it all. And little jokes, story threads and character interactions are popping in, giving little touches to what was a good silly little story thing. It has become more than I meant it to be. I do not think it is bad. But it really isn't what I had in mind when I started this. it is tons better. I just hope I can make it fully to fruition. 

     One thing I noticed was I kept having to flip around through my notebooks to make sure I was referencing each character correctly, and not leaving dangling story threads through out. I found cheap foam board at the Dollar Tree, which I had planned to use for light bouncing. I decided that having everything easily accessible was a better idea. 

So now, my walls look like this:

     I just taped the foam board to the walls using packing tape. I will still be able to use the other side for lighting. I also am saving a few to put animation notes on. As crazy as it looks, it is actually helpful. I have never been in a writer's room, but after I did all this I realized this room now looks like pictures I have seen on the intertubes. So maybe I am on to something. Probably a lot less efficient, as it follows my logic not general conventions, but still. Sitting back and looking at it all I feel like I actually accomplished something. And I feel that much closer to this thing becoming a reality. 

     Also this weekend my friend drove me to the hardware store so I could purchase some supplies. I bought plywood, 1x1, 1-1/2x1/2, etc. I glued and nailed the boards together for a frame, then I glued and nailed the plywood to the top. Once it is dry I will have a base I can clamp to the table and attach a background. 

Here are some pics:

     So that's now done. I also purchased some small pieces of sheet metal. I am still figuring out what exactly I want to do with them. One of the ways I anchor my puppets is by using magnets. Unlike some, I put my magnets in the feet and use a metal base. Even if I feel the need to go the other way with my new puppets, a sheet metal base for the floor will give extra stability. I just haven't exactly decided how to execute it yet. 

     So that was my weekend. I still have a ton to do, but I feel like I am moving forward instead of stagnating. 

For ages I have been threatening to try to sculpt my own puppets for my stop mo. Last weekend when I was out with a friend I found some Van Aken clay on sale, so I scooped it up. Then I promptly forgot all about it. well, not forgot as much as was too nervous to try to do anything with it.

So today I was restless and listless and had a really hard time concentrating on anything, so I decided to take a walk. That walk took me past Oregon Art Supply, a very very dangerous place for my bank account. It suffers casualties every time I go in. Today I was good, but I did see they had a cheap extruder and flat roller, which inspired me to bite the bullet (and all sorts of clams) and dig in.

When I got home I dug out my sorry attempt at an armature. Now I am close to being ready to give it a go. Just gotta get up the courage to fail now.
Wish me luck...I'm goin in.

EDIT: OK, after about 2 hours, I barely have a head. I realized I can't use white clay for eyes. They will mush if I try to move them, or the eyelids, or the eyebrows. So I now need to either go to Michaels and look for doll eyes or Sculpy to make n bake them.

Here are the humiliating results so far:

Yeah, I am giving up for the night. I could make hair and build up the body, but I feel like I am saturated at the moment. Tomorrow I gotta go in to work for a little bit, but I may continue this afterwards, given I find enough chocolate and Pepsi and maybe a movie or two to keep me sitting there. When your sculpting skills suck it is easy to lose patience with it. I may not have the temperament for this kind of puppet making. Or the fine motor skills.

So, remember a while back when I was posting about Chris Hardwick and the RL-RPG thing? No? Not surprised. It has been ages since I have posted about it. I haven't stopped working on it, but I really haven't been talking about it much either. One of the goals I set for myself was to write and learn how to perform as a storyteller. I have spent a lot of time listening to other storytellers and analyzing their styles. I have worked on writing out several stories. Now I have decided to move on to the next step. I have contacted Kevin Allison from the Risk! Podcast to negotiate one-on-one sessions. The price isn't too bad. I have decided I can afford 2 sessions a month. That will give me time to polish between sessions. Now that I have started the processes, I am a tad freaked out. This shit just wandered into real territory. I will be investing money into getting better at it. Someone else will be listening to my story and telling me what they think. I can no longer hide safely behind my computer, wondering if I could have been or what I could have done. I will have to shove myself out of my comfort zone, out of the little self-coddling cacoon of safety I created for myself while I was feeling it out. I will have to put aside my feelings of self doubt. I will have to stop fearing the possibility I will fail hard, and know that when I fail hard I will have someone to help keep me from failing so hard the next time. it is scary and exciting all at the same time.

I miss the stage. I used to love performing. I still feel at home just standing on a stage. When standing on a stage, my instinct is not to go "oh my god, people are looking at me" but to go "I need to do something". For too long I have let fear take over that rush I get when I am actually on stage. That self doubt that crept in there when I was dealing with abusive situations and difficult people has made it hard to get back to a place where a stage is a stage, and what matters is the performance, not the person. Performing is fun. It is a huge adrenaline rush. Yes, for me performing is a selfish thing. I like to give people a good show, but the rush you get when you have been practicing hard, and the performance is going well, and there is good energy coming from the audience, and you feel it and it feeds your energy, and you finish with a huge applause and this symbiotic energy that doesn't go away for hours, sometimes days. It is the best kind of high. It was the kind of high I thrived on in high school.

Another day of writing. I am housesitting this weekend starting last night, so I thought this would be a great weekend to sequester myself with my computer and write. I have a lot of writing to do. However, now I am here I am having a hard time motivating myself to get started. It's not like I don't want to write. I love writing. As hard as it is, and even with how much I struggle with getting it just right, I love it. This whole frustrating, maddening, wonderful process I call stop motion is love worthy. I admit, no job I have ever had has made me as happy. Or as frustrated. And yet, in spite of the frustration, I still want to do it. I have not the feeling of "Fuck it!" and the urge to walk away, kicking everyone in face as I do so. The frustration does not make me mad. As much as I want to have an income, after experiencing this, I don't want to go back to crappy day-to-day stuff. I am still looking and will take what I can get, but I am realizing more and more that I need to get my butt in gear and figure out a way to make THIS my job. I need to find someone who can help me figure out what is crap and what is good, so I can improve faster.

I feel stupid just figuring out what I want to be when I grow up at age 37. I wish I had figured my life out sooner. Looking back on my life, I don't think I could have. I went from one abusive situation to another. I wasted my 20's on an abusive man who wasn't worth my time, and wasted most of my 30's getting away from the shit he lay on me. Only now am I realizing what I can do, and what makes me happy. Only now can I look at what I do and see the good as well as the bad. I guess I am getting to a point in my life where I really am getting too old for other people's shit, and their negativity no longer completely shuts me down. Granted, I have a long way to go before the fear monster sitting on my shoulder dies. He may never die completely. But it feels good to look back on something I made, even if there are flaws that need to be corrected, and be excited and happy with what I see. It feels good to make myself laugh. It makes me feel like running around yelling "Look what I did!" like a five year old.

Actually, I take that back. I am not just discovering now what I want to be when I grow up. I am only now rediscovering what I wanted to be from a young age. When I was in elementary school I used to write little stories all the time. I used to amuse my teachers with them. One of them even encouraged me to submit one of my stories to the district wide writer's conference. Somewhere there is a published volume of elementary school kid's stories from 1984, and one of mine is in there. I believe it was a story about a witch. I LOVED melodramas, and as an extension British pantos. One summer I wrote a melodrama, and I roped my siblings and my cousins into performing it for all the adults. I think I was 10 at the time. When I was a teenager I wrote books to take with me babysitting. I had what I called my babysitting bag. I found that although kids had books and toys and videos at their houses, usually they had played them all to death and didn't really want to do any of that stuff. So in my bag I put a bag of chocolate chips with which to make cookies, a jump rope, paper and colored pencils, dress up clothes  and cheap McDonald's toys. And, of course books. My mom wouldn't let me take our books out of the house, so I wrote my own and my best friend illustrated them. We made several for my bag and several for hers. So what happened? Several things. There are circumstances I don't want to bore you with, but mainly the end result was me giving up on myself. I honestly thought that the best I could do was be someone's wife and raise kids. (The ironic thing is I still don't have any kids) That I was too stupid and incompetent to be creative. That my ideas were cliche and stupid. And it has just taken me this long to wade through all the bullshit and realize what I have known all along.....that I can do this, and whether or not I am good enough at it NOW for people to pay me for it, it makes me happy. "It" being stop motion animation, storytelling, writing, comedy....anything and everything that I have been working on the last year to keep myself sane.

Because in the end, all THAT,  is what makes me happy and sane.

Well, look at that. I think I just knocked my motivation loose. See ya either when the weekend is over or when I hit another rough patch. Enjoy your weekend. :)