Clearly some changes need to be made to make me feel happy in areas that I can control to help combat the areas in my life where I’m not. So while on my all-day Disney binge yesterday (hey, we all have our ways of coping and Ratatouille is AMAZING) I came up with some little and big changes I can make that could get me on the way to feeling better about things in general.

So here’s my “Getting Shit Done” List.

- Cook more! At least once a week make a damn good meal. This week I’m making Parsnip Soup and later on I’ll be making Ratatouille (both dishes I have wanted to make for ages). I’ll also try to cook more Iron-rich meals to bring those levels up (am slightly anemic).

- Boxin’! Going to keep that up! At the moment will be focusing more on the cardio aspect than the strength because I have some weight to lose. But Will be trying to go at LEAST two times a week.

- Find an evening and weekend job! Will suck and ensure that I have absolutely no social life, but it would mean more money and my savings account needs to be filled (plus long-distance relationships are expensive and I want to be able to afford more visits and trips [We’re thinkingChicagoin June]).

- Cleeeean! My room is now clean and I want to move on to the rest of the house. I have a book that shows me how to make my own cleaning products, so there will be a fun kind of “I made something” aspect to it as well as the feeling of accomplishment in cleaning.

- Make more things! I kind of know how to use the sewing machine and my mom wants one of my heat packs. Will start looking at tutorials and see if I can make more stuff.

- Game more! While I think I may be done with D&D for now (finding a group is frustrating and playing for hours and hours in one sitting isn’t so appealing to me right now) weAREgetting a brand newHDTVsoon and I think I want to play vidja games more.  When I was at Alan’s I fell in LOVE with LA Noire. I’d like to play that and maybe a good first-person shooter.

- Cut down on beer! Doesn’t sound good or exciting for those who know me, but I’ve been feeling the need to cut back a bit for health reasons.

- More photoing! May have a contact with a studio and another that can give me gallery space. Let’s try and get that shit going.

That’s all I can think of for now.  I suppose I’d like to explore more comics and get experimental with clothing again (two years ago I made the CRAZY change from black t-shirts and jeans to coloured t-shirts), but since those require money, they’ll have to be pencilled in.

This was my second time ever on a sewing machine and the first time ever that I made something crafty without a teacher looking over my shoulder.  All in all it was simple.  Cut rectangles, put together, leave hole to put stuff in, close up hole.  And it’s far from perfect (I might need to do some patching up later), but I’m proud of it anyways.  I used brown rice for the filling (which smells just wonderful) and putting this thing in the microwave is just…wow.  Such wonderful warmth for these cold months!

And even better I still have a buttload of this nifty batman fabric!  Thinking of making some small lavender pouches and a few other things.  We’ll see!

Past couple of weeks have been interesting leading up to Christmas.  Parties have been attended and I made a couple of contacts that could lead to some collaborations and an exhibition in a coffee shop down the line.  I’ll follow the leads and see where they go.

For the most part things have been great.  I’ve been working out a few ideas, might be getting something close to a career in Music Direction and Publishing (more on that in a later post). I’ve got a great fella who, while we don’t see much of each other physically due to being in different countries, has been one of the best things to happen to me in a while and…yeah.  Bit by bit I’m getting close to being the person I want to be.

But that god damned low self-esteem keeps creeping up.

I have issues with my weight, primarily.  Getting names like tubs and jokes about me being pregnant were pretty rampant when I was a kid, then I slimmed a bit in my teens and then became something of a giant blob monster with multiple chins.  Then, mostly spurred by the death of my brother I decided to lose weight primarily for health reasons and because I wanted to, in my eye, look pretty awesome.  Set a goal for myself.  Since I was about 70lbs overweight I resolved to lose that 70lbs.  Thanks to running, walking EVERYWHERE when I’m downtown and eating pretty reasonably I’ve lost 50lbs of that 70.  Nearly 80%.  And it’s been great.  I went from wearing XXL t-shirts to a size Medium.  I feel good.  Hell, I REALLY look good.  But the problem has been that I’ve been on those final 20lbs for fucking ever.

Which is where things get murky…Because of past things like being made fun of all other crap I’ve…put a lot of my self-worth in to how I look and finishing off that final amount of weight.  I shouldn’t, but…well, I do.  I won’t lie, a good part of it is a looks thing, but then who hasn’t looked in a magazine and saw a model or met a person who was just so stunning that suddenly in your mind all your little imperfections that only you notice just…stick out more?  So yeah, not going to lie.  It’s a big part, but not the biggest.  Because really, if it was just that I’d be happy where I’m at.  Currently I go to boxing lessons and while my weight has stayed the same, I have toned up a HELL of a lot and look 10lbs or so lighter than I actually am.

So no, the other part is just the fact that this is a loose end.  Something that isn’t finished in the timeline I was hoping for and something that is lowering my personal morale for still being around.  I want this finished and, for reasons that are entirely my fault (very little willpower when it comes to delicious, delicious crap foods etc) I just can’t hit it.  I’ll be trying, more than ever to hit that mark in the coming year.  Boxing lessons for the next little while will be focusing on cardio rather than strength so I can focus on fat losing with no muscle mass being added on (though I would like that later on).

Not so much hating myself as a person…I actually like who I am.  Just…right now and for the past few months I’ve been feeling frustrated of having not finished this one freakin’ thing.

Rant over.

Go to her Etsy.  NOW.

NOW, DAMN YOU!

The day itself, hell the entire WEEKEND was amazing.  Meeting up with friends new and old, drinking, laughing, talking the night away…and even getting to spend time with the New Guy, Alan, who traveled all the way from Virginia to see me on my Birthday.

The gifts were WONDERFUL.  Comics, music, a Samhain toy, Star Trek: TNG Season 4, a book on the collected works of Robert Crumb’s art on record covers, some beautiful flowers and the much-coveted Brooklyn Box Set, a set containing a signed copy of The Oxford Companion to Beer and a custom ale to go with it, only available at the Brooklyn Brewery’s shop in Williamsburg and paid for by my folks, graciously picked up by my friend Melissa and picked up by Alan who sent it to me.  Gorgeous, gorgeous gorgeous.

But, and I usually think about this at the end of the year, where things seem a little more…significant to me, I can’t help but notice the outstanding change in me within only the past two years.  I’m even thinking back to the times where I pushed people away.  And now…it really feels that in the past two years I’ve come out on to my own and at least have gotten on the path of being someone I’m comfortable with.  Add this to the selection of amazing friends I have and I really do count myself as an incredibly lucky person.

2009, as a lot of you know, was sort of a time of death and rebirth for me.  Some bad shit happened, I broke down and just didn’t know what to do.  Since then I’ve culled out the poisonous relationships, embraced the interests I was too nervous to embrace for fear of judgement while seeking out and getting in to all other new interests.  I’ve become confident to a level I didn’t even think was possible, in part with losing weight and being less afraid in expressing my opinions.

And of course I’ve learned that by being myself and not compromising who I was in order to fit in, I have gained the respect and kindness from a mindblowing amount of people.  That one shocked the HELL out of me when it started up.  Being yourself works, who knew?

So yeah…25 was a good chance to get my feet in the pool.  26 was me swimming around the pool and getting a feel for the motions.  And 27?

I get the feeling 27 will be the year to try my chances in the ocean.

Thank heavens, I’ve actually been busy with photography lately.

So this is the result of the Secret Personal Project that I have been kind of alluding to, a victim of The Joker dead in the alley.  A forced smile from the Joker Venom that entered her system and a rather happy Mr. Punch sprung from her stomach.  The photo set, which is growing as I edit them, can be found right here.  With a little luck (and money), this will be part one of something bigger, but I’m getting ahead of myself and should probably start at the beginning.

It all started, funnily enough, with the Arkham City “Riddler” trailer being released last month which led to a discussion with my friend Liam Leadbetter on how he was portrayed.  I’ll be honest, while I do feel that the comparisons of Riddler and The Jigsaw Killer from the Saw series is a fair one, I was glad to see the Batman villain imagined as the way I always imagined him: as a super-intelligent serial killer obsessed with riddles and his own inflated ego.  It was a far cry from the spandex green suit and the rather lighthearted view of him that I’ve normally seen of the character.

The conversation then progressed in to the methods of some of the more popular Batman villains, which led me to think more on the damage they leave behind.  For a brief moment I imagined what it must be like to be a part of the Gotham Police Department and dealing with the bodies left behind by these twisted villains.  What happens when the body has been found and Batman has either left or is on his way there, with the villain long gone?  What happens when all that’s left is the victim, killed because they got in the way, or a message needed to be left or, even worse, was just killed for fun? And I’m not talking about the more famous victims, Jason Todd or Barbara Gordon where you get repeats of their attacks over and over.  I’m talking about the security guard that Poison Ivy had to seduce to get in to the lab.  I’m talking about the fast food manager that messed up the Joker’s order.  I’m talking about the guy who the Riddler just had to use as writing paper for a riddle.  The victims that are grouped in under the phrase “the people they’ve killed”, who have no name and are barely given a second thought.

And that’s where this came from.

A victim of the Joker’s was my choice for this mainly out of preference.  He’s always been such an interesting villain to me.  Within 12 hours of coming up with the concept, make up artist Blake Evernden, who I met on the set of SCARS, had agreed to help out and was already coming up with ideas on how to pull off the deadly smile from the joker Venom.  And college friend and Sound Editor Andrea Cyr, bless her, had offered to be a model without knowing what the idea was.  Thankfully she didn’t back off when I told her about it.

What followed was a series of rescheduling, picking up prop ingredients, getting location permission, multiple viewings of Batman: Under The Red Hood (The Joker parts so I could feel a bit mad) and, like any good artist has, multiple panic attacks.

But despite the rain, the shoot went incredibly.  Through the use of silicone, Blake managed to make a freaky, twisted and terrifying smile out of Andrea’s beautiful face.  In the end I was incredibly pleased with how it all looked and amazed that for the first time in a while, I managed to pull a vision in my head right out in to the real world.

So the question for me right now is where to take it.  I could be happy with just this one set on the Joker’s victim but…well…I already have some ideas on other villains like Riddler, Poison Ivy, Clayface and Scarecrow and I kind of want to make a series out of this and maybe, just maybe, put on an exhibition in a comic shop or something.  I’ll need to look in to getting permission from DC Comics, I’m thinking.  My view on it is that if I’m wondering whether or not I need permission, I probably do.  So we’ll see where that goes.  Perhaps a Kickstarter can get set up so I’ll be able to afford props and makeup and other stuff.

We’ll see!  But that’s what’s been going on with me for the last little while!

My home brew Audacious Bitch, talked about on my beer blog.  With a beautiful label design by Emmanuel “Mojokingbee” Hernaez.

More stuff to come real soon, but I have actually been doing what I said I’ve been doing.  Creative stuff has practically exploded lately. !