Update, Internal Serious Thinkings, and A Commission

been a while eh?

Well I've been up to no good lately.

Got a new job and had a blast at AZ '08.

That, along with doing a helluva lot of thinking finally brought me around to realizing my own potential.

You can thank that entirely to the hard efforts of My Beloved Muse.

I really don't know what I'd do without her.

I've been a major ass over the past year and a half to 2 years that I've known her, and to many others along the way as well being a whiney emo bitch-face about how my art "sucks" and that I should quit while I'm ahead and I'll never get anywhere.

Just being a regular emo-pants I was.


Finally got to sit down and think about it. And I really don't believe that any amount of sincere apologies I can lay on anyone will be enough to earn me the forgiveness for being such a lameass all this time.

But in good news I've finally gained the majority of the confidence that everyone has wanted me to realize for myself, and things have been looking up. Although it's few, which I really really don't mind at all, I have a lovely group of fans whom I've come to love dearly. And slowly but surely my art and stories are making their way into knowledge circulation in the art and writing community, which is all I've ever looked for. No fame, no glory, no nothing except just honest recognition for my achievements and hard work.


But enough of my BSing.

I've been balancing stuff pretty well lately between art and work, and I'm getting ready to add school into the equation once again come this september, which I'm really excited about.

I was really extremely morbidly depressed for the longest time thinking that I wasn't going to be able to attend next year or ever again, but I pulled through barely, and I'll tell you I'm NEVER going to let that happen again.
It'll be smooth sailing from here on that note.









I'll admit I've fallen once again into a personal depression. Although it has nothing to do with art or work or anything.

I guess it's all just to prove to me once again that I am indeed human.


It was brought up in conversation lately, and on more than one occassion with more than one person, that I need to get out more.

I also have determined myself that I need an apartment.

Be that as it may given the circumstances that tuition and a monthly car payment suck up 3/4 to almost all of my current wages, and are driving me near the broke meter, have disheartened me once more in even the slightest attempts at moving out by next summer.

I told myself 20, no later than 21. That even if I had to live next door to my dad or grandparents, I would be officially out of the house, no longer under the roof of a blood relative.

and damnitall if all the affordable places in the entirety of greater Greensboro, Winston Salem, and High Point aren't all uber expensive unless I chance the ghetto. And I've tried contacting student housing for local universities, none of which I attend. No answer or a straight "no you must attend this uni to live in student apartments."

It seems I cannot live on my own at the moment without the aide of a roommate. Unless I can manage to talk my tuition dept. into lower payments and finally kick my car bill, which is almost entirely paid off.

Which moves me onto the main point of previously aforementioned conversations.

I don't really know ANYONE at all on a personal level anymore.

outside of my immediate family, in which my sister and mother currently live in a separate state than me.............I have NO friends at all to hang out with. I'm literally alone in greater Gboro as far as social interaction. Not even my work buddies ever hung out with me. I got invited out several times, but most of them were out drinking, which is something I both cannot and care not to do (being as I'm both underage, and dislike drinking at the moment)

I just don't know anybody. And it gets me everytime just HOW reclusive I really am when I'm asked "so, who do you hang out with" or "whatcha up to this weekend" and when I answer it's like "oh.....really?"

It's disheartening really. Very depressing. I really don't like doing anything without anybody else there to share it with me. I view it as pointless. And most of if not everything in Gboro consists of the party atmosphere. In fact Gboro IS a party city.
Malls, movies, shopping, dining, clubs, you name it. Everything here relies on social interaction. Even grocery shopping and getting the dumbest of shit at walmart or something.

And I've noticed that I've once again become a boring person. I wake up, take a shower, go to work, come home, eat something, go on a walk, come back home, do some house chores, check email and web accounts, start on school or freelance artwork, talk to My Muse, stay up to the wee hours of the morning drawing or thinking or reading.

I'm so boring. So monotonous.
Scheduled, predictable.

DULL.

and that's the one thing I've been afraid of becoming.

I'll even go so far as to admit that I've come to deeply realize that others around me DO in fact have lives.

My Muse for example. It's one thing after another and it's been hard to keep her on the phone for more than 5 minutes for the past month.
I know I'm going to sound selfish here, but it's the one thing that truly brightens up my day, even if we don't talk about jack shit. Just hearing her voice and hearing about what she's been up to, even if she think's it's pointless makes my day, and also lets me know that the world is still spinning and I'm not just stuck in some day-to-day ring-around-the-rosey lifestyle that will eventually kill me with it's monotony.

I want to be near her every day so badly it almost kills me sometimes.
I honestly am starting to hate it here in Gboro.
It seems I never live in the same place as everyone else I know.

If I could find a decent place to live on top of a well paying job over there, you bet your ass I'd be moving to her town ASAP. Hell I'd overnight myself in a FedEx box if I could.

Then I remember my true place in life.

I'm the older of us, and she's going into her senior year of high school. She has so much to look forward to. So much to hope and aspire for in the future.
She has dreams and ambitions, things she wants to accomplish, and I know she will.

She the kind of person who doesn't really like to, and in fact hates thinking about anything other than the day as planned.
Haphazard in her schedule, as opposed to my planning things out months and sometimes years in advance, forever setting goals and deadlines and planning events that may or may not even happen at all.
She goes with the flow, a real believer in the term "Carpe Diem" (Sieze the Day).

As a matter of fact, our relationship is solid proof that opposites do indeed attract:
She is hot (temper/personality/just plain hawt), while I am cold
She is bright and outgoing, while I am dark and reclusive
She is positive, while I am her negative
She is haphazard, while I am cautious
She is one-tracked in her methods, where I am dispersed to the 4 winds and back
She is my Fire, and I am her Wind (our elemental natures, which ironically coincide)
She is my light/day, and I am her dark/night (and literally, our initials are AM and PM too if you can believe it)

Frankly I'll add that there is also one thing about our relationship that I've stated several times before, even to her, that truly scares the bejeezus out of me.
The overwhelming fact that she may not see a "me" or even an "us" in her future agendas, frightens me a little.
Then I remember my place once again and that I'm selfish and should just accept it if that be the case later on down the road.

Then there's concerning personalities and relationships.
Although she's younger, she's dated far many more people in number than I know (albeit most were schoolyard relationships, nothing more). I on the other hand have dated one other before her.

It ended rather violently I might add.
I'll say it now that there is no greater insult to the human ego and overall mentality than to stand in front of your partner, your lover that you have shared everything with over the past 2.5 years and watch and listen as they berate you and smear your reputation as a decent human being across the ground like a washrag in front of everyone you had believed was you friend. On top of this only to learn that not only did more than one of your best friends dated and/or slept with (there are 4 I can name in a 3 month period) your significant other, some at the same time as you - proving that you were nothing more than a toy. Then to hear this verbatim from their mouth coldly, with no emotion, that it was all you had become good for, and that you had become the following: boring, dull, fat, ugly, a turnoff, just didn't do it for him, useless.

This piled on with years of disappointment from other people I've befriended and confided in, ALL ended in ruin, save for 2 or 3, and even then those connections are kept on a short leash at my convenience.
There has not been one close connection I've had since childhood that has not gone unbetrayed at some point or another.

All of that in itself has driven me away from social interaction over the years. What once took me minutes now takes me months.

It's the one TRUE fear that I currently hold in any and all aspects of my life.

REVOCATION and ISOLATION, along with a dash of FAILURE.
These have mixed inside my soul into a wonderful concoction that constantly tears at my mind and heartstrings, baring its fangs and drooling over my being like a madman possessed, clawing and biting his way out of his cell, threatening to overturn any and everything that I have fought and stood for.
Sometimes it has won.

While I DO NOT fear this kind of action from My Muse, I DO, however, fear myself in the idling thought that I may one day do or say something that would provoke her everlasting hatred and disapproval.

In a way you could say that at this point I technically fear losing her and/or her love/affection/approval/etc more than anything


I guess all this fretting has been getting me more riled up about her senior year than even she is, and it's not even mid-June yet. Her school year JUST ended for crissakes and I'm fretting like a ninny.

It just proves the fact that LOVE is indeed the most PAINFUL emotion you can or will ever feel.

Then I remember that I am yet again a very selfish being.

That and I tend to worry and look into things too damn much.

And if she saw this and read all the way to the bottom she'd jump through the internet line and strangle me senseless for being so damn cotton-headed.

Even if my current fears, which loom over my head, threatening to suffocate me like a warm pillowcase, and if at the end of this coming year when she walks across that podium. She will be an adult.

She can make her own decisions, think for herself and all.

If when that time comes around and she doesn't want anything in the world to do with me.

I'll just have to suck it up and press on, just like before, regardless of how badly it may hurt.

I love her endlessly and that's all there is to it. Be it that I share her future or not.



...................





Although I don't believe this will stop my thoughts from gnawing at the back of my mind like starved hamsters.








Sorry to write you all a novel here.

It's just been on my mind a lot lately, and has really been bugging me.

Yes.....I know

I know.

I should really be talking to her about this.

But for certain reasons:
1.)I really prefer to talk about this in person, and that does NOT include a phoneline
2.)She's currently having fun at a friend's graduation sleepover, and I wish not disturb her

I will definetely talk to her about all this in the near future. Just not right now. It's a personal matter that I feel needs to be addressed on a face-to-face basis, so it will have to wait for that.

I don't believe anyone reads this other than her anyways.

I also realize that this may have seemed like an internal rant or something, and might be taken the wrong way.

I assure you that it's not and I'm just trying to clear my head.

Typing just really helped me get this off of my chest. And I wanted to type it all out and get it all down as clearly as I could make it (and TRY to make it all make sense in writing), and it helps me build up the balls to even address it down the road.

So yah. There you have my excuse for giving you a novel.

In the meantime enjoy some of my latest commission work: