Howdy, circus freaks!

Right now I’m doing some stuff online that’s inadvertently bringing people to my site for the very first time and I’m feeling the urge to scramble around cleaning things up because my site is a bloody mess. So, the first thing people should know when coming here is that THIS SITE IS UNDER HEAVY HEAVY CONSTRUCTION AND DOESN’T ALWAYS LOOK THIS BAD. It’s never been the most well-designed site, in its almost 7 years of existence, but it’s always been a HELL of a lot more organized than it is at this very moment.

So hello new people, my name is Sunny and I’m a writer, an artist and a semi-retired muse. I’ve been living my life publicly, online, in front of an audience (so to speak) since 1997 for reasons even I’m not completely sure of. Over the years I’ve had a running webcam (which I’m probably the most “well known” for), an IRC channel, forums, I’ve sold my art and writing and things I’ve made through a website that no longer exists called Merch Bitch (this was in the days pre-Etsy). Half the internet’s seen me naked, knows my kids names and knows where my husband works. I’m an open book, there’s very little I hold back (and when I do, it’s usually as a courtesy for others), and that’s why people read and have followed my crap for so long….I think, anyway. I live an extremely examined life and truly ascribe to the old adage pertaining to such.

In 2006 I had a (very public, as it happened online) psychotic break and I’ve pretty much spent the last two years in a living hell that I never thought would end. Between the unparalleled terror of psychosis and its aftermath, the lack of aftercare I was given upon my release from the hospital and then 18 months of hellacious trial & error with psychiatric drugs, I’ve really been through the ringer. Throughout it all, I was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder and it’s been a slow crawl back to who I was before. Only recently have I become stable-ish and I feel myself becoming a better, if battle scarred, version of who I was before. If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout this whole ordeal, it’s that life is just a series of processes. I feel like I’m just beginning another, which will eventually end or change and another will begin again.

So that’s me. Oh and I’m 29, married, with two kids, a dog & a cat. This isn’t a current pic, but is, more or less, what I look like (when I’m not sick, anyway):

Part of my “coming back” from mental illness has a lot to do with art and currently I’m enrolled in Suzi Blu’s online workshop “Les Petite Dolls“, which I gushed about here and here and my dear friend Raya paid for me to do because she was glad to see me eeking back towards my old creative self.

When I was starting to “lose it”, just before (and during) my psychotic break, I began working around the clock on a few creative endeavours that I thought were “genius”, including a painting I entitled “Camp Tampon” which to this day I still feel really captures where my mind was at the time. I mean, there’s a definite contrast between that and the way I usually paint.

Because my creative mind was so affected by the mania and because psychosis felt like I was “stuck” in my own imagination and I couldn’t get out, I’ve been afraid to be creative or use my imagination ever since. I’m afraid that if I let my mind “go there”, I’ll get stuck again and that was the single worst experience of my life. I’ve been beaten, I’ve been raped, I’ve been homeless, but psychosis was scarier than all of those things
put together and naturally I want to do everything in my power for it never to happen again. In my mind, that meant stopping all creative activity because to be creative meant I was risking losing it or going over a line that I had no way of seeing. It’s taken my shrink a dozen visits to convince me that as long as I take my medication, it’s okay to be creative and only now that we’ve found what I think is the right medication, have I been able to trust my creative self again.

In the Suzi Blu workshop, you have a profile where she asks specific questions so she can help teach you better and one of them was “What has kept you blocked with art in the past?” to which I answered, “Fear of my own imagination/mental illness. (It’s a long story.)” And this is that long story. You get a blog there too, but I figured if people from “Les Petite Dolls” were clicking the link to my site in my profile anyway, I might as well just write it all out here and be able to post pictures and links to better explain myself.

So there ya have it. Art has always been a huge part of my life (my mom’s an artist, I just grew up with it) and it feels good to have it back.

My friend Erica, who lives in the retirement capital of the world, Florida, made a Live Journal post about how old people often get upset that no one’s listening to them and for that reason, people like us should teach them how to use the Internet and show them websites where they can express themselves and impart their knowledge. Plus, she figured, it would give them something to do.

In that post, she gave examples of old(er) people she knew of on the internet, including a 72-year-old lady who creates instructional videos on how to train birds and uploads them to YouTube and a woman named Jan Griffin, who…well…keep reading.

In searching for instructions on how to use an oddly-shaped pet grooming tool she’d bought, Erica found ExpoTV.com, a site in which people make and share videos of themselves reviewing all kinds of products. This is where she stumbled upon Jan Griffin, an American professor whose age it would be rude to guess so I’m going to forgo hazarding one.

Jan has uploaded almost 500 videos in the past year & a half, seemingly reviewing everything in her house, including such insanely mundane items as Kleenex (twice!!), Ladies’ Home Journal, two different lint rollers, a stuffed soccer ball for dogs (also reviewed by who I’m guessing is a daughter or granddaughter), a calculator (”it adds very easily, that’s 20 + 10, EQUALS, and then you see what the result is,”) and my personal favourite, bobby pins:

I can just picture her meatside, moving through the world looking at and buying things because they’d make a good review for the internets. She’s a living, breathing Saturday Night Live sketch, one that hasn’t happened yet, but one that probably should. Chris Crocker can’t have all the glory, there’s room in this arena of internet celebrity for the old bitches too. Internet, let’s make it so!

I’ve been talking to Jay Holben, the director who’s doing the documentary, Camgirls, and a person I consider a pretty decent, creative, guy and thinking about where the cam world is going. I’ve been more watching and reading than performing in recent years, but I’m still a part of the community and while no one’s asked me about “the book” recently - except Jay Holben - who wasn’t being a douche about it.

The book I’m talking about is Digital Burlesque: When the Girl Next Door Goes Global, which is/was the working title for the book I am/was/will always be sort of working on, I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Basically all I do is cram myself with tidbits of info and hope like hell one day it’ll all come into place, if only as a memoir when I’m 80.

But lately I’ve been thinking sooner than that, but no time soon. The documentary sounds interesting though, from what I’ve heard about it from both Jay and my “sources”. ;D

It’s true, I’ve been cut pretty much completely out of it, but I’d been hoping like hell about that since before we even started because I’m shy about cameras, I much prefer the other side of the lens, outside of my webcam and even then I prefer stills because I’m less goofy looking/acting. So thank god for the cutting room! I do happen to know approximately what footage had been left in and where it’s going, but it’s still in post and I signed a contract and stuff, so I’ll just say it all sounds so very interesting. I love the camworld.

It occured to me the other day that when Jennifer Ringley was on Leno or Letterman or whatever the hell I posted, I bet half the audience didn’t even have the internet. Like half the people in the studio audience OR half the people in the viewing audience, I don’t know, but I bet there were a lot of people who really didn’t understand what she was doing and what it all meant. But everyone I know, at least from back then, did. And it’s stuff like that I’m trying to convey in the book, or at least I’d like to, but I have trouble when it comes how to present it. And in what order. And how long it should be. Plus the cam world keeps changing. The focus has been on YouTube for a while but there’s been a lot of undercurrents that the mainstream media, the “world at large” hasn’t caught onto because for a while there, it appeared as though video killed the camgirl. It didn’t, but that’s a whole other chapter.

Then there was also this pesky USC 2257 law (that was recently struck down), that I was trying to follow but personally, I find US politics really fucking boring. I find Canadian politics really fucking boring. (Unless either affects me, of course.) While I saw the effects of this law and saw how it was detrimental to both legitimate businesses (Camwhores for example) and our rights and freedoms should that kind of insanity spread north of the border, I paid attention, printed everything out and stuck it in my box of “book stuff”, which is slowly becoming two boxes, badly in need of proper sorting and filing. I’ll go through that crap later, I was too busy watching YouTube and trying to keep track of this iJustine thing. And the current state of the girls I’ve mostly been watching since I decided to write a book.

Anyway, I’m gonna shut up now. I just felt like addressing the world today, so hello! I hope you are having a good Thanksgiving to all my neighbours to the south and enjoy your festivities!

Jennifer Ringley on Letterman:

Who the hell is Jennifer Ringley?

These pictures made me happy, so I thought I’d share. :)

This is Ana’s hair mixed with mine (hers is the pink/blonde), which I shaved off on March 1st:

Pic 1
Pic 2