I re-read the CammityJane entry I posted yesterday and I’m not entirely happy with it, but I’m not going to go editing it until I DO like it because I don’t believe in 2nd drafts. I’ve never gone back and edited anything I’ve ever written in my whole entire life, so I’m not about to do doing that now. SO THERE.

Once it’s finished (if it’s ever finished) and I’m thinking about turning it into a book, THEN I’ll play with stuff. Right now I just need to get the story out of me and slowly but surely, it’s coming.

Fiction’s weird. I’m not sure I’ve really talked much about the CammityJane journal, but last year when I went nuts, I had this huge explosion of concrentrated ideas and it was as if I got stuck in my own imagination and the problem was that A) I didn’t realize I was “off” and B) I couldn’t bring myself out of it.

It was during that period where the story of Jane (or more to the point, the other people she’s going to encounter) came into my mind and I spent most of my time in the hospital sketching scenes in my head with these characters (none of whom have been introduced yet), but not writing down a single word.

When I got out of the hospital, I got out my pencil crayons and drew every location of every scene, maps, character sketches and right now, I guess the name of the game is moving characters from point A to point B, which is actually a lot harder than I originally thought it would be and I find as I obsess with that, my characters lose a little depth.

For example, the “strange man” Jane encounters in the latest post is seriously glossed over from what’s in my head and I know that my descriptions aren’t sufficient if the reader’s going to come away with the mental image of him I have. At the same time, I also know he’s going to show up later so that gives me a second chance and the opportunity to round him out a little more. (How he moves, for example, is important, but in the restaurant setting I had a hard time trying to figure out a way for him to move because everything takes place at one table and it was important to the over all story that Jane come to him and not the other way around.)

Anyway, this isn’t a serious project or anything, just something I work on when the mood strikes or a character walks into my dreams demanding attention, which was the case with Good Eat Part 1 and “the strange man” himself.

In other news, my 10lbs of plain ol’ grey plastiscene arrived on Monday and I’ve spent a good portion of the week screwing around and seeing what I can do with it. So far I’ve only made a really stupid looking girl with a lot of hair…

I realize the face is dumb, that part took maybe 10 mins but each “strand” of hair was hand-rolled by yours truly and took about 30 hours total.

I’ve been on Wikipedia practically all day researching dragons, I think that’s what I’m going to make next and there’s a reason; when I was in grade 5 or 6 (hard to say since I had the same teachers and the same classroom for both grades, it was a split class) an art lady came to our school to teach us about using clay and I made this really awesome Chinese dragon, that’s now long gone, and I wanted to see if I could do it again, but better since I’m no longer a chubby little kid with chubby little fingers doing things the way someone else tells me to.

All week, when I’ve told people that I bought 10 lbs of grey plasticine, they’ve all asked the same question: “Why grey?” Well, it’s all gonna end up grey anyway, isn’t it?

The reason I got it was mostly to help me visualize certain things in 3-D and to better figure out where shadows would be (when painting) and I don’t need colour for that. In fact, for my purposes, I think colour would be distracting.

Some folks have suggested that I do stop-motion videos since I now have all this plastiscene and believe me, I’ve been thinking about it, but if it’s gonna happen, it’ll be a long time from now. I’ve got too much on the go between now and the spring and once the warm weather hits, using plastiscene is going to suck because it’ll be way too melty. So, if I ever do a stop-motion video, it’ll probably be next fall. (And if I did do one, I’d have to buy coloured plastiscene, so I’ll wait until I have a good idea first. :))

And finally, this brings me to YouTube and video blogging in general.

A few people have subscribed to my YouTube channel, which is fine, but don’t bitch about there being no context, because sometimes I’m uploading this stuff to be used for other things. For example, there’s a few videos that friends asked me to put up there, that have absolutely nothing to do with my site or blogging or anything, they just wanted to be able to share them with their own friends or post on their MySpaces. There’s probably gonna be a lot of that, so basically, if I don’t embed the video in a blog post and write about it, I uploaded it for someone or something else.

Another thing that keeps coming up is the lack of Madison (my daughter) in the videos I’ve uploaded thus far. Well, there’s a reason for that, a few of them actually.

The first is that, unlike Wes, she understands what a video camera does and as such, she tends to not “be herself” or becomes a different version of herself when it’s around (which is a nice way of saying that she tends to get obnoxious). She grew up with me following her around with a digital camera, so she doesn’t do this with stills, just with video. Wes is the opposite. If I get out the digital camera, he turns into an obnoxious little brat, but with the video camera, he acts himself because he’s too little to understand that it’s recording. He’s seen the videos of himself, but he just doesn’t understand the concept of video yet and he’s barely even aware of the internet, let alone YouTube.

The other reason is simply that she doesn’t want to be in videos that are of just “real life”.

She wants to put on plays and dress up and do fashion shows and stuff like that, which we do videotape for her, we just don’t put them online because she’s self-conscious and doesn’t want us to. We respect that. :) Basically any footage of Madison that gets put online is with her final approval and this is the kind of stuff she wants out there:

(That was from her school’s Xmas concert.)

Since that’s the case, most “kid videos” are going to be put up by Blake over at the kids’ site, Bunnies & Bees, for their aunts & uncles & grandparents to watch (and whoever else wants to, obviously, but it’s mostly a family thing).

In other news, it’s Wes’ 4th birthday on Tuesday and last week a few people e-mailed me to see if I’d gotten a wishlist set up yet, so this afternoon I cleaned up the kids’ old wishlist (deleting unavailable items/stuff they’ve kinda grown out of wanting etc), which can be found here.

And with that, I’m out.

Fun Fact: I have this theory that if one can live a karmically neutral life, at the end of it rather than reincarnating, your energy just dissipates into nothingness. Personally, that’s what I’m going for.

So this afternoon I had a shower, put real clothes on (as opposed to PJs) and even a little bit of makeup and then I sat here for like, 3 hours trying to make a video blog using iMovie and my iSight. Well…I’m just not a vlogger, I don’t think. Moving video of myself, to me, is just the absolute fucking creepiest thing and I can’t stand it. I haven’t given up on the idea of making at least one video blog for shits, giggles & sheer posterity (eventually), but using iMovie with the preview window & all, just isn’t the way to go about it, I’ve decided.

I’m not sure if anyone’s been paying attention, but I’m kinda in the process of seriously re-evaluating and reorganizing my life and this site and the internet in general is a really big part of that. I didn’t do a big New Year’s post because I don’t do the resolution thing as a rule, and new years don’t mean a whole lot to me because, like a lot of people, I’m still just a big kid and the “new year” starts in Sept., ends in June and summer is just this period of awesomeness that’s outside of the calendar year. I’ll know I’m a grown-up when suddenly January means something to me.

I can’t even really say that I’m working on any particular goals, outside of NOT going nuts and ending up in the hospital again this winter, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how life is going to change around me pretty hardcore in the next year and what opportunities & pitfalls that’s going to create.

Wes, my youngest, is turning 4 in a couple of weeks, which means that he’s going to be starting junior kindergarten in the fall. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have immense issues surrounding this fact, not because of the whole “my baby’s leaving me” thing but because of how it’s going to change the structure of my day and routine in general, as well as the pressure I’m feeling because when your youngest starts kindergarten, usually women go back to work or school or find a job or something and that’s basically what society expects people to do.

But that’s not what I want to do and half my problem is that I don’t really even KNOW what I want to do yet, beyond the shit I already do. :| All I know is that (among other things) I’ve got $32,000 worth of student loans that aren’t going to go away and I can’t stay on interest relief forever, so come September, some decisions are going to have to be made.

I guess I’m a grown-up afterall. When the fuck did that happen? :(

Despite all this personal upheaval and mental junk I’ve been sifting through, there are a lot of things I’m looking forward to once days become mine again and a lot of things I’m attempting to work towards in the meantime, but at this point are mostly tentative. Right now I’m trying to get Sunnyland set up as a legitimate business. What kind of business, I’m not entirely sure yet, but hopefully one that makes more than the $15/month the bank’s charging me for a business account. I know I definitely want to make ‘zines again, I know I want to do something with Lulu.com eventually (have a few projects in mind), I want to set up my studio more as an actual studio where I can paint and cam and write and create and actually be somewhat productive, as opposed to it just being “the smoking lounge” with the leaky roof where we watch TV when people come over.

With the roof being fixed in the spring, this is all possible. When the teacup wall is complete, I can move the smoking lounge outside where it belongs. When Wes starts school, I can explore and do a lot of things I just can’t do now.

One of the things I’m really interested in is the town I live in because in some ways, it is so ass-backwards I can’t even believe it exists, let alone the fact that I live here. For months I’ve been trying to figure out a safe way to explore and add that dimension to things online, but I keep getting caught on both logistics, ethics and overal safety. I mean…is it really a good idea to blog about the town I live in? Especially when it’s teeny tiny, gossipy as all hell and the internet’s full of creepy stalker types? I’m not sure, but it’s something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to recently. The world I live in, the one in my head, the one inside my computer (which are mostly one in the same), it’s all very contrast to the environment in which I live and there’s a part of me that gets a really big kick out of that…but it could be ruined pretty easily if I exploit it creatively, so I’m trying to think and plan carefully.

I dunno, my mind’s just a jumble of plans and ideas these days, which is both worrisome and reassuring, but at least I feel as though I’m on a path to somewhere.

Basically? Just bear with me while I get my shit together, I’m workin’ on it.