Love Suddenly

I downloaded a free program called GIMP. It’s image editing software similar to Photoshop, just without the price tag. I found a nifty tutorial for doing shadows and highlighting, and I thought I’d give it a try. Here without further ado, are the results.

This is what it looked like with just the line art (which I didn’t do) and the color fills. Kinda like what you’d see in a typical coloring book.

This is the finished product. I really like the way her face turned out. Especially the shadow from her hair. I think it’s a good start. I need to learn a lot about shading, but I had a ton of fun just trying it out. The best part of the program is the ability to turn on and off certain layers.

This is the finished picture with the flat colors turned off. This is the background, the line art, and the highlights and shadows. I think it looks pretty cool.

This is the finished picture with the line art turned off. Funny what the lines hide yeah?

Ah the first day of June. It was a beautiful day, with sunshine and hints of the heat to come. I was recently introduced to the idea of New Month’s Resolutions. Things to be accomplished within 30 days are usually much more concrete and accomplishable than stuff to work on for a year. It also brings your goals to mind more. Each passing day ticks off one more chance to get some work done. So with June now upon us, I hereby announce some New Month’s Resolutions.

Number One: I will post every day this month here on the blog. I mean to write here more, but there are so many things that get in the way. So with a new month comes a new chance to try again.

Number Two: I will jog in the morning at least four times a week. I will do my pilates DVD at least three times a week.

Numer Three: Along with the regular blogging, I will post something creatively written once a week. A poem, a narrative, some dialogue, something.

Number Four: I will get the house to a state where I feel comfortable inviting someone over. Right now I’m embarassed by the condition of my house. This will be a pretty big project, and it feels a little undefined, but I know in my head what everything should look like.

Number Five: I will go hiking at least once. Hopefully it will be with people, but if I have to go by myself to get this one done, I will.

Wish me luck, and feel free to join me in making your own New Month’s Resolutions. If you decide to, leave me a comment!

In the spirit of writing creatively, I’m cross-posting the pantoum I wrote for an assignment given by friends.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I know the sensation of terrible fear.
There’s a chill on my skin, fire tears at my breath;
Blood is all I can see, screams are all I can hear.

I know the sensation of terrible fear;
Facing my terror, my mind makes it worse.
Blood is all I can see, screams are all I can hear;
Hands clenched to my skull, as if it could burst.

Because of my terror, my mind makes it worse.
Deep down I have power to overcome all.
Hands clenched to my skull, preventing the burst
Of potential for greatness. It beckons, it calls.

Deep down I have power to overcome all
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
My potential for greatness has beckoned, has called.
There’s a thrill on my skin, and fire in my breath.

Please allow me to pimp two very nifty people in this digital world of ours. Naomi of IttyBiz works from home helping very tiny businesses figure out how to tell the world why they’re awesome. While that sounds like it would make for a niche-oriented blog, her writing is accessible, engaging, and often very relevant. Sometimes she gets downright high-larious (yes, I’m channeling Jayne). She’s one of those networking people. She either knows something awesome, or she knows someone who does. I’ve found several interesting reads following her web of links around the net.

Which leads me to my next little bump. Wednesday, Naomi put up a fantastic guest post on motivation from David. First off, the post is excellent, so go read it, and then come back and I’ll tell you about David and his company. Go on… I’ll wait…

David runs a nifty little company called Postcard Perfect. Here’s the idea: upload your own photo, tell them what you want it to say, and where to send it, and then they print and mail it for you. You can do this from the internet, or insert the memory card from your camera into one of his kiosks. Imagine a personalized “Wish you were here” card, with a photo you took just ten minutes before, with none of the hassle of buying stamps or finding a post box.

I was impressed by both his post, and his idea, so I shot him an email to give him some kudos. Every struggling entrepreneur (are there any that aren’t?) needs a high five every once in a while. He got back to me within minutes, and he came across as one of those pleasant people. When I’d mentioned that I was less likely to use his service, as most of my friends live close, he replied that it was his goal to get people to see mail, real hold-it-in-your-hands mail, as something of value again. He says he surprises his wife with cards all the time.

He was gracious enough to give me a free trial, so I shall return and report (and hopefully pimp again) when I’ve given it a test run. Until then, check these peeps out!

For three or four days last week, I had a little spider doing laps around my bedroom ceiling, teasing my poor cats. Then I discovered he’d made his way into the bathroom, and I decided to get some pictures to see if someone on the net could tell me what kind it was. I’ve posted the good ones on my flickr, and yall should check them out. He was really small, so a lot of the detail in the pictures wasn’t visible to my naked eye. I’ll refrain from posting them here, as I know one of my readers doesn’t like spiders, and I don’t want to freak her out. Just a link. Enjoy.

There is nothing in my life that stresses me out so much as money. There’s just so much that gets me about everything. First of all, if the money isn’t there right now, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. Yes, I can go out, work hard, etc., but that doesn’t make money appear in my hand at the end of the day.

I also have a lack of firm control of myself in this area. If I sit down and really study out the whole picture, I can be good. But if I just have a vague idea of how much is coming in and going out, I invariably find myself with less than I thought. When you’ve got things that require getting ahead of your paychecks to deal with, “less” is not a good idea.

I’ve been in a mild panic for the last… well, it’s been awhile. Anyway, things are starting to pick back up again, so I’ve been a little looser with my spending. Foolishly, I hadn’t yet sat down and really figured out where everything was going, so I’ve spent more than I should have. This is embarrassing at best, and very disappointing, and potentially damning to BF. No details here, sorry.

He called me the other night, with a reminder that sets things a bit on its ear. And he wanted to know how things are money-wise. He’s very good to me. He’s trusting me with handling everything, and he’s not hovering or asking questions. Thus far I haven’t lived up to his trust. I haven’t sunk us, but we’re worse off than we could have been. Better off than we’ve been over the last few months, but that loss of potential is very sad, and totally my fault. I knew this in the back of my mind, and this triggered my usual stress response. Run away.

Running away from financial difficulties is a far cry from the best option. I don’t think it can possibly do anything but make everything much, much worse. So tonight I faced that fear. I’ve got our financial set-up mapped out in a pretty detailed way for the next several weeks, and it’s in an extensible system that lets me add input and output on the fly. I think I’ve finally got the big picture. I’m still working on getting it all documented, but now I know where it all is, where it’s all coming from, where it’s all going, and I think we’ll be okay. It’s going to be tight, and I DEFINITELY need a better paying job, but we’ll be okay.

I’m going to audition for Into the Woods (it’s a musical) next Saturday. I will actually be vastly surprised if they give me a second thought (honestly, I have no experience, and I will have had five days to practice my music of choice. Which I haven’t chosen yet), but I’ve decided to go for it anyway. Fortunately, I have some excellent resources at my disposal, and my dear friend was kind enough to take pictures for me to use as a headshot. I was going to post the one I picked here, but he beat me to it. Go there and check out my sexy.

You can’t ever go back. You can only go forward. Focusing on what you had, what you lost, how things were only does you a disservice. Just as being caught up in the future leads to missing the present, being stuck in the past denies present and future.

1. 10 years ago: I was 13. Finishing up 8th grade. I got a perfect attendance award. I tore the ligaments in my right ankle jumping down some stairs. I kicked my arch-enemy with it. Hard. That still lists in the top 10 days of my life. I got the cast off the day before going to Raging Waters for a field trip. I went to girl’s camp and Brighton during the summer. I thought I was cool by using the first letter in place of various swear words. Telling someone they were an effing ‘a’ was the worst I could come up with.

2. 5 things on my to-do list today: Complete this meme. Relax. Work on my quilt block. Start using three of the six pounds of ground beef I foolishly didn’t separate before freezing. Write our rent check. (Yay!)

3. Snacks I enjoy: Doritos. Nacho and Ranch. Trail mix with MnM’s and raisins. Potato chips with onion dip. Laffy Taffys. Ice cream.

4. What I would do if I were suddenly made a billionaire: Get BF square with the law. Pay off my student loan and the other lady. Pay back my roommate. Get BF’s Mazda all fixed up. Get me my Saturn Sky. Buy a house. Invest. Very probably in that order.

5. 5 places I have lived: Salt Lake, Cedar City, Steiner. I don’t have five.

6. 5 jobs that I have had: Theatre everything. Store clerk. Rifle Director. Climbing teacher. Massage therapist.

7. 5 Things people don’t know about me: This is possibly the roughest time I’ve ever had answering this question. I got the rest of this post done days ago, but what to write here has been weighing on my mind. One: I interpret this question as “Five things you don’t know, but will find wildly entertaining.” Thus my difficulties. Two: I ate an apple-pear for breakfast this morning, and it was delicious. Three: I wish I had a sarcastic mental commentary running in my head. Four: I really, really, really want to ride in the bike tour for the marathon, but I don’t believe I would make it. I have no actual proof or reason to believe that, just inner negativity. I use my lack of funding as an excuse. Five: I want to go hiking like it’s nobody’s business.

Tag! At this point, pretty much everyone I know personally has done this meme. So I’m tagging whoever reads this. If you’ve done this already, feel free to ignore me. If you haven’t, please give it a go, and leave me a link to your post in my comments. Thanks!

There are several things I’ve been meaning/promising to post here, so I’m going to run through and do it all at once. Be ye prepared?

Hair

Before and after pictures of my new hair cut. Oddly enough, I got several compliments on my hair just before I cut it. I like the cut, but the woman who did it styled it in the HUGEST beehive lookin’ thing, and I was more than thrilled to get home and restyle it myself.

Quilt

I started playing a game called Patchworkz, and got totally hooked on the idea of trying some quilting. My wonderful friend Ki was gracious enough to give me the leftovers from her own attempt. Here are some pictures of what I’ve done so far. I’ll post another pic of the finished block when I’m done. I’m hand sewing the thing, which I’ve never done before, so we’ll see how long it lasts.

This internet thing is amazing. Toy, tool, communication, and all the information you can sink your virtual teeth into. There’s also a lot of money out there, and it’s starting to really catch my interest. Sure, there are plenty of people with shady websites willing to cut you in on their somehow magical effortless system that no one has thought of before, or that Mr. Rich Namelessguy has kept secret until now. But there are also people making a legitimate income, either adding to or entirely providing for their living. Read that last part one more time. There are people who write blogs, and do it for a living.

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits can be credited (blamed) for starting this whole thing percolating in the back of my mind. In one year, he has gone from being in debt and working your typical day job, to being debt free, with an emergency fund, and fully self-employed. Then, somewhere along the line, someone pointed me in Dooce’s direction. I was a fan initially because she lives in my hometown, and because I think she’s funny. When I discovered that her family lives on what is essentially blog-based income, I was hooked.

From there, things have gone in two predictable directions: Half of me wants to do too much too soon. Throw up ads, ask for donations, comment from here to Satan on every blog I can find, add links to every social bookmarking page EVAR, etc, etc, etc. The other half of me is convinced it’ll never work. Little ole’ me will never be successful at anything I do. With as many people making money (or trying to) around the net these days, I’m Sally Come-Lately, and I will be scrambling for the scraps at the table.

This post is an attempt to combat both symptoms. I’m putting my little seedling intentions out there for people to comment upon. I’m forcing myself to slow down, do some research, and decide if all this is what I really want. It also allows me to take the time I know I’ll need to truly build a solid foundation. While I’d love to be instantly famous, the internet is cruel to it’s pop stars. Honestly, when is the last time you watched a Chris Crocker video? “Who?”, you ask. Exactly.

By admitting that I’d like to make money off of what you’re reading right now, I also combat the Wench Woman. That voice in my head that tells me why I’m personally not good enough to be successful. She’s astoundingly persuasive, pervasive, and personal. Which is exactly why she’s wrong.

At this point, I’m off to do more research. There are a lot of good resources on the net full of information for the beginner and the pro. As someone who is one, and would like to become the other, I open myself up for suggestions. If you’re new, or a long time reader, an expert, or just opinionated, please feel free to share your opinions. What would you be willing to pay for? What would turn you away? What advice would you give?