It’s been a busy few weeks, so I won’t bother anyone with excuses. Needless to say, their are times when you have to just put away the big ol’ interwebz when you get home and pay attention to what truly matters. Some people spend most of their time worrying about what goes on in the World Wide Web of deceit, as if it were the life blood of reality. People spend more time checking their phones than talking to each other it seems like.

It used to be that I needed a cup of coffee to start my day. Now it’s become a cup of coffee and a smartphone.

Anyway, this isn’t really to gripe. In fact, I am quite content and happy. I have had some great experiences this week. I have had a bunch of great opportunities open up, and I am looking forward to working on them. I’ve also started painting again, and doing some small carving things.

Sadly, I did have some work stolen. That sucked, but it happens. You just have to gauge how important it is to you on whether you fight for it or not. I raised Hell, but in the end I don’t think I really would have gotten through the beauracracy and hypocrisy of a visibly corrupt marketing system. Oh well. Lesson learned. The thing that really got me was that the people I expected to support me literally disappeared.

The moral of the story: surround yourself with people who are going to do what’s right, and get rid of those who are only going to preach what’s right.

Here’s a small piece I did on the computer that I have been waiting to post. It’s titled: Vincent Von Frankenstein: Adolescent

Also, here are some initial concept designs for a puppet show that I was working on:

Oh… also, I did some carving.

@BgKahuna recently posited a question How Do People Achieve Happiness? How do you define it?

Westerners define it differently than Easterners. For Westerners happiness is a feeling of euphoria. It’s a sense that everything is going to be wonderful, and that we are going to live happily ever after and ride on unicorns that fart cotton candy in the shape of kittens dressed in panda costumes (yeah, that was for you BgK!). In a word, it’s pretty unrealistic. One of the reasons is that the Western view of happiness is based on the external. If I buy a house, I’ll be happy. If I get a good job, I’ll be happy. If I get a big screen TV, I’ll be happy. If I shower myself and my family with luxuries that make Olympus envious, then I will be happy. See a trend here.

The Western view of happiness is totally based on external. Things that we do, obtain, or achieve outside of ourselves. They are hollow victories, and the rarely give any sustainable meaning to one’s life. Remember that smart phone you just bought? Next year’s model will be released soon, and it will have more memory, more features, and touch screen that will lick your nether regions if you get the right app. A Westerners view of happiness is based on conquests. It’s kind of like Gilgamesh run amock, only Gilgamesh never realized that his victories were hollow and that his defining commitment was to protect his people.

Easterners, on the other hand, view happiness as a momentary event. We are happy one moment, and sad the next. Happiness is a state of complete joy and serenity. It is the overwhelming urge to smile, laugh, cry, and dance at the same time. To allow one’s heart to explode with delight. However, it is also with the knowledge that true happiness is momentary. It’s impermanent. Really, the best way to explain it is inner peace. It’s knowing how you react to certain situations, and to be able to allow yourself to feel those emotions that you need to feel to get through trying times. Without that inner peace, we tend to look for outside forces to make us well which causes more suffering, which encourages us to seek out more bad forces, and so on, and so on.

However, it doesn’t end. It’s impermanent in the sense that one moment of happiness is not like another. It is also understood that happiness is in balance with suffering. You can not achieve enlightenment without suffering, neither can you achieve happiness without sadness. However, within that balance comes contentment, and the knowledge that happiness is an ever flowing river. It has it’s good parts, and bad parts, and there is occasional loss, but ultimately that is life. Short, beautiful, impermanent, and understanding that balance comes peace.

His Holiness the Dalai Llama has said that happiness is a muscle. It is something that we must work to achieve, through meditation and focus on where we are at the moment. My wife does not like that analogy. It’s a hard analogy to wrap our heads around. Either something makes us happy, or it doesn’t. What HHDL is saying is that we must be active in our happiness. We must cultivate our own inner peace.

For me happiness comes from making things. The things I make are rubbish for the most part. It’s not the end product, it’s the process. It’s letting energy flow through me to make something, to cook something, to build something. To be a part of the impermanence of it all. It’s joyous actually. I see that joy extending to my kids, as I watch them build something. It cames from this inner need to see how something works, and how it connects us. My happiness comes from the connections I cultivate, the people I talk to. The people who give me a little piece of themselves everyday, and in return I give myself.

More importantly, it’s knowing there is balance that I am responsible for in my own life. I am the cause of my own happiness. I can either be a part of this world, or I can shun it. I know a lot of people who shun it. They call themselves cynics. They would much rather say why I am wrong, then look at themselves. I am not saying that everything in the world is great. There are lot of things that suck. There isn’t a library big enough to contain all of the sucky things going on right now. However, I can’t let those sucky things stop me. In fact, it is my duty to help other out of their sucky situation as other have helped me out of mine.

We are, as it turns out, responsible for those around us.

Go be Happy. Go Be Awesome!

I’m performing improv for the first time in 20 years. I am full of butterflies. Not only am I performing for the first time in decades, but I am also performing with a group  that is easily, half my age. I never thought that I would say this, but I am old enough to be their dad. It’s kind of cool in some ways. I mean these kids are fresh, they are trying new things, learning how to trust themselves to be in the moment, and to accept everything to see where it will go. I kinda get there and see where I was when I was their age.

It has made me realize what I have been missing. It hasn’t been the performing. To be honest, I can do without some of that. It’s not the performance, it’s the scheduling. Maybe when the kids are older it won’t be so bad. They’ll be more self-sufficient, and I may even be able to include them. It’s great to hangout and work on stuff in a team environment, but the scheduling is just a bitch. It must be just as fun for the director.

What I have really been missing is the ability to break the box. I do that a lot in just the way I see the world. I don’t see it as a clear black and white world with delineated absolutes. It’s more like looking at a big petrie dish of amoebas. Constantly changing. However, in my work I tend to stick with what I am most comfortable with. I use the computer to draw, I use a very set scale pattern for bass playing, and my food is usually stuff that I know by heart.

What I miss is stepping out of my own skin and just seeing where the choices go. It’s one of those things that my kids have been teaching me. Enjoy experimenting, and watching the kaboom if need be.

It’s kinda fun.

That all said, I am truly looking forward to performing again. I am scared, excited, nervous, and ecstatic. I think it’s going to be a great time, and the best part is I have a great bunch of performers I get to work with. I good bunch of minds who are willing to break their own shells.

For this I would like to thank all of the students of the Marian University Theatre, the Performing Knights club, and the entire cast of One Knight Wonders. You helped make an old meneheune feel young again.

I turned 40 last summer. It was kind of a non-event for a milestone birthday really. We were in the middle of closing on our house, trying to get out of our old house, organizing people to help move and watch the kids, and oh yeah… work. It was what it was … just another day. We’re hoping to do something special for my 41st since that is the one that really gets the party hopping (you know … being that I was able to remain 40 for a whole year).

Anyway, it got me thinking. When am I going to start doing what I want to do. I’ve taken care of my family, I have seen my loved ones through good times and bad times, I have dusted myself off every time I’ve been pushed to the ground, and I’ve charted my own course in doing so. Recently, I joined a group of fellow bloggers – some serious, some not so serious, yet all are sincere. The goal was for each of us to post once of week. We’re kind of a secret society, so a lot of people know about it – well… a lot of people just blankly stare and nod.

This group, this band of bloggers, is really encouraging me to take more control over those things that I enjoy. It’s like there is a group out there for me, and they are just as much of a misfit as I am – except one guy who owns a manatee (long story; involves kelp I think). Whether it’s picking up my pencils again, drawing on the computer, or digging into audio recording, I am really starting to feel like it’s my time to stretch my legs. And it’s making me a better father. My kids are unknowingly raising me because now instead of trying to keep their attention to put on their clothes (yeah, that never stops) they are trying to keep me doing what I love doing, and that is creating. They see me making stuff and want to jump in.

The next major goal for me is to start selling prints of my work (as seen below). I have a lot of research as far as budget, shipping, printing, and how many should I do a first run. In the mean time, playing with my band the VertigoGo’s, dancing to Culture Club, and finding new ways to make my family laugh. Life is pretty good. I am sure I could find something to complain about, but it wouldn’t do that much good, so I focus on everything that is right.

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition[...]

- Henry V, act IV, scene iii

It’s a great feeling. I have a lot of people to thank, and I haven’t met all of them. I will soon. In fact I think there are some fruity drinks that should be had and soon.

EDIT: Sorry, this post is no longer being maintained. If you really need help with this you can always contact me directly, but seeing as Flash is no longer the go to web interface toy I suspect that there are simple JavaScript solutions available.

Thanks! 

Everyonce in a while I get inspired. It’s going to be the next “big thing”. 5 minutes later, I’m sitting on the couch wishing how that next “big thing” could have worked out? Why didn’t that next “big thing” work out, you ask? Because the first 5 minutes didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to.

Growing up we are given conflicting messages. At school we hear “if at first you don’t succeed, try again.” In sports we hear “practice makes perfect.” But in every other walk of life we hear “If you’re not going to do it right, why try.” This gets stuck with you. It eats away at your work, and the more you hear the more you believe it. It take over your own workflow until you can only spend 5 minutes on a project before you throw your hands up in frustration.

The point is… you have to make crap. Not only do you have to make crap before you can make something beautiful, but you have to set out to make crap. You actually have to say to yourself “SELF!!! Today, I’m going to make crap. It’ll be a horrendous pile of dung I would not server to my own mother on her deathbed, but it will be made by me. I will labor, sweat, toil, and fret about this crap, but I am going to make it, and it will make me proud to have done so. For I will not know what I am capable of unless I can fling the poo of my own brain dripping onto the canvas of awesomeness, thereby validating my own existence.”

Sometimes you just gotta make crap.