Whew...

It's been along time. In all of this time I've had a very encouraging interview at Nathan Love, animated a couple of scenes for the Mass Animation competition on facebook, churned out more drawings and artwork than had previously in my prior 4 years at UD, started my seed planting/shade tree project for the UD art dept., and gotten a better grasp on my world. That's probably only the half of what I've been up to.

I mean there's trumpeting, I sound better and fundamentally better than ever and still love playing. Maybe even moreso now that I'm in no UD ensembles. I never felt as if I performed very well to begin with but was kept in my place because there was no one else. I'm still in the Eddie Brookshire Big Band and National Guard Band which keeps me performing. Also as a sort of carry over from my deployment I still play trumpet at the McGinnis Mass. Trumpeting has been a bit more of a personal endeavor playing in ensembles was more the price I had to pay in order to have access to the instrument.

My 'shade tree' project is titled such because of a quote I heard, also because of my original intent, about how you don't plant seeds in order to enjoy the shade of the tree. That's the same for the vision of my idea. There have been changes to how I originally wanted it to run but so far so good. Keith Lango was correct when he replied to a message of mine in that it can be hard to get others to get behind you in your vision and complete the project, with no money. So far I've had to be rather flexible in trying to finish this project, however the end is near and is getting ready to go live.

The drawings! My goodness. I'm averaging 2-100 sheet strathmores every 3 months since returning from my deployment. I really can't explain it other than there is some base, inner, urge to create and drawing seems to be one of those places that works...aside from the sketch books it's inexpensive. There are the Boston Stoker chalk drawings which all from prior sketches I was recently commissioned to come up with some illustrations for 2 enterprising grad students and their various on-campus businesses. It still seems funny to me when I'm in Boston Stoker and someone asks to see some of my work and I just point to the blackboard.

I kind of feel like I'm bragging or boasting but, no one reads this! And it's more shock due it's suddenness. As if I'd won the lottery in life. There's plenty of things going wrong but none of it is beyond my capacity to handle. At the same time there's been a lot of practice and work done and I'm doing my damnedest not to squander any of this time. It's at about this hour 0500 (am) that I feel like I'm done animating. So this is the break in the marathon all night animating time. Strange to have to explain that I'm up all night not because I working on something last minute, rather that I really enjoy doing it and don't want to be bothered.

This will easily come in as the longest post I've done but well worth it. There'll be more...'cause there's always a tale to tell.