It's been like a year and a half since I was really involved here. I'm sorry! I feel so irresponsible ;~;

On my absence: The situation all began back in June of 2007 when my computer stopped working. (I think you all remember this.) This situation went on for over six months, despite continuous visits from Comp USA repair men. They would visit, seemingly fix the problem, I'd get all happy, and within two days the computer would be back to it's old tricks. I even took it to a repair shop in town, but the result was the same. No one had any real idea what was wrong with it. I had arranged to start online medical coding classes in January 2008, but computer problems meant I had to cancel and start in Spring quarter instead. I realized that there was no way I'd be able to complete a full college course with a computer I couldn't trust farther than I could throw it, so I broke down and bought a new one.

Then came college. The first semester went pretty smoothly, but I spent all spring stuck in my bedroom doing school instead of enjoying the gorgeous weather. By summer term I was bordering on miserable, and my life had been consumed by college and work. Also, once again, I spent pretty much the whole summer in my room. I was stressed enough that when I did get free time I barely had the energy for anything more than falling down in front of the TV with a can of liquid caffeine. Looking back it's not surprising that with this mental exhaustion, unhappiness, and complete lack of "scope for the imagination", my inspiration pretty much died. I kept sporadic track of my DA account. Over the last few months I had gotten two LiveJournal accounts, a Youtube account, and a Flickr account as well as my account here on DA, and the only one of them that was getting any real attention from me was my lj, simply because I could access it easily while doing school (unlike a real journal), and it gave me a place to vent and organize my thoughts. But asides from my journal entries, I wasn't writing anything. No stories, no poetry, no articles. I wasn't drawing or sculpting or sewing or embroidering either. I had neither the energy or the inspiration to do anything artistic or creative. Hence, nothing to post.

Then in early summer my new computer got a virus. It didn't really affect using the computer, but it made school really hard (I would fill out a page of answers, click submit, and then instead of taking me to the results page it would go "You don't have virus protection! Would you like to buy some?" and would lose me everything I'd just done.) as well as submitting anything on DA. It also made it nearly impossible to look through people's galleries or just navigate around, since everytime I got more than two or three pages in it would give me the advertisement page and kick me all the way back to the first page. Since it wasn't like I had anything to submit to DA anyway due to my multi-medium artistic block, I pretty much decided to give up on DA until after I finished school and could go take care of the virus.

School ended last December and I have spent the time since then trying to recover my inspiration, and creative ability. I have sewed a lot of things, decorated pretty much anything I can get my hands on, and worked a little on my embroidery. My stories are going slowly and frustratingly hard, but I'm trying to perservere and get back into the swing of them again. Last month, after more than two years, I finally wrote some poetry, and just in the last few weeks I've picked up on a doll I started sculpting more than a year ago.

Major events of the last year: Bought a digital camera at last and have really enjoyed being able take pictures and film. I got high-speed internet in order to do my school, and so finally accessed Youtube. It's broadened my musical horizons so much. I was finally able to listen to a lot of artists I'd wanted to hear for ages but hadn't been able to, as well as watch a lot of movies I'd been interested in. My aunt found out she was pregnant again in November, and the baby (it's supposed to be a girl) is due next month! I graduated in December and have been attempting to get a job in my chosen field but with no luck. Went to Ohayocon in January, and that was way too fun. Bought a PS3 in January as well, and rediscovered one of my favorite video game series, Metal Gear. I worked at a pizza place in town during all of this time, until last month I was let go. I am currently unemployed, but I've managed to get a job at a waterpark in Columbus (Zoombezi Bay), and start there soon. I've been working on my livejournal account, as well as my flickr account and my polyvore account. I also just started my own blog, Cair Paravel! [link]

And also, regarding this entry [link] I did finally settle on a name for him! Alter. It means "old" in Yiddish and "the other" in Latin. And since he is pretty much just a doppleganger, as well as being incredibly ancient, I thought it suited him rather nicely.