I guess the shortest, simplest answers were “Yes” and “Yes.”

I didn’t want  to return until I knew I could stay returned. I’ve done far too many things in a scattershot, at-whim fashion, only to lose whatever impetus I had at the start–and I didn’t want blogging to be yet another of those things. So I stayed away until I could get the whole “blog thing” sorted out: What did I want it to be about? What kind of regular posting schedule would I adhere to? And, perhaps most importantly, was I willing to go all in, turn it into another career, and give it the serious, sustained effort it needed in order to be what I wanted it to be? Because I can’t do anything halfway; I’m either fully committed or I’m not committed at all.

So: I’m committed.

I dusted off the domain I registered a few years back, got a new host for it, and installed a brand-new version of WordPress. I was going to import these old entries, but decided against it; I wanted a clean start. It seems only right.

If you’d like to follow me to my new home, I’m now at www.magicalrealist.com. At this writing it’s still sparsely furnished–I’ve been there less than a week–but there’s definitely more coming…

And it’s worth it. Totally worth it, and in ways I never anticipated.

The most obvious benefit is that when I’m at the studio, I get work done. I close the door, start drawing or painting, and stay focused on what I am doing for hours and hours on end. It’s amazing. I haven’t experienced this since art school, when I would spend all night working in the painting studios.

Granted, I haven’t produced anything particularly good in all those hours of work; most of it has ended up in the burn box or gessoed over. But that’s fine. That I am productive at all is a huge improvement over where I’ve been.

The most unexpected benefit, however, has been to my domestic life. As soon as I moved all the art-making apparatus out of the house and into its own space, I gained the ability to complete neglected projects around the house. In the last three weeks, I’ve painted bookshelves, refinished a desk and a chair, and cleared all the junk from my huge, glassed-in front porch. I am now busy turning that porch into a space for the cats to hang out, complete with perches, ramps, hiding places, and cozy spots to sleep–a project I’ve meant to do since I moved in six years ago.

Just as I’ve spent years stalled out in making art, I’ve had a similar problem with DIY projects around the house. I’ve ended up with furniture that’s half-refinished, upholstery projects going to seed, and an ever-growing stash of fabric I fully intend to make into clothes once I have the time and energy to do it. And I’ve never had the time, energy, or attention span to tackle, much less finish, these projects. Most end up languishing for years before I finally get to them, and I’ve always had a huge backlog of projects waiting to be done.

And these DIY projects haven’t gone undone for lack of physical space; I have plenty of room in which to do them. Moving the art supplies out of the house freed up a bit more space, but not that much. What has changed is that I now have the mental space to devote to these projects. Before, with art-making competing for attention on my to-do list, nothing seemed to get done–just as domestic matters always distracted me when I tried to make art. But now that I’ve taken art out of the house and out of my day-to-day decision making, everything has changed. I’m getting shit done. I have energy and patience for it that I’ve never had before. And none of it is so big or overwhelming as it once seemed.

Now here’s the funny thing: I’ve spent very little time in the studio since the beginning of November, and have made almost no art. I’ve put up shelves, cleaned, and organized my supplies, but that’s pretty much it. And this is okay. I’m not fretting over it, nor am I beating myself up over the rent I’m paying to do little more than store my art supplies. Instead I’m at home, working on a few big projects that will make my life immeasurably easier and more pleasant once they are done. They’ll be done (or done enough) by Thanksgiving, and by the first of December I’ll be ready to go back into my studio and pick up where I left off. The rent I’m paying for this “unproductive” month of studio time is more than offset by what it’s allowing me to accomplish here at home.

But I’ve finally had to face facts: this whole self-contained live/work arrangement I’ve aspired to has never, ever worked for me. I’ve ended up puttering endlessly while getting no work of consequence done. Because at home? There are distractions.

Cats demanding to be let out. Trash that needs to be emptied. Cats picking on each other. The bathroom floor that’s suddenly looking rather filthy. The fresh pile of cat vomit that needs to be wiped up. The Internet (oh, God help me, the Internet). Cats demanding to be fed. The overlooked bill that needs to be paid. Cats shitting Kryptonite and not covering it up, so I have to go do it for them before we all die of the stink. Twitter.  Cats who decide that the best way to get my undivided attention RIGHT NOW is to piss on something. Going downstairs to make lunch and deciding that making cookies would be a fine idea.  Cats falling out of upstairs windows. Email. Cats demanding to be let in. Cats…motherfucking cats, okay?

Yeah. You get the idea.

It finally dawned on me that one reason I managed to get so much work done in college, and do it so well, was because I did it all in public spaces. The university library, the ugly  couch outside the History department, my favorite pub, Starbucks–these were the places I went to get serious work done, because it was hopeless trying to do it at home.

Each of those places had their own potential distractions, especially loud ambient noise. But here’s the thing: none of the noise had anything to do with me. I didn’t have to investigate it. I didn’t have to respond to it. It was all impersonal, so I could just shut it out and focus on the task at hand, be it writing a paper or slogging through more dull academic prose. In fact, the university library was often too quiet unless I sat near the copy machines or the circulation desk. I needed background noise to focus; it just had to be the right kind of noise, from the right sources.

Why I didn’t apply this bit of self-knowledge to making art, I’m not fully certain. But finally, after 25 years of struggling to make art amid all the distractions of home, it’s finally dawned on me.

So I’m going to take the plunge and rent a workspace. I’ve looked at a few likely places, and if all goes as planned I should have one by the end of this coming week. I decided to give it a six-month trial, to see if having a space to make art in away from home makes a difference. (And I think it will.)

I was nervous about spending the money and making the commitment. I was afraid I couldn’t afford enough space. I didn’t feel I could justify spending money on workspace when I have more than enough room in which to work at home. Plus, I’ve always blamed myself, and my alleged inability to focus, for why I can’t make art in a sustained manner. I’ve always beat myself up with, “If you’d just exert some self-discipline, you wouldn’t have this problem!” And as I wrestled with renting worspace, I wrestled with that old self-blame, too. That, and, “What if you spend all that money renting workspace, and still don’t get anything done? How can you justify throwing money away like that?”

It was interesting, all the self-defeating self-talk that came roaring to the surface over this. It’s always been there, but this time I decided to confront it, pick it apart, and see if any of it was actually valid or true.  And as I did so, all that self-blaming, worst-case-scenario thinking collapsed in on itself. All the noise and fury faded away into nothing–because frankly, it’s all bullshit based in unexamined fear.

If, in the (unlikely) event I still can’t focus well enough to make art away from home, I will at least know this about myself. I can then consider other alternatives. But I won’t know for certain until I do it, so doing it is absolutely necessary.

My “self-discipline” problem is n’t really a problem at all (or at least not my problem). I have enormous self-discipline when I want something badly enough–but if I don’t want it, I don’t care about it, so forget it. I didn’t get through college and into grad school, or start a business, or enjoy any of my countless other achievements, both great and small, because I lack self-discipline. Sure, I’m restless, easily bored, highly distractable, and do not do well at mundane routine, but when I care enough about doing something I can usually find ways to work around all that.

As for the money, I got rid of a storage space, cable TV, Netflix, and a couple of monthly subscriptions, all of which have freed up enough money each month to get a small space. If I cut back on some of my other needless spending habits, I can afford a space big enough to be comfortable in for the next six months. And by next April, if this experiment is a success, I’m sure I’ll be able to find the means to rent an even larger space. Maybe I’ll do something utterly, mind-bendingly strange to get the money, such as–oh, I don’t know–sell artwork. Hey, anything can happen.

And getting studio space in a building full of other artists and creative types isn’t just about getting away from domestic distractions. It’s also about meeting other artists and becoming part of a creative community. I’ve lived in this city since June 2004 and still don’t know any other artists, or who’s who in the local art scene. I scarcely know anyone in this city, period.  So, paradoxically, this is as much about coming out of my self-imposed isolation as it is about escaping distractions–and I’m positive that both will fundamentally change the way I make art, and for the better.

Plus, I’ve spent the last ten days or so getting my act together to deal with a long-neglected health matter, so I’ve let blogging slip far down the list of Things to Do.

(The health thing isn’t that big a deal, but it’s something that will end up a very big deal if I keep neglecting it.  So I’ve been making a few minor lifestyle tweaks that–once I get in the habit of doing them–should nip the problem in the bud.)

So, in lieu of putting off posting for yet another day until I have a Serious Post, I’m just going to post video of (some of) my cats.

This is Martha, the smallest of the cats and the most high-strung. She’s just a little ball of panic much of the time, and is easily freaked out. But she loves my lap, where she kneads biscuits like mad and would lick my fingers raw if I let her:

Nate was Martha’s adoptive “Daddy”; they were so close I used to worry about how she would handle his dying. She missed him a lot at first, but fortunately she has a friend in Sophie; they have grown much closer over the last two months.

Max and Sophie are brother and sister; I adopted them as 11-week-old kittens. I meant to adopt only one male kitten to keep lonely orphan Nate (who was then 6 weeks old) company.

They were the last two from their litter left unadopted, and they obviously had a very close bond. I mean, how can you resist kittens who are hugging each other in their cage? So yes, I had to take both.

And to this day, they still have that close bond–maybe a little too close, sometimes:

Spay/neuter your pets, folks…

I have no trouble standing (even for long stretches of time), or lounging on the sofa, or slouching in a deep armchair with one leg thrown over the arm. I can paint or read or walk around for long periods just fine. I’m also okay if I lean on a tall stool while working at my drawing table or sewing. But this sitting-at-a-desk thing is giving my body a lot of grief.

This has been a growing problem for at least a year, but it’s finally to the point where I have to (literally!) get off my ass and do something about it.

As I type this, I’m standing.  It’s still not a very good arrangement; I’ve put my monitor atop the computer tower (which sits on my desktop), and the keyboard is sitting on a stack of books. The keyboard’s at a decent height, but the monitor is still too low, so I’m getting stiff shoulders and a crick in my neck. But my lower back and legs are fine–which they would not be were I sitting–so I think I’m on the right track.

Over the next few days, I’m going to figure out some sort of standing-desk arrangement. I can’t spend any money on it (because I’m still on my spending fast until the end of the month), but I’ve got loads of scrap lumber and hardware and ingenuity, so I’m sure I can invent something that will work.  I’m a big believer in the idea that if you don’t fit into the world, it’s your job to remake the world to fit you–and on that note, I’m off to find my tape measure and see what I’ve got in the lumber pile.

ETA: I’ve got it! I swiped some of the Ikea ‘Ivar’ shelving in the basement, and it’s the perfect thing for this project. I need to clean it up, and I might have to buy a pull-out tray for the keyboard, but I’ll definitely have a new standing computer desk before the weekend.

It was a highly-regarded program; I had full funding for the first year; the faculty included many scholars working in my areas of interest; my fellow grad students were a congenial bunch, and the department and staff were very supportive. As grad programs go, I had it good–and I knew it.

At the same time, I was utterly miserable. Before that first quarter was half-over I knew it was a mistake. I felt trapped and suffocated and didn’t want to be there. Specializing in a particular field (which I had been so excited about when I applied the year before) now seemed like a dead end. I wondered how I was going to make it through the next two years of coursework, much less write a dissertation.

I wanted to quit, but gave it another quarter to see if things got better; I’d worked so hard to get there, after all.  The professors who wrote my letters of recommendation were also friends, and didn’t want to disappoint them. I dreaded telling my family I’d left, and explaining why. I didn’t want to be the first one in my cohort to drop out. And besides, grad students are supposed to be miserable, aren’t they?

I stuck it out through that second quarter because–on paper at least–all the long-term advantages of staying outweighed the immediate benefits of leaving. When I wrote them down, the pro side of the page had a long list of very good reasons why staying was the better option; the con side just said, “I’m completely miserable. I hate grad school. I want to quit.”

I’ve stopped making pro vs. con lists when I have a decision to make. Those lists might be worthwhile when deciding which of two similar products to buy, but for big life decisions, such as quitting grad school? Useless. Deep-down, I always know what I really want to do anyway, so now I just do it–because during that second quarter I learned that no matter how many entries may be in the pro column, they can never offset “I’m completely miserable.”

The day I quit was crap. It was pissing rain, I had a cat at the vet’s with a mysterious liver ailment, I had an intestinal bug of my own, and I got shit on by a crow as I trudged across the quad to see the department chair. And yes, I was grieving, too. I’d spent my final two years of undergrad high on the idea of grad school, a PhD, and a career in academia. As a non-trad student who had been a classic fuck-up and underachiever in my teens and 20s, only to discover in my 30s that I could be an outstanding student, I was determined to go all the way with it. So many of my undergrad professors urged me to consider grad school, and it was intoxicating to think that I could be a scholar and an intellectual–one of them!–instead of just somebody who read a lot of books and chose to live in college towns. I rode that high tide of ambition into grad school, so I felt pretty gloomy that day as I watched the tide recede.

When I left the chair’s office, however, I felt incredibly light for the first time in months. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do next, other than perhaps write a novel (which remains unwritten), but it didn’t matter. As I walked back across the quad, I knew I’d made the right decision and that I would not come to regret it.

And to this day, I haven’t.

And funny that I should sing the praises of a new magazine about overcoming fear–because it fits in so perfectly with the subject I’d already decided to write about.

A couple of entries back, I wrote about Nate’s dying, after defying all odds and living for nearly a year with end-stage Chronic Renal Failure. Taking care of him forced me to confront a host of my own fears, which I wrote about last October. But when I said that “…one sickly little orange cat changed me and changed my life in ways I’m still only beginning to comprehend. I am not the same person I was, I no longer view the world in the same way I once did, and I have plans for the future that I never would have considered before,” I wasn’t kidding. And I’m not just some crazy cat lady wallowing in maudlin sentiment, either.

Because of Nate, I’m headed back to school again, at age 42. It’s going to take me a while–I will probably be about 50 by the time I’m done–but I’m going to be a veterinarian.

In order to get into vet school, I have to take every single math and science prerequisite, from the ground up. I barely passed the required Algebra course to get a BA (in History), and I have never set foot in a Chemistry class, but that’s not going to stop me. I’m not going to scare myself out of it this time around.

Like a lot of kids, I had an affinity for animals, and wanted to be a vet when I grew up. “Veterinarian” is such a common career ambition for kids and teenagers, however, I’m not sure it’s even worth noting. But there it is.

I could go into all the boring details of why I didn’t pursue it, but they boil down to two reasons: I just didn’t get math at all, which shut me out of the sciences by the time I was a Sophomore in high school; and I was afraid of doing surgery, putting animals down, and all the other “hard parts” of vetmed. Even if I could have handled the math, I scared myself out of being a vet. Since I had enough artistic talent to make going to art school and pursuing a creative career seem like a reasonable thing to do, I chose that. It was much less frightening. And over the years, I’ve always wished I could do science, or that I could have been a vet; those desires have never faded. But the required math always scared me away.

Almost thirty years later, I know I’ve got what it takes, mentally and emotionally, to be a damned fine vet. Taking care of Nate finally made me realize that. But the math–that’s a big one.

To prepare myself for the math placement test at a local community college, I bought a couple of old college Algebra textbooks at Goodwill and started reviewing the material on my own. I felt stupid, and a bit delusional–I’d barely understood enough to pass the class even when I showed up five mornings a week and paid attention every day; what made me think I could figure this shit out on my own? The books sat untouched for days before I got up the nerve to crack them open.

I don’t know what happened–maybe I repeated Algebra enough times that it stuck, or maybe I’ve finally grown new neural networks in the right part of my brain–but as I sat down with those books and studied, it wasn’t that difficult.  I haven’t taken a math class in almost a decade, but all of a sudden I understand it. I’ve never understood it before, but I do now. Not always perfectly, but pretty damned well. Well enough that I think I can pull a decent grade in a class, and maybe even go on to do well in pre-calculus (where I’ve never ventured).

It’s still scary. I still have a lot of doubts about whether I can actually do this. I mean, a veterinarian! Me! Which means getting through not only math, but other things I’ve never studied–such as Chemistry. Will Chemistry be hard? Will I get it? I’ve heard Organic Chemistry’s even harder. And then there’s Biochem, which just seems like…dude. I might as well try flying to the moon.

I could scare myself out of this all over again.

But I’m determined not to. Because one thing I have learned is that any large goal worth pursuing should scare me, just as much as it excites me. I’m not afraid of failure; there is no failure. That fear comes from knowing that I’ll be pushed to my limits (and beyond) as I change, grow, learn, and transform myself in order to get what I want. It means that I won’t be the same person when I get there that I am now; that just as I’ve had to kill past versions of myself to be this person, I’m going to have to kill my present version of myself to become that person. Will I even recognize myself in two years?

That’s one hell of a question to go to bed with, so I think I’ll go read another story in Fear.less before turning in. But there you have it–when I grow up, I’m going to be a vet after all.

On my calendar, I’ve made an UPDATE BLOG  note for today. There’s only an hour or so left in the day, but that’s fine; I just have to write something. And if I end up writing a sad and gimpy little excuse for a post, well hey–it’s not as if I have a readership, right?

The whole point of this resolution is to get into the habit of posting in the first place. That’s it. Now that I’ve resuscitated this poor, neglected critter I’ve got to keep it breathing if it’s ever to sprout new legs and walk again. I get the feeling that someday soon I’m going to want it to not only walk, but to run–so I’ve decided to stick with it through each ragged breath.

The spending fast I’ve committed myself to is a simple idea: make no unnecessary purchases for an entire month. Pay the usual bills, buy groceries, attend to any crucial unexpected expenses (such as a vet bill or car repair), but that’s it. Don’t eat out; don’t buy fabric, books, art supplies, or other “useful” extras; don’t spend money on entertainment; don’t grab coffee, snacks, or any of the countless small purchases that add up.

After I started painting on pre-printed textiles, I got a little crazy seeking out suitable fabrics to paint on. Right now, I’ve got enough printed fabric to last me until the end of the year–or longer–even if I keep working at my current feverish pace. I also have everything I need to print my own fabrics, should I run out of a favorite design. So there is absolutely no reason for me to buy anything more. I have all the paint, brushes and mediums necessary, as well as stacks of canvases (bought at deep discount last year, and untouched until now). I also have stretcher bars, and while I might not be able to come up with an 11 x 33″ or 27 x 36″ canvas should the inspiration strike, that’s okay. I don’t need to set foot in the art supply store this month. I also have an enormous stack of books I haven’t got around to reading yet, so there’s my entertainment.

That I save a lot of money during the month I do a spending fast is the most obvious benefit.  During my month of not-spending, I have to stop and think about every single purchase I make. If I’m coming off a long period of free spending, I’m accustomed to just buying the stuff I want without much internal debate. So the first few days are the hardest because I’m like a junkie denied her fix. It’s appalling to realize how strong my “I want” impulse is, and what a spoiled brat I can be when I can’t just buy something, or solve a transitory problem by throwing money at it.

It’s the aftereffect, however, that makes it really worthwhile. By the end of the month I’ve done a lot of housecleaning, donated loads of stuff to Goodwill, made at least two trips to the dump, and completed at least one major project around the house that I’d once bought all the materials for but put off doing. Instead of accumulating more stuff, I purge the stuff I’ve already got. I never plan to do it; it just works out that way.

And once I’m in the habit of not-spending, it takes a while to get back in the habit of buying stuff again. I don’t dash out as soon as I can and start buying all the things I thought I wanted during the month of horrible deprivation I just imposed on myself. Instead, it takes me up to two full months before my old spending patterns start to reassert themselves, and six months or more before I realize I’m being incredibly stupid and mindless about money again.

I’ve made a half-assed effort to do a spending fast at least once a year, preferably twice. But after giving it some thought, I’m going to try doing it on a quarterly basis. I’m going back to school this year (ah! there’s yet another post!), and if I’m going to absorb the cost of tuition with minimal pain I think it would be a very good idea.

Okay, it’s 11:58PM; I’d best post this before it turns back into a rotted pumpkin…

How many times have I said that over the years? I don’t think I want to know. But does it really matter? Probably not. (Okay, definitely not.)

So: I’m painting again–again. And I’ve finally given up on art as a career.

This doesn’t mean I will never have some sort of art career. I’m only 42, and with heredity and ever-improving medical technology on my side I’ve got at least another 50-60 years to go. A lot can happen in that time.

What it does mean is that I’ve given up fretting over how I’m going to make a successful art career happen. I’ve given up worrying whether a given piece of work, or series of works, will be saleable. I’ve given up thinking about sales, marketing, geting into galleries, opening an Etsy store, having prints made, finding exhibit space, taking decent photographs, getting into juried shows, or blogging about my work on a regular basis.

It means that I’m just going to paint–for its own sake, for my own enjoyment. I’m going to paint things that appeal to me, that I want to see on my own walls. I’m not going to try to exhibit or sell my work, even if it means I run out of wall space. And unless I really want to, I’m not even going to post pictures of what I’ve painted to my blog or discuss it with anyone.

I’m just going to paint.

And yes, I do struggle with this; after all, changing the mental habits of a lifetime doesn’t happen overnight. I still catch myself standing before my easel, uneasy about a decision I just made because I’m convinced it means that nobody will want to buy the result. I used to think that I had a merciless Inner Critic, but I’m beginning to think that it’s more like an Inner Consumer instead–the one who says, “I kinda like it, but it’s just too weird, ya know?”

The stuff I’ve been working on since the end of March is a lot of fun. I’ve taken to painting on apparel and upholstery fabric–some of it from Ikea, some of it cheap quilting cotton, with the rest scavenged from Goodwill and the clearance sections of local fabric stores. Some of it is so hideous I can’t imagine anyone wearing or furnishing their house with it. Sleazy polyester, vile color combinations, seizure-inducing patterns–this stuff begs to be painted over, so it’s not hard to jump in and start.

Unlike a pristine, white, carefully-prepared canvas, I can’t fuck it up. I can’t make it worse. Anything I do is bound to be an improvement, and as I start smearing paint around one thing leads to another and the next thing I know I’ve got something interesting. And it’s collaborative, in a strange way. Every textile, no matter how eye-bleedingly awful, has a designer behind it. Someone intentionally chose those colors and devised that pattern. Did they come up with such ugly fabric because they were incompetent? Color blind? Cynical? It doesn’t matter–I take their work, transform it, and make it mine.

I don’t have any finished work yet–but that’s okay too. Nobody’s out there waiting for it, or depending on me to produce it. So I skip from painting to painting as I feel like it; at the moment I’m actively working on six pieces, and have another half-dozen ready to go when I decide what direction I want to take. I think most of the paintings I’m working on will end up as the bases for collage, and I have some ideas about that simmering in my brain. But for now I’m content to keep playing. I haven’t been this active or this inspired as a painter in years, and sustaining that–rather than pushing for finished products–is what matters most to me right now.

While he was boarding at the vet’s in mid-March he had routine bloodwork to see how he was doing, and his kidney values came back alarmingly high. Worse, a subsequent x-ray revealed fluid in his lungs and an enlarged heart.

I’d spent almost a full year expecting the end to come at any time, but the diagnosis still came as a surprise. Nate had been doing very well, and hadn’t shown any outward signs that he was so ill. Even while boarding he ate well, enjoyed attention, and showed no sign that there was anything wrong with him. As my vet said, “He just doesn’t seem to know he’s a sick cat.”

But there was nothing to be done for him. Reducing his dosage of sub-q fluids to ease the strain on his heart and lungs would send his kidney values even higher, and giving him IV fluids in an attempt to bring his kidney values down would only add to the fluid in his lungs and hasten heart failure.  Either way, he was out of luck. We didn’t know how much longer he might live, but it was not going to be long.

When I brought him home from boarding on a Saturday afternoon, he was noticeably less energetic than he had been when I dropped him off three days before. On Sunday and Monday he was still active, and even went outside for a while, but no longer jumped the fence or tried to go very far.  By Tuesday evening it was clear he was in decline, and while he didn’t seem to be in any pain and was eating and using the box as always, I decided to make a euthanasia appointment for the following Monday.

But by Wednesday morning I knew he wasn’t going to make it to Monday. He was much weaker than he had been the night before, and even getting up to eat took huge effort. Six days hadn’t seemed like much the day before, but it now seemed like forever.

I had a bit of a meltdown when I realized there was nothing more I could do for him. I’d spent almost a full year buying him more time in tiny increments, always hoping we could get another two or three good months before his time was up–and now it really was up.   So I dried my eyes, called the vet, and calmly made the euthanasia appointment for the following morning. It was time, and it was the right thing to do.

When I first brought Nate home from the emergency vet’s last April, still weak and frail post-crash, I thought I’d get maybe two more months with him, three if we were really lucky (and I could get over my fear of giving him sub-qs). My vet was no more optimistic; his numbers were so lousy (and stayed so lousy), it was amazing he was still there at all. But Nate made it almost a full year–356 days, to be exact–and because of him, and that year, nothing will ever be the same.

It will sound crazy to a lot of people, but that one sickly little orange cat changed me and changed my life in ways I’m still only beginning to comprehend. I am not the same person I was, I no longer view the world in the same way I once did, and I have plans for the future that I never would have considered before. And it’s all thanks to my little dude, my buddy, Dead Cat Walking.

As for how things have changed? Well, that’s a pretty good incentive for me to write another post. Or a bunch of them. Stay tuned…