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AerithReborn

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Sporadic update

1 min read
Hey, all!

Those of you who are left, anyway.

It's been a while since I last did or said anything...  I had a horrible bout of depression that came to a head last December when my job description changed AGAIN and my grandmother died.  

I have since left that job and I've had my time to mourn... and I'm medicated now.  So yay!

I am now a custom lettering artist for <name redacted> where I vector and set up custom logos for garments... t-shirts, jackets, etc.

I'm slowly getting back into the whole drawing thing, so I should be finishing a bunch of my WIPs that I basically thought weren't good enough (like I said, depression) and posting those in my normal manner- fits and bursts.

Thank you to all who have stuck around.
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I've been doing a bit of soul searching lately.

I "graduated" college in 2010.  You know, walked the stage, had some great friends throw an awesome party, got roughly a million pictures.  Yeah.  Graduated.  Fast forward a couple months... when I receive a letter in the mail that states that I did not get my degree because one of my classes' grades were too low.

Here I am, 3 years later, one class away from my degree... and wasting away as a mortgage collector.  I'm facing a harsh reality that all of my plans have been swept away, partially due to my own apathy and partially due to the economic shit that has plagued this country for years.  Namely that my chosen profession is oversaturated.

"They'll always need teachers," my mother said.

Well.  They don't.  At least not in English.

Anyway, enough with the depressing crap.  The soul searching bit comes in around here.  It started with my parents saying, "Just get your degree.  It doesn't matter what you end up doing with it, just get that paper."  My father even said, "If you even want to teach."  Now, that should sound like crap.  I mean, for years I thought I wanted nothing more than to be a teacher, to be able to share my passion for books and writing.  But, the question arose... Did I really want to teach, or did I just want to never leave school?

A few other things came up.  Subtle.  Like missing my 10 year high school reunion - I was late - and seeing all of high school through that convenient lens called "perspective".  I asked myself if I really wanted to immerse myself in this again... The drama, the heirarchy, the parents.  If I was to teach, I'd be forced to teach with the shackles called standardized tests.

(Kids, I promise you that the teachers, the real educators, hate standardized tests as much as you do.)

About a year ago, we were doing something silly at work... where we'd earn shamrocks for every perfect quality score that we could decorate and Gold Star on our manager's door.  Elementary, I know, but I took my shamrock and doodled a fairy on one and a leprechaun on another.  Doodles.

Holy crap did that draw a lot of attention to my desk.  I suddenly went from being another employee to the Artist.  Managers from other teams and departments would stop by my desk to ask me WHAT THE HECK I WAS DOING THERE.

Things like that.

Then my sister sent me to a link for a book called [i]The War of Art[/i] by Steven Pressfield.  hnguyen.files.wordpress.com/20…

I rarely feel like anything really changes my world.  I think the last time anything rocked my world to its core was probably when I discovered Final Fantasy VII and Joseph Campbell's Hero Journey.  Yeah, that long ago.    But the first chapter of this thing called me out back and tried to pick a fight.  "What am I so afraid of?" it said.  "...it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas" (19).  If it bullies you out into the back alley, just you wait until chapter 3, the section titled "fear".  It's a mean right hook that can leave you dazed.

So I looked deep inside and had a little chat with my inner 5 year old watching the pencil sketches of Marahute open her wings to fly away... What did I want more than anything in the world?  To be an animator.

I went to the Art Institute near my apartment just to get some information.  You know, not to sign up, but to get some information....

It went well.  

I'm working to get that pesky English degree, then looking towards pursuing my art, whether I sign up with Ai or another school... or if I simply continue teaching myself like I have been, continuing to improve and practice... and to stop comparing myself to people "better" than myself because I'm just as talented as they are... just not as educated.

Expect to see more submissions in the near future.

Current Tarot card: The Tower
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NaNoWriMo

1 min read
How did it get to November already?  Wasn't it just summer?
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Well.  It's been a while, ladies and gents.  Don't you hate it when the world grabs you buy the balls and says, "oh, you thought you were crying before?"

Yes.  That's about the long and short of it.

My computer went down about 6 months ago and I've been working on getting it fixed.  It wasn't the hard drive, oh no.  It was the OS.  For whatever reason, it won't boot past the welcome screen.  So, it's been turned off waiting for a restore disk.  What all does this actually mean?

Do you guys remember the last time my hard drive crashed?  I was working on a .hack pic?  Well... it was almost done again.  AGAIN!  So we're moving slow to try to salvage as much of my hard drive as we can right now so I won't lose more than some dloaded movies (that I own anyway) and junk.  We bought an external hard drive to move stuff over, and my sister's bfriend works for Geek Squad, so he's been "working on it".  Luckily, we still had this infected netbook laying around gathering dust.  I just wiped this one's HD and started over.  Basically the same thing I need to do with my big computer, but without the issues of rescuing art and writings.

Well, since then, I was offered a full time position at my job, so that opened up a lot of opportunities, but devoured an extra 3 hours that was previously set aside for sleeping off late night drawing/writing/reading/movies etc...  Don't judge me!  So, between that and my sister getting her own full time job, we were able to move into a new apt.  This happened around April.

Well, starting sometime around when the computer went down, our internet was turned off.  This was around the time that Meg was just starting her job, so we were still broke.  I was looking at either fixing my computer or getting the internet turned on... so we were internet-less for a while.  When I could finally afford to pay internet, they had shut off service.  Well, it has been a long chain of "Ok, we're good to go lol no not really you still don't have internet" since.  Everyone else kept telling us to change ISP, but dude, our company is the cheapest around.  Of course, the others would get the issue solved in a matter of a day or so, but we'd be paying almost double for the same service.  So, once a week, I was on the phone with this company, trying to get SOMETHING set up so we can get internet out again.

So, between jobs and moving, internet and computers... let's see... good news....

We performed our "secret" cosplay that really wasn't a secret at all.  I mean, we were telling everyone about how it was Tantalus (Final Fantasy X) and Shakespeare.  But no more details.  Like what exactly that meant.  Well, we performed at this past Anime Matsuri in Houston and won Best Advanced Skit woo hoo!  I'll be posting pics on here as soon as I have a real sized computer.  I think this screen is about the size of a VHS... which is better than a phone, but it's not enough for posting anything, really.

We discovered something VERY important that day.  Our audience.  It's fine and good to perform to our chosen audience... for Play Within a Play, this meant people around our age who play Final Fantasy.  Big enough bracket, right?  Nope.  Our audience these days... well, some of them don't have conscious memory of when FFIX came out.  They've played with Lightning or whatever her name is, but they don't know anything about the S-Gen games.  It was a sad moment... and one in which I felt very, very old.  But I know most of you guys will understand and appreciate what we were going for.  And if you don't, I suggest you educate yourself.  Shakespeare is a staple for the Western media (books, movies, and video games as noted here).  And Final Fantasy IX is a wonderful game that doesn't get enough love.  Final Fantasy Whatever's Next needs to do the same thing and make a nod back to their roots.

Kids these days...  They only know Zidane from Dissidia... and call him Zidahn...  I know it's a dumb argument like between Yuffie and Yuffie, but I will stick to "long A" Zidane.

And I'm degrading into a soap box rant about the correct pronunciations of names that only have text.  It's almost like trying to find the correct pronunciation of Latin or ancient Egyptian.  It can't be done.  So whatever.  You kids get of my lawn.
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Front page

1 min read
What the actual fuck.  I drew better pics than this with my eyes closed a DECADE ago.  How are you on the front page (popular 8 hrs).  If I wasn't so addicted to *my* page and those of my friends/followers/creeps, I would quit.  I mean, I HATE what this website has become.  Back in my day, there was Elfwood.  You really couldn't post fanart there and I wasn't brave/prolific enough in my original art to join up there.  So I joined here.  It used to be fun and quiet.  You could browse galleries that were amazing and those that were less so, but they put in a good try.  Just about everything then was done by the deviant.  Now dA has become a social network about equal to tumblr and facebook fucking and with a good heaping spoonful of softcore porn.  Guys, this isn't the website to upload and show your friends that cat pic you found online.  This isn't an image share website where you post your demotivators to post on your message boards... unless you captured the art yourself.  THIS IS NOT 4CHAN.

Please excuse the rant.
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Sporadic update by AerithReborn, journal

Semi-annual Journal Update by AerithReborn, journal

NaNoWriMo by AerithReborn, journal

Call a Waaambulance! by AerithReborn, journal

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