A Grateful, Goofy, Geek

In the middle of last month, inspiration struck.

I was sitting in my car, quietly lamenting to myself how I didn't want to go into my dayjob. I had been struggling with that feeling for quite some time, (who doesn't), and I was making myself write down what I was grateful for, before I walked through the door. Then it hit me: why don't I just make a quick video each day of what I'm grateful for? It'll be something fun to do, and I can do it through the end of the month, taking me into the new year.

In the midst of the holiday season, some people feel lousy. In the midst of the mentally ill taking lives, you can feel devastated. In the midst of feeling ever so broke, you can feel crushed. When you combine that into December 2012, oh, what a triple whammy of crap to go through. So I thought doing a video each day of what I'm grateful for might just be a good thing not only for myself, but maybe, I can reach someone and make 'em giggle at my goofiness, even for a moment.

Trust me....there's some goofiness.

So if you have about 26 minutes, turn it on, listen, and laugh while you're doing the dishes, or have something inane to do.

I think there is always something to be grateful for - that's what I've learned. It may not feel like a big deal, but there is an awful lot to be grateful for. So go out there and tell me what you're grateful for.

Happy Frickin' New Year!

Susan Update!

Today Susan goes into her LAST CHEMO TREATMENT. Hooray!!!!

Having just hung out with her last night, I can easily say that she is ecstatic about her last round of chemo.

Susan being greeted by Scruffles & Punky,
the pups I get to live with. 

Susan's been doing great. Throughout the ups and downs of Life being heightened by the outrageous fortune of fighting cancer, she's hanging tough, for sure. She's been working on a children's book, taking commissions on art, and has two gigs through Fiverr.com. (Links are at the bottom). For those of you who don't know, Fiverr is a great resource where people hawk their wares and services for $5. I think everything you can think of is on that site.

Susan has become friends with renaissance man, Adam Emperor Southard, and got to be part of his series, Id, Ego, and SuperEgo.  In the L.A. Theater scene, Adam is a writer, musician, photographer.... I think he pretty much does everything. It makes nothing but sense that they found each other and hit it off. Susan was previously part of Adam's series, Body & Soul.

As Susan's a force to be reckoned with, she's also working on illustrating a children's novel called Zwoosh!. Below is the first layer of the cover. As I understand it, these things have several layers, (like a cake!), and here it is, right off the easel. I was lucky enough to see a draft, and it looks just delightful. As a big fan of picture books, (hello, I used to run StoryTime at Borders), I'm thinking this will be a hit.

And some of you are probably wondering how she's doing financially, as we had that emergency fundraiser a little while ago. Her Disability has finally kicked in! They lost her claim once, and I'm pretty sure, if she hadn't stayed vigilant and kept calling, it would've been lost forever, and I would've been trying to figure out other ways to help her raise cash monies. She luckily got a hold of someone who helped expedite the whole process, and it has kicked in. Finally. The relief has been palpable. She now can afford her rent and bills, but that whole food thing and you know, life, still needs a budget. So if you want to commission some art from her, or need some copyediting on your latest book, why not contact her? (Nudge, nudge).

 If you'd like to help out, you can kick in whatever you'd like, or even just simply share the links to friends.

If you need help with copyediting, go to here on Fiverr.com.

If you'd like to gift someone some handcrafted kanji necklace or Halloween Goodness, go here.

If you'd like to commission a painting from Susan, follow this link, and contact her at susan@lifeonitsside.com.

If you want to send Susan a note of encouragement and love, or even send her a buck, you can send it via PayPal at her email, susan@lifeonitsside.com

No matter what, chances are you know someone who has been affected by cancer. Give 'em a hug, ask if they need anything, and if they have an organization that's helped them. Share your stories.

Webseries Watch Ep 2 - Halloween!

Yesterday, Cindy Marie Jenkins and I  got right down to biz and started our 2nd episode of Webseries Watch. We wanted it to be a little more themed this time, so we decided to make it all Halloween-y. We discussed watching Vampire Mob, Vampire Zombie Werewolf, Zurvived, and The Hunted.

Watch our chat here:



If you want to know more about Vampire, Zombie, Werewolf, click on the image below!

If you would like to catch up on your favorite Vampire hit man, click below:

Find out more about Zurvived and the Weapon of the Week here: 

 (You know, the more I type Zurvived, the funnier it looks...).

The Hunted!

Field Trip - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! Zombies! 5k!

There are many great things to share from Saturday's 5k with zombies. I didn't bring my phone w/me as I didn't trust taking it into the mud and the water. Christy, one of trusty members, had a very cool waterproof case. I need to get me one of those things. Here are just a couple shots borrowed from others. There will be more pics and videos to share later in the week. Woo!

Amy the Writer's Camera Phone

Here we are, pre mud, pre hill climbing.  There was a HUGE hill they had to start us out on, nice and steep. It went on FOREVER. Right when you thought you would have a break, ZOMBIES!

I don't walk up hills very well... I really don't race up hills very well either. So I lost two flags right in the beginning.

Christy Black's Camera Phone! Pre Mud Cam.

Here we are, after the hill nonsense. We realized it's best to stay in a group. We're all so clean... Amazing. Me in the front, and going left to right, that's Amy, Trina, Kelly mark in black, Autumn, the tall drink of water in gray, Jim in green, and Richard in red. Brian is hiding behind Autumn, in blue. Christy took the picture. She and her friend Nikki were amazing to run and laugh with. We started adapting Nikki's technique of screaming and flailing arms to keep the zombies away. Brilliant, really.

Dorking out with Brian.

Below are the times! Took us an hour and a half, basically, to hike, walk, sprint between zombies, and climb over things after we finished diving into mud. Good, good times. More pics will come later, promise. Steph took amazing shots of as much as possible. I will share when I get them.

I'm 428!!!!

Field Trip-Laker Game

On Saturday, Stephaine scored  4 tickets to a Lakers game, (she has perks through her job), and she invited Trina, Casey, and I to join her. Woot. Mind you, none of know much about basketball, but hell - let's do this. 

On our way there, we spotted Charlie Chaplin just hanging out and looking forlorn on Venice Boulevard. 

Our seats were in the Premiere Section 2. We even had a waitress! So fancy. 

Casey and Trina!

Steph lookin' all executive in our seats. 

Me, dubious. 

National Anthem time!

Add caption

Steph, proudly dorking out. She's wearing a Starks Hockey jersey - not a Kings jersey. She had everyone fooled. 

We were behind press. Here he is watching TNT. 

Here he is watching a baseball game. At a basketball game. 

Laker Girls! We ladies weren't that entertained by them. We were more admiring The Gun Show put on by the players.

NEXT WEEK: RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! ZOMBIE 5K OBSTACLE COURSE! AGGHHH!!!!!!

Webseries Chat Episode 1!

I always have a good time talking with Cindy Marie Jenkins. She's one plugged-in lady. She's always working in the social media world to promote theater, outreach, and everything in between. I've known her for a couple years now, but have been in her presence just a couple of times. Love the way the world works....

Cindy had me on her webseries, Navigate the Arts recently, and our topic was the Wild West of the Webseries World. We had such a good time, she asked if we could start our own wee show. I, of course, said YES! And when do we start?

We started today, with hopes and plans to do this bi-monthly. Today's chat was mostly just the beginning, laughing at my poor lighting, having technical difficulties, and just having a good chat. Somehow, we mentioned 11 shows to watch, and we've only just begun...

If you want to see the page with all that we talked about, go here and scroll down.

While you watch this, I will finally catch up on Jedi Camp.

Learning to take my own advice: Acceptance

Hi there. It's been about two weeks since I posted about my huge ball of stress manifesting into a huge ball of gunk in my lower left eyelid.  

There it is! Look, almost all better..... Gah. 

It's still gonna take awhile, now it's almost a sore from the outside instead of something icky brewing on the inside. I'm a lucky gal.... 

So, let's talk about the stress factor. Or when you're fighting a Funk of Depression. Something is bringing you down right? You don't like It. You want It to stop harshing your mellow. It's bringing you down and you're fighting It. 

Fighting's good, right? YES, AND... accepting It. 

You know what happens when you finally accept the existence of It?  You let go of the worry, stress, and funk of it. You wind up feeling a lot better. Let me sum up. 

There I was, stressing out about the eye, the stress that must've brought it up, stressing about the pain, stressing about how gross it must look, and therefore how I must look, stressing about going out into the world with Eyegor the Horrible and feeling like I must've looked like Quasimodo. I was trying to ignore It, I was trying to fight It, I was trying to take care of It, I was trying to deny It. Frickin' Eyegor wasn't having it. "I'M HERE AND YOU CAN'T IGNORE ME!" I felt like a nutcase. 

I dunno what happened. I blogged about it. I felt like crap, but the next day when I woke up, I worked on a project, I went out into the world and gave a friend a massage. Something just clicked. Eyegor was there and was in it for the long haul and I just accepted It. That day it felt like a literal weight had lifted off my shoulders. Despite the weight of Eyegor pulsing in my eye, I laughed and went about my business. You can call it surrender, and you know what? It very much felt empowering, it didn't feel like being defeated. 

As I was driving away from the massage and heading towards a walk with my wonderful friend Victoria, something felt different. This is gross, but, my eye started oozing out gunk. Yeah, it was nasty. Yeah, it was while I was driving. Yeah, I was totally stoked. There's me, excited and grossed out at every stoplight sopping up the Nasty. Finally I just pulled over at a nearby park and just finished getting the gunk out. I can only imagine what people were thinking if they caught a look at me. "Why is that woman smiling so much and making icky faces at the same time? What is she doing with her eye? Is she? Oh my god! GROSS!"

I've been feeling a hell of a lot better since then. Like I've said before, I take these symptoms from the body, (ginormous stye, horrible neck spasm, lung infections, the flu like you've never had it before), as a sign that something is off, and that people need to see it like that as well and take a frickin' break. 

In talking with my friends Jan and Kim and how they deal with stress I came away with this: If you let yourself continue to stress, all it does is lead you down the rabbit hole of stress. It serves no purpose in life accept to further add feelings of guilt, depression, more stress, and continued yuckiness. (the yuckiness was my choice of words, not Jan and Kim's). Letting one's self remain in a prolonged, never-ending cycle of stress, worry, doubt, and guilt brings you down and never lifts you up. Gad, I feel a little yucky just thinking about it. Oof. 

What I'm trying to say here, is that you first need to accept that you have this problem, (whatever it is you Fellow Stressed-Out People, you), and just let go of It. I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do. How can it be an easy thing to do when you're in a maelstrom of stress? But you know what? It is. Accept it as fact and let it go. A shitty thing is happening to you right now. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means it's happened/ is happening. It's there, it exists. Let that acceptance of it take the weight off instead of add to your stress. It's sometimes not very easy to change one's perspective, believe me, I know. (I KNOW IT). We all have our special crosses to bear for any set of circumstances in our lives, but let me tell you - that acceptance will take you further than you think is possible. It will relieve you. 

I think the next step is learning to take back control of ourselves. I'll save that for another post. You may have realized, I'm no mental health professional, just an Average Patty Jean of the World. I'm learning as I'm experiencing, and sharing as I'm grokking. (If you don't know what Grokking means, you need to read A Stranger in a Strange Land. It's all cool, I still grok you). 

I would just like to take this moment to thank my little feline best friend, Bugaboo, for being a very helpful muse. She sat right between me and the computer the whole time. She's a very helpful kitty. I'm very lucky that she chooses to supervise me when she's not supervising her mom, Trina.