Blog

So I took some more time off from the blog again. Honestly, it’s hard to get back into it because I don’t know what to write. Back in the day, I blogged about what it was like to be a geek mom raising two girls while working as a writer and a cartoonist. I also blogged about my experiences as a geek mom learning to be a Girl Scout troop leader. But all those lovely blog posts got eaten alive when I tried to clean up and update the blog last winter, so now we’re starting form scratch and I’m wondering, do I really have anything to talk about at this point?

The kids are both in college now, so I’m no longer having daily adventures teaching them about my love of all things sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Although we do share those interests, the girls are old enough to figure out on their own what they like.

And since the girls are no longer in grade school, middle school, high school, I no longer volunteer at the school, so I no longer have any interesting stories to tell about trying to survive dealing with mundane parents who truly don’t get why I love sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, why I feel the need to dress in witchy clothing, or why I dye my hair turquoise or magenta or whatever color I want and keeps the sides shaved so I have a lovely low-key death-hawk. Basically, I’m not hanging around anyone who’s bothered, confused, or offended by that anymore, so there’s no interesting stories there either.

As for other things going on in the family, I don’t feel ready to write about my mother’s battle with dementia and her death over a year ago. I loved my mother a lot, and we had a good relationship, but it was also difficult a lot of times, and I don’t know how I want to approach certain subjects yet. And forget about writing about my dad. I’m barely even talking to him because he’s pretty much killed any relationship we used to have.

Maybe one day I’ll talk about these things, but it won’t be today.

Anyway, I’ve decided for the time being that I want to blog about life after the kids have grown. My entire life was centered around the daughters for over two decades. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to raise them, and I’m overjoyed that we’re close and we talk to each other and love each other. But they’re adults now, and they’re not around to fill every waking hour of my day. So what do I do now?

I’ve spent over a year trying to figure out what I used to do before the girls were born. It’s hard. I remember that I wrote and published stories, that I recorded those stories and podcast them, and that I did a lot of digital art. I had a webcomic that I loved, and I had a decent business making digital art and graphics for various clients. But I haven’t written for publication in years (I had to stop when things got too busy with the kids). And most of the clients I used to work with are long gone (that’s work I had to stop when I got overwhelmed by Girl Scouts), and drawing the webcomic about my daily life became more painful than funny (how does one do a webcomic about one parent’s abuse and the other parent’s battle with dementia?).

Around the time Mom died, I had started working with a therapist. I was struggling with depression and crippling anxiety. Life had become one major disaster after another. It’s taken me over a year to get to the point where I could finally figure out what I wanted to do with my life now that both kids are out of the house. And what I’ve decided is that I am going back to writing and I am going back to digital art. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to do either, but I’ve made a start. I have a writing project that I’m spending time on a few days a week, and I’ve signed myself up for online courses for digital art. I’m taking classes through both Freya Kotchakorn/Two Tap and 21 Draw. Both of these courses focus on Procreate, which I use a lot, but the lessons can also be applies to Clip Studio Paint, which is my favorite drawing app.

The idea behind signing up for these courses is to:

1. Make sure I’m drawing almost daily.
2. Fill in the major gaps in my art education.

Sad but true, I desperately wanted to get a degree in art when I was college-aged, but my father refused to let me do that, saying that no one ever made money as an artist. So I ended up with two degrees in communication and still made money as an artist, even working for a few years as a government contractor designing graphics for the Air Force (and I made good money doing that). These days, I feel the gaps in what I know about art, and I want to fix that as much as possible. I’m not prepared to go to college again. I just can’t see spending that kind of money. So online courses it is!

This is all a very round-about way to say that I drew some stuff today, so here are the pics to prove it.

I’m also going to start posting webcomics and other art here. I have no idea if anyone is going to read these blog posts, but at least it will get me back to daily work, writing and drawing and posting. And once I get used to that routine again, maybe we’ll see what happens next.