It's 3:30 am, so thought I'd do a very short post. I'm lying in bed with my iPhone in hand. I've been a bit MIA here, but assure I'll be back in full force once I get some personal projects completed.
I have a huge bank of posts, illustrations and video just waiting to be uploaded, but time is always a factor. I'm working heavily on my portfolio and close to the finish line. I'm doing my best to drown everyhing else out until I am finished. Maybe I'll post a few of the portfolio pages here.
So, until then I'll try and do these easy breezy quick updates.
As I've already established, I'm awake. Actually went to bed fairly early, but always end up waking up. I find I wake up to an idea and need to jott it down.
I'm lying on my back tap, tap, tapping my iphone with one finger. Holding my iPhone this way makes it feel like a 100 pounds. It is hard to hold up even the lightest of items. My finger gets tired and both arms feel strained. As it progressses I hate how I can feel how weak my legs feel even when I am doing nothing...even when I am just lying here. My legs feel numb and tingly. The muscles feel like they are hardly there, but voiceful just enough to express their depletion.
Hardly a part of my body, I feel like they (legs, arms...etc) are fighting to leave the 'team', they 'just want out', they cry...they want nothing to do with me anymore.
During the night I need to manually turn as my legs don't move on their own like a 'regular' person's body does. Pretty much while I sleep I lie perfectly still until I'm forced to wake up and reposition my darn body. I try to move my legs by myself, but many times I have to poke Jason to help.
Because my legs don't move on their own they get very numb and I need to constantly move and reposition to stretch them out and increase circulation. This combined with an over-productive mind makes it hard to sleep sometimes. I hate the feeling of numbness and I hate literally feeling the atrophy in my muscles. At least I still have feeling, right? There is the bright side. As the condition progresses the time it takes for circulation to waiver or parts of my body turning numb decreases. Seems like it happens quicker and much more frequently. My joints have really suffered, too and it's pretty uncomfortable. ALL the time. I'm always in discomfort.
Just to recap this weekend.
Well, the holidays are coming up, so I've been prepping for that. Around this time of year I always think of my grandma. She passed away 3 years ago. She was Thanksgiving and Christmas to me...to many of us. I believe that is one of the thing I adopted from her is my love to have people over, especially holidays, and have as many people as possible.
Whether I know you or not--anyone is welcome and as long as people are together and happy that's what matters most. I like the idea of making sure people have somewhere to go. When I first moved to LA many of our west coast friends had no place to go for the holidays as they left their family back in their home state. I feel it's important to make it a policy of open door, because many people don't have a place to turn to. Afterall, isn't that what the festivities is about? Sharing?
Family is not just biological and it should be available to all those who need it even if it is only one time a year. When I was much younger, my grandma's house was filled with people and that's how she liked it. Welcoming of whomever, even if she didn't know you. I noticed that. I liked that.
What else...hmm, this weekend I got a super short hair cut! I guess you would call it a Pixie style cut. I like! Anything that mixes things up I'm a fan of. We also visited 'Pixar: 25 years of Animation' art show at Oakland Museum. Very good show. Much better than expected. So much talent and more importantly the passion and vision is overwhelming. I love Lassiter's personal story of his journey. Attracted to Disney's story telling in classics such as, Dumbo, Bambi, it fused passion in him and he ended up working at Disney, his dream job. He ended up working there, but later was fired or let go.
Why? Because at the time he was working on the animation, 'The Brave Little Toaster' and in his free time he worked on a CG version of it. He believed this tool, this technology was the future, and so he pitched it. After the pitch Disney looked at him and said he could leave and that this technology, if it wasn't going to make them more money or the process faster, was no use to them (Disney), so they let him go. It's interesting when companies don't want to change or are afraid of anything that is different. No one wants to change. When they cant see past their door step and don't want to accept those that don't fit into their mold they degrade, and rationalize, the passion the person being too wide-eyed...too 'green'. When they do this they lose so much of 'what could be'.
People do this, too. "If you're not a part of my mix then I don't want to take the time to know you or share anything with you".
Even If CG was sincerely silly and would never take flight in the production world, Disney (any company) should have rewarded and harnessed that type of passion, because it would inevitably be useful. You need those types of people around. The types of people who work not because they think they are smarter, better than others or trying to get ahead, but because it stems from genuine passion. Vision and passion are things that can not be taught and very few possess this quality. But, he (Lassiter) had the passion and now look at what he's created. No opportunity is ever your last and Disney most certainly was not the end for him.
"Art challenges technogy, and technology inspires art"
Well, this ended up being longer than a quick post. Good morning!