Finding my happy place....

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the economy, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny." - Albert Ellis

"Most barriers to your success are man-made. And most often, you're the man who made them." - Frank Tyger

"One man's creativity is another man's brain damage." - Roland Fischer

"Imagination and fiction make up about three-quarters of our real life." - Simone Weil

"Live on the abnormal and unheard of... sing the anguish of ultimate grief and discover the cavalries of the earth, arrive at the tragic by way of what is mysterious." - Santiago Rusinol

These are just a few of my favorite quotations that now decorate and pretty much define my newly made happy place. I'm not going to post all the pics on the blog, because we'd have more pics than blog, but anyone who would like to go over and see the album on FB can do so here. I hope I've got the settings right to have made it publicly available.

Back at our old house three years ago shortly before we moved, I created what I was calling my "creativity corner", which back in the day consisted of a card table in a corner with some random stuff pasted to the walls around it. Then we moved, I became employed (yes, in that order), and creativity of any kind sort of got lost in the shuffle, much less the making of a space for it. I sort of pasted a lot of that same random junk on the wall by the computer downstairs, but that was as far as I ever got. Strange, because most of my creativity happens in my bedroom, and it happens after dark. Apparently I cannot create in the daylight. I sort of discovered accidentally last year that lava lamps and purple chili pepper lights, for whatever reason, put me in a creative happy place. I discovered accidentally a few weeks ago that blacklight doubles this effect, especially when I'm surrounded by an awful lot of stuff that glows in blacklight. Also, for years now, I have had a file on my SD card titled "quotebag", in which I keep track of all the little quotes I stumble upon on the internets that make me happy.

The coalescing of all these events has finally culminated in the creation of my new Happy Place... the place where hopefully I'll finally get some songs written and go about doing this thing I've recently decided I'll never forgive myself if I don't at least try to do. There are an awful lot of band things in my Happy Place (not nearly enough pics of Shaun Morgan yet, but I'm working on that.) That much I expected. I was not expecting so many skulls to show up, but they did. I guess skulls just make me happy... especially the decorated Mexican ones. (Brings back fond memories of catrina-hunting in Metepec, maybe, I dunno.) The quotes on blacklight-reactive post-its were a stroke of genius, however.... proof that the magic of the Happy Place is in effect. Also I've noticed that I'm blogging more since I started pulling the bits of the happy place together, which is either a sign that the creative juices are starting to flow again or a sign that I like boring my literally ones of readers with the minutiae of my attempts to grow out of the box I used to put myself in.

Either way, you're stuck with me. I'm not going away. In fact, I'm probably only going to get louder as this thing progresses. I've finally found my voice, and I'm about to start using it. So stand back.... *evil laugh*

Song o' the Day: "Trip the Darkness" by Lacuna Coil. I do not know why, but this song just makes me happy at this point in my life. (Not as happy that the white Cristina in the vid looks like Yolandi Visser from Die Antwoord, but you can't have everything I guess.) Follow me, follow me, as I trip the darkness one more time....