I guess it's been a long year!

So I'm sitting here at my computer this morning having the last smoke in my pack and debating if it'll be my last smoke period...I need to quit.
I put out the smoke thinking it was the last one.

I don't think much of the cops that just went flying up the street and the volunteer firemen on the way to the station going in the other direction.
A minute or two later I smell some funky smoke so I reach over to the ash tray and start doing a better job of crushing out the butt. But the more I look...the less I think the butt was still smouldering.
So I reach over to the curtain and pull it aside...and I can't see out the window...looks like the view out a plane window when you're going through clouds.
I realize it's not a smouldering butt...so I throw on shoes and coat and head out.
I start walking towards town and can barely see



I turn the corner




Yup...the store in town where I buy my smokes...is ON FIRE!


I wouldn't want this guy's job!


I think they shoulda waited for the guy to climb down the ladder before turning on the BIG hose!


a cool shot (imnsho)


And the rest:





So...was that fates way of telling me I really should quit smoking today?

Pelican Fly-By

Vacations are good!

Wow...been a while since we've been here.

Ok...time to quit again.
I'm ready.
Let's do it!

See ya in ten days :o)

From an xpn bulletin board post I just left...
Still makes some good points even without the contextual thread...
And we haven't exactly been here a whole lot lately...



Well...at 12/13 I was spending a minimum of 5 hours a day in the pottery studio at my Jr. High school. It has always been my passion and I feel like I've lost a part of myself in the past 10 years as I've moved away from doing anything art-related. Home ownership moved me into computer programming and teaching before I ended up doing home repair/renovation. The current career is the least frustrating probably because I get to work with my hands and the end result is right there for all to see...but it's still not Art.

Like I say in my bio...Jack of All Trades...Master of One. And the one is pottery. I'm good at a lot of things...but I'm a GREAT potter.

What I want to do is open an Art Gallery where I can just make stuff all the time and sell it in my little shop. Pottery, paintings, sculpture...all things Art. I've recently begun to look at all the things I've done in the past ten years as my way of working towards that and not away from it...If I play my cards right, the house my computer programming and teaching jobs bought me should be able to get me that little shop on a big property somewhere out in the middle of Pennsylvania (or wherever) where I can get back to doing what I'm meant to do.
When I was younger and still doing Art and my dad was still alive I kept trying to talk him into being like Rousseau...a postal clerk who became a MAJOR artist beginning in his mid 60's. Little did I know it was going to be me who would have to try to resurrect an Art career (life) when I got older.

As for Ann's workshop thingey...in my life I've done a lot of those adventurous things...joined the Army and saw some of the world...bought a Harley and rode it across the country, etc. I will say this...I do not regret anything I have done in my life...the only regrets I have are centered around the things I haven't done. And the way I figure it...as long as you're still breathing it's never too late to do what you really want to do.

Most of the obstacles we face when thinking about living our dream lives are put there by other people telling us what a hard row to hoe our chosen dream is. The thing age has taught me is that those people have no idea what they are talking about. I could spend an hour typing stories about my folks telling me to get a teaching degree, "So I'd have something to fall back on" rather than switching majors and actually getting a BFA...or about my nephew the musical phenom who played his first gig at a bar behind a drum kit at 4 years old and now at 8 has blown through his piano lessons and has moved on to learning to play guitar and hopefully he will never hear my mother say how hard a career music is like she said to me when we were recently talking about him. I think that's the hardest part of living your dream...sticking to it when people try to squash it. I now know people who chose their life and stuck to it and they are the ones living their dream life. And I watched them...it wasn't hard per-se...they just were the ones that stuck with it where others get frustrated and move on. I recently saw that one of my best friends from college managed to make it on the dream job thing....of the 38 Art Ed students I was with he's the only one I know that is now teaching Art where he went to high school. We all went into it because we had a Great Art teacher somewhere along the line and dreamed of becoming them. Well...the kid who did so poorly in our classes he had to go back through the program again the next year (after the rest of us graduated) before getting his degree is the one that did it. And it was a long road for him through years of Special Ed and Masters degreeS etc. But he kept the goal in mind and made it reality.
And that's the key. Keep the goal in mind and it will become reality. Lose sight of the goal and it'll never happen.

Happy New Year to All and to All a ...um....a.....uh....A Good New Year! :)