So, here it is, July 27, and my last post was June 12.  This just goes to show that when conflict is between the day job and being creative, the day job wins.  For now I won’t be changing blog hosts because my stale blog would be a waste of advertisers’ money.

In the free moments around my 60 hour a week slog, I have managed to accomplish a few other things:

  • I took my CEP Level 2 exam on June 10 and passed it with flying colors!
  • I started studying for my Level 3 exam in November.
  • We celebrated Miguel’s 35th birthday.
  • I got tile floors installed in my entry, kitchen and dining room (okay, I worked the day job while the tile layer put in the flooring – but I designed the pattern and it turned out fabulous even though everybody thought I was crazy).

And yesterday I found Randy Pausch’s amazing lectures.  What an inspiration – and what a loss, his passing so young.  It does make one wonder what happened to our childhood dreams.  And when we were children, how many of us actually had the passion and conviction to say “I want this” ?  And then actually strive for that as an adult?

I never made a list like Randy did, but here is a list of things I did with such passion that just remembering the activity now I can feel myself doing it:

  • playing the lead in the elementary school play and singing the opening solo – and winking at my father in the front row (age 5)
  • watching Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl (and every other movie she ever did) and yearning to sing and be spunky like her
  • watching Star Trek and wanting to be like Spock
  • playing the not-yet-King Arthur in the class production of The Once and Future King (age 11)
  • singing the lead in the elementary school Christmas play (age 12)
  • singing Motown and the Beatles and Creedence into a pink plastic hair curler
    (oh, cruel world, I just realized that I switched from singing and acting to drawing after that creep Wayne Yee shamed me for knowing all the words to all the songs when I was in 6th grade – Wayne Yee, you suck)
  • designing entire wardrobes for Betty and Veronica and sending them to the comic publisher
  • drawing every art school entry form picture I found (remember those advertisements in Sunset magazine?) – houses with landscaping, portraits, cartoons
  • designing a costume for Tatiana in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (age 13)
  • designing the winning poster in a contest to publicize a local concert by Cuban pianist Joaquin Nin-Culmell and then listening to him play (age 14)
  • painting the winning Halloween window decoration at the local fabric shop with Sandy Abalos (age 14)
  • drawing my feet one day when I was sick and hated missing art class – and being amazed at how perfect they turned out (age 14)
  • drawing my first nude – and being amazed at how like a photo it was in its precision (age 19)
  • getting accepted at CCAC on the basis of my 8 pencil drawings portfolio (nope, couldn’t go – evil stepmother interference)

Miguel and I watched the movie August Rush the other evening and I realized that I did have one dream growing up – to go to Julliard.  But Wayne Yee, divorce and freaky stepparents intervened and I went into survival mode and never looked back.

So I’m holding out for my other childhood dream – winning a huge lottery jackpot and traveling the world.  I’ve got to have at least as good a chance at that as at going to Julliard at 50.