I gotta tell you... I kinda like it!

I just finished (okay, I quit where I was and went ahead and did it... there is a difference... ask Lynne. She knows it as this: "Better is the enemy of Good Enough." Ken would be so proud!)...

So, anyway, I just finished putting together a drawing demo for Chocolate Panache and decided to do it more than less. I know how I love watching them for other artists, so I thought it was a good idea.

Here's where the slide show is on-line (with it's too-cool music)...

And I gotta tell you: I kind of like it! Which surprises me. Because I normally hate everything I do until at least a few days have passed.

Many many years ago when I was still young and listening to people, I messed up something or other at work and my boss said this to me, "I don't need to say anything to you. You'll feel worse than I could ever make you feel."

(P.S. I was working as a secretary and my boss was, OMG, an engineer! I am not suited to work for an engineer! They only use one side of their brains... ! I'm not saying they're not smart. They're smart, but can be so essentially stupid because they are so left-brained. Both my daughters married these types of creatures. So, I've seen it numerous times up close and everything now and these boys, along with that first good boss, I gotta say: NOT REALLY about the stupid part. He was a great boss and I was crazy about him. He was instrumental in my beginning to learn to get over myself. And all this has nothing to do with anything I am trying to tell. But it's 12:30 a.m. and I am really getting wild. But my husband is not left-brained. He's a writer. He just comes across as left-brain to me because he's just disinterested in all my big pile of crap for other reasons I suppose, most of which have to do with me always having yet another big pile of crap that I'm trying to sell him on. ha ha ha Look how it doesn't even bother me! Man! Have I changed!)

Anyway, that was a painful epiphany for me: that I could make myself feel worse about myself than anyone else could. I thought I was just trying to be good at my job but really I was indulging in what has tried to rear its head over the years as a mental illness that will begrudge anyone of EVER being successful in anything because all you do is beat yourself over the brain for all your failures. And believe me, I have amassed a lot of those.

So anyway, I don't really know what I'm saying here: But I think I like the how-to-draw-a-hot-snot and I bet I dream I'm running around naked tonight because I feel like I have let people into my big secrets that nobody cares about anyway. It's so dumb.

I watched that video five times: once I obsessed over how crackly my hands look. Then I obsessed over how old lady my fingernails are. Then I read through the retarded (still struggling not to say that word after watching the new Ben Stiller movie) stuff I was quoted as saying. Then I was freaked out by how ignorant my drawing is and that I didn't even finish or start it on the show. Then, as I watched it through for the fifth time, I just felt all on display and exhibited and ridiculous and out of control and like I was showing too much (the pictures of my messy little studio are enough!)...

So why is it so different on here? Because this is for my friends (and ka-billions of fans who will be buying my stationery products in May ha ha ha). It's really embarrassing to market. But I knew that was one of the major obstacles I was going to have to get over.

(The truth about marketing is: nobody is paying attention anyway. So get over yourself and do what you gotta do. If you look stupid, that's no different than usual. The only one who didn't realize previously that I looked stupid was me. Now I'm in on the secret too.)

So, Lynne. To market to market. You know what they say next don't you? To buy a fat hog. That's what they say, Lynne! How come you just keep egging me on? Well, I love you for it.

And I waxed on in my big slide show like a nut about women needing to be vulnerable and now that's it! It's that feeling vulnerable and knowing - just KNOWING - there are people who can't wait to see you screw up and look like a fool and die laughing at you.

And you know what? And it's the truth. It really seems to have become the truth somewhere over all those years since I worked for an engineer and both my daughters married engineers. I still love to indulge in cruel self analysis and judgement. But I'm also over it. So to-market-to-market and for those who don't like it - or me - and are waiting for me to fall apart... well, I probably will.

Because that's what vulnerable people do.

And that's why they can be vulnerable.

And people who can't be vulnerable are the REAL wounded ones.

And they are the ones who really have nothing. And will never have anything but.

Thank you to all and each one of the people I have been blessed to work with over the years. I sometimes think of people like Jim Tarr and Rick Mercier and JoAnn Boatman and Bev Mitchell and Mary Alexander and they've all gone on... and I think of the ones I loved the most like Gene Humphrey and Millie Street and Anne Falkenrath and Lori Vaughn... and now my beloved Lynne Bergman and Shonette Jones and all the girls at the shop.

You guys have pushed me to ever greater realms of mental illness and to such a despair that now, I truly WILL, do anything.

ha ha ha

Love, Donna Ann

Hot Snot Artist

Apparently