Cartoon School… Step Two

Well, the second step, after Applying, would be Getting In….

I GOT IN!!!!

Since I can't throw confetti or glitter on my blog, I did the next best thing and embellished my acceptance letter…

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am. And terrified. Going back to school… have I mentioned it has been a really long time…? With all the crazy stuff going on right now - financial aid forms, a really big illustration assignment (kids' book!) with a deadline next week, the kids' stuff… anyway… I have to remember to actually CELEBRATE this major achievement!?!

I want sushi. And a movie.

I have a really bad habit of throwing the water (my attention) wherever the major fires are. As soon as one thing is checked off the list - I'm on to the next - without even a pat on the back.

I just called Bonnie - who was busy building Lego - and when I rattled off all the things I had done in the past two weeks, I realized I hadn't rewarded myself for any of them. Here are a few things I did that were really quite difficult, mind-numbing, or just WAY outside my comfort zone:

• Applied for a property tax abatement. I now know everything about my own and all my neighbors' property taxes.

• Gathered and brought all my tax info to my accountant.

• Filed financial aid forms for my son's colleges.

• Had an interview for cartoon school.

• Redrew 20+ pages for the kids' book project.

• Painted 5 pages out of 20+ pages (all due next week). And shared my drafting table with my little art director who wanted to learn to use the lightbox and Inktense pencils - so we each had about a foot of space to work in. There's a funny story there too - another time.

• Applied for ISBN numbers for my ebooks and self-published books so I can list them on Amazon.

• Revised The Tangles of Santa Fe, added new artwork (DREW the new artwork), and sent it off to the printer (yes! the printer! That's another party we need to have!)

• Worked out with my wii every day this week.

• Took the new cat to the vet. Then had a family meeting to vote the cat off the island. :-( Also a good story. Actually, that one might be a comic book.

• And a hundred other things.

Point is - I'm not just sitting around eating bon-bons and watching the soaps.

[Bonnie said, "No, that's me."] :-)

It's important not to see everything as just another item on a To-Do List. This is my Life. Some of the items sucked, some were exciting - but all of them taught me something new. I think that would qualify them all as "Experiences."

When I was working on my cartoon school application, I had to draw a comic that included myself, a robot, a piece of fruit and a snowman (?!). I also had to write an essay and all the other usual stuff. Since this is graduate school - I had to include a CV. A list of my Experiences. The last time I had updated mine was in 2008 so I made myself nuts trying to figure out what I had done in the past 7 years. I eventually went through all my blog posts to recreate my life in list form.

And since anything worth doing is worth overdoing… I decided that I would do an extra comic, using the same characters, to explain my CV. I thought you might like to see a page from that...

(Yes, the blog version is intentionally a little blurry.)

The Lilah Bean on the bottom is holding a pack of my Tangle Cards in one hand and a copy of Marvin the Martian in her other hand. I had forgotten that I had illustrated a couple of activity coloring books for the Childrens Museum of RI - about 20+ years ago! I forgot I had been an exhibit designer there…
I felt like a cat with so many different "lives". Sometime I will have to share the CV here on the blog - and the rest of the comics too. At the very least it will help anyone who has been following this cartoon school story and has been thinking "Cartoon school?! Where is this coming from!?"

Way back before Zentangle. Before blogging. Before kids. Before marriage. Before Egyptology and photography… I drew cartoons and dreamt of animation and writing and illustrating children's books. At the risk of sounding philosophical… sometimes you need to have your world come crashing down to see what it is built upon.

And one more time - "WoooHOOO! I got accepted!!!"