Introductions

Hello,
I'm Hera. Of course I'm not putting my real name here for obvious reasons. I have created this blog because I am finding it fun to write again, plus, I am about to quit smoking and every opportunity I have to keep my hands busy (Get your mind out of the gutter!) is going to be beneficial.

Maybe I should write a little about myself. I am a 26 (almost 27) year old who immigrated from the USA to Australia about 6 1/2 years ago. I have type 1 diabetes and some other issues I might talk about from time to time, but nothing terribly serious.

I spend a good portion of my life in Photoshop. I play Second Life and love to sing. I have two cats who keep me entertained and most of my friends are online due to reasons I will write about later.

I guess i will include the digest of the last 6 months of my life for anybody that cares.
Last year I exchanged agoraphobia and social anxiety for booze and pot. I felt on top of the world for a long time. I didn't realize what these were doing to the medications for the aforementioned maladies and ended up on a downward spiral of crap.

So, a few months back, I ended up sick and with my diabetes out of control. I ended up taking a couple of ambulance rides in a couple of weeks (My first ambulance rides ever and I don't remember much of either!). I decided to give up the drinking and "herbal refreshment" and try to clean up my life and take control of my health a bit. So with the support of my Bob (The cool-whip on my chocolate jello pudding) and my online friends (who rock) I quit both cold turkey. I've had low-carb beer in my fridge since before the second ambo ride and havent touched it and have been invited to "have a cone" at least 15 times and have declined.

Of course I haven't really been out and about a lot since, but I've come to a conclusion. As long as I can get myself where I need to go without freaking out I'm fine. Why do I have to go to the stupid pub? Of course I lost 98% of the "friends" I had because I stopped partying, but I find that I enjoy digital art and hanging with my friends online more than wasting all my money on beer, falling all over myself and having at least 3 hangovers a week. And I asked myself an important question. "Do they really like me if they mostly deal with me when I'm drunk?"

When I actually realized how much less I was spending by not boozing *hugs her Reclusa keyboard and Wacom graphics tablet* I made another decision. I'm going to quit smoking again! This time I won't have the occasional one at the pub which led to the demise of my last quitting attempt. Maybe this time I will stay off them for good. Of course the MAIN reason for quitting is my health, but that isn't the best incentive for some of us no matter how hard we try to make it.

So I have this crap I'm thinking about doing to keep myself busy. First off my dear friend Neural is having someone send me some rough opals to polish. Sound strange? Well if you've never tried to quit smoking maybe it would. If you have tried a few times you can truly understand how therapeutic rubbing rock against sandpaper would be to someone who literally feels like doing the uppercut finishing move from Mortal Kombat that drops the guy onto spikes under the bridge you're fighting on. Also, I just got the idea to make beds for my cats. They love sleeping in those little cardboard half-boxes that sodas come in. So I am going to make an elasticized cover out of towels (that can be washed) with a little removable mattress for underneath. That way I can replace the boxes if they get all ghetto'd up. I plan to hand sew them because as I said before, I need to keep my hands busy! Of course I will be working in Photoshop A LOT! And I just replaced explodoputer for a new dual-core.

Explodoputer was crashing and freezing at random and eating my work. That's about the last thing I need when I'm trying to stay CALM. My monitor had also eaten it's own ass. I replaced that too. So now I have a dual core 2.4 ghz (Intel) with 2 gigs of ram, a 160 gig HD (or 2 if you count the old one that's in right now), A 20x dual-layer cd burner in a pink case. Yes, a pink case. It was the first thing I noticed when I walked into the computer shop. It actually has good ventilation and cooling. (Including an awesome fan with blue lights on the side.) The monitor I got kicks butt too. I think the display even looks better than Aaron's 22" Viewsonic Widescreen. Don't tell him that though. It's a 19" Samsung Widescreen with a 2ms response time. I actually see the difference between a 2ms and 5ms. Or maybe it's just the fact that it's mine and I love it. (Kinda like a mama with an ugly kid.) Oh and I grabbed some new Logitech 5.1 speakers. I'm a dork. I'm only using the 2 main ones right now until theres more room on my desk, but they still blow the last ones I had out of the water so nyehhh.

Hopefully I will have a lot of interesting stuff to write here. I have some odd views on things so it isn't highly unlikely. I guess I'm thru bitching and bragging for now... Take it easy whoever's reading this!