Hey!

Thanks for taking a look at my page.  :-)

I'm not a terribly interesting person...a social science teacher, who packed it in after twenty-five years in the high school/college classroom (mainly the high school classroom but I taught a few college history courses as an off campus professor).  I love the educational environment and would've been a lifelong co-ed, if that were possible.  As it was, I spent 13 years, off and on, at Georgia Southern University and I've got three degrees to show for it.  That, I guess, is my chief accomplishment in life.

I did publish a book in 2002.  It began as a historical novel, based on a true story.  The publisher wanted to turn it into romance (sex...ca ching!).  The result was a Southern Gothic bodice ripper, if you can imagine such a thing.  I tell people who're reading it to "concentrate on the storyline and skip the tacked-on sex scenes."  I had NO idea how to write a love scene in 2002. 

I've since read a how-to by Angela Knight, the bestseling romantica (erotic romance) author -- who's also a Poser lover, BTW, and a really cool person, too.  The book's a bit graphic, but she does tell you what sort of mindset you need to be in, in order to write a good love scene.  I work on writing good love scenes when I'm bored.  :-)))  Just joking.  I'm never bored.  Matter of fact, there are not enough hours to do everything I want and/or need to do.

Especially when it comes to 3D!  I LOVE 3D, no matter what program I'm working in -- Poser, DS3A, Lightwave or Zbrush.  Otherwise, I wouldn't hang around here, or DAZ, the two shopping centers which get all my extra money and then some.  I love to model clothes for all the V4 characters I've collected.  For awhile, I was turning out freebie clothes for V4 like crazy but then I noticed that all my dresses were beginning to look alike.  So I decided to take a break and let my muse rejuvenate.  Same ol', same ol' bores me beyond belief and, from what I've read, bores other people, too. 

Since then, I've been researching, reading, thinking, trying to find my niche.  I'm a firm believer in the self-actualization philosophy -- there's something out there, something unique, that each and every person is capable of doing -- and ONLY that person is capable of doing.  In the art world, I guess that'd be called style.  So right now, I'm searching for my own unique style.  I look for it every day.  "Hey, I'm here, waiting!"  Hopefully, it'll show up soon.  :-)))
  
If you've made it this far, you've gathered, I'm sure, that individuality and originality (as well as honesty) are tops on my value scale.  :-) 

Personality wise...whew.  Should we go there?  Might as well.  In all honesty, some people would call me a drama queen, if they're fond of buzzwords.  I don't particularly want to be a livewire.  That's just the way I'm programmed.  I can distinguish a mountain from a molehill just fine, but deciding which one to navigate is the problem.  After all, there are very safe and very beautiful mountains on Mother Earth while a nasty, inconsequential little molehill just might be filled with vicious fire ants...the kind with teeth (or stingers anyhow) like tiny razors, overflowing with venom that raises welts on your skin -- welts that last for weeks!

I really should try to become a calm, even-keeled individual, so I can be yet another round social peg in another round social hole but, great balls of fire, if we weren't meant to express our emotions, why were we endowed with those emotions in the first place?  No, I'm not a 'take it in stride, suffer in silence' kind of person and actually, I don't know that I want to be.  Like they say, the wheel that squeaks loudest, gets the grease!  ;-) 

Just joking.  I HAVE learned, after a lifetime of being an emotional pendulum, that you can express emotions in an appropriate way but still if some goofy nurse, who'd just finished watching me screech like a banshee (for a good ten hours) in natural childbirth, told me I had an EASY time again, I think I'd still call her...never mind.  ;-)

Speaking of childbirth, I've definitely not contributed to the population explosion.  I have one daughter.  I'm married and have been FOREVER, to a guidance counselor (talk about polar opposites!) but I'm owned by a little 20 lb. critter named Dolly.  She's a Shih Tzu dog, adopted by my kid but turned over to Mama Jan to raise.  That dog keeps me busy, or tries to.  She bosses me around unreasonably and if I didn't love her so much, I'd have tried to teach her that things are really supposed to be the other way around.  I'm meant to be the boss, not her.  I hear it's hard to teach a Shih Tzu to mind though.  Their aristocratic "I'm descended from Chinese canine royalty, so who are YOU to tell me what to do?" streak makes them very arrogant.  So I figure, why rock the boat this late in the game?  There are more important things in life than a bossy dog.  Ha...I guess I AM learning to prioritize!  :-) 

Artistically speaking, I have no preferences, other than the ones I mentioned above.  I like any and all types of artwork -- the only criteria a creation has to meet, IMHO, is originality!  I realize this is a trendy business but I cannot follow a trend to save me!  I might take a quick interest in a trend...all the rusty Steam stuff was fascinating for awhile, for instance.  (I never, ever understood where those gigantic goggles fit in though.)  Then the whole thing became a bandwagon and the only interesting thing about it was to see who could manage to create something unique, within the trend.  That was fun and I wound up with a really cool set of face morphs and a pack of "metal eyebrows tacked on with nails" type makeups as a result.  Nifty.

It sure would be cool if everyone would try to set their own trends though, instead of just producing variations of what everyone else is producing.  Artistry would be unbelievably interesting!  Then again, a perfect world would be pretty nice, too.

And that about does it...again, thanks for stopping by!  :-)

Jan