Busy Body

Fall is in the air here in Washington state. Trees are turning, lawn is looking nice, and days/nights are noticably cooler. I'm still plugging away on my instruction certs for the PSIA. So far I have passed the intro 'modules' or classes and have moved on to the level one exam portion. I've been doing a pretty good job staying motivated and moving forward with the online portion as it's self-paced. The membership to the PSIA is yearly and gives access to all sorts of proprietary reference materials to help you succeed in either ski instruction or snowboard instruction. The membership fee for new students ran about a hundred bucks and lasts one year until automatic renewal. I relish the thought of working at a ski resort and getting out of merchandising at least for the winters. I'll tell ya; getting older sucks sometimes. Your body starts to ache in ways it didn't in its younger days. Before I knew it I was walking around rubbing my shoulders like a elderly man on a ben-gay commercial. Could be way worse though, and I realize that. My job is very demanding physically and has forced me to abandon certain 'habits' I once had. It has also created some new habits for me to assure success in my work. This first one is a big one, and will probably be a surprise if you know anything about me. I quit drinking alcohol, almost two years ago. It was a choice based in health and function and sure enough, it helped. It took all that time to get my mind and body back to a 'normal' frame, but it's nice to have me back. On top of the sobering up, I started a workout regiment with free weights and cardio. Its helped a lot with my job and I no longer need to carry albuterol for asthma. It certainly has been a lifestyle change for the better and one I never thought I would even WANT to achieve. Once I overcame that, I did feel that I could do just about anything. There are still triggers, but they are no longer hair triggers. Dealing with them has become at best a minor nuisance, I just hope to keep them that way. So, let's move on to art, please and thank you. I havent been working in our studio as much as I'd like to but I have started blocking in a new piece recently. Again, my affinity with masks comes through in my new Robocop acrylic. Keep in mind, it's still in its blocking phase. It still feels strange to me that the pop culture of the 80's has become so popular. I'm hoping to get some shading detail done in the next day or so.

If the comp looks familiar, it's the same sketch from my profile pic. Starting this blog anew feels great. I don't know why but a lot of the content from all of my past posts had been deleted and trying to re-connect all of the images and blogs together just became impossible. I think that was a different Casey as well.