So I'm a big fan of Project:Rooftop. For those unfamiliar, it's a collective of artists, comic nerds, and art lovers who redesign the costumes of comic book characters. Sometimes current popular characters, sometimes old characters that have fallen into the public domain.

Anyway, it's their anniversary, and they referenced the LJ post that kinda started it all. It was a simple idea: Draw Batgirl. As things sometimes do on the intarwebs, it went viral and the response was seriously impressive.

So I started going through a bunch of those original responses. The thing that it impressed upon me? Just how many folks have left LJ behind. I had seen it in my own friends, but it's always possible that I just have a group of friends who tend to stay out a bit further on the frontier of the net (I do), so I was never really certain that it was an LJ wide thing.

Until now.

I never would have put the number this high, and I'm not too sure about the method that they use to get their numbers, but it was fun anyway.

It has nothing to do with the fact that it made me feel like someone's paying attention. Nothing at all...

I called off yesterday, but went into work today. I am not completely better, by any means, but I was getting stir-crazy enough that I decided to go in anyway.

I'll probably be out again tomorrow - they're calling for some really shitty weather, and we don't have a whole lot of work right now.

Did I mention that I hate being sick?

talking with my friend Jason about my future. you know something? it seems like I spend an inordinate amount of time talking with my friends and family about my future. I wish that there was some quicker way to get folks to stop worrying about me. I mean - I always have some new scheme or 'sure fire' money maker, but of course (as such things are want to do) they don't pan out.

And so, folks continue to worry about me. It sucks. I would like to (just for once) have folks just like the way I am, and see the world the way that I do. I don't think that I begrudge anyone or anything for my life, and it almost seems like that's what folks think that I am doing. It feels like people see me as saying "well, this didn't work out because of this guy, or that situation" - as though I am making excuses.

I don't really feel like that. I realize that I have had a lot of failures and not a whole lot of successes, but when I explain the reasons for the failures, I don't really feel like I am making excuses - I'm just EXPLAINING what happened.

I feel like I'm supposed to be living up to someone else's expectation of who and what I am. Which isn't really a problem, because I think that we all feel that in one sense or another. The problem comes from the fact that I seem to be falling dramatically short of that expectation - not with regards to a single individual, but with everyone I know.

It's as though they all see something in me that I don't see in myself. It's a strange feeling really. Imagine drowning without knowing that you're drowning. No, come to think of it - that's not really accurate. Better this: you're drowning, and you know you're drowning, but you're not scared, you're not panicked, you feel no pain or trauma, and you only stress when you see those you care about surrounding you and trying to keep you afloat.

Wow. Now I am depressed.

Does that happen to you? Do you talk yourself into depression? Seems to be a habit of mine. It's almost as though I should keep myself busy just so I don't have time to think.

Hmmm.. think that I will try to go and get some work done - maybe that will cheer me up a little.

been working on the new layout for the gallery of my web site - trying to make it look more like the rest of the site- and I think that it's there...

I just have to figure out some way of doing specifically defined thumbnails so that I can clean up the 'thumbs' that are auto generated - they're too big and clumsy.