It's been a rather exciting few months around here. We set up some homemade dynamite and turned our lives upside down, gave up the huge loft in the cushy suburbs and found an amazing (smaller) apartment in San Francisco. I should add that we NEVER have a hard time finding a place when we want to, but SF is an entirely different beast. I know everyone says that, but we went through everything to get this place. We lost $800 on an apartment and we spent our lives to get settled. It was FULL of challenges. One of the biggest challenges was fitting our giant apartment of stuff down into (still a large apartment for San Francisco but) a much smaller place. It was the most stressful and secretly exciting part for me. I love a design challenge and my life is my top design priority. Mariela was amazingly patient during the whole process. She talked to me about dining room tables until she fell into a daytime coma about it. Surprisingly, it was after the table was completely standing in our dining room! She really stuck it out with me. The most wonderful thing she did was to make a giant 11x17 to-scale printout of our new apartment floorplan. It really melted my heart. Most people would think, big fuckin deal. But it really showed how much she cared and how much she really knows how my crazy mind works about this shit. She even painstakingly helped me make to-scale paper versions of our couch, bed, desk and fantasy dining room table options!!! That's love.
I went to work designing and planning like a madman for the next month. I reconfigured the layouts a million times and the day we moved in -- my plan was completely in motion. I knew where everything needed to go and it was brilliant. It IS brilliant. Our apartment is finally done and it's time for a party!!!
I'm sensitive to my surroundings. I can only get to my creative zone in a creative environment. I've worked myself stupid to achieve that. I never forget where I came from -- a tiny, crumbling shack of cockroaches. My environment is important, perhaps a little too much. But I firmly believe in living for right now because tomorrow may never happen.
Never dreamed that we would end up in San Francisco though! It feels like a dream and I'm scared to wake up. And then I wake up to floor-to-ceiling windows! I'm so grateful for the chances I've been given and the fact that I've leapt onto them at every opportunity. It's the one thing about my unstoppable Granny that I always didn't like -- she doesn't handle change well at all. She fights it tooth and nail. I've always tried to embrace change. I owe that to Mariela. She's the leaper in our family and she pushes me to jump.
We've changed so much during the 16 years together that we're almost unrecognizable from when we met. Somehow we always manage to change and morph around each other. Sure, there have been mistakes and veers off path, but we find our way back to the sea (as Stevie says).
So now our home studio is alive and well and I'm not fussing over bookcases and dining room tables anymore. I've been focusing my energy on an animation project that I hope to finish this week. But I always get upset and restless when I start to finish a project, like "what's next??" "is there anything else that I can do?" "where do I funnel energy now?"...
It's silly really, I have about 500 projects going at once right now at work. But I'm constantly looking for that path. I know I'll find it if I just keep going. Interests are not my problem, I have about a 100 things I want to learn right now. I just have a hard time figuring out where I should narrowly focus my attention because there are sooooo many things I want to do.
- I want to get our podcast going again, like regularly.
- I want to focus on photography again.
- I want to edit our Europe footage together.
- I want to tell more stories with animation.
- So do I dive back into character animator? Maybe that's a great plan for the next stroll down memory lane...
I also need to dive into some code and fix this website theme, upgrade or move everything to SquareSpace...? I'm just not convinced that it can handle all the customizations of Wordpress. I always feel like it's a platform for people that have no idea how to code html or css. Obviously from everything that I've said just in this post you can tell I like a lot of control. :-/
Anyway, I've rambled on enough with this overall life update. These are a few of my favorite photos and events of the past few months, getting settled in San Francisco:
- Roomba busted up the 18 year old RENT poster frame and carried around shards of glass for a few hours, thoroughly terrorizing the kitties.
5 Likes, 1 Comments - CopyCatFilms (@copycatfilms) on Instagram: "#Roomba disaster zone! "Behind this door is shards of glass and traumatized kitties..."..."
- The amazing dining room table that we finally bought on our 16th anniversary. I love sitting right next to my espresso machine, working for hours facing a floor-to-ceiling window. We've come a long way, together.
17 Likes, 3 Comments - CopyCatFilms (@copycatfilms) on Instagram: "Waited 16 years for a table. Seems totally worth it. A beautiful stranger sold us the table we..."
- Drag shows are our favorite past-time. We made Rupaul Drag Race Watch Parties a part-time job. Here are some hilarious pictures of our adventures. Talking to Eureka was probably my personal highlight. I love her because she's fierce and hilarious.
18 Likes, 2 Comments - CopyCatFilms (@copycatfilms) on Instagram: "6 hours later. I nearly choked to death on the confetti explosion of "It's Raining Men" and..."
13 Likes, 2 Comments - CopyCatFilms (@copycatfilms) on Instagram: "I know, why are they sitting 🙄-this is or was (for Charlie anyway) a race! #dragraceseason9"
16 Likes, 1 Comments - CopyCatFilms (@copycatfilms) on Instagram: "Fierce mama. @eurekaohara San Francisco loves you. #rupaulsdragrace #shonteyoubettabeonseason10"
19 Likes, 2 Comments - Mariela Abbott (@gutteda) on Instagram: "Excited to see @nina_bonina_brown who doesn't give a shit because she knows y'all are talking..."
11 Likes, 1 Comments - CopyCatFilms (@copycatfilms) on Instagram: "Finishing our #rupaulsdragrace season circuit with an evening of @allaboutvalentina -and guess..."
16 Likes, 3 Comments - Mariela Abbott (@gutteda) on Instagram: "@eurekaohara!!!! #backstage #weloveyou #shonteyoubettabeonseason10"
- And I have to say, I was actually terrified at the final showing of Peaches Christ Showgirls! It took me 10 years to make it to a showing. She never disappoints. Only in San Francisco would you find yourself running from a drag show in fear! I love you, Peaches. (Please let me redo your website and work with you on media projects. ♥)
13 Likes, 2 Comments - Mariela Abbott (@gutteda) on Instagram: "We set these people up with our large 🍿 for a free lap dance...as we ran scared from the Children..."