. . . but not for good. I'll merely have to drastically cut back the hours spent here.

After a ten year hiatus, I'm rejoining the workforce! I've been offered a job I can't refuse; I've accepted an offer to work with the public schools as an assistant librarian. It's going to be a BIG change from my previous job as the head of a Documentation group for a defense contractor. That job paid about $40,000 annually (remember, this was ten years ago) - my new job will pay $12,000 a year for a full-time position. Today will be my first day at my new job - school officially starts tomorrow.

The biggest difference is that I'll be around high school kids who are interested in learning as opposed to grown men who get excited about kill ratios and blast areas. Of course, I'm going to do what I can to promote art, music, empathy and compassion for our fellow man.

Consequently, my time here at dA will be cut severely. I'm not going to be able to keep up with the average 30 deviations and 90 comments I receive daily. I'm going to have to skim and choose what to view and who to answer. I hope NEVER to offend anyone, and will try to devote an equal (small) amount of time to all of you - you're all important to me.

In closing, I'd like to leave you all with a long quote from Marcel Proust. I hope that this gives you all some hope and determination for those rough periods that all artists inevitably experience.

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They have composed our masterpieces. We enjoy lovely music, beautiful paintings, a thousand delicacies, but we have no idea of their cost to those who invented them, in sleepless nights, spasmodic laughter, rashes, asthmas, epilepsies, and the fear of death, which is worse than all the rest.

Remembrances of Things Past