Good bye Dynamite

At 14.5 years old, our cat, Dynamite, suddenly passed away early Thanksgiving morning.  Michael and I were both heartbroken.  The first week was especially rough dealing with the grief of losing her.  She was so much more than a cat or pet to us.  She was family.  She was our baby before we had a baby.  She was our muse.  She taught me a lot about love and honesty.  She provided so much love and joy to us.  She gave us a million moments of absurd hilarity, and millions more moments of perfect, quiet companionship.  Our family feels like it's missing an important piece now.

A quick glance through my doodles will show you that it's mostly cats.  It was all inspired by Dynamite.  The art that flowed most easily and joyfully out of me was always those doodles of cats as I envisioned Dynamite on all kinds of imaginary adventures.

Her passing was a devastating loss for our family, but as I dig up memories of her, I am inspired to resume sketching and dreaming.  I spent the last 3 years diving deep into technical skills.  Now I emerge from it feeling empowered.  But art and story was always food for my soul.  And I can think of no better way to honor Dynamite's memory, than resuming my "Official Kitty Cat Business" comic and just drawing a ridiculous amount of cats.

A month later, the crippling grief is gone (nevermind, it still comes back every other week or so), but the sadness is still there.  I think we'll be okay, but we'll be feeling this for a long time.  We still miss and think about her everyday.  I still listen for her taptaptap on the hardwood floors.  I still look for her in my closet.  I still think about the last affectionate head bump I got from her.

Dynamite, my sweet girl, you will never be forgotten.  Thank you for spending your life with us because you made every moment sweeter.  Thank you for your love, your sass, your inspiration, and the profound impact you had on my relationship with Michael.  I will love you forever and ever.

And here are some new cat sketches.

What a crazy 3 years, it's been!

It's been more than 3 years since I posted.  Wow.

A lot has happened in that time, all contributing to why I was too busy to post and too busy to make progress on most of my projects.

First, of all, I changed jobs.  PDI/DreamWorks was my dream job.  I found like-minded creative people that I had been looking for all my life.  I met my husband there.  I met my closest friends there.  There were so many talented and brilliant people there.  But after 7 years I no longer found the work challenging (maybe a sign of that was all the side projects I poured my energy into) and I found my career had hit a wall.

Along came AltspaceVR.  I had been interested in VR and I didn't know what I was looking for in my next challenge, but when I saw their demo, I knew that was it!  I started as a Software Engineer there in Oct of 2014.  My friends from PDI gave me such a wonderful send off and such love that I knew they would always have a piece of my heart.

AltspaceVR was an amazing ride.  We were trying to build a platform that would best let people communicate in VR.  Everyone was passionate, bold and supportive of each other.  I was learning so much and free to explore my own crazy ideas.  The time I used to funnel into side projects were now used for legit work.

Then in 2015, I got recruited by a friend to be a part of the TEALS program.  Now this was really cool.  It's a volunteer program backed by Microsoft that pairs industry programmers with school teachers to help setup Computer Science classes in schools.  It was high commitment, but extremely rewarding.  For a year, I worked with my friend, who was a teacher at San Mateo High School, following the syllabus from TEALS, to create the lessons for the Introduction to CS class.  I taught 3 mornings a week, did the projects and labs.  It was exhausting and easily one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had.  I got to know the kids and see some of them surprise themselves with what they were learning.  I truly believe this is a great, sustainable way to open the funnel for kids to get into programming who might not otherwise have.

Then in early 2015, I got pregnant!  Pregnancy is crazy, people.  The whole process seems like a ridiculous way to create mini-people.  But our bodies are also incredible.  Pregnancy, child birth, and parenting are the hardest things I've ever done.  I've always respected moms, but actually going through it has increased my respect exponentially.  I'm so blessed to have gotten the support I had from family, my husband, coworkers, employer and medical team.  I can't imagine how hard it is for women in parts of the world who have to walk to get water, or travel miles to get to a doctor.

My husband and I simply ADORE our new son.  For all the projects I've done and all the ones I'm still to do, my little baby boy is the coolest thing I have made and will ever make.  (Well, maybe tied with the next one, if there is another one.)  I was never a baby person before, but now, I find babies AMAZING.

Then a few months after returning from maternity leave, through a series of bad luck, AltspaceVR had trouble securing our next round of funding.  AltspaceVR eventually was acquired by Microsoft!  But I ended up at Oculus in another chapter of my career.

Over the last 3 years there were multiple times when I half-typed up a post, only to forget it and abandon it.  The real event that motivated me to dust off this blog again was the recent passing of our cat, Dynamite.  But that deserves its own post...