woah I havent been on here since
April?? Damn, that's what happens when you're juggling a bazillion projects and trying to get them all done I guess. Man it makes you tired lol
sleep
Thanks for the comments guys, Pete.. that Luke looks AMAZING on that body!! I didn't think it'd look that good all put together.... cool custom you've put together there mate, looks brill!!!
...damn I'm good sometimes
Hiya Jase how's it going? I'll PM you a lil bit later today
Good News Time.
Guys, one other thing I wanted to mention, I'm not sure how many of you know (certainly the old timers will) that I have epilepsy, and about 14 years ago I was a financial adviser, and my childhood epilepsy that was previously controlled with drugs kicked off again... and I had to hand in my driving licence and stop working. I started to receive Incapacity Benefit (like disability payment for people who can't work through illness)
after years of doing nothing I got so bored that I started to do oil paintings as a hobby, and even sold a few... and for a while I thought I'd be able to turn that into a business, but ultimately it never went anywhere. (not enough people buy original oil paintings)
I'd tried going back to work doing some basic office work for my brother's finance business... photocopying, answering phones, filing stuff... that kind of thing. EASY stuff. But the side effects of my epilepsy were (and still are) so strong, that trying to do more than one (simple) thing at a time.. results in my brain slowing right down to the point where I get confused and forget what I'm doing/where I am etc. It's such a pain... considering what I used to do for a living. Anyway I really wanted to work, so I stuck with it for a whole year... hoping it'd get better, but it didn't.. it just got worse. And eventually the docters pretty much said "Darren what are you doing, you're going to give yourself seizures again" - and so I gave up.
few more years passed, and I started to collect 1/6 figures from Sideshow. I'd already repainted a few small 7" Star Trek figures for myself and a few others, but nothing much. My very first 'proper' resculpting and repainting of something was the Anakin Skywalker that I did. And I got so much interest from that from people who wanted me to do custom work for them, that it turned into a nice little 'hobby that paid'.
Over the last three years the level of work that I've done and the level of interest and requests from people has shot through the roof, to the point where I realised "I could do this for a living... oh my god...
this could get me off Benefit... this could be what I do for a living!!"
I've been going through the process with the various agencies involved, and on Friday last week, I officially signed the paperwork to sign myself
OFF Incapacity Benefit, and am now officially self employed. In charge of my own destiny... or someting lol
more importantly, it's now
wholly up to me to bring money into the house.
It's both very exciting (VERY!!) and a little scary. No safety net now... this is it, my own business, self employed... all by myself.
and I'm LOVING IT
thanks for all your support during this time! You guys
thanks!
