HEY, everyone I am close to online. As you know, my C drive was wiped quite a while ago, and so I lost every single contact I had last year for the Christmas cards I sent out. It would be super great if, via note, you could send me your address again. If you just want one and we're not that close, send me a note also. I love cards. Thanks, dudes!



I know many people will overlook this journal after one look at the word "commission", but hear me out. This money is not going to me, but to a better cause.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder... defined by Wikipedia, "...is a mental disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce anxiety, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing anxiety, or by combinations of such thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions). The symptoms of this anxiety disorder range from repetitive hand-washing and extensive hoarding to preoccupation with sexual, religious, or aggressive impulses. These symptoms can be alienating and time-consuming, and often cause severe emotional and economic loss. Although the acts of those who have OCD may appear paranoid and come across to others as psychotic, OCD sufferers often recognize their thoughts and subsequent actions as irrational, and they may become further distressed by this realization."

Put simply, OCD is when you think really terrible, really awful things, and you can't make it go away. Because of these thoughts, you perform an action, believing it will alleviate the stress of the thought. Such as, "I think I just ran somebody over. I didn't see or hear anything, but I better turn around and see." Unfortunately, all the compulsions do is further fuel the OCD itself, so the stress comes back in full force. It is a vicious cycle.

Sufferers of OCD experience a torturous battle with their own mind, of which it feels they may no longer have control. They may question their moral fiber, their position as a husband, wife, father, mother, etc. One man may think of killing his beloved son when he treasures him more than anything else in the world, while another woman may have constant images of a sexual nature with other men other than her husband, to the extent that she wonders if she actually cheated and forgot. A devoted priest may crawl on his knees after communion searching for wafer crumbs on the floor to make sure he had not dropped even a speck, therefore perhaps offending God himself.

OCD is not curable. It does not go away. It disrupts your life and the life of others. While treatable, some cases are worse than others. In some cases, OCD leads to suicide.

Howard Hughes, the record-breaking aviator and filmmaker (Scar Face) had OCD, and it's extremes can be seen captured in the biographical film The Aviator. Marc Summers, David Beckham, and Howie Mandel are several examples of sufferers, and even Martin Luther, the man who started the Protestant Reformation was said to have perhaps been plagued with OCD himself.

I never thought that I would personally become the type of person who champions a foundation like this, but like most people, if I hadn't experienced the pain first-hand, I would not be this devoted to a cause. There is hardly a time when I draw that I do not struggle with erasing lines for fear that if I didn't, something bad would happen because an intrusive thought flashed through my head. As an artist, this disorder tears me apart. Emotionally, I can sometimes seem a withdrawn wreck or immensely angry, and physically there are scars from picked wounds, missing toenails, and chunks of flesh missing because of dermatillomania (a condition often going hand in hand with OCD).