OK, this is gonna seem a bit backwards, and forgive me for how much of it there is...
I started trying to write songs with lyrics, many years ago, but I couldn't cope with it because I was a prog-rock kid but all the songs I wrote insisted on being country, and I was like D: and ran away from them like they were on fire.
A couple books ago (I'm a writer/music furry) I came up with a character who was real folksy. Wrote him into the book and found his manner of speaking REAL comfortable.
Started going to (furry) conventions and quickly discovered that I wanted to help out- by now I've run sound for some of the biggest cons. I would be on time (most furries ain't!) and bust my hooves (well, paws, at the time) to get it together. I would try to deal with the fact that seemingly nobody else would make the effort, and I would try to deal gracefully with the normal apathy and thanklessness you get doing things for people, but still thought that I 'should' want a bunch of public recognition and stuff.
I would drive to these cons for fourteen hours and up at a stretch, seeing double and shaking my head (no lie) to clear it, learning that yeah- you do that, it helps for a moment and then it makes it worse, trust me. But I would get through, always, every time.
Sometime during the daily (furry, grimdark n yiffy) comic I did for over a year and 442 updates, I got to burning scented candles (Yankee Candle, best ones) to get a vibe. Though frankly the only ones worth a damn for giving me inspiration and lettin' my brain work were apple ones, notably Farmhouse Apple. I am not making that up and this was in what, 2008? I have some sitting two feet from me right now.
Meanwhile, I would be running my own business selling audio plugins, (yes, while trying to draw a daily comic) and would bust my hooves to help my customers and give them things (still do!), doing things like giving out ten grand worth of stuff as free updates because I'd promised I would. People got to noticing that, and it still pays my mortgage. Didn't leave much time for anything else and I remain single and too proud to do much of anything about it, but always had a weakness for elfin spunky girls who were real tomboy and feisty- not that I saw where _I_ fit into that, exactly, but I remained stubborn on that front as well.
I abandoned the comic (for the time being) and wrote a 160K word novel in a little over a year because I was like 'Yay, I don't have to draw anything!'. Having finished it I began another in the same universe, that was even more grimdark, something I'm pretty good at, because what would I do if I wasn't taking on ridiculously huge projects? I would wish they got me more affection and encouragement, I would sulk, I would keep doing 'em anyway because I had like twenty daily readers from what was once three hundred daily comic readers, and I wasn't gonna let those twenty readers down.
Turns out I get suicidal celiac depression from eatin' wheat gluten, so I had to cut it out and feel much better now, but I was doing all that without a will to live, bit in teeth, not giving up.
And THEN I discovered the new My Little Pony- and began to look into the characters, before rightly watchin' much of the actual show. And then I watched the show!
I AM (an) Applejack, walking around on human feet (more's the pity). I am not the prettiest pony- or the cleverest, or the sweetest, or the most heroic- but by GOD I do know what I am, and there are people who like that (on the show, and for real). And I'm now keepin' an eye out for meetin' a Dashie, because my one-true-shipping is AppleDash. I'm actually running a furry record label with a Dashie in the furry fandom- I sit at the dealer table at cons for the entire time dealer's room is open without a break, and the Dashie runs around being awesome and is much more widely noticed and idolized than me, and dividing the labor and talents up that way works just fine. (He also DJs and pulled the biggest DJ dance crowd, at the biggest furry con (Anthrocon) of anybody ever. And I knew all along that he could
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)
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That's my story, and you music ponies are the first to hear it XD