I’m Steven Lareau, an overly creative, moody artist guy, residing with my lovely wife in East Tennessee. I’m a guy who invents music and plays numerous musical instruments, an artist dabbling with everything from digital photos and photo manipulation, fractal creation, both static and animated, 3d artwork- both photo realistic and volumetric abstract work, animation, video, music and video editing.. more ideas and interests than I have time to do.
This blog is about me, the man behind all of this stuff I do. I fight a lot of crap to get through every day. Bipolar disorder, fibromyalgia, arthritis, chronic pain in a lot of my body, two failed neck fusions, a messed up hip replacement, a leg nerve that was accidentally cut- there are days I’m a mess. Truth be told, most days I am a mess.
To top if off, I was diagnosed with COPD, a lung disease. It’s not curable, but it is survivable, to a point. It is a progressive disease, my main hope in life right now is to do everything I can in order to survive as long as possible. I’ve made some progress and recovered some of my lung capacity, but it will deteriorate over time. Now the game is prolonging the inevitable. I’m 52 years old, I have too much stuff I want, and need, to do.
Despite all this crap day to day, I’m not going down without one hell of a fight. If nothing else, I am one stubborn SOB and I don’t know when to give up, when to throw in the towel and cry Uncle. I refuse to let the physical and mental problems of the day get the best of me, to limit what I wish to do on any given day. Some days I fight a losing battle, and eventually give up for the day. But when the next day comes along, it’s a brand new day, a new set of obstacles, a new battle.
I don’t know how long I can last with this lung stuff going on. I’m finding it the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with. I can’t just power through it like powering through pain as I have been doing all these years. I’ve met my match, but I’m trying to figure out a way to continue living my life, despite knowing what’s going to come one day. I’m not in denial, but I just refuse to allow it to take over my world without one hell of a fight.
The thing you need to know is that I’m not known as one who pulls punches. I piss people off with my sometimes brutal honesty. But you know where I stand, you know where I’m coming from. I don’t have time to sugar coat the world, so what you see is what you get. This isn’t any sort of drama for attention, it’s just me being real, living my real life, and talking about stuff here, in my place, on my terms, in my own voice. I know there will be entries here that are going to be uncomfortable for you to read, but it’s part of life. I just hope you walk away from reading me with something good, something positive, something informative, something that outweighs the bad crap going on. That’s my hope anyway. I don’t know just how involved this place will be, but it’s my little way of leaving a record of my life.