Today is my 26th birthday, and I had planned to celebrate by doing a ‘Draw My Life’ video. I’d like to congratulate everyone else who have managed to do one, because I couldn’t, for the absolute life of me, work out how to angle my camera properly or use video editing software when I gave up and drew everything on my iPad instead.
So, there’s no video… but I DID draw my life. And I’d still like to share it, so here it is in image + text form.
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This is me. My name is Darnielle, and I am terrible at drawing.
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I was born in Whangarei, New Zealand. My dad was a badass truck driver, and my mum was a “textile technician”, which is just fancy speak for “sews curtains and soft furnishings”. We also had a dog named Boz.
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When I was about three, we moved from Whangarei to Rotorua. Dad became a chef at a Mexican restaurant. While we were living in Rotorua, my younger sister, Katrina was born. A few weeks after this, one of the most important people in my life, my grandmother (who I called DorDor) passed away. (Sidenote: Because we had to leave Boz in Whangarei, we got another dog. His name was Goldie, and he was pretty much a dick dog.)
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I started school in Rotorua, and although I was really smart, I had behavioural problems. I would “hulk out” over minor things. I was eventually diagnosed with depression after suggestions that I was autistic or had ADHD were thrown around.
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We moved back to Whangarei after a few years in Rotorua. I went to four different primary schools, but I made a lot of friends… so I didn’t mind moving schools that much. At some point during this time period, Dad decided he didn’t want to be a chef any more, and he became a dairy farmer instead. It was during this time that I became interested in web design. We also got the bestest doggy I’ve ever had, Cosby.
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I started high school, which was an all-girls school… so I got weirdly boy crazy. My grades started to suffer when I started worrying about boyfriends. BUT, my first boyfriend was pretty cool. We grew up together. I had a fair few more boyfriends after that, but none of those relationships worked out.
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We moved to the Waikato when I was 16. I really hated the school I went to, so I dropped out. Dropping out turned out to be a good thing, because the depression I had been battling with for most of my life lessened enough for me to function as a healthy and happy human being. I got a job as a checkout operator, and things were looking up for me! Until…
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I fell ill with ME and fibro. I became depressed again, and had to quit my job. BUT, it meant that I had the opportunity to do what I’d been thinking of doing since leaving school. I decided to go to university and work on becoming a crime fighting superhero!
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During this time, I met Sam (who is really tall!). We weren’t dating very long before we decided to move in together. I was (and still am!) deeply in love!
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While I was at university, my family got two more dogs. Can you tell dogs are an important part of my life?! Haha. Spud only lived for two more years after they adopted him, and not long after him, Wicket came along. And the biggest thing? I graduated in 2012!
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And my future. It involves more study, more web design, more Sam, and hopefully lots of crime fighting superhero antics!
So there you have it. My life in terrible stick figure form. If you’re like me and suck at cameras and video editing and stuff, I did all of this with the Paper app on my iPad with a stylus. It would probably be really difficult to do on an iPod touch or phone… so maybe don’t try that? Haha.