The Stories of my Tattoos #7: The One with the Crazy Purple Monkey

This Tattoo Post Contest by @foxyspirit inspired me to finish up my "Tattoo Stories" series that I started a few months ago when I was a really new newbie. (if you want the truth, it reminded me that I had started this series and not finished it!)

The Crazy Monkey Tattoo, thanks to Jon at Just Another Hole Body Arts. I had set up an appointment for a Monday with just the words of this tattoo ready to go. That was all I had originally planned to get done that day.

The monkey part was added to the plan after attending a fantastic weekend workshop at The Actor Factory. It was a huge turning point for me in ways that actually have nothing to do with acting/whatnot, but it definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things and inspired me to get back to creating again. It really cemented for me how much I NEED a creative outlet to feel fulfilled and happy. (Currently steemit is that outlet for me and I am absolutely beyond thrilled to have the daily place to create, write, draw, share my real self, interact and meet so many other amazing people who are using the platform in the same way.)

As a mom of five kids, I spent way too many years refusing to do things for myself because it would cost something or take time away from things that I should be doing... instead of doing things FOR me because it would make me a happier, better person and then I would have more to give to those people in my life that were so important to me. I mean really, it's a hard lesson to learn, but it's pretty impossible to keep pouring yourself into others if you never refill yourself!

Anyway In our acting class, the instructor gave us each a little plastic monkey as a reminder of things that we learned (and as a big encouragement for the future, a lucky charm of sorts) I LOVED this monkey idea and when another student mentioned getting the monkey as a tattoo, I decided right then to sketch the perfect monkey to add to my tattoo appointment that I already had set up for the next day (I did have an open ended appointment with my tattoo guy, since I had a nice sized gift card and he knew that I had several things I wanted to work on.)

The monkey is purple because of Bean's Monkey Business (a puppet show I did on youtube with a puppet I made), which was an especially big deal for my girls @abyni & @loliboofae and I.

_{Part of Patrick's purple monkey collection that the kids have been gifting him for Christmas/Father's Day since they were old enough to buy their own gifts for him!}

THAT came about because of Patrick's (aka @serapium) habit of answering incessant kids questions (Where are we going? What are we getting? What are we doing? What is going to be there? What's at the Top/end, etc) with his favorite phrase "Eleven Purple Monkeys!!!"

And... of course, this was right before we were leaving to go live on the boat... which we named "11 Purple Monkeys" so in a way, this tattoo manages to capture a BUNCH of different parts of my life and I love it. My favorite part about this tattoo is that I see it all the time because of it's placement on my inner left forearm and that makes me happy :)

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All phtos and graphics are my own.