RIP My Past Pen & Project Names

 So Fiction It Is
Never Published Blog Draft 12-9-2014
So Fiction it is. God I was a mess the other night! But seriously... try spending most of a year sneaking hours here and there out of your crazy busy life to pour your heart and soul into a book you're writing and as you are wrapping it up and working on edits you realize... I can't publish this. You know... I took all that "writers advice": "write from your heart, write what you know, write like no one will ever see it, don't worry about what anyone else will think, just write what you feel." I felt inspired, I cried, I faced things from my life I never intended to walk back through, I was moved, I learned, I grew. I met myself... I realized we are not heroes or villains in the story of our life, we are human. And I wrote and wrote thinking it doesn't matter what the people I know think, this book is good and if I can actually get the word out about it, I think people will love it, I think people will identify, I think people will buy it, and maybe just maybe my dream of being an author will come true. But then as I really began to go back through my notes, my scribbled chapters, my word docs, my iPhone notes and every other place I managed to write bits and pieces of this story I realized it wasn't just my story I was telling. It was every one I knew, every one I loved, every one I wished I didn't love. And many parts of the story dated back 20 years, the people I knew had grown and changed same as me. They didn't need their past connected with mine and shared from my perspective through my eyes written where others could read about what may have been or not been their lives...
R.I.P. My Many Pen & Project Names - Loved You All
​9-6-2022 - Finishing this blog all these years later - why not :)
​So I started this blog in 2014. I don't believe I ever finished it but I'm pretty sure that was when I may have taken down this website for a time and switched my username online to Cherris Taylor as I was going to test out a pen name and try to turn my writings to fiction. I had used the name Cherris when I originally started posting poetry on myspace. At the time I was married to my ex and he and I decided it was best to not use our real names online for security or something and when we created our myspace pages, remember those ;) We decided to use our gamer tags instead as we often played video games together and I have always gone by Cherris or SweetJane in video games. I still do. I chose Taylor as a last name as it was close enough to my last name at that time and that way I could initial all the art and poetry I shared and it would be my initials. So in late 2014 I had been writing like crazy for about a year and it hit me that I couldn't publish any of it under my own name, it was too personal, to raw, to detailed, to erotic, to honest and just too goddamn much. I wanted to publish the book and thought the ideal plan would be just to pick a pen name, switch all my social media to that name so I could promote the book and just go from there. I chose Cherris Taylor because once again I could use my initials on everything as I still had the same name from 2004 when I'd used the name on myspace, it seemed like a perfect plan but unfortunately (or fortunately lol) at that point in my life I'd gained a bit bigger following online under the name Charity Joy (which is my real first and middle name) that my new pen name just confused people. At the time I was running a separate business from home where I needed a squeaky clean image online and  as I had tons of poetry and artsy self portraits that I wanted to share (many of the themes were definitely NSFW...) I needed a space online where I could share my art under a different name as well, because at this point I had people googling my name to see if I'd be a good fit to hire, and the work I was writing and creating in my free time was not a fit with the image I needed for work. Which image was me, both, all of them, the internet is so tricky to navigate. But one day in February 2015 I woke up and realized a pen name was never going to work for me, it just wasn't my style anymore, I was going to have to find a way to work under my own name and just not publish any of the more intense, raw and vulnerable work at that time. I changed all of my social media to my birth name Charity Janisse and so after 10 years of being on the internet, writing and creating art, jewelry, poetry, short stories under a series of pen names and project names, I changed my website to charityjanisse.com, I wrote my book "We Are The Artist" and published it under Charity Janisse so that there was no going back, I could not change my name again, and I've been writing here ever since. Unfortunately as I was still not comfortable posting most of my work under my own name, I pretty much stopped blogging. I didn't stop writing, I never ever stop writing, but I stopped blogging which is something I really love to do. 
Now I am finally for the first time in my life completely self employed in a way that I work for myself and no one else. No corporation to find my work online and decided it's to risque and fire me lol. No small business that requires a squeaky clean image and no fears around my conservative family reading my work and disowning me. Any hopes of being truly accepted by my family I gave up when I decided to become a Tarot Reader. Knowing my relationship with my family has survived that I suppose it can survive anything, but all in all I will just be publishing a ton of really honest work in hopes my family doesn't notice it, because my family is the other half of the reason I never felt comfortable publishing under my own name. 

It's taken me forever maybe to get here but I realized I love my work, I love what I write, I love the art I create and I love expressing myself and sharing what I create and learn with others. I have realized any relationships or jobs I lose by openly expressing who I truly am are not relationships and jobs that I want in my life, so that's the rest of this blog that I started in 2014.
I'm finally finishing the project of putting all the old blogs and poems up that I had taken down, I think I have an unfinished blog about that some where in my drafts as well.

And for those of you that have followed my work online for a few years through my many project and name changes, I adore you. And for those of you that are just beginning to check out my work now thank you also! I feel honored.

Charity Janisse

AKA: Cherris - Poet, Artist - Myspace 2004-2005 
SweetJane's Chains (SweetJane) - Jewelry Artist, Rust Photographer, Model, Poet, Artist - Myspace, Instagram, Facebook 2005-2012
Life Path Travel - Inspirational Writer, Photographer, Poet, Artist - Instagram, Facebook, This Web-site Originally 2012-2013
CharityJoy77 - Painter, Rust Photographer, Poet - Instagram, Facebook, Twitter 2012-2014
Cherris Taylor - Poet, Painter, Performance Artist - Twitter, Instagram, Wordpress & Wix Site December 2014-February 2015
PunkRockGirlArt - Painter, Poet, Urban/Rust Photographer, Old School Punk Enthusiast - Twitter, Instagram 2014-2017
Channeling Art - Supporter of the Arts, Collaborated on  Several Twitter Art Pages and Projects and met and featured tons of amazing artists and creators online. Twitter 2015 - 2018
(I wish I didn't delete that one but that is a whole other story)

In every single one of these projects I was expressing a very real part of myself, but not my whole self. That is something I realized I had to do when I chose to write my poetry book under my birth name Charity Janisse in 2016 - I am quite fond of all my lovely pen-names, usernames, project names honestly, it was fun getting to know myself better by expressing aspects of myself in each of these projects, but although they were all extremely entertaining and meaningful to me, they mostly just confused people who know me in real life or followed my work online - so R.I.P my many pen & project names. I loved you all!

All Art & Written Works on this bog past & present by:
Charity Janisse - Aritst, Poet, Author, Punk Enthusiast, Psychic, Inspirational Writer, Photographer, Creator
1973-Present

Some of my favorite profile and project pictures past & present!  :D