a golden year in review

Frodo Baggins once said "How do you pick up the threads of an old life?  How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back?  There are some things that time cannot mend.  Some hurts that go too deep... that have taken hold."

I spent most of 2011 waiting for it to get better.  "It" being that thing I had called my life.  I was waiting to feel like I was finally waking up from what seemed like a really long sleep.  One of those sleeps where it starts out easy, turns itself into the best of dreams, and then slowly, gradually, becomes a nightmare.  A nightmare that doesn't ever want to end.  You open your eyes and the world around you has changed yet you have not, therein lying the irony that finally gets to you.  You, the proponent of things changing and the good that can come from it.

When my relationship with the dreaded-ex ended in the spring of 2011, to say the world stopped spinning would be a bit of an understatement.  I've written about this before so I'll spare the usual details, but it is a blanket statement that I need to get out there.  In the past I had been able to move on fairly quickly from boyfriends, this time "attempting," however in vain it was, to do the same.  Seven months after my relationship ended, I thought I was ready to move on and took my chance at another relationship.  Of course I failed miserably and was left back at ground zero.

In hindsight I can see now that it was because I wasn't ready, but not for the reasons you might think.  More on that later.

As the bells chimed on New Years Eve and I was launched into 2012 with hardly any clue as to where my life was going, a sort of depression began to take a much more firm grasp over me.   I wrote a blog that day announcing that I would take a cue from @caitcd and try to accomplish 26 new things I had never done before over the course of the year, blogging about them as I did so.  Is it bad to say that I didn't buy it?  Or didn't buy "into" it, as it were.  What I wanted was to do something that would push me beyond myself, far from where I had been toward something so much greater.  Whether I would get there or not would remain to be seen.

But then I spent a few weeks in a sort of... stasis.  I don't know what else to call it.  I worked my dead-end job at Express that had taken so long to go ANYWHERE that by the time it did I had lost my interest completely.  I drove a car that was falling apart quicker and quicker as the days went on.  No love life, a friendship with my best @markstyleme on the fritz due to a silly argument, and no ambition to change a thing.  It was almost February when I decided to take a day trip to Madison to visit @shizzauna, a good friend who was also in the dumps at that time.

Misery loves company!

We went to lunch at The Great Dane and I had thought to bring along my camera, a gift I bought myself after the breakup.  When she went to the bathroom I took the camera out and turned on the video function, aiming it at the red jar with a candle burning inside on the table before me.  The wheels, my dear friends, started turning in that moment.  Maybe the year didn't have to be just me blogging about 26 stupid things I would do (like buy an iPad (I mean, really, who gives a shit if you buy an iPad (yes that really was on the original list of 26 things.)))  When she came back to the table I cemented my idea in stone.

          "What are you doing?" she asked, taking a seat and watching me power down the camera and tuck it back into my pocket.  I inhaled and let the words out.
          "I'm recording a year of my life."

Now in all fairness I know how dramatic that sounds but it is how it really happened; a sudden split decision and then I hit the ground running.  I filmed a fair amount that day, then got home that night and filmed a fake opening to the eventual video I would compile.  Every month has a title card video and for January and February it is faked (my hair should have been dark brown but I had put blond in it at that point, so for January it is covered with a hoodie and February it is wet (me so tricky.))  Then the rest fell into place.

The word spread through my inner-circle pretty quickly about what I was doing.  The fact that video was tagging along with the 26 Golden Things seemed to up the ante a bit.  Those closest to me grew comfortable with my filming them and then it became a sort of game.  A story that they could tell... a story that I could tell.  I'll be honest when I say that I used it during my interview with Pottery Barn.  When they asked me something I was proud of, I gushed about my project for the year and watched their eyes light up at the idea of someone who would go out and do that.  Trust me, it looks even better on paper than you'd think.

I won't ramble much about the project because I've done that enough and "technically" it is complete.  What I will say is that it was something that came together after a lot of endurance, tears, laughter, and in the end, fun.  A lot of times I had to be my own cheerleader to keep it up, but for the most part I had some pretty great company as well (c:

A few paragraphs back I mentioned how I wasn't ready to find a new love after my last failed attempt just a few days shy of a year ago.  Once upon a time I had an AOL profile with this quote in it: "I choose to impress myself before I go impressing anybody else."  I used to smirk and think I was so clever having that on there but I never really understood the implications of what it meant.  To me at 18 years old it was sassy.  To me at 26 it was a wake-up call.

I wasn't ready to find a new love because I had some work to do on myself first.  There are two options at the end of every relationship, for both parties involved.  We each took a separate road; he chose to find a another lover and I chose to find myself.

I no longer have to ask myself who learned more.

I suppose in many ways I have a lot to thank him for, really.  The definition of a catalyst is "a substance that causes or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being affected," and for me that is what he was.  He took me from where I was at 22 and dropped me at the door of who I was going to become a few years later.  I know what eventually happened to him and I felt smug when I found out, because I knew I had chosen the correct path.  Maybe in his eyes, he did too, and that's alright.  To each their own.  I could be so angry over what happened but if the ends justifies the means then I have no more complaints.

Sarah Ockler wrote "--then I realized that I was holding on to something that didn't exist anymore.  That the person I missed didn't exist anymore.  People change.  The things we like and dislike change.  And we can wish they couldn't all day long, but that never works."  Words have never rung so true, and with that, I have an announcement: the dreaded-ex shall never be referred to again in any form or context, in any blog of mine after today, ever again.  The space in my mind he still occupies is only for me now... I suppose that revelation has been a long time coming and maybe should  have a while ago.  But we are constantly learning and to learn it eventually is better than never at all.

I think I portray myself as a person that really has his shit together, and I don't.  I put on a good show but I don't actually know what I'm doing.  Sometimes I feel like everyone around me is getting a handle on things and then going off to live a great life that I can't seem to attain.  And there I am, y'know, over there on the sidelines waving my arms and shouting "I'll see you guys later!" while waiting for an opportunity to fall in my lap.  Because when the people around you get their own business in order, be it marriage, kids, moving away, moving in, moving out, new relationships, new friends, whatever... it doesn't ever seem to include you.  At times I wonder if my whole life is going to go trolling by in this manner; me waiting for things to happen... waiting for someone else to come and make it happen for me.

Everyone else has always had to figure things out for me while I just stood there.  Reacting.

And then there are times when I feel like the lessons I've learned this year have been so great and so monumental that maybe those other people who "seem" to have it together really don't.  That they aren't ever going to really know the satisfaction of doing something totally and wholly for yourself and how rewarding of an experience it is.  I let go of my inhibitions this year and took a stance for myself, something I had not had the nerve to do before.  I made it all about me, and while my ego may have flared up here or there, it was a great experience because it showed me how happy I could be again if left to my own devices.

If I could, I would call up myself at age 18 in a heartbeat.  "You choose to impress yourself before impressing everybody else?" I'd say, popping a piece of gum in my mouth and flashing a toothy grin in the mirror. "Well, at 27 I'd like to say mission accomplished, Mr. Parker."

Putting myself "out there" the way I do (and on a fairly consistent basis, might I add) has paid off in a very strange way.  I used to keep a blog on MySpace that few people read, and while I have amassed a small army of true friends over Facebook in the interim since then, I don't think any of them (any of you) got to see who I really was until the break-up.  In April that year I penned my"open-letter," calling the dreaded-ex out on everything we endured together.  It was remarkable how the messages just poured in.  Most were of support, a few slaps on the back for having the balls to put it all out there, several apologies over what had occurred and the "I would have told you if I'd known" testimonials.  There was also anger from a few individuals who felt I aired too much dirty laundry (both of our dirty laundry, not just his.)  Those messages got me to see that maybe I should start writing about my life again.

This blog has become a tool for me to express myself, often in ways that I cannot do even with my own voice.

I suppose that the underlying feeling of 2012 was a theme that has run rampant in several parts of my life; the ever lasting question of 'what if?'  The movie Dragonheart told me when I was 10 that "dreams die hard and you hold them in your hand long after they've turned to dust," and that is one of the things I feel that keeps people FROM dreaming.  Failure.  What happens if it doesn't turn out the way you thought it would?  What happens if it DOES turn out the way you thought it would?  Well, I guess that's the great part about daring to dream.  You get to start a whole new one either way.

I feel like I am finally at peace.  I feel like... I don't really know, actually; like I did something that MEANT something.  I achieved something profound, even if I am the only one that sees it that way.  After all, I did it for myself and nobody else, right?  Take the reins in your own hands and redirect the horses dragging you forward in life.  Like Megan said in Bridesmaids, "you are your own problem.  You are also your own solution."  Now that I've done what I wanted to do, I feel like I can do anything else I want.

The natural progression being that I will attain the ability to fly by the time I reach 30.  Obviously.

2012, the Golden Year, being 26... whatever you want to call it; it changed me.  Sheer will changed me.  I have always idolized Vanilla Sky for cueing me in on the wonderful mentality that "every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around."  It's true.  I gave myself 12 months and 26 steps to turn it all around, to figure myself out, and to feel like I am ready to take not just a small step forward, but to run and jump and scream and shout in leaps and bounds.  I'm ready to get swept off my feet, I'm ready to fall in love, I'm ready to move out on my own and take the world by the horns, screaming my accomplishments in its face the entire time.  Feeling that is indescribable.

Labeling 2013 as anything other than the first page of a new book would feel wrong, because that's what it is going to be by all intents and purposes.  I'm choosing to look at the Golden Year as the culmination of events that lead toward something truly remarkable in my life, and if that meant it was me attaining my dream then it is certainly time to find a new one.  There is a whole myriad of things I'd like to accomplish this coming year but I suppose I'll save those for New Years Day and the reveal of said resolutions.  Gotta keep you coming back, right?  Right!

So all that being said and you now seeing that being 26 was the turning point in my life (and how ANY age can be the turning point in yours should you desire it to be,) I'll leave you with the best quote I read all year.  It was shared by my best @klreynol's sister Kelly, and I wanted to share it with you all.  I'll see you in the New Year... and what a glorious one it will be (c:

I love you all so much.  I do, and I hope you believe it when you read it.  Thank you, each and every single one of you from the absolute bottom of my heart for taking this journey with me.

            "As you grow up, you will learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will.  You will have your heart broken more than once and it gets harder every time; you'll break hearts, too, so remember how it felt when yours was shattered.  You'll fight with your best friend.  You'll blame a new love for the things an old one did.  You'll cry because time is passing by too fast and you'll eventually lose someone you love more than anything else.  So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you've never been hurt because every 60 seconds you spend upset is another minute of happiness you'll never get back.  Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin."

document it

So today is December 21st and unless the Mayan's were correct in predicting this would be our last day on Earth, it is just five days from my birthday.  The big 27!  Another year older and another year wiser.  Allegedly, at least.  I wanted to post this on the 26th but I have a much better blog that'll show up on that day, so don't you fret your little hearts because all is well.  All is really well, actually, because this blog is about #26 on my list of Golden Things.  I started tearing up as I typed that.  Shit.  Readers behold, for the journey of a year ends here.

#26 Document it; record a year of my life.

It might seem like the cheap way to round out the list of achievements I had never before unlocked (like a Legend of Zelda game, natch,) but it isn't.  Sure, we have pictures taken of us from the day of our birth and they continue throughout our lives, but that doesn't really equal out to documenting a year of your life.  Through video, through pictures, and of course as you live and breath, these wonderful blogs.

I'd also like to point out right now before I go any further that if ANY of you think #26 would be a cinch or easy to pull off...

       Fucking do it yourself, then come back and tell me how easy it was.

In many ways, this year was an absolute terror.  A terror!  Let me repeat that, underlined this time so you understand the gravitas of the situation: it was a terror.  I think the original idea to "document" my life was a simple one in theory but the reality was that it was overly complicated.  Especially during the summer, when I could never leave the house with just my phone and keys because the camera had to be firmly tucked in my pocket as well.

Oh, is someone doing something funny?  I'll film it!

Hey, are we all doing pictures?  Use my camera too!

Another Golden Thing crossed off the list?  Better write a blog!

It was a year that came with a sense of duty and an odd sort of determination I didn't know I actually had in me.  So many times in the past I had made New Year's resolutions that typically fell to the wayside within a month.  I WILL say that in 2006 I vowed to take better care of my skin and that one stuck.

Obviously ::tosses hair::

In hindsight I wish I had kept a tally of every time someone saw me filming and rolled their eyes.  Every time I started filming and got yelled at for doing so (it happened much more than you'd think.)  Lots 'o people wanted NO part in this project, so that complicated things a bit.  And it's fine, really, because if you want to be a boob about it then go right ahead.  It got old to pull the camera out and start filming inconspicuously, only to have people pause what they were doing to smile.  "I'm videoing you," I'd say, met with a then blank face and confusion.

I make it sound like it was an awful experience and I don't mean to, it was just a tedious one.  There were several times when I would just lay the camera out on a table and say "Here's the camera, someone film things."  And to their credit, my friends were fantastic about grabbing said camera and recording.  I don't know if it was because they felt a sense of duty or because they were excited to be part of something I kept claiming was going to be a big deal; either way they helped a lot.  You can only hold your arm out so many times recording yourself before it gets ridiculous and someone needs to do it for you.

In June, when I bought my iMac, that was when the page turned on this little "chore" I had assigned to myself.  I bought it solely for iMovie, which is a fairly great program (though I have now learned of its flaws (note to self: documenting a year eats up a lot of memory (not my memory, the computer memory))) and super easy to use.  Originally I thought the FINISHED product of this venture would be about five minutes long, maaaaaaaybe pushing toward 10 minutes.  But those first couple days were an indicator of what would end up being something much larger than I anticipated.

With material only through mid-June, I had about 18 minutes of final footage.  And it wasn't 18 minutes of crap, it was actually good and fun to watch.  Fun to re-live, for me and for the few friends who were able to see it in such early stages.  That was a big push on my back and as a result, propelled me forward.  And if I was to be honest, the reason I reached #26 is because of you people.

I wouldn't have been able to achieve this if it weren't for the people in my life and the support they offered.  Sometimes, like I said before, it was the fact that they would do the filming for me.  At other times it was when they would simply remind me "Get your camera out," or "do you want me to film this?"  It was a lending hand that at times I desperately needed and one I always accepted.

In the end this project wasn't just about me but it was about everyone else.  When I finish cutting the video together and it has premiered, it is going to be available to anyone who wants it, for free.  Either give me a blank DVD to burn it or give me the money to buy one for you.  I don't want to make a profit off of it and I don't want to sell it, I just want to provide it.  Because some of you were with me at the start of this adventure and you followed me all the way through it; I'll never forget that.  And I'll never forget the 26 Golden Things.

And there you have it folks, the end of a list that at times seemed insurmountable and at others seemed like a walk through the park.  It hasn't really sunken in that I achieved what I set out to do, but I did.  It'll probably be a while before that fact hits me, at least until the video has been shown and everyone has walked away.  But for now, stay tuned for my birthday, as THAT blog is going to be a doozy.  And it wouldn't be me in true fashion if I wasn't trying to get ya'll to cry (c;

I'll end this "series" of blogs the way I started it, with a song that carried me through the year.  Seeing the video for "Young Blood" by the Naked and Famous gave me the initial idea, and the lyrics to the song struck me right off the bat.  Throughout the year they resonated every time I listened, and that is the precise reason this song kicks off the main video.  The best lines are below the video, sorry if you have to follow the link to Youtube.  Fuckin' Vevo.  Enjoy, and I'll write again in a few more days.

Happy day of the apocalypse!

We're only young and naive still; we require certain skill.
The mood it changes like the wind, hard to control when it begins.
The bittersweet between my teeth, trying to find the in-between.
Fall back in love eventually.
Can't help myself but count the flaws; claw my way out through these walls.
One temporary escape, feel it start to permeate.
We lie beneath the stars at night, our hands gripping each other tight.
You keep my secrets, hope to die.
Promises, swear them to the sky.

(arc)nova

There is a good chunk of you that know what I've been up to "behind the scenes" so to speak, and that is getting a move on with one of the more ambitious parts of my list fo Golden Things.  Unless you don't consider launching your own little "empire" ambitious.  And some of you may not, I don't know.  But I WOULD like to know what you do consider ambitious, if that's the case.  Behold the second to last on my list of 26 Golden Things:

#25 (arc)nova; the launch of a brand.

Last winter, @MarkStyleMe and I decided to get together for a coffee and devise a strategy that would bring some sort of personal business into reality.  In the past we had come up with little schemes to rake in money, ranging from idiotic to borderline genius ideas.  This time it would be something a little more grounded in reality, and we did come up with a pretty great business model after a couple short hours.  We also came up with a name.

A few were tossed around, with me wanting to keep it somewhat celestial and @MarkStyleMe mostly agreeing but also wanting to play with symbols and it not just being a word.  I think we spent more time on the name than we did on the business model, because evrryone knows a shit name doesn't get you anywhere.  After looking up definitions of countless words and putting them together in random sequences, we came upon our solution.

             arc: a luminous bridge.
                  nova: a star that suddenly becomes thousands of times brighter.

Now, the original business model dealt with (arc)nova operating solely as a talent agency.  Being as we were both in dead-end jobs and looking for the next great thing... it seemed like pretty solid idea at the time.

That being said, and as happens with most things in life, it fell by the wayside and was forgotten.

Flash forward a few months.

I'd just been in a fight with one of my bests (which resulted in the end of the friendship (see August 5th blog: "and then there were 4") and wanted to prove a point to her.  And I suppose everyone else at the same time.  That point being that ANYONE could start a business, they just needed the drive to do so.  I immediately contacted @MarkStyleMe and asked if launching (arc)nova as a multimedia-type venture would be alright with him, for the time being at least.  He agreed and I began devising my plan.

First was getting a Facebook page in its name (yes, I have had the (arc)nova page since August,) and then an e-mail address and finally a twitter handle.  Cover those bases, yo!  Next was the bigger question of what the hell was I going to use it for?  I've always been handy with Photoshop... or, not always, but at least the last five or six years though it was mostly tinkering, nothing serious.  Then several years ago I started getting random requests to "fix" pictures.

Lines under eyes.  Power lines in the backgrounds of wedding pictures.  Removing scars from shingles (no shit; the bride had bad scars on her cheek and I had to fix a whole wedding's worth shots, yikes.) Turning skies brighter blue.  Replacing chunks of dirt in a grassy background with the grass instead.  "Hey, can you whiten my teeth?" "Take Uncle Carl out of this group picture, I hate him."  "This picture sucks; can you do anything for it?"

It dawned on me that for all of the requests I had been fulfilling, I could have been charging for them.  Ask anyone and they'll tell you that getting photoshop work professionally done isn't necessarily cheap.  Even some photographers will add on extra photoshopping fees as a bonus, not an inclusion of the original cost.  Sure, you'll get a decent picture, but like the guy taking your senior portraits, you have to pay for them to go the extra mile (in my case, I had a bumpy forehead back then.  He blurred my face out, lol.)  Granted, this is not all photographers, because I know a few who only give back the best work possible and I think it's very cool that they do.  They have a name to protect, right?

Now, you can talk a lot about your skills but sometimes you just need to show some proof.  I did some photoshop work for my great friends Liz and Tyler a few months back because they were displeased with the quality of their wedding pictures.  I did it for free because it was a great chance to take some fairly good pictures (camera-quality wise) and mess around with them.  My own personal cameras don't shoot in very high definition so this was a real treat for me.  The goal was to make every picture worthy of being framed, and to expand on the original vision of the photographer with a little twist of my own.

Sometimes the issue at hand was as simple as messing with exposure and contrast ratios, like the below example.  A little bit of cropping also goes a long way by getting rid of the pavement and drawing your eye a little more naturally to the center of the image.  Toss in a few filters, boost the color, and ta-da!  Original pictures are all on the left, (hopefully) obviously.

There wasn't much beautifying done in the pictures (or any at all, actually.)  I learned my lesson a long time ago that you shouldn't remove moles and freckles without the request of the person in the picture, so that was obviously not the goal.  But we all have wrinkles under our eyes, divots in our skin, discoloration in our pigment, etc., and for pictures, specifically wedding pictures, you want to look your best.  If that means digital removal of said imperfections, soooooo be it.  In the below picture, you can tell the original version on the left was a little "under the weather" looking, which is fixed pretty easily.  Then it's just a little bing-bang-boom to get those blue eyes sparkling (c:

So you may be thinking "what else is there, aside from color correction and beauty-jobs?"  Well, it starts to get a little more complicated when you replace backgrounds.  The focus of this picture being Liz and Tyler was just fine, but with a line of cars, a white truck, and then a building in between them (as well as power lines on the left, my old nemesis!) it was distracting to me.  So I took them out.

More difficult than the distant background of a blurred mostly-one-color scheme is moving on to the removal of larger objects with a bit more focus in the image.  While it's easy-ish for me to do a lot of these tricks, this one was actually a bitch.  I loved the picture but I HATED the background.  You'd think it'd be common sense to not take great pictures with cars in the background, but you'd be wrong!  It was my personal mission to clean up the plate.

And then of course, to branch away from the "Everyday" sort of work, there are always the multiples.  That particular set of photoshop skills speaks for itself (c;

The point of (arc)nova is not to take the creativity away from photographers, it isn't even to take away the fact that they took the picture.  It isn't about that in the least.  The point is to give you (the client) a product you are happy with.  There won't be any branding on the bottom of images (for now or for the foreseeable future, at least until I start taking them myself,) nor will there be required advertisement of the work performed were you to post it.  It's all a private business, especially considering some of the subject matter that I've photoshopped in the past.

You have no idea what I've seen...

I think my hope when it comes to photo manipulation within (arc)nova is that if you are unhappy with ANY picture, be it one you took yourself or one you paid to have taken, I can fix it.  I should say, actually, there is a 90% I can fix it.  Because some shit just can't be fixed, am I right?  If you have a great picture that you've always loved but there is just that ONE thing you hate about it, give (arc)nova a shout.  Truth be told, if you're paying me to do photoshop work, I'll do it without any expectations on your end.  I'd even prefer it kept somewhat quiet because the last thing I'd want is for you to go running back to your wedding photographer (who no-doubt put a lot of time and work into those pictures) and scream "LOOK at what HE did to THESE!  Look how GREAT they are NOW!"

I know that would make me feel like doo-doo, were I that position.

The other facet of this venture is the video branch, and that really speaks for itself.  I've gotten quite crafty with my video work and that's just another service I will be offering.  Not too much in the beginning (lest you have footage for me to work with right away) but down the line expect it to expand.  Wedding videos, celebration videos of whatever... who knows where it will go?  It's obviously a little self-promoting to say (arc)nova is producing the finished product of "26 Golden Things," but who would I be if I wasn't a little shamelss at tossing my name out there?  Trailer is posted yet again below, for those so-inclined, lol.

The point, by the way, behind my slogan is that this is merely the start of the business.  There are so many directions it could head and so many shapes it can take that really, right now, it is anybody's guess.  But there is something kind of exciting about that, don't you think?  (arc)nova is just a glimmer right now... maybe it'll grow into something, dare I say, luminous?  Ideally I'll go (super)nova on this thing and take over the world.  Maybe someday.

That's all for now, thanks for reading and (hopefully) coming to me with your requests at some point in time.  I love a challenge!  And take THAT #25 (arc)nova; the launch of a brand!  I wrote all about you and didn't leave my chair ONCE to do something more fun!  Ya bitch!

Ciao kids (c:

'tis the season

Well, today is December 1st and I already find myself with the burning desire to start writing again.  It's not unheard of that I would want to do this after a marathon of forcing myself to sit and pound a blog out (last night, blech,) but it is rare.  I think when I force myself to blog my natural instinct is to get up and walk around and then look at websites before I flip through magazines.  Like the child who is told he must finish his homework before he can play, the last thing I want to do is work.

Childhood never ends, people.  I've made it official!

Today I went with my parents to get our Christmas tree, the 15th year in a row that we've cut it down ourselves.  There is something fulfilling about that... I'm not sure why.  It's always a quick trip; leave the house by 9 and return before noon with less than 30 minutes being spent at the tree farm.  And though the last few years have been bare of snow (more on that later) during tree-choppin' day, I can't really complain too much.  The best part about not having the snow, aside from the obvious chill factor, is that it is usually moist air and it looks really atmospheric and cool at Harmony Hill Evergreens.

When we got home and successfully stood the tree up on the first try (why did the dreaded-ex and I always do it wrong, causing the tree to inevitably topple when we weren't home?  Must have been an omen) I marched upstairs to get to work on a list of chores I had created.  I don't know if it is a sign of me getting older and not being able to remember everything I need to do or if it is just because I have waaaaay too much commotion in my mind right now to handle the medial tasks of buying Christmas presents, organizing my desk, paying bills, etc.  I'd like to believe it is the latter but of course I could be wrong.

Having Novemeber wrap itself up is such a blessing for many reasons, chief among them that December is my absolute favorite month of the year.  This year makes it a little more special because it means I am just 31 days away from completing my list of 26 Golden Things and the resulting video.  Speaking of that video, I worked on that as well today.  Right now it clocks in at 55 minutes (yeesh,) but I still get excited everytime I watch it so I suppose that's a good sign.  I started putting the bits filmed today into sequence, and once I added music to it I got surprisingly emotional.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you by now that I am a huge crybaby, mostly over things that are sentimental but also with animated movies, romantic movies, dramatic movies, superhero movies, tv shows, some commercials, sad letters... I can go on.  But today, with the music joining the December cue card and the small note "at last" scrawled across the bottom of it (see picture above) there was an odd sense of finality to it all.  Not only that I will achieve what I set out to do 334 days ago, but that it is culminating in a series of events I don't think I believed would ever arrive.

Anyway.

Now I'm searching for a venue to host the premier and I have a couple great options for that.  The goal being that for all of you that will come, you'll have a place to sit and eat/drink rather than stand and watch.  I know I personally wouldn't want to stand around for an hour watching someone else's life no matter how much I had been filmed in it.

To touch back on that snow thing... I really hope we get dumped on in the next couple weeks.  Last year we didn't have snow until January and I would just love to wrap up this most perfect of years with the most perfect of holiday nods.  A little white powder could do that, and not the cocaine kind!

Okay, back to work.  I just wanted to say hello and I love you (c: