Almost to the end.

I am not sure how long it has been since I did my "year in review" posting(I suppose I could easily check but I prefer not to know for sure until after I'm done writing it) but tomorrow I will take an extra moment or two to scrawl one out again. This year, as basically every year seems to be, has been a fairly eventful year of challenges, memories, and adventures that definitely deserve a bit of mention. It's never an easy thing, to attempt to recall so many days of value, but it's always a worthy exercise of the brain. Sure, each day I do this generally gives each possible memory that validity and respect, but the overall memory snapshot of each year has its own value, as well.

Breaking the fever down.

It had its way with my attempted sleep last night but I might be breaking back to normal for tonight's attempt. I actually popped a few aspirin this time(a very rare thing for me) just to see if I could actually improve my chances. We shall see.

The lengthy, feverish battle.

Or... the battle against the fever, at length. I don't feel particularly crummy but it's enough to screw up my sleep and make me cough a decent amount. So it goes, I suppose... touting foes... inside my noes... needing blows.

Always a lot of energy after basketball.

Which technically is pretty much what the body should be doing anyway... I just happen to play semi-late basketball. Sure, it kinda screws up my sleeping schedule for the two days a week that I do it, and if you've read much of my writing you would know how much I preach for the importance of sleep, but I do make some exceptions in this case. I gotta get some exercise, after all! And now I need to lay down and let my body try to heal itself a bit. Ha.

Learning takes away mystery.

Which sort of squelches curiosity, as well. I don't have much of a very formulated thought on the concept at the moment but I am wondering if I've run this one through my mind before... or, if so, why I can't seem to recall doing so. Strangely,(and somewhat coincidentally) I learned today about a comic book super hero that was invented with a nearly identical power to one that I invented about 12-13 years ago. It was a guy who is totally forgotten once he is no longer within direct line of sight. It is strange to be hearing about this character who so closely resembles the one I invented so long ago... it is the first time I have had such a distinct feeling that my idea was directly ripped off... even though I know that is basically impossible since the very few people I described my character to are very unlikely to be connected to the person who created this character for real. Still... it's a strange feeling to have. Fun and strange!

What is a celebrity death?

There seems to have been more than the usual dose this year. Maybe it's just because of who they are that it seems that way. I would think that logically it isn't really much of a different number than the usual crop but logic doesn't always account for luck(or anti-luck, in this case.) In the age of social media and hyper awareness of all things bad and good I tend to think it's generally just that... we are simply more aware of what is happening these days than were were in the past. Either way, it's just the way things are and we all gotta deal with it the same... in our own ways, preferably.

'Tis the season of giving.

Yet, what have I given? In recent years I have acquiesced to the idea of actually giving things in the spirit of the holiday, having been somewhat oddly opposed to the idea of setting a time apart specifically for giving from the rest of the year for as long as I can remember, but I am not entirely sure how much I have really embraced it. I consider myself a fairly poor fellow, financially speaking, but have certainly the means to dig quite a bit deeper into my pockets at this time of year. Doing so would definitely represent the greater sacrifice expressed in the season's deeper meanings. In any case, I definitely feel like I am given much more than I give. I love my family and friends and I offer them my time as often as I can(which, while also on the somewhat sparse side these days, might be the truest form of gift-giving love) but that is not enough. There is always more to be given. And, to whomever takes a moment to read this, whether I know you well or not, I hope you have a great holiday season! You are all basically anonymous to me as I write this(and perhaps forever) but I do write this with the idea that what I write could be somehow beneficial to anybody who might read it. Some of it in the hope that it will reach my(hopefully) future children, wife and family... but I am aware that I might have friends poke in along the way and I take the opportunity of sharing a little piece of myself, a little piece of my life's experience, also bearing a similar hope that by doing so I have somehow given a few beneficial words to the cause of creating a better life. We all connect through communication in one way or another and this is one of my consistently self-disciplined ways of doing it... one paragraph-a-day at a time.

Family is a gift.

And we all should be more grateful for what we have, in my opinion. They're a powerful, important reminder of my history, my responsibilities, my truest self. We learn new things every day about the world, our work, and where we are heading in life but taking in the reminders, and allowing them to enmesh their meaning with every new thing we learn, we can be further empowered to reach the futures we strive to achieve. This probably sounds all high-conceptish for a basically casual evening with my f-crew(most of whom visiting for the holiday) but it does reflect a tiny piece of their importance to me. The simple truth - LOVE is the reason... for the family and the season.

It's a strange end-of-year sort of feeling.

Maybe because of the basically continuous hours spent at work, thinking about work, or planning what work is on the near horizon... I'm not too sure. There's a little bit of family in town, which is cool, though I haven't been able to see them much. I feel a bit disconnected, I suppose. I do still look forward to the new year, though. Lots of cool stuff on the horizon. There's a good dose of cool on the slate and I look forward to all of it!

Don't fight the battle with sleep!

It will always win the war in the end. Sure, you might scoop up a few extra hours of fun, or productivity, or relaxation, or nonsense, but the payment for anything you do end up doing that isn't actually sleeping will ALWAYS come due eventually... and sometimes the payment gets extracted undetectably, forcibly, painfully, even having collateral effects that don't seem related. It's a messy business that nobody should endeavor to engage in, including me! Such is the challenge of an overactive mind, I suppose. Ha.

Willing recipient of infection.

I will always be happy to go where the optimistic people are. They share the enthusiasm like a fuel that, in them, doesn't fade... rather, the act of their sharing seems to multiply it. It is paradoxically given and gained simultaneously. This is why I have chosen, yet am also lucky to have found, the positive to be in my life on a regular basis. The undisease they carry enervates, invigorates, and elevates me in so many valuable, important and necessary ways!

The results of our labor, well-executed.

It was quite fun to sit in a room full of people, many of them unknown to me beforehand, and get a sense of their raw responses to our newest episodes. I think the episodes were very well put together, we have reason to be proud of our work, but you never really know how the authentic(well... as authentic as I will probably ever witness personally. ha) audience reaction will be. We love what we do and it seems we have some actual fans of our work. Luckyboom!

Diving into sound.

I have basically been dipping my toe into it for just about as long as I can remember. Initially as an aspiring musician, later as my band's self-appointed music engineer, further as the occasional field and live switch audio engineer and now as a general audio production and post-production hyperstudent(a new term I'm unsure why it has not arisen in my wordsmithing lexicon previously to now?) There are definitely worse things one can obsess about... things that aren't actually useful, for one... but there are definitely cheaper things I probably should obsess about, to the mind of the logically unobsessed.

Snappy cold weather.

Mid-twenties isn't really a bone-chilling cold if it isn't very humid but I'll still call it a wake up kind of cold. I'd rather not even discuss the weather as it tends to get a little too much love in the small talk of life but I also tend to think that small talk gets a bit too much disrespect from the self-proclaimed(whether verbally or by action) intellectual types and is generally written off as a form of communication below the station of said disrespecter. Small talk reflects the very core of a person's attention as well as the very core of a person's interest. Not to say everybody has the weather at the core of his or her interests... more to say that establishing human connection is and small talk is the standard form of bridge building between two people. Small talk has as much to do about subtext and context as it does the very subjects it commonly elicits. Small talk also provides a somewhat clearer vehicle of emotional expression than the weightier, more deeply drawn conversations often will. Of course, all conversation should not be entirely comprised of small talk, another example of "moderation in all things," but learning to balance, and even enjoy it, will definitely improve one's ability to communicate, in my opinion. There's always so much more to discover in every simple concept!

Winter surrounds us.

But never climbs inside us. We have a great deal of optimistic opportunities in our short-term outlook and all of it excites me thoroughly. I DO feel like it could be unlikely I have ever claimed as much of a generously over-loaded portion for my plate than I have at this moment. Some of that would be in the time commitment section of my plate but some of that would be in the breadth of my responsibility as well. It will be a grand, sometimes painful, sometimes pretty, sometimes powerful experience for sure!

Hanging in the think tank.

Stockpiling the ammunition of invention. Preparing a volley of creativity for the war against mediocrity. Purposeful creativity is offensive by nature, not defensive. It ventures rather than waiting. It is a two-edged sword, poised for potential success/failure(intended use of the slash.) It is pioneering beyond purpose, stumbling in shadows, inviting intuition, staring into stratosphere. And it's guaranteed reward... not victory, not glory, not understanding, not ego, not connection... simply, experience.

Connecting some serious dots.

Or seriously connecting some dots? Dots... connections... happening. Anyway, I think that connect-the-dots is a highly underrated game/experience. Connecting people to other people, people to jobs, learning to concepts, intentions to actions... and there are so many more joyous dot connecting scenarios it's difficult to even list them. I'm lookin' forward to all the next dots I get to connect. Just connectin' 'em all over 'da place!

Business and passion.

Being passionate about one's business is likely a very good idea. Being able to separate the passion from the business is also likely a very good idea. The thought being that it can be very easy to make a poor business decision because of a passionate bias. It's a bit of a strange tightrope to walk, I think. It might be similar to the comparison between discipline and passion. It would be great to have both in large measure but having just one, either over or under represented, will often be detrimental to any sort of consistency or stability. I would say all of these reflect well the concept "moderation in all things."

Selling knowledge.

That might be one of the more base ways to put it... teaching, that is... but I am not inclined to mince words. And one thing I have learned about myself, something that I have begun to feel greater emphasis as of late, is that one of my greatest skills is my ability to learn, synthesize and teach a large variety of disciplines and topics. I enjoy it so thoroughly that considering payment for the act of sharing my talent didn't even cross my mind for many years. It was simply something I enjoyed doing as one who loves helping others. Now, when I consider all the things I need to prioritize about my career and future, I would have to consider it silly/strange not to think of this skill as a valuable, and maybe even critical, way to best ensure a successful reach toward a financially sound future.

Finding more pieces of inspiration/help.

Our company is a very small, fairly redundant crew that definitely needs to stretch out a bit in order to cover all of the relevant needs. I say redundant because we all share many of the necessary skills of our trade(camera operating, audio, editing, etc) but I wouldn't call that a bad thing. It simply reflects a need to bolster our talent pool, whether through recruitment, purchase, training or selective marketing. I almost always prefer the training route but am finally becoming more and more cool with the purchase route(which I have generally overlooked because of my independent and purist tendencies.) I am glad for the change of mind!

Powerful cinema.

Every time I watch a movie that stirs my emotional innards(Sicario, this time) I am reminded of the immense impact cinema can have on a person. I might be a bit more emotionally receptive than the average person, which could influence my opinion of this concept, but I might be less emotionally receptive than the average person and not even know it. I appreciated my experience tonight and definitely look forward to the next time I will be privy to a similar experience again in the future.

A busy new year ahead.

Typically speaking, this time of the year is very slow in the video/film production world and generally stays that way until the early parts of next year. As we may have the opportunity to dive into some pretty serious and valuable projects almost immediately we have quite a different outlook this year. Sure, there is pretty much always a project brewing that we can stay busy with, but I think we have even more on our possible plate than usual in the coming year and I will call that verifiably exciting. Plus, much of it is fairly new to what we have been doing so the opportunity of new challenges just makes it all that much more interesting and exciting to look forward to.

Still gettin' it done.

The work pace could definitely improve but it still continues moving along and I am glad for it, either way. Sometimes it seems like getting everything done all at once would be nice, and I suppose a short break is always a healthy investment of time in its own way, but that is sort of a flawed thought to begin with since I am, by nature, always inclined to create new things or projects to keep myself busy. I guess this is just the way of life for the overactive imagineers like myself.

How many different careers can one person have?

Or is that a trick question? Some might say that your career is simply the entire body of work that one accomplishes in his or her lifetime. Anyway... I think I've had a fairly diverse body of jobs in my short time around the block... and I might even pick something somewhat new up just to fill the gaps... and also because I enjoy it, of course.

The icy fall.

I had to melt the ice off of my car when I got out of work tonight. Cool!(in every way that word is used) Some of my friends experienced snow in various places around the Sound, too, but I was not so lucky, myself. Anyway, I dig the change of seasons in pretty much every form. I dig the metaphorical life changes it all represents, too... you know... just for the heck of it. Ha.

The weekend of basically nothing.

Which is sort of just code speak for relaxation. Ya, I did go into work for most of the day on Saturday but the work was very low-key and the remainder of the day following it was in total relaxation mode. Today was pure relaxation mode. Much appreciated(likely much needed) and I think a nice way to kick off the week. As always, there's lots to do and I look forward to another grand week.

The cold days are coming.

Which is cool for the odd level of social disarray that it tends to bring with it. It always gives us a slightly new appreciation for the warmer days that most of us prefer while simultaneously offering a challenge to our senses and opportunity to rise above it. We always adapt, as we are built to do, whether by natural inclination or determined intention. It's generally a subtle process that doesn't get a lot of attention but I wouldn't say that is necessarily needs it... I'm just pointing out my enjoyment of it and look forward to all that it brings with it.

Always something more to learn.

And some of that learning, for me, comes as I take these moments to recite my thoughts in blog form. It is one thing to gain a technical understanding of a new concept but it is another thing entirely to internalize it then attempt to synthesize it through the process of describing what it is that you have learned. That might be one of the reasons why I probably sound like I repeat certain topics from time to time... it reflects my natural human behavior of forgetting things I once knew and not only reiterates that same thing in that technical way, it expresses that internal synthesis of regaining said concept, likely coming in the form of a slightly newer, possibly more complete perspective. And it probably also brushes up on my basic ability to communicate the idea in writing... which is a valuable skill in its own right. Now if I could only get more motivated to apply all of this to scriptwriting. Ha.