Adversity.

So, summertime was relatively good. I worked and had a mostly great time with the Arcade-In-A-Box crew, enjoyed not having the pressure of school or anything resembling responsibility other than feeding and cleaning myself (which I mostly succeeded at). I even took a whack at stand-up comedy, which was a long-held personal goal of mine that felt really good to try. I approached this semester with open eyes and an eager heart.

It has been an uphill motherfucker to this point.

First sign of trouble...the XBox 360 died two weeks before school began. Not terribly surprising, especially if you're a gamer freak in-the-know and you know just how many of these have bitten the dust. It just has fatal design issues. Of course, I don't even game so much anymore, but the whole instant-Netflix movie thing is kinda insdispensable to me now. So...not really a tragedy, but an annoyance. Or...an omen?

A couple of weeks later, right before school...I drove out to California in my car. I love the beaches of Santa Monica, and seeing them right before the academic shit hit the fan again seemed like the right thing to do. Of course, I got out to Cali in one piece, but while tooling around the freeways in LA, my radiator decided to blow. No bueno. It was fixed the following Monday, meaning I missed the first day of class and was $560 poorer to start off with.

A couple of weeks later, on a Sunday, I got the awesome double-play of learning that my Uncle Mike was extremely, critically ill, and the unvarnished pleasure of seeing my ex-gf with her new boyfriend. More awesome.

A week after this, my MacBook's harddrive died. Everything I had, my photos, my music, all my work from the previous 3 years at the UA, the comedy stuff I had compiled over the summer...poof! Gone.

The cherry on the sundae: H1N1, or the swine flu. Got it, had it kick my ass royally for about a week. Never been sick that way...utterly devoid of energy, in pain from head-to-toe, killer headache, fever, the whole nine. Missed a week of class.

So what did I learn from all of this? I learned who truly cares and who doesn't. I learned that despite all of these setbacks, I am in a very fortunate position to be in school at a time when the job market is an absolute wasteland. Not only that, but I learned what I am NOT meant for (a career in politics) and am about to embark on the journey I was always meant to take: learning how to make films and explore that whole creative side I haven't truly tapped into yet.

The last year has been an arduous, sometimes excruciatingly lonely journey, but it has yielded rewards that I wouldn't trade for anything. I know more about myself and what truly makes me tick than I ever did. Technical problems...disease...heartbreak...it's all dandruff if you are strong enough and really know what the fuck you want.