Today is the final Wednesday of the semester. Today is the final day of the semester. Today was the final day of the semester. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and realize "yesterday was the final day of the semester." Fall 2012 is TOAST and Spring 2013 is fresh bread waiting to be placed in the toaster. It's incredible to think I will NEVER be taking a general education class again, no more classes that I have to take to simply satisfy a requirement. If I choose to take classes ever again in my life, they will be intentionally and beneficially chosen for the sake of personal learning. None of this "oh, I HAVE to take one more science class because I HAVE to or I WILL NOT GRADUATE." None of that.
We're growing up. People are graduating. School is done. School. That thing we've gone to most weekdays of our entire lives up this point. A professor put it this way: "You're about to be fired from your full time job of 18 years." We've been full-time academics, spending our time in schools, in studies, in educational practices. That world is about to be vanquished, kaput, straight toasted. We're about to enter into this thing called the "workforce." Sounds terrififying. But you know what else it sounds like? ADVENTURE. Time's only moving forward.
To all my fellow Biolan's who are graduating, the world is yours for the taking. You have the opportunity to literally, figuratively, and spiritually change this planet if you take the skills you have learned through this point in your life and utilize them. Biola's a good school, they're relevant. You're ready to make an impact on this thing called the "workforce" for Jesus. Let's go. I'm rooting for you. I'll see you in the "workforce" in 6 months. Pumped to hear the stories.
In other news, here's a fantastic .gif:
In other news, here's one of my favorite blog posts of all time. SO RIDICULOUS.
In other news, this week has been ABSOLUTE INSANITY. It's finals week, projects are due. I decided to go above and beyond on a specific Graphic Design book assignment and it ATE my time like a juicy cheeseburger. I've spent probably upwards of 30 hours in the Art Lab, the famed 82, in the last 4 days. And then Ms. Morgan McGannon has just been a twinkle in my eye. She's fantastic.
Here's a few tweets from the week. They're pretty vague. In fact, some are VERY vague, possibly so vague I won't know what they are referring to in the years to come. So, future Morgan Lott, these tweets were somewhat significant this week. BAM.
The joys of social media.
Okay, well, I'm out. I'm taking this girl out of the town tonight. This girl, the one in this picture.
Go outside right now. Look at the sky and how vast it is. IT IS UNBELIEVABLE. The sky goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Think about that for a second.
You remember last week? When I said it was decently significant? I showed you a screenshot of a tweet? Yeah? No? Here's a refresher: http://emliv.blogspot.com/2012/12/thisisbig.html. More on that in a bit.
Folks, it's finals season. This is the time when people start gettin' a lil loopy, the library is WHERE IT'S AT, and sleep becomes a thing of the past. Projects, projects, projects; papers, papers, papers. Finals season is when college gets real. Classes begin to mesh. And whether you want to or not, you have to recall information you have learned throughout the semester to a point where an "A" is deserved. My largest project is an assignment for my Graphic Design Forms I class; a 100+ page graphic design book on an episode of "This American Life," the radio show on WBEZ hosted by the elegant Ira Glass. I chose an episode called "Content Unknown," and I have been enjoying myself thoroughly. Here are three of the 50+ spreads.
So, something big happened last week. It requires some backstory though.
On October 20, 2012, my house, The Bakery threw the FIRST Bakery Dance Party, a party that exceeded all expectations and was a blast and a half. Here's the blog post detailing that event: http://emliv.blogspot.com/2012/10/blog-post.html. At this party, at my house, a number of visitors showed up that the members of our house did not know, which is GREAT. It was cool to open our house up to not only our friends, but to the Biola community at large. There was a certain point when I noticed a certain girl enter the scene, I had never seen her before, and she caught my interest. Huh. I continued dancing to my lil hearts content, shooting photos up the wazoo and happened to snap a few of this certain girl. Here's one of them:
At the end of the party, I noticed this certain girl heading out to leave, so I quickly stopped her and asked for her name. She said, "My name's Morgan." I have to be honest... I didn't know what to say! I must've answered "uhh... me too!" We had a short exchange and that was that. Fast forward a couple days, Ms. Morgan McGannon sees me sitting at the Flour Fountain, she joins me, and we start a conversation that lasts from 10:30am to 3:00pm. I asked for her number. Fast forward a couple days to November 8, I have asked Morgan out and we head to downtown Los Angeles for the LA Artwalk. It's a good time, we cruise around, look at some bizarre art, look at some bizarre people, enjoying each other's company. As we walked around, we stumbled upon this RAD Hyundai hideout with all sorts of crazy things to do, including this wild photobooth that connected directly to facebook. Take a look!
We then took off to Hollywood Blvd, the Walk of Fame, a place you can't go without wild memories being made. It was a late Thursday night, the Walk of Fame was not as crowded as it would be on a Saturday afternoon. Earlier that evening, the film "Lincoln" had premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theater, so the red carpet, large trailers, and the rest of the big kado were being cleaned up, preventing us from experiencing the grandeur of the famed Chinese Theater. We had to walk around it and as we were, we were approached by two gentlemen. They proceeded to ask if we would like to help them out with their web series called "The Dark Knight Retires," the scene would involved the actress (which would be Morgan) getting mugged, and the scene would end. They assured us it wouldn't take long. Morgan quickly agreed, which surprised me, because the two gentlemen did not have a camera in hand, did not necessarily look like filmmakers, and Batman was nowhere to be seen. To make sure these two dudes weren't con artists/muggers/bad guys, I started to lay down detailed questions that con men wouldn't have answers to "What lenses are you shooting on? How many episodes in your websites? What episode is this that we're filming? When does it premiere? What is your medium for release?" They answered these questions without hesitation, so I eased up. Turns out, "The Dark Knight Retires" is a webseries made my "YouTube Celebrity" Mr. Hunter Davis. Here's the trailer for the series:
So, the scene takes place, Morgan does great, and the whole event is hysterical. The shoot finishes with a Taft-Hartley signing and we were on our merry way.
Perhaps my favorite part of this story happened after it was all over; it was when Morgan turned to me and said "This WOULD happen to me, this kinda stuff ALWAYS happens to me!" To which I responded, "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST SAID THAT. This kinda stuff ALWAYS happens to me too!" If we keep this up, we'll have stories to fill novels to fill libraries. Here's a picture. I was under the impression we were supposed to be "hard" like Batman. oops.
Night ends, Morgan and I keep chat chat chattin'. Chit chattin' a lot. Here's a couple more pictures. And then more chat chattin'.
And then, long, DTR-esque, story short, I take Ms. Morgan McGannon to Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles to ice skate. You know, we're skating around, the moment came,...
And that was that! So we're all OH-FISH as of what was actually December 6th, and you know what? It's been GREAT! It's a been a whirlwind of a couple days and it's been amazing to think about the process it took to get to this point. Unfortunately, this isn't quite a topic for this blog discussion, but if you're curious about what in the world I'm talking about, ask me and we'll chat. I will say this though: it's been incredible to see God show up within our conversations and within our relationship. She's got a heart of gold and challenges me to be a better person, something that is immensely important to me. The evolution of our relationship has been ridiculously natural and easy... it's difficult to convey over text. I'm way too excited to see what God's got in store for us and that fact that we're both trusting God to guide, discern, and wise us up is, in a word, RAD. Phew. Love it.
Next order of business: THE BAKERY DANCE PARTY 2.0. This was round two. People DUG that last one, they demanded another. We opened up our house, The Bakery, and, well, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:
I'm literally speechless. We provided music and water and around 270 people showed up to our little house. UNREAL. (By the way, that number was determined by: 150+ leaving through the front door at the end of the night, 11:30. People leaving through the back gate into the driveway, probably around 50. People coming and going throughout the evening, probably around 60-80 [Our most packed moment was around 10:15]). People came for good clean fun, NO alcohol, NO freaking, JUST A BLAST. And when sweat is literally pouring down the walls like waterfalls and dripping from the ceiling like rain, you know it's been a perspirational night.
GOTTA LOVE IT.
And that's the post ladies and gents. It was a big one. This week was HUGE. Unreal. Never would have guessed in a million years. Oh, one last thing, the Bakery Dance Party 2.0 was placed an interesting time. Remember how Morgan and I met during the first one? 2.0 was the day after I asked her to be my girlfriend. The Bakery brings people together.
This is the teaser trailer for my documentary, thisisstuttering. This is a project that has been in the works for months (or if you want to get specific, 22 years). thisisstuttering deals directly with my own speech impediment, a stutter that has plagued me for years. The film documents that progress made during the summer of 2012 as I went through another round of speech therapy.
We've been working on it a while, the content is not new. I've seen it all, been editing it, talking about it, working through it. We produced this teaser and it turned out great. I was excited to release it. And then the moment came to make it public. I released the teaser and shared it on facebook, and then IT HAPPENED. At the moment, I became mentally disheveled. I could never have expected what happened and I will attempt to explain it through words. When a person "suffers" from a speech impediment, the automatic instinct is to hide it, to mask it, to deal with it any way possible to prevent people from noticing. We stutterers develop habits to get around certain words, to push through blocks, to avoid potentially dangerous situations. Since I was a kid, I decided I would not let my stutter control me, I would not let it stop me from doing what I wanted to do. Obviously, having a stutter made things difficult, but I tried to push through as best I could. Nevertheless, I never introduced myself as a stutterer, I never associated myself with the problem. People would notice when they noticed and I didn't point it out.
When I released this teaser, a made a MASSIVE realization: I am letting the entire world know I have a stutter, a quality of myself I have been trying to hide with all my might for 18+ years. Unreal. I flipped out, I had to play drums real real loud for a long long time. I laid on the ground. I sighed a whole bunch. My heart was beating nonstop for 3+ hours. And the weirdest part about it was it was COMPLETELY unexpected. Even in the moment of realization, I feel like it was my subconscious freaking out. There are so many complex incricacies to this speech impediemtn that have formed my character and who I am today, many of which I have never processed. The release of this teaser is the beginning of the process of process.
I don't know if my words do the feeling justice. No idea.
When the teaser was made public, I immediately headed to facebook to tell the world. The responses shocked me:
I can't explain the significance of these comments. The response to this project has been simply unblieveable, I'm overhwelmed. The fact so many people are intrigued/interested/curious/loving a topic that is socially so frustrating/confusing/embarrassing/mocked is INCREDIBLE.
I only have one thing to say: I can honestly say I do not have a clue what is going to happen with thisisstuttering. It feels like a volcano getting ready to erupt, it's impossible to know how wide an impact this is going to make. I'm immensely excited and dangerously frightened to see this film take shape.
It's Wednesday and it's madness. Registration for classes took place this week. Here's mine:
There are a lot of implications, assumptions, epiphanies embedded within this schedule. First, there's only 2 classes, 6 units. I'm only taking 2 classes next year because that is all I need to graduate. I have two college classes left of my college career, my educational career. This is it, the big kahuna. Also, if you notice, these are both Bible classes. No general education classes, no film classes, no art classes, just straight up Bible. I have heard nothing but GREAT things about these two classes and I am ecstatic to focus, for the first time in my life, on Bible classes. Typically, my art/film classes dominate my schooling, sending the Bible classes to the deep end to doggie-paddle. Not this semester. Bible classes are controlling this swimming pool. Lastly, due to the minimalist structure of this coming semester, there will be more time to take on the world. Personal projects, freelance projects, creative projects will have time to breathe, will have time to fester outside of the educational world. Next semester will serve, as least I predict it will, as a solid transition between the said educational world and the said "real world." As always though, this is all SUBJECT TO CHANGE.
So last week was Thanksgiving. I'm ALL ABOUT Thanksgiving. Here's what I posted on Facebook (I've realized taking screenshots such as this one keys you into the emotion of the actual day, rather than a recollection of the emotion of the actual day, knawatimean?).
Thanksgiving is an amazing holiday. It was great being home, with the fam bam and gram. It was great being away from classes, away from campus. Even though there was oh so much work to be done, being away from classes was a rest in itself. It was a great time of revitalization, eating eating eating, and resting. Thanksgiving is an amazing holiday.
Last week, or should I say two, I mentioned the rock climbing trip, "one of the funnest most bestest trips of my college career." Folks, it really was. Here's why: rock climbing was described to me as both a solo sport and a team sport. Here's why: rock climbing is very much solo, you climb by yourself, you depend on yourself to get to the top. You yourself choose to keep going, to give up, to try a different route, to lunge, to jump, to try again. However, MUCH of rock climbing is the reliance on the belayer, the encouragement by other "teammates" and our teach Dave Bedell, the excitement of everyone when you or another teammate reaches the top. And because of this, everyone on this trip was in it together, everyone made it to the top every time. Seeing "teammates" overcome the obstacles of the rock and their own personal vendettas? INCREDIBLE. This paragraph failed before it even began in describing the authenticity of the trip, words aren't enough. Scratch that, there's one word that described it:
SPEECHLESS.
Here's are photos I snapped. Joshua Tree is beautifully beautiful.
Here's our group, taken by the guy two pictures up.
Can't even begin to describe it. People told me "the rock climbing trip is the best thing ever." I somewhat believed them, but I thought "I'm sure it will be great, but it can't be THAT great, best ever? Naw. There's no way." After I got back, I was the one saying "the rock climbing trip is the best thing ever." Sleeping in tents in 25 degree temperatures, cooking by flashlight, climbing rocks I never thought were climbable, enjoying the company of a FANTASTIC new group of friends. It's too much, too great. THE BEST THING EVER.
This post is complete. It's ended. This the end. Go explore somewhere, somewhere you've never ventured before. Learn something new, try it out, experiment. People don't do that enough.
