This entry started as a birthday blog, but since my birthday was Dec. 5 and it's now Dec. 30, I'll go ahead and make it a year-ender instead.
Let me tell you about the birthday blogs.
For several years in my mid-twenties I wrote detailed recaps of my year. They were often centered around key lyrics from a song. I posted them to MySpace, and I'm not sure of their intended audience. Though the entries are long gone from that sphere, I'm happy to report I saved all of my original ramblings as word documents. At least, I suppose I'm happy I did that. Reading back through them is almost like scanning through the meanderings of another person -- a lost soul in a parallel life. I wrote in codes, and found strange life details to be of great importance. But then, there was some wisdom mixed in, and it's in those moments I know the person who wrote them is me.
She said things like:
"I've decided 27 should start off some place new; some place happier; some place not riddled with unfinished tasks, but with a sense of completion, closure and contentment. This longing for happiness is no longer a fancy, but a NEED. My hope is that with 27 will come a long-anticipated win for team Jamey, a long-lived goal finally within reach, and a long-awaited triumph will be what you'll be reading about this time next year."
and
"The difference between sitting next to someone you love and cuddling close to someone you don't is that with someone you love, you feel their love through that theatre seat, through a secret hand bump, an e-mail, a nose joust or a quick squeeze, and with someone you don't, well…it doesn't matter how tightly you hold on – it'll never be the same."
My first memory of 2015 was toasting, and then writing Star Wars in black Sharpie on the calendar for December. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the constant (okay, except the date changed at some point, but whatever). It's everything in the middle of the year that was a grab bag of variables, a whirlwind of straw grasping and WTF. I think there's a part of me that's still coming to a conclusion in my mind, even though I know the results are absolutely correct.
Let me try to tie the 2015 procedure into a nice bow.
My goals for 2015, as written in late December of 2014:
1. I'm Going Home
2. Make You May Clap Productions an LLC
3. Finish "Clippings"
4. Submit "Clippings" to festivals
5. Write feature script, and hunt for grants/funding
6. Create short stop-motion art piece
7. Watch 15 past Oscar nominees
8. Celebrate 4 random holidays a month
9. Pay off a loan or a bill
10. Read 35 books
Also...
Draw more
Eat Organic
Work on collages
Blog more
Save money for a vacation in a savings jar
Of these, I completed 3, 4, 9, and got a pretty good start on 5. I managed to check off all of the "Also" items as well, which makes me wonder why the "Also" items weren't higher on the goal list. I only watched 7 past Oscar nominees, and finished reading a mere 10 books (11 if I can wrap up Trigger Warning in the next day).
Then again, I wrote a good number of webisodes for the I Didn't See That Coming web series, which may or may not see the light of day (we'll see) and knocked three (almost four) items off of my master list of "100 things to do in my life." Plus, there are a lot of awesome things that happened that weren't on any list.
Okay, let's face it, there is no nice bow. There's only this:
On Nov. 4 of 2015, I landed in Paducah, Kentucky, a place where two rivers meet and artist's come from all over the world to work. Who knew? It's full of antique shops, historic brick buildings, and around ever corner, another quirky object you may have missed the day before appears in the form of painted fire hydrants, giant Minions, bullfrogs, labyrinths. I felt like Alice wandering about in a funky Kentucky Wonderland. How did I get here? What am I doing? Who do I think I am? This is what crossed my mind as I explored this place, and watched my film screen in front of audiences full of strangers.
I pondered my own timeline, and knew that despite all of the changes in 2015, I would have been here, in Paducah, Kentucky regardless. Paducah, another constant. This trip was set in motion in June when I submitted my film "Clippings" to the River's Edge International Film Festival, and even before that when I made a master list of places to send it. I'd made a plan to follow it wherever it went this time. I squirreled away as much money as I could, and I waited to see where I would go.
Paducah, Kentucky -- halfway between a possum trot and a monkey's eyebrow. At least, that's what the postcards say.
Shortly after finishing the final edit of "Clippings," Travis Duncan recommended a book to me, The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer, and I savored it. This book recommendation is one of the best gifts any one has ever given to me. I read, and re-read passages, I shut it when a story about her and Neil rocked my heart. By the time I finished it, I had a great new perspective on people, on asking, on collaboration, on art, on following your own path, on being true to yourself. It did something else too. It made me believe again in the one thing I'd let slide -- love. Not just the kind of semi-love and acceptance you settle for, because on paper it looks fine, and it'll do, but the kind people write about. The kind that had been staring me in the face, waiting for me to just jump... for too long.
The book changed my life, and a few months later, I was walking around Paducah, Kentucky like I was Amanda Fucking Palmer in Travis' coat talking to the ticket man on the American Queen Riverboat about his Shark Tank invention idea, and a balloon artist on my plane about her creations.After I finished the book. I simply couldn't see anything the same way as I did before. Life cracked wide open, and for a month or so it felt like some weird mania, in which the universe kept sending signals involving Werner Herzog, the moon, Neil Gaiman, and rats. The rats! The rats!
I stood in the middle of a tornado, and hugged my Baymax plush, a gift from my boyfriend at the time, and Baymax asked me, "On a scale from 1 - 10 how would you rate your pain?" "It's pretty close to ten," I thought to myself. The Amanda Palmer story ran through my brain about the dog sitting on nails, unwilling to move. I was frozen like that dog, hugging Baymax, and unsure of my next play. "It doesn't hurt enough yet," I thought.
Then, one day, I went down to the monkey bars. I'd been swinging across them for weeks, training myself for something. I did a lap more than normal, and my blistered skin cracked wide open. I won't post the gory photo, but it hurt enough. I listened to the Blitzen Trapper song, "Love the Way You Walk Away," at least 30 times sitting at my kitchen table, my hands stinging and covered in bandages. I had no clue what to do or what would happen next -- only that, it hurt enough.
Rewind.
Earlier in the year, I did many things. My film, "Ten Past Two" screened at Denver Comic Con, and got a rave review from the programmer. I spoke on a disastrous panel, and heard the voice actors from Animaniacs sing some of my favorite tunes from the show. I also posed with a cosplayer in a Baymax suit, a highlight of the day. It was even enough to make me forget about yet another "normal" argument with said boyfriend at the time in a Larkburger.
Rewind.
A month earlier I finished editing my short film "Clippings." I didn't think I'd make my May 15 festival deadlines, but I worked my ass off, and believed I could do it, and then I did. I submitted it with a few minutes to spare. When I finished, I was elated, thrilled. I'd managed the impossible. I wanted to celebrate, but there was no celebration. There was a person in the other room who wouldn't speak to me, because I'd asked him kindly to wait twenty minutes so that I could submit my film in time. Exhausted, I went to bed, hugged Baymax close to me, and fell asleep. I'd celebrate with someone else in the morning.
Rewind to one of the greatest celebrations of the year.
In February, we sat in a hospital in Loveland waiting for the arrival of my beautiful niece, Riley. When I held her, my heart split wide open. Before she was born, she was just the idea of a niece. I didn't know what being an aunt would mean. As she cried her face out at me, though, that first day in the hospital, I knew we had many years of Riley telling her Aunt Jamey all about it. "I'll always listen to you, kid," I thought.
I always will.
Fast Forward.
A few weeks ago, I danced with my nearly 10 month old niece to Christmas music. I brag about how adorable and brilliant she is to everyone who asks (or doesn't ask). I still don't know what I'm doing half the time as an aunt, but on Christmas Day, she crawled over to me with a big smile, and climbed onto my lap, and gave me a hug, and my day was complete.
Who knew?
Rewind.
In late November, in a truck stop in New Mexico where Travis and I stopped for gas, my all-time favorite love song "I Cross my Heart," by George Strait started playing. I laughed as I told him how bizarre it was that the song was on, but he took my hand, and we danced in the hallway under a photo of a buffalo. Sounds from the game room mixed with George's crooning, and I tried not to cry. It was a ridiculously beautiful moment, and the funny thing is these ridiculously beautiful moments have become the norm.
Rewind to a countless number of these moments... in just a few months.
Last year, as 33 approached, I was leery of it. I didn't know what it would bring. I was distrusting of the double 3's. At Thanksgiving dinner, though, it was brought to my attention that it was Larry Bird's jersey number. Maybe if I'd know that, I would have known that 33 was going to be great after all. But then, there's no way I could have ever seen any of this coming...
I went skiing and sledding for the first time, and have a piece of art in a gallery show. What?
In 2015, I also celebrated first birthdays for two of my best friends beautiful kiddos, and feel honored to be called Aunt Jamey not just to Riley, but to Ethan as well. This birthday/New Year's blog wouldn't be complete without celebrating my friends who have always been there to catch and accept me. I tip my hat to you guys, always.
Let me tell you about item number one on my list of goals for 2015.Ever since I can remember, I've been obsessed with this idea of "Home." Where is it? What is it? Who is it? Is it mountains? Is it Seattle? Is it the town where I grew up? Is it my friends? My family?
"I'm going home," is a lyric in the song "Home" by Daughtry, and it's resonated with me since I first heard it something like 10 years ago. Home, despite any other inklings I have, has always meant Denver. I hear the song in the car, and my eyes well with tears. For 10 years, all I wanted in the world was to just... go home.
Life swerved around a bit, and I'm still not there. I thought this would be the year, but it hit me a few months ago that the goal would not be met. "Home" is going to have to wait a bit longer... and that's okay. Here's why:
On a short plane ride from Chicago to Paducah, Kentucky the song came across my iPod. I was staring out at the lights of Chicago thinking about how they go on and on and on, and suddenly it hit me that "the place where I belong" meant something new. I realized I'd met my goal after all. Home was never home, because I always needed something more...
On Christmas night after a great day with my family, I went to my "sort of family", and by request we watched Big Hero 6. I saw Baymax ask, "On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your pain?" and I knew it didn't register very high, because to my left and right, I saw home. And then, we fired Nerf darts at walls and wrapping paper.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I've now seen it twice, and love it. I love it despite my original trepidation about it's potential to disappoint. It makes perfect sense that it's the constant.
In 2009, I wrote this:
"What you don’t know is where I’ll go next and what I’ll do
there. But then, I don’t know that either. What we don’t know happens in 28. And
the jury seems to think 28 will be great. I have to at least believe they’re
right. I hope that you’ll do the same."
Two months into the year that was 28, I was offered a job at Pikes Peak Library District. My entire life changed for the better. I barely recognize the girl who wrote those old birthday blogs. Some people think I changed this year -- that I became a different person. They don't understand why I made the decisions I made. They think I screwed everything up. That's false. I'll agree about the change, though, but my argument (which, let's face it, is the only one that maters) is that all I did, was became the person I always was. I won't tie a bow around it, and tell you I did anything the best possible way, but I chose love, happiness, laughter, and adventure. That's the right thing to do. My heart opened back up to the world, in a whirlwind of intense joy and pain, and that's where we begin 34, and 2016.Bring it!
