2021 Christmas Letter

This Christmas I decided to do a Christmas letter, this was something I've thought about doing for years, though part of that was also because I've wanted to do a FAKE Christmas letter writing a fictionalized version of my year, but that's not this. This is a real Christmas letter, updating my family, and now also my 3.5 blog readers about my 2021. And part of 2020, because that was also relevant.

Anyway, here's the letter. No guarantees of a 2022 version, but maybe I'll do that fictional version next time.

~

Dear Everyone,

 

I'm doing a Christmas card! Or at least a Christmas letter. But probably by the time I send this, it’ll be a New Years letter. I've kind of always wanted to do one of these, but I just never have, partly because I've never had anything to write about, and partly because usually the only people who do these are moms with kids, who want to give updates on their perfect, adorable families. And I'm a single 35-year-old with no kids and two podcasts. 🤓

 

Well, who cares. I want to do one, so I'm doing one. Will this be an every year thing? Who knows. We'll see. Let's just do year one first and see how things go.

 

Well, I guess for starters, I finally got a job this year! If you read my blog, which, be honest, you don't, and that's fine. I barely even update it these days anyway, because I have so much more going on. My blog hit its peak in 2011, 2012, and it's been all downhill ever since. Though I might recycle this letter as a blog post, because, well, free content. I'm a big believer in recycling, which includes digitally. 😆

 

I suppose I should preface all this by going back to the first half of this year, (and even last year) because SO MUCH HAS CHANGED. From January to June I was working part time at Hy-Vee in Harlan as a personal shopper. I moved back home last year because I got a job with the census. I had been living in Ames with my Grandma after graduating. I was working overnights at a hotel, and part time at the grocery store there. I would do an 8-hour overnight shift, then go work 4 hours at Hy-Vee in the morning, then go home, crash, wake up, and do it all over again. So fun.

 

Not really. Anyway, I got a job with the census early 2020, and started making plans to move back home. Since I still had my permanent address set to Harlan, even though I lived in Ames, they wanted me to work in Harlan. Of course everything got delayed because obvious reasons, but then everything did eventually start up again, and I moved back home. And then Hy-Vee in Harlan wanted me back too, as they were desperate for help doing personal shopping which had become huge during the pandemic. And that's what I'd been doing since the end of 2020.

 

And even though Hy-Vee was part time, it was nearly full time. They wanted me to work just enough hours so that I would still be classified as part time, but not enough that they would have to do insurance, benefits, etc. But a lot of weeks I got full time hours anyway, because we were so short staffed.

 

Anyway, that brings us up to this spring, when, as I wrote in my ONE big blog post this year, I actually FINALLY found a job in what I went to school for! In June I started a job at Harlan Municipal Utilities, (HMU) which as the name implies, is a water/power/telecom company in Harlan, IA. Shockingly, the town where I actually live. I say shockingly, because I never in a million years thought I'd find a job in my field in Harlan. I barely thought I'd find something in Iowa.

 

I've been applying for jobs since 2017 when I graduated, (Not counting 2019, when I took a year out of the job search to do a long-distance internship with my friend Rachel Wagner in Utah) and for the majority of the search, I mainly focused on Des Moines, and Omaha, because those were the two big cities within driving distance, and I figured they were my best bet for finding a job in advertising. Little did I know, I would end up finding a job in marketing right in my own backyard. Funny how these things work sometimes, isn't it?

 

So, even though my job is in "Marketing" this job has surprisingly little actual marketing duties. To be sure, there is a lot of Marketing in this job, however, HMU has three local cable channels, and the vast majority of my job has been making content for those channels.

In fact since I’ve now been here over 6 months, and have been making content all that time, pretty much all the old content that was running when I got here, has now been cycled out, and I would probably say that at this point, about 90% of what is currently running on those channels now is programming that I filmed and edited myself. And the other 10% is church services, submitted by local churches for replay.

 

The fact that I now do so much work with video editing is actually kind of amazing, because in addition to that internship I did, (Which was a lot of video and podcast editing) my main extracurricular activity since I graduated has been to start a YouTube channel and my two podcasts. I learned some video and audio editing in school, but I would say the vast majority of it I have taught myself in the past 4 years of podcasting, and I'd like to think that that experience is part of why I got this job.

 

And even if it somehow turned out that wasn't why I got the job, it's certainly why I have felt so comfortable doing a lot of what I do now, because there is SO MUCH editing in this job, and I had no idea how much it would be when I first applied.

 

The first of the three cable channels is not video though, it's basically a local bulletin board. We sell advertising here, which is where the bulk of my "Marketing" job happens. I also have some marketing/graphic design to do for HMU itself, but most of it happens here. I either make ads for companies who buy space here, or make/update local events calendars, I even make all the local obituaries that we run on the channel.

 

The second channel is the local programming channel. This is where most of my duties began when I first got this job, as the main thing that the people keeping this department going were doing was updating this channel every Monday with the local church services.

Oh yeah, I suppose I should mention that when I got this job, it was kind of in chaos. There was literally no one in marketing, and they were barely holding the position together. They had lost literally the entire marketing team within a few months of each other, and by the time they hired me, it was two guys from the telecom department doing the bare minimum to keep the marketing department functioning in addition to doing their own jobs on top of that.

 

The head of marketing had retired last year, then HMU decided to fold telecom and marketing into one department, then one of the two remaining marketing associates was called to a church in a different state, because he was also a pastor, then the last one was diagnosed with cancer not long after, and she quit almost immediately.

 

And I think it took them at least three months to hire me, because I missed it the first time they advertised the position, and it wasn't until May when Mom saw the ad in the paper, which led to me getting hired by the end of the month. And of course I gave Hy-Vee two weeks' notice, so I didn't start until mid-June, months after everything in Marketing had fallen apart for them.

 

So needless to say I was kind of thrown into things, and have pretty much had to learn everything on the fly. And half the stuff I've almost had to teach myself. Thankfully my boss and one of the other telecom guys had been able to figure out some things after the other team was gone, so I wasn't totally thrown in blind, but still, my boss's main job is running the telecom side of things, so, back at the beginning, I was on my own for more than I would have prefered.

 

Anyway, where was I? Okay, back to the second channel.

 

This is where a LOT of my time has been focused the past few months, way beyond just getting local church services on the air every week. One of the first big projects I was "Thrown into" was the Shelby County Fair. HMU is responsible for a lot of the local coverage of the fair, and people around Harlan expect to be able to watch the biggest events on TV.

 

So the whole week of the fair I was there bright and early filming the cattle show, the swine show, sheep and goats, the crowning of the Fair Queen, the parade, the talent show. I was everywhere, and I was exhausted by the end. That was a long week. And of course I also had to edit everything too, so when I wasn't filming, I was editing, basically turning all the footage I'd collected into a television show. When all was said and done, I figured I had made at the very least, a Netflix season's worth of television, 100% by myself.

 

Oh, and then, not to interrupt myself again, but right after this, I got Covid and ended up in the hospital for a week. And all in all I was out of work for almost an entire month. 

Thankfully this was right after my health insurance had kicked in, so in the long run, I was out of pocket for very little. I am SO thankful that I got this job when I did, because if I'd have ended up in the hospital while I'd worked part time at Hy-Vee, I would probably be in debt till I died.

 

Okay, so again, back to the cable channels. Right now we are right in the middle of a whole bunch of sports seasons. I filmed almost every single game that our local football team played, right up until they hit the semifinals, because at that point the rules changed, and a bigger company owns all the rights to film and distribute those games. Our team ended up winning the entire 3A Championship, and I somehow was actually invested? (Here comes another tangent.)

 

I have literally never cared about sports in my life. No one in my family cared about sports enough to watch them on TV. My dad moved here from Canada when he was a teen/young adult and the only sport he cared about was hockey, which we couldn't watch here, so I didn't even inherit that.

 

But somehow, throughout the last several months of filming every game for our hometown football team, (Including away games, which I traveled for, sometimes staying overnight in hotels) I actually found myself caring, enough so that when they ended up going into the semi finals and championships, I actually watched them on TV, because I cared enough about seeing them win.

 

If you had told me a year ago that in a year's time, I would care enough about the Harlan Cyclone football team to attend every game, and then watch them on TV, I would have laughed in your face and assumed you were the absolute worst psychic to have ever lived. And yet here I am.

 

Will I continue to watch and enjoy football? Ehh, I don't know. I'll continue to watch and enjoy Harlan football, as that's now literally my job, but I'm not really invested in any other teams right now. But I guess the moral of this story is, you never know what the future holds.

 

Okay, back to my job. Currently we are in basketball season, and even though I do not travel for this one, (We only cover away games for the football team) I am filming a LOT more games than I was for football. I guess I never knew how much more basketball is played than football, at least in terms of the numbers of games played. I guess part of that is that both girls and guys play basketball, so that does double the number of games I have to film, but it sure seems like I am filming a lot more than I ever did during football.

 

And sports aren't the only thing I'm filming now anyway, because we don't just cover sports for the school, we do as much of the arts as we're allowed, (plays are copyrighted so no filming allowed unless it's written by someone locally) and this mostly entails concerts. And unlike sports where we only cover high school stuff, we cover concerts for all ages. And we're right in the middle of the Christmas season, so there have been a not insignificant number of non-sports events to film as well.

 

PLUS, I haven't even told you about the third channel yet! The third channel that HMU owns and operates is the local government access channel. And I film and edit everything there too.

 

This includes not just our own board meetings, but city council meetings, school board meetings, county supervisor meetings, and even hospital board meetings! Plus any other special government things that happen locally.

 

And I only just started getting back into those after the football season was over, as my boss has been trying to ease me into everything slowly. Which I am grateful for. I would have been totally overwhelmed if I'd have had ALL of this thrown at me when I first started.

 

So, as you can tell, this new job keeps me VERY busy. And I somehow have been able to keep my podcasts going all this time as well. I have had to cut way back on the number of episodes I make, but I would never want to give them up entirely, I have friends all over the country that I keep in contact with through the podcasts, so that alone makes it worth it for me to keep them going, even if my spare time is now far more limited than it used to be.

 

So, I guess that's all my updates from the year. I know some of you know a lot of this, but I still thought it would be fun to write this, and it was. We'll see if I end up doing this again next year, I did have fun with this, so if anything worth writing about happens, I'd say chances are pretty good I do it again, but, like with literally everything that's happened to me this year, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

 

Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, Happy Birthday, Bye!

 

Your friend, son, grandson, nephew, uncle, cousin, etc.

Jonathan

I FINALLY Have an Internship!

So, kind of big news, okay, who am I kidding, HUGE news! I finally have an internship! After almost two years of applications going nowhere, and (almost) never hearing back from anyone, I finally have an internship!

And now for the twist. This will not be a traditional internship. In fact, I am basically making it up as I go! I had to get special permission to do my internship this way, but it will count as the final credit I need to officially graduate and get my degree!

I've mentioned my YouTube channel here before, I don't talk about it a lot here, but if you follow me on my public social media pages, then you'll know I almost always make at least one video a week. Some of those videos I do with other people, and one of those people is Rachel Wagner.

I mentioned her in my last post, you may have seen the pictures from January when I made a scarf and hat for her for a late Christmas gift. Rachel lives in Utah, and she and I met through the Rotoscopers. We both write for the site, and she's the main reason I finally bit the bullet and started my own YouTube channel.

We've become pretty good friends over the past few years, and for the past few months I have been occasionally doing some freelance editing for her. Rachel has two blogs, two channels, and two podcasts, (In addition to a full time job, completely unrelated to YouTube) and sometimes, on weeks where she has too much to do, she'll have me edit an episode or two of her podcasts for her.

In mid-January I started thinking, I have been getting some decent experience with this, I wonder if there is a way I could expand on it and make it count as an internship. I didn't say anything right away, like I said, I have been applying for internships ever since I graduated, and I had just applied for some at the beginning of the year, so I was waiting to see if anything came from them. Shocker, nothing ever did. Story of my life for the last 22 months.

Finally in February, I proposed an idea to Rachel, if I came on as an unpaid intern, would she have enough work for me to do on a consistent basis? It was an immediate yes. Like I said, she's very busy.

So, as for the unpaid part, I know I've said since I graduated that I was not going to do an unpaid internship, since it would almost certainly mean quitting my job while working on it, and I have bills to pay. I can't afford to be without income for 3 months, or however long a full-time internship would last. I had a plan for that, but since this internship is very unconventional, having it be unpaid would only work out if everything came together perfectly.

So, Rachel has actually been paying me since I started working for her, but knowing that she requests my services only when she's really needing some extra help, I figured it would be best to propose it be unpaid. That, and at this point I really just want to get this thing over with. I figured this way it'd be a win-win for both of us, as long as everything worked out the way I wanted it to.

Since January I've actually been working full time at the hotel. At first it was because someone went on vacation, but then there have been, (and are still continuing to be) a bunch of schedule disruptions. People quitting, getting promoted, moving to a different parts of the hotel; it seems like every week a new person leaves or is hired. At the beginning of February, one of the night auditors was moved to days temporarily, so I've been working five nights a week until things can go back to normal. Even if I wasn't working full time at the hotel, I am still employed at Hy-Vee, so I have full time work either way.

With that in mind, I am definitely not interested in quitting for an unpaid internship, no matter how much I need to get this thing done. So my idea in proposing the unpaid internship to Rachel was to keep working at the hotel, but work on the internship on the side. Normally internships are ten, 40 hour weeks. Basically it becomes your full time job for around three months. The way I was planning this, it would take much longer to reach the required 400 hours, but at least I could still have a steady income, and do the internship at the same time. Any other internship, unpaid or not, would not have this kind of flexibility.

So obviously I had Rachel on board, now I just had to convince my faculty adviser and the school's internship adviser. My adviser was pretty easy. Once I told him what I wanted to do, he thought it sounded like a great idea, and a great opportunity. I couldn't believe it! I thought I was going to have to work so much harder to convince him! Rachel even wrote up a huge long list of her qualifications, education, and achievements, and he hadn't even seen that when he said he liked the idea!

But then I had to make another appointment with the internship adviser, and I was sent a whole long list of guidelines, and forms to fill out before our meeting. And one of those guidelines was that the internship had to take place at a physical location, and I could NOT work from home. There were no exceptions listed anywhere in these rules, just that students MUST go to an actual workplace environment.

Well, I figured that was the end of that. I still decided to keep the meeting with her, I figured I'd at least TRY to explain everything on the very off chance that she could bend the rules for me, but I was no longer hopeful at all. I wondered if maybe my adviser didn't understand that I had planned to work from home before he given me the green light to move forward. At that point I had basically accepted that this was not going to work out. So the rest of that week I was not in the best mood.

When we finally had the meeting she seemed very hesitant about the idea, but when she heard that I had already been freelancing for Rachel, and that we always keep in close contact when I'm working on something for her, she seemed a lot more open to the idea. Apparently the biggest reason for the no working from home rule is that the students typically have a hard time keeping in touch with the person who is supposed to be their supervisor. The fact that I am always in touch with Rachel, made it pretty clear that that wouldn't be an issue.

The other reason they don't allow students to work from home is that the school wants students to get the experience of working in a professional environment. However, when she realized that I already work full time for the Gateway, that pretty much sealed the deal. I may not be getting the "Professional Environment" from the internship, but the fact that I've already had an office job for almost a year now, is great experience in and of itself. So the fact that I'm getting that experience somewhere, paired with the fact that I already have a great working relationship with with the person who would be my internship supervisor, she thought that this could be one of the VERY rare instances where they actually approve a work from home internship.

Of course this wasn't the end of it though, I still had to write up a formal proposal, the school had to get in contact with Rachel, and I had to go through all the official steps to actually register for the internship as a class. And then I had to wait more than two weeks for my registration date to open up, so I could actually submit the paperwork and actually get officially registered. Which finally happened today! Or, yesterday. It happened on the 26th. I work overnights, I can't keep days straight.

Right now it still hardly feels real. Over two years of applying for internships and I finally have one! Not to mention, I'm practically creating it as I go! I'm still full time at the hotel with a very unpredictable schedule, so I haven't fully gotten into everything, but my internship adviser told me, back when she officially gave her approval, that I could go ahead and start counting hours. So I have been working on a few projects here and there since then, but hopefully work will get back to normal soon, so I can get into the internship work on a regular schedule.

So anyway, that's my news for now! I probably won't do too many updates here along the way unless something really interesting or exciting happens, but I'll definitely follow up when I finish. Right now that's looking to be around September, but like I said, since I'm already working full time, I'm just counting hours as I go, so I can't predict an exact timeline. Either way, things are finally moving forward, and I'm just excited that this is actually happening! Before the end of the year, I should finally have my Bachelor's Degree!

I Have a New Job!

So, for the few of you left that don't know, I have a new job! No this isn't in advertising, as nice as that would be, I'm actually working for a hotel, which, weirdly enough is actually something I've kind of wanted to do since I was a kid. I blame movies like Dunston Checks in and TV shows like The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. :p

I am now working as a night auditor for the Gateway Hotel and Conference center in Ames, Iowa, and I have to say, I kind of love it! Don't get me wrong, this job, like most jobs, is not perfect, but even with the small issues here and there, I am still really enjoying it so far! As a night auditor, I am working overnights, but I actually adjusted to my new schedule pretty easily. I'm already a night owl, so all I had to do was stay up a few extra hours!

Now, I will say, that this job is not at all what I was expecting it to be. I originally applied for just a regular front desk position, day shift of course, and I never heard back from them. I believe that was at the end of last year, so I just assumed I never got it and moved on. I've been job/internship hunting for over a year now, so I'm used to never hearing back from people.

Then at the beginning of March, I got a call! Apparently I'd given up on them too soon, because they wanted to set up an interview! I went in the next week, and somewhere during the interview he brought up the subject of a night position. I had never even considered that as an option. We have a night crew at Hy-Vee, but I would not want their job. Far more manual labor, and zero customer interaction. (Though I suppose in some ways, that could be a positive... :p) But I actually like working registers at the store, most days we have great customers in Ames, and it's the closet thing to 'fun' you can do there. (For me anyway.)

Anyway, the more he talked about the night position, the better the job sounded. Better pay with full-time hours, and it's usually pretty quiet, and you almost never get overrun with customers. All in all, it just seemed like a quiet, low-stress job. After the interview was finished, he told me I definitely passed the first round, and they'd call me once they'd finished all the interviews. A week or two later I had a second interview with HR, which I thought went great as well, but then I didn't hear anything for well over week. They'd told me I'd hear back from them in just a few days, so when I didn't hear back from them by the end of March, I was pretty sure I hadn't gotten it.

I was back at home by then, I had gone on a quick weekend trip with my cousin to see a crane migration in Nebraska, (I'll blog about that eventually!) and I started making tentative plans to move back to Harlan for the summer. Hy-Vee wasn't giving me many hours at all, and I figured I'd have a better shot at hours at the store in Harlan. On my last day home on that trip, I decided I'd call the hotel and get a definitive yes or no. If no, I was going to make plans to come home for the summer, because I have bills to pay! However, when I called, it turned out, the manager had been planning to call me that day! Actually, he had scheduled the call for not even an hour after I'd called him! I got the job!

I've now been working here over a month, and it is very different than anything I expected, and very different than anything I've ever done before. For starters, I kind of expected I'd just be sitting at the desk all night, maybe checking people in for a couple hours, and then out in the morning, and then nothing in between. That's not how it is at all. There is a ton of paperwork, computer work, and audit work, which you may have guessed earlier by the job title.

We have a restaurant in the hotel, and if guests charge things to their room, we get those receipts, and have to enter them into our system, to make sure they are charged. We make sure that direct bill charges line up with the records, and we sort all that paperwork for the "real" auditor who works during the day. We have cash registers around the hotel which we have to count as their respective areas close, as well as a safe which we also have to count, once we've refilled the cash registers (if need be) and all the money around the hotel is accounted for.

After the last guests check in, or 3:00 am, which ever comes first, we "run audit," which is essentially resetting the entire system, causing a ton of paperwork to print, which we have to sort, scan, email and file to all the respective locations and managers.

A bunch of that paperwork is also check-out sheets for guests leaving in the morning. Those all get sorted, and then we have to deliver them all over the hotel. We have 8 floors and almost 200 rooms, so between the walking and the the bending over to slide the papers under doors, that can end up being a decent workout if we have a full house.

Then we have to unlock the kitchen and make coffee for the lobby. That's not too strenuous, until it comes time to carry the coffee downstairs. That's a workout by itself if we have two full restaurant-sized pots. After that we wait for the guests to start getting up, because we usually have some who want to check out first thing.

And all of this doesn't take into account that we'll have guests calling or coming down to the lobby at all hours for lots of different things. More pillows, extra blankets, wake-up calls, toiletries, coffee packets, microwaves, fridges, you name it, if we have it, we'll get asked for it, and if we don't have it, someone will still want it. Thankfully this doesn't happen all the time, but some nights are worse than others.

Some nights, if we have a lot of guests, especially if we have large groups of people here for conferences we'll be busy all night. There's a lot more paperwork, more money, and more checkouts to do. However, on a good night, the bulk of the work will only take up about half the night. Not all at once of course, different things have to happen at different times, but in between jobs, we have downtime that lets us do, sort of whatever we want!

When I first got the job I was planning to bring my laptop and edit videos for my YouTube channel when it was quiet. But then I found out that we were only allowed to use the computers at the front desk, since we have to be up front and available in case anyone shows up or calls. So instead, I've taken to blogging and writing articles for the Rotoscopers, which kind of means, in a roundabout way, I'm actually getting paid to write!

Honestly, this is probably the best part of the job for me. I like most parts of the job, it's definitely a great change of pace from the grocery store, but the fact that I can write while I'm working, is kind of the highlight. I actually wrote this whole blog post and two full articles for the Rotoscopers over the course of two nights at work!

So anyway, those are the highlights for now. I do have one story to tell you about something really weird that happened on my very first night, but I think I'll save that for another post. This one ended up being really long as it is, plus, I need to save something to work on for future nights too. Stay tuned! :)

Graduation 2017

Well, it's finally over. Mostly. I still have to do an internship before it's official, but I am finished with my classes. Last Friday and Saturday were the graduation ceremonies. I didn't get many pictures myself, I was a but busy, but I gave my dad my camera, and my friend Rachel was there and took quite a few great pictures as well.

Friday night was the convocation ceremony for the graduates in the schools of LAS, Liberal Arts & Sciences.

We all got a medal from the school to wear during the ceremony.

Advertising was the first school into Hilton Coliseum, so I was one of the first ones in.

And since we were first onto the floor, we were also the first up.

The woman on the end in black, one of the people reading our names, was actually one of my favorite teachers from 4 years ago when I first started at Iowa State! Her name is Jane Cox, and she taught my History of Theater class, before I switched majors, when I was still going for the design degree. I actually even wrote a whole blog post about her, which you can find HERE. I'm sure she didn't recognize me, I was in a class of probably hundreds, but I recognized her immediately, and it was nice to see her again.

Afterwards we tried to get some pictures.

But the lighting was not very good, so this is the best we have. :)

That was convocation. The big one was the next day. To begin, every school went to a different location to line up. We were supposed to be there by 12, and the ceremony didn't start until 1:30, so there was a lot of sitting around.

My location was the Cyclone training arena.

I rarely take selfies but I did that day.

I took a picture as we walked out on the field of Jack Trice stadium. You can see just a fraction of the people graduating here. The ceremony was huge. I think there was almost 5000 people graduating here. Little did I know, I got my cousins Shaina and Sasha in this picture, as well as Rachel.

She texted me until I saw them. :p

She also got a picture of my family all the way on the other side of the stadium.

And Dad got a picture of them. :p

He also took a picture of Jackson. :)

Here's a game for you.

It's similar to Where's Waldo, but you're trying to find me. :p

Does this help?

I am there, but good luck finding me.

This was the picture published on the school newspaper's website the next day.

That's a lot of people.

Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing, and Iowa State Alumni, gave the commencement speech.

LAS was the second school to go, so I was up rather quickly, in comparison to the whole ceremony.

We all went through a photo tent to get our picture taken by a professional photographer before we went across the stage, but they didn't tell us what the tent was beforehand. My dark sense of humor imagined something nefarious going on in there. In particular I was thinking of a scene from an episode of Doctor Who were people were lined up to enter a building in order to be "upgraded" into a Cyberman. Yes, it would not have been very funny if it had been true, but I have a weird sense of humor. :p

No one got a very good picture of me actually getting the diploma (cover) but Rachel did get a great picture of me on the giant screen over the field.

The rest of the ceremony lasted until after 5, and by the end pretty much everyone had left. I didn't want to be one of THOSE people, I didn't want to seem rude and leave just because it was more convenient, so I stayed.

I suppose I should have just left; in the end, staying got me nothing but a sunburn. :p

But a girl gave me a streamer wand to shoot confetti, so I guess that was one good thing. :p

Afterwards I took another selfie while I waited for my family.

And then we went back to grandma's for a reception.

And Rachel insisted I pose for pictures with people. :)

Shaina

Rachel

 Sasha

Alex

Shaina and Alex

 Joel

Joel and Jared

Mom and Dad

That night, after everyone had left, I found this attached to my car.

Not sure who left it there, or why I didn't notice it earlier.

Mom thought it was Joel, but I never heard for sure. :p

And that was the day! I am glad that Rachel and Dad (and Sasha with my phone) were there to get pictures, because only like 5 of these were mine. There were of course official photographers there, and I should be getting a copy of those pictures, but I don't know when those will be coming. I'll probably do another post whenever I get those pictures.

As I said before, I won't have OFFICIALLY graduated until I've done an internship, and I am currently working toward that. I'm spending my first few weeks of summer building a portfolio/website. I'm making mostly a lot of new art and taking a lot of new photos for the site. I'll probably share some of the new stuff as I create it, and I'll of course share the website when it's finished. Stay tuned!

Life Update Again

I know I just posted one of these a couple months ago. You wouldn't think that things would change enough that I'd feel the need to do one of these again so soon. But they have. I'm changing majors again. I'm going into advertising.

I have actually been thinking about this for a long time. When I first switched over to journalism, I was under the impression that advertising was something you went into with an art degree. I had no idea that journalism was part of the same school as advertising and PR. It wasn't until I'd gotten into the first journalism classes that it was clear that advertising was an option. But I stuck it out because I had just switched, I didn't want to do it again a few weeks later. Plus photojournalism was an option and I really did want to get into that.

Well, it's now been year and a half since I switched the first time.  I have had time to discover everything that is involved with journalism, and I have discovered that it isn't for me. I like being creative, and there isn't much there for that. I kind of figured that out in the first semester, but I stuck it out, hoping to get into photojournalism. Photojournalism is a little better, it is more fun, but there's still not much room for creativity. I was still pressing forward though. I was still working toward that goal until this semester.

This semester I took a video class. It covered both filming and editing. At first I was slightly overwhelmed. I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't know what to film. I did like the editing though. For that class we have to have 14 minutes of content filmed and edited by the end of the semester. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I put that out of my mind for the time being, and thought about the editing.

I decided that if I was going to get into journalism, I wanted to be in television news. I wanted to film and edit news packages. If I worked at a station I wouldn't have to fret over what to film, they'd just tell me. I thought this was a great idea until we had a guest speaker who showed us a reel of footage of himself and his fellow camera-persons being attacked, and people trying to smash their equipment. Even though that's not exactly the norm for them, I didn't want any of that. After that, in our next class, the teacher started talking about ad agencies hiring their own video editors instead of outsourcing. He said it was a quickly growing field. The seed was planted, and I started seriously thinking about changing, but this was right at spring break, so I decided to mull it over for a week.

Over spring break, my friends, we call ourselves the Vagabonds, got together, as we usually do when I come home. For the past few years, almost every time we get together, we've had a lip sync video contest. It stopped being an actual contest a long time ago, but we still do the videos every time just to entertain each other. I had never done a video before, I know, I'm terrible. This time, I was learning Adobe Premiere Pro, and I decided I could use the practice editing, so I got together with my cousin Shaina, and we decided to do two videos. We planned out the songs we were going to do and the clothes we were going to wear. I ordered an article of clothing for one of the videos, but it did not arrive on time, so we just did the one.

Making that video was so much fun. I really wanted to do another one, but our original idea was out until my item arrived. We were going to the zoo a couple days later, so we started brainstorming ideas for filming there, when Sasha had the brilliant idea of doing Katy Perry's Roar. We were going to the jungle, it was perfect. We shot there for two to three hours, going all over the jungle, getting all sorts of interesting shots, it was a blast. And the editing was really fun too, it was harder as you couldn't hear anything through the deafening jungle noises, but still fun.

I was going to be content with just the two videos, but two days before our Vagabond event, I hit upon the brilliant idea of filming the song Radioactive, over at the "Haunted" house across the road from home. It is a very run down property, and with the world just emerging from winter, the landscape looked very bleak. It was perfect for that apocalyptic song. Shaina was not around yet, so Jacob helped me film. We shot one long take before Shaina got there, and when she did, I had another great idea. I asked Jacob if he could be a dead body, and he happily agreed. It was awesome. Shaina was a bit weirded out by it, and did not like our suggestion that she play a body as well, but she was ok with filming it. The footage from that night turned out great, except the camera died before we had enough. We'd have to do a second shoot the next day.

The next day at work Sasha came through my line, and we were talking about the video. I jokingly asked her if she wanted to be another dead body, and she agreed immediately. No hesitation. I was thrilled. That night we all met over at the haunted house for another round of filming. Sasha was an excellent body. She kicked off one shoe for extra authenticity. It was amazing. As the sun was disappearing over the horizon we shot one last take, and, well, I won't tell you what happened with the last take, I do plan on getting these videos up on YouTube sometime, and you can see for yourselves what happened.

The videos all turned out really great for my first try. I had never done one before, so everyone was excited that I had even finished one. Then they were even more surprised that I'd done two. They were absolutely shocked to find out I'd done three! I was so happy with how the videos had turned out, and so happy with the response to them, that I realized I wanted this to continue. I started thinking about the class I was taking, and was convinced by my friends that I should submit the lip sync videos as part of my 14 minutes. The teacher had said no music videos, but he'd said that to avoid getting slideshows and rave footage. My work was so much more detailed than that, I decided it was worth a shot to ask. The worst he could say was no. But he didn't. He accepted all 12 minutes of video. I was ecstatic. I have almost nothing left to do for that class.

So, I said all that to bring it all back to creativity. I loved making those videos. I had more fun with those than I've had in a long time, and I want to keep doing it. Switching to advertising will let me flex my creative muscles, and get me a lot more experience with film and editing. Eventually I'd love to make commercials, and maybe do short films on the side. If advertising is half as much fun as making videos, I know I'm going to love it.

For those of you wondering, no, this won't mean extra time in school. I'm still on track for a fall 2016 graduation. I'm at the point in the classes where everything starts to branch out. Journalism, advertising, and PR, have, up until this point, all been using the same base classes. This semester was the first semester where things started really branching apart. I am dropping one class, but the rest of it is all very useful to me as an advertising student.

I have a lot of plans to continue working on videos in my spare time this summer, and not just lip sync videos, so stay tuned! I hope to get back into blogging more than just once a month!

Life Update: ISU Year 1 done!

I decided to do a brief life update since I haven't done one in awhile. I haven't done much of anything on this blog in awhile. My computer actually is having problems at the moment, and I generally don't like using my iPad to blog. But since that's all I've got at the moment it will have to do. I bought a keyboard for it, so writing on it is not that bad anymore. I'm waiting for some stuff to fix my computer to be shipped to me. Hopefully that will take care of it. If not, I'll have to take it somewhere to be fixed.

In case you didn't know, I am now done with my first year at Iowa State. I am loving it so far. I got pretty good grades all around. One not-so-good grade, but also one very good one, so it kind of evens itself out. I took (a few) pictures and I plan to share them as soon as my computer is working properly again. Next semester I'll be taking a few more journalism classes, as well as introductory Spanish, and Photography. I'm hoping the photography class will start teaching me more about all the hundreds of settings on my camera that I have no idea what they do.

I also quit my job at the Ames Hy-Vee. I was getting barely any hours all semester. A couple of weeks I only got three hours. For the whole week. Which is not enough for anything. So I decided to cut my losses before going home for the summer and look elsewhere next semester. Right now I'm looking into getting a job at the campus bookstore. I've always loved the idea of working in a bookstore or library, so I hope it works out!

Tomorrow I turn into a saggy pile of wrinkles and begin using a walker, drinking prune juice, and going to bed at 7:30. I mean, it's my birthday. I turn 28. Get off my lawn kids.

In related, happier news, my uncle is taking me to a Lindsey Stirling concert for my birthday on Saturday! I can't wait! It will be my first ever "Real" concert, not just a classical performance at the local high school, or at college. I will be bringing my good camera and praying it makes it through security. I want good pictures!

Well, that's about it for now. I'm still working at the Harlan Hy-Vee. I'm getting way more hours than I was in Ames. Later this summer my cousins and I are tentatively planning a trip to somewhere. We're still ironing out the details, but there will be pictures. I've been going to a bunch of movies, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Godzilla, X-Men: Days of Future Past, but I haven't written any reviews. Maybe I'll do that later on. There's still a few coming up. I'll be seeing Maleficent tomorrow with my cousins for my birthday. It looks amazing. I love new twists on old stories.

Okay, that's enough rambling. Look for another True Facts post tomorrow!

Huge Month

So, this month is probably going to be one of the biggest months of my life. So far anyway. Hopefully there will be bigger ones... For starters, I sold my first car and bought a new one. It was my mom's old car, but still new to me. I've never sold a car before, so that was pretty big.

Then, I went to Chicago with my cousins. By ourselves. Yes, we're all in our mid twenties, no we've never done anything like that before. Yes, we're probably late bloomers. Don't judge us. :p

Anyway, we had a great time, I'll probably post more info and pictures later. I need to sort through them first. Way too many to post all of them.

Next I will be moving. To Ames. 2 hours away. This is huge because I have never moved before. Ever. As in I still live with my parents in the house I was born in. Well, not literally born in. Though, that would be a more interesting story... This is also huge because I have always lived in the country, and Ames is a city. It has a small town feel, but it's a good first step in case I ever end up in a big city.

Next, I am transferring to a new grocery store. A much bigger store in a city. Aside from the car thing,this is probably the least huge step, but it's still pretty big, as I've always worked in small stores. And a nursing home, but that's rather irrelevant here.

Lastly, I will be starting school at Iowa State, which is a pretty huge university. I was homeschooled all throughout my "Childhood" years, and when I went to college it was at a small technical school. When I went back to college it was at a bigger community college, but still small potatoes compared to where I'm headed.

So, that's my month. It's slightly overwhelming, considering I am used to doing pretty much nothing other than going to work, but it's exciting too. I'm hoping that going to school will lead to bigger, and more exciting things in the future.

Some News

Well, I now will finally have something to write about. When I first started this blog I didn't have anything to write about, but I was hoping that would change. I had had this idea, but I didn't know for sure everything would work out so I kept it a secret, from pretty much everybody. I told a few people what I was planning on doing, but I didn't want to make a big announcment on facebook or anywhere until I had finalized everything. But now, everything is finished and I made the big "Facebook Announcment" so all that's left is the details. What? You're one of the last remaining people on earth that doesn't have a facebook page, and you have no idea what I'm talking about? I'M GOING BACK TO SCHOOL! I finalized everything yesterday. I went in to take the placement test, and while I thought I did poorly in the math section, the girl who started me out in getting my class schedule put together took one look at the test and said, "Wow! These scores are amazing! Congratulations!" I still say I did bad in the math, but if she thought it was amazing, I'm not going to argue with her. I suppose you're now wondering what I wanted to go back to school for. Or maybe you're not, since it's no secret that I have always loved art. That was my original reason for going into multimedia/graphic design at ITT Tech. I loved art, I liked computers, computers seemed to be "Where the money was at" so I decided to combine the two and go to school for that. Obviously this could only lead to piles and piles of money, right? Right! Only the piles and piles of money were all piles and piles of money that I owed for the education that never got me a job. So the past three years have been spent working at grocery stores and a nursing home, trying to pay off the debt. This was getting me nowhere. I still didn't feel like I knew enough to be good at anything, and there was still so much more "Art Stuff" that I wanted to learn, and emptying millions of unfinished glasses of thickened cranberry juice every day is not really my cup of tea. (Translation: I wanted out of that nursing home!) I started my plan of escape when Jared's previous girlfreind started at home photography classes. I asked her about them and I started looking into that, but eventually I realized that the best course of action would just be to get a well rounded education in art in general before leaping into one specialty. The next thing that happened was that I got a raise at Hy-Vee. One of the girls I worked with in the bakery told me I should ask to move up front instead of the bakery, that way I could get more hours than I was getting there. They had too many people in the bakery, so I was only getting about one day a week. Two tops. So I asked, and got moved. A raise + more days at Hy-Vee = Good-by Elm Crest! Then my brother Joel applied at Iowa Western, I decided that the best thing to do would just be to do what he was doing. Iowa Western had a good art program, and they included photography in with their other classes. Now that I had quit Elm Crest, it would be much easier to manage my schedule at Hy-Vee with a school schedule, so I started looking into applying for myself. I think I got in just under the wire, because they told me that yesterday that the deadline for financial aide was the day before, so I'm lucky I started when I did. Classes start on August 23rd, so you can look forward to updates as I begin my quest to become the next Da Vinci!