This kid glows in the dark

My camera is so good, i freaking love my camera. You just point and pick a few things manually and BLAMO awesome footage.

This is my little buddy Jayde. She’s the best. I took this picture while on vacation at her place. We ran around a lot and saw a donkey. This is us putting stuff out at the yard sale.

She recognizes herself in pictures and she loves to take them, this is the first picture she ever took. I’m going to have it framed! 

Hard drives and the converting/transferring/backing-up of files is the bain of my existence. Here I have a project I really want to edit, but smack in the middle of the road between me and my epic journey of editing, is hours upon hours of monotonous file management. it’s a terrifying process because nothing about computerfiles is tactile so you are constantly afraid that you will delete something permanantly by mistake. Hard drives are like babies, or gold fish.. You have to take care of them and feed them information, and keep them clean, you have to let them rest, and be gentle with them and at the end of the day, when one dies, it is usually a very horrible thing. 

i’ve learned how important it is to keep care of them. When we worked on our thesis films one of the guys had 2 hardrives fail on him and dropped a third! it was like a horror story and the victims were hard drives, and they were dropping like flies. I’ll never forget the day that my professor and the technitian opened up the hard drive and did a little impromptu and very dangerous sergery in an office. It should have been done hermetically but we didn’t have time to send the drive away before the end of school. literally hundreds of hours of work teeter on the brink of existance with a hard drive. 

So from now, until the end of time, hard drives will be the bain of my existence. 

xxxooo

When working with children, people often forget that they need guidance. They also tend to forget that the best guidance you can give a child is letting them make their own mistakes. 

I find that organizations that oversee groups of children tend to either be rigid and condescending or they tend to dole out a little too much free love. There is never an in between with adult run youth facilities, it’s the hard road or the free pastures. Often the free lovers tend to let the children wander and learn, what they learn, as they learn it. The thing is with kids, is that they wont drink the water just because you bring them to the well. You have to put their nose in the bucket sometimes. You have to make them pass out the papers; no one wants to be the singled out kid that gets up to hand them out. They often wont take initiative because they don’t want to stand out, not because they don’t have bright ideas knocking around in those noggins. On the other hand, if you give them too many rules and go the rigid road they block you out. There is a little free will in every youth out there and they want to have their independance. As much as they want to know you will hold their hand, they don’t want you to do it until they ask. They also don’t like to know that they are learning, if they are aware of it they get defensive and bored all at the same time. I saw it happen today: 

Boy-“This is school”

Me-“No it’s not, it’s summer”

Boy-“Yes it is, we’re learning. That’s school, and this is homework. I don’t want to do homework. I’m bored.”

I gave my lecture at the workshop today, this particular course is a little too free will for my tastes. Mind you that’s not to say it isn’t working, some of the kids were engaged and having conversations with each other while others challenged themselves quietly in thought. I am learning a lot from the production of this workshop, it’s teaching me about how I do, and don’t want to run my company. I hope I am asked back for that fact, but also because the kids are really great and I hope they really learn something from all of this. I know I am learning tons and I wouldn’t trade that for a cushy numbers job ever.

xxxooo

I need a place to write my notes for my workshop tomorrow. This is just as good a place as any. 

Behind the cut 

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“We get even by being excellent… We need to teach our children that we get even by succeeding.” -Marva Collins. 

I read this quote in an article on a race riot in Halifax that happened 20 years ago,  and it really struck me. I am going to use it in the workshop I am taking part of next week, i think it is a good way to make the kids realize that what they do in every moment is important. 

Today I started seriously thinking about starting a business plan. I already have a basic model of how I want to run my youth co-op. It will be very much like a rec-center, workshop, seminar and summer camp. It will have elements from all of these things. Cole harbour is my definite location, I can see expanding to halifax or other provinces in the future but Cole harbour is the greatest community and resource I have and I will use it as much as possible.

I want to build a place where youth and creativity come together to reduce crimes and the isolation of our children from our neighbours. I want to stabilize the future of our community through the development of youth skills and creativity in a film related model. Through the production of films, youth can learn about communication, management, becoming resourceful, independence, leadership and a better sense of self awareness.

I have been working on a few youth projects the past 2 years and with them I have learned from their successes and mistakes. All of this will help me to better focus my business model as time goes on. I am very thankful for the opportunities that have been given to me lately and I never though i would see myself in this position. I’m very glad to be right where I am.  

So tomorrow i’m going to sit in and listen to some fabulous stories about heroes in the Preston, Cherry brook area. I’m a little suburban white girl but i love all the history their community has. I met a man from the original giles family (lawrencetown) he was actually born in the giles house, which is now a museum that i work at as a young teenager, I was almost giddy! I’ve also met some of the current Settle family (I live on Settle lake), things like this really make me thankful to come from the place that i do. 

Tomorrow is apart of the workshop that I will be leading next week. Tomorrow they learn about local heroes from the black communities, and next week i teach them how to build a story and story boards. 

i’m excited, i bet these kids are brilliant. 

This is a photo of 2 chairs from Africville that are now in the East Preston United Baptist church. I took this photo when i was working on the global tours project. 

So, no one understands the reference? really?

Alright then, the world just got a little sadder to me. 

I’m pretty sure I will be managing a production office soon. This excites me to no end. Like beyond excited, to the point of giddy really. I’ll also be doing retail part time but i’m okay with that. I’ll need something steady that pays the bills when we arn’t working on projects in the office. I am not excited however to have absolutely no time on my hands. 

Looking for a job is hard. Looking for a job in your specified field is even harder. 

Lately I have been looking for a job in film, I want to work in a production office, and I want to learn the ropes. I’ve exhausted all of my knowledge of the Halifax film industry. I’ve applied to every possible studio in Halifax and some in dartmouth. I have been promised a job as an office manager but that is reliant on a contract between the studio and a third party. I can’t hold out forever, so the question is “when do you give up on the dream?” 

I’m starting to apply to retail now. This is the most disheartening thing I have had to do in a while. Im still not giving up, this is my chance and i’m going to take it but mama has to pay the bills between now and then. 

maybe i can just get a sugar daddy instead.