2016 / 2017: A Year In Review, Kind Of...
And when they've given you their all, Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy, Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall...
Life:
I started out trying to write a year in review but in the end, I hated a lot of 2016. I lived in a building site, I had several major fall outs with my parents and with my mother more importantly.
I love her, I do, but there are times I feel like the adult in this situation and her memory is short and petulant. It drains me and worst of all it drains my partner Hazel.
That said, their support for me attempting to be a writer, in all forms, has been unwavering. Maybe the fall outs have been more pained as a result.
I love my family and my partner and the depth of understanding has made better.
Let met explain...
I moved back to my families home, because I needed to change a situation, THE situation if you will. I needed to work on things that have been chewing away at me. Some were work, others were more personal. I make no bones about suffering from PTSD, after 3 years of graft in the Games Industry.
I got treated like a cunt, and worked like one in the end. I learned a lot, I grew hard in some areas.
Others will take time. Some days it feels l have a lot of it, others it feels like its slipping away.
Progress all the same.
That said, let's put the gloom to bed for now.
I like to think that certain universals of the human condition, will always be around. Hitting 30 and hating it would be one of them. Maybe not in a time when you were lucky to still have all of your teeth and your fingers. These days 30 feels quite far from how I feel, or even how I feel I feel about ageing in general.
I didn't always hate the idea of being 30. When it held the promise of promotion or distant places, with money I had yet to earn. When I dreamed of big films, big music and big games.
These days I'm glad if I can afford a new pair of jeans and a tank of diesel without being ripped off. If I can have a day without the feeling of stigma or the fear of being left behind.
I did get to do some cool shit. I got to see Warsaw, I was the Master of Ceremonies at my best friend Ben Penrose's wedding. I now have an amazing 30th present, my Gretsch Acoustic, had one of the best meals of my life. More importantly at least the house, well it feels like home.
I'm now old enough to be responsible but still stupid enough to attempt stupidity.
2016 felt like I was learning like a child, all over again.
With the up's and downs of home, the career path this year, really started to hit rough ground.
Work:
Jon, my best friend and my co-writer was there for all of it, and there making the work, well work. The two big projects we created, got on their feet. These were Crunch and Supreme. About as far away from each other in regards to content as they ever could have been.
Crunch a comedy series about game development went to competitions and kicked right out again. The format was fucked from the start, its now being changed.
Supreme, a British superhero film, about heroes out of work that create themselves jobs by creating natural disasters. Warmly received and even got to the quarter finals of Screencraft Sci-Fi, then died.
They both died at the gate for good reasons, honestly. They need work, they need a bit of TLC and mostly they need time. We rushed them, because they were new and the ideas felt new. We were excited to share them with the world, but we rushed them out too damn quick. This year, we fix that.
When not working on those projects, we met Jay Robey at the BBC. On a whim I replied to a nice post on a crew group on Facebook and as a result we made a short film script to help him get some projects green-light. Its a script that at first we didn't have much hope for, but its given us time and I know we have already improved so dramatically. Its name is Satisfaction and feel free to read it.
(If I trust you enough for the password that is).
Then there's the kids book Day Dream Dog. I had the urge to write a kids book about dogs, but I didn't think it would have the response its had. I'm looking forward to chasing the dream this year and seeing what Ben Penrose or his extended friends can produce. Big excite and big expectations for that.
The most recent development has been going to the Script Angel Script Development meeting down in London. Total eye opener in a lot of ways and thankfully it reinforced our positives and negatives in a pragmatic and realistic way. I also got to meet fellow writers and I'm looking forward to sharing some work in progress.
Jon Taylor, Andy Mort and I, are also kicking off actual writing on our sketch show. Crunch has a Proof Of Concept script ready to go. Already this year is much more diverse and focused.
Hard as it has been and tough as it has yet to be, 2017 will be a blast. Not because of presents or places but, because its all the things I need it to be, and the dust feels like it has finally settled on a shit time.
Onward and upwards.
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies,
Tongue tied and twisted, just an earth bound misfit I...