The Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand and Six Retrospective

In actuality this quote-unquote 2006 retrospective will probably only involve the months since I went to school in September with any kind of reasonable detail, but, to humor the idea of a complete overview of an entire year (in retrospect) I'll at least try to start with last January, though, it may take some doing.

January. We spent New Year's at Dan's house, I believe. I remember very distinctly being pleased that I wasn't working (for it was the first year I wasn't manning a shift at a restaurant or something), and, if I recall correctly, it was a very good time. I'd just started really cracking down on a journal again. I can't say I created this journal in January, but I certainly never wrote in it much at all before then. Sandstorm, the movie, was in a strange lull, right before the major push for completion a month or so later, and I was extremely anxious about getting high school over with. I spent hours and hours watching the winter Olympics. I also started getting Netflix and musical practice began for me.

February. We hit Sandstorm pretty hard in February, filming almost every weekend. My grades began to slip as I started to worry about too many things at once: Eagle Scout project, college, etc. I started to love Biology class and hate English, which was a strange, strange. Eric and I spent most of English class reading America: The Book. February, of course, involves musical's Hell Week, so there was, of course, that to deal with. I remember it being particularly low key. It was also when I started actually caring about the show.

March. In early March I completed my first ever sweep of Oscar predictions, which was intensely awesome. I even correctly guessed all the small items based almost completely on luck. Musical was awkward and strange and tense, but things came together, for me at least, during tech week (as they always seem to). College answers started to come in, but no New York University early in the month. There was some nostalgia involved in the last semester of Performing Arts, but mostly I was geared up to start finishing up the goddamn thing. I wrote a play for a contest at Geva that I was really proud of, but it didn't win. The show went amazingly well, I thought. I received a letter in the mail inviting me to a party in New York City for the NYU entering class of 2006, but I never received any acceptance information, which made me a little confused. The real acceptance followed up a little later, but the financial aid was do dismal I didn't think I could go.

April. April was a very exciting month. We started things off right by starting the beginning of the end of senior year with a little skip day we dubbed "V for Vendetta Day." Eric, Dan, Kevin, Tony, Madelyn, and I skipped school and went to the beach, got Thai food, saw V for Vendetta, and had one of the best days of my life. April had many, many fun days including, Orchard Day (which was the discovery of a creepy orchard in Webster and my first cheese Won Tons). I also went to Chicago for the first time with Jazz band, which was a very fun trip. I spent most of the time with Eric and Kevin M. Then there was, of course, the Florida Trip, which had its ups and downs, but I would not trade that spring break for anything. I've never seen that much of the world in such a short amount of time, and have not made more memories in ten days since.

May. Early May was dominated by AP exams, which went moderately well. Sandstorm picked up dramatically as well too. I won a scholarship from the Cox Foundation and got nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Bela Zangler in Crazy For You. The final jazz band concert also took place in May. Jimmy directed us in Bang, Bang Your Dead, but that show was in and out of rehearsal so fast I can barely remember anything. I didn't do as good a job as I could've out of pure laziness, but it was not the only area of my life succumbing to sloth. After AP's were over I pretty much stopped going to school.

June. Sandstorm got down-right stressful, but it was easier to manage with school having become such a joke. The last day of high school was interesting. I won a scholarship from Performing Arts. I started a job working as a production assistant on a local independent film. Graduation was long, boring and extremely awesome. I started to think about my friend Tony joining the army a lot. I tried to re-explore my childhood hometown a lot. Eric and I had a bunch of adventures exploring the places of significance from our youth. I actually developed some sleeping problems. They peaked in late June, but subsided by August. Oh, and graduation parties began to consume my life.

July. The fourth of July was memorable, but Tony left for the army so it was very sad. I went with Kevin M. to New Hampshire to hike the White Mountains, and, man, we did it. It was tough, long, and grueling, but beautiful and breathtaking. I also had my graduation party, which led me to the purchase of the love of my life, my new computer. Took a trip to visit my brother with Kevin Winters, Caroline, and Dale. It was fun. We saw a great Red Sox game (the only good one in that particular series) and saw Ortiz hit a triple, which was incredible. I edited Sandstorm a lot, but we decided, somewhere in July, that it was not going to finish over the summer. We took a trip to Toronto to see a Blue Jays game, and I played off-and-on in the church softball league. We played a lot of poker and ate a lot of late-night meals. It was a wonderful month.

August. August was tough. Eric left. Dan left. Kevin left. I was getting really sad by the end, and really anxious, and many other things. Finally, finally I left for school, and it was immediately as wonderful as I hoped. I was rooming with my old friend from the summer high school filmmakers workshop, and we got along really well right off the bat. We made friends with two wonderful people whom I wish we saw more often now, but such is life: Alie and Anna, the Brides, as we called them. We reconnected with a bunch of kids from the summer program, but geography got in the way and we don't see them as much anymore either. I started getting adjusted to life and love in New York City, but it would not be for a while that I became fully acclimated.

September. With September came the start of classes. I took Language of Film with Prof. Nick Tanis, Digital Frame & Sequence with CCR, History of Western Art with Prof. Monti, and Writing the Essay with Ethan Youngerman. I was not particularly overwhelmed with work in September, so Eric and I took in a lot of the city. We ate out a lot, and started to work on script (Leonard in Three Acts) ideas with Eric's friend Jeff (who went to Columbia). Time moved quickly. At some point I became really good friends with a bunch of people on my floor, spending a significant amount of free time with them: Alice, Meghan, Yooree, Gabe, Lillian, Mariko, Abby...but we saw Alie and Anna very rarely (which was dramatically sad). I began to worry A LOT about my Eagle project, and had to work way more on it than I would've liked. It had some negative effects on my first semester, but I can't complain. We began to see Alie weekly because of the Studio 60 parties in our room that she attended, but Anna had rehearsals Monday nights so we had to schedule extra events to see her.

October. In October I finished my Eagle Project and wrote a teleplay pilot (Higher Education) with Eric for a contest involving the N (a Viacom-owned preteen network). We began, on the floor, having a really elaborate birthday for everyone, which made several days a week exciting. Tim Wu, another friend of ours from the summer program, asked me to join him crewing on an upperclassman shoot. I needed to fill crew hours, so I happily obliged and met some of the most impressive, influential, and nice people I've ever worked with: Andrew, Matt, Jeff, John, Patrick, Grant, the sound twins, Isaac and Kelly, Campbell, and Goldberg... Tim and I ended up spending almost every weekend helping different members of the group shoot their Junior projects, steadily moving up the ranks. Eric and I continued to plug away at Leonard and we came up with a new idea for a project we want to shoot this summer called A Walden Variation, which I'm writing now. I brought Yooree home with me because Itzhak Perlman was playing a concert in Rochester and her mom got us free plane tickets.

November. Eric and I found out that we were finalists in the contest at the N for Higher Education, which was more than a little exciting. We began to plan out more fully our ideas for the summer shoot in Texas and discussed scheduling and funding a lot. I came home briefly for Thanksgiving, but was a little disappointed by the way things had changed/hadn't changed in Irondequoit. I was also upset that I was home for such a short amount of time. I started to seriously worry about finals, and the weeks after Thanksgiving before the end of the semester were some of the most hellish in my recent memory. DFS became my job and Art History the bane of my existence, but I continued to plug along. We saw Casino Royale and were so inspired to host our own Casino night, which was an exciting, formal event.

December. Once finals were wrapped up, though it's a lot easier to type this than it actually felt, life was so, so good again. Well, my western art final was the day I left for home, but before that I had several days to myself as Eric had left for Texas (his finals ended earlier than mine). I studied for art, reconnected with a lot of people I didn't have time to hang out with too much (due to other final projects) and slowly packed my things. It was anxious about home. There was a fun wrap party for all the Junior projects we worked on, which was a super way to round out the semester. I headed home after doing moderately decent on the art final and, the next day, passed my Eagle Scout board of review. The next few weeks was a whirlwind of reunions, holiday celebrations, and some, though not much, relaxation. I started working for my uncle again to make a little extra spending money, and celebrated the New Year with some of my favorite people, enjoying, among other things, the beautiful Nintendo Wii.

It's been a wonderful year.