2013: The Best Of

Not all of these films/books/YouTube channels etc. came out in 2013 nor did I first get exposed to them that year, obviously. But they made an important appearance in my life this past year, ergo their inclusion on this list.

Films:

Monsters University

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Desolation of Smaug

Scott Pilgrim

Catching Fire

YouTube videos/channels:

Vlogumentary trailer

Louis Cole

Sorted Food
CTFxC
Video Game High School
Rickshaw Run series
Our Fun Family Vacation

Books:

The Madness Underneath
Geektastic

Twitter pages:

Kelly Haight

Court Mann
Reasons My Son Is Crying

Charles Trippy

Musical artists:

We The Kings

The Killers

The Head And The Heart

Imagine Dragons
Smoke Signals
Watsky

Television shows:

Chuck

Teen Wolf

The Office

30 Rock
LOST
Community

Road trips:
St. George

Yellowstone

Other events:

Going to the Imagine Dragons concert with Stacy and Lorraine before Lorraine left on her mission



Living in New York for a few months






 
  

Talking with Cameron literally hours before I flew to New York

Sitting by a small lake in Yellowstone one Sunday afternoon










Talking with Peter one Saturday evening after work and him buying me Taco Bell for dinner

Kelly and I spending 12+ hours a day together and never getting tired of each other

Visiting the Atlantic Ocean for the first time

Being sent by my editor to Coney Island to ride the Cyclone
















Cameron sending me on a quest to a specific part of Central Park and then to buy cookies




































Writing a huge article for my capstone class

Realizing I not only love graphic design but that I'm also good at it

Making a new friend because of my VPLCT jersey

Getting Peter into longboarding and helping him buy his own

Being opinion editor for the summer

Going to lunch with my all-time favorite professor and his awesome wife

Flying home to Wisconsin for the BYU/Wisconsin football game

Seeing Arthur Darvill perform in Once on Broadway




















Cameron and Angela's wedding

Fake graduating in August & real graduating in December

















Spending the rest of summer in Utah after living in New York
    

The 10 unfinished blog posts of 2013

Yes, I have 10 drafts sitting here in the abyss of my blogger account. That's what I have to show for blogging in 2013. The number of unpublished posts says more about me than the number I actually posted, I think.

Some posts got lost in the fray of coming up with new things to write about. And at this point they're just not important anymore.

Some posts aren't time sensitive, meaning they'll be published some day in the hopefully not too distant future.

Some posts were too time sensitive. I didn't finish them within a week of the event happening so they probably won't see the light of day. At this point I don't remember enough details to really do the events justice; I mean, I remember how I felt on those days but it's hard to put those feelings into words. Those things are best left as memories for me alone.

Some posts just became too hard to finish. Even looking back at one now, far-removed from the day I started writing it and the circumstances that provoked it, I wouldn't be able to finish it. And not for lack of words to say what I want to say; I still have those words.

In a sense, I'm glad a number of blog posts were never posted and that I blogged very little about life in the ending months of 2013. It means I was busy living life and not just recording it for people to read online. While I do believe that if life is worth living, it's also worth recording, there are also some moments that just need to be experienced. (Don't worry, the big events were still written down in my personal Moleskine journal)

On New Year's Eve, Stacy, Becca and I went to the beach, sat in the sand, wrote down things we wanted to let go of from 2013 and then burned those pieces of paper. My first two things burned I kept secret; they each burned something secret as well. All the rest we shared with each other out loud. Once it passed midnight, we then burned our hopes/dreams for the new year. They shared all of theirs and all four of mine were shared, and yes, there were only four.

But here's the thing: I won't be sharing any of those four things with anyone again. Those two pieces of paper I burned for myself alone and the four pieces of paper I shared and burned and the words on all of them are for the three of us alone in those minutes after the clock struck midnight. So yes, I'm sharing that overall experience here in this post but the actual experience of burning those hard times and those dreams isn't something to be recorded.

So here's to 2014, a year in which I hope to balance the living and the recording. And maybe I'll have even more unfinished blog posts to look back on.