Springtime for Webster

Well, Spring Break has come and gone, and of course for us the word "break" was a relative term.

The greatest thing so far has been the change in the weather. Last week, for the first time in a really long time, I was able to wear shorts and a T-shirt outside. I really love warm weather. Winter I don't handle as well - I can tell you I'm not particularly looking forward to the latter half of our trek, when things will turn colder.

We all had things we worked to accomplish over break, and besides my personal stuff (finish reading Catch-22, start some comic books, catch up on some writing, clean my room, etc.) I spent the greater part of the week at school continuing to edit my and Lauren's Film II project. It's a short, 5-minute flick we both wrote and shot together last semester (with the amazing Jonathan on sound), and this semester we're editing it as part of a post-production class.

Working on our Film II has been both a blessing and a curse. It has definitely been a learning process, and like all learning processes, you learn both things you got right and things you wish to heck you had done a lot differently. I think it's safe to say that we are finally getting our film to a place that we both like, but the hardest part has been trying to maintain focus on this smaller project while also trying to get everything together for our next, much larger project.

It's been a good exercise in patience and taking things one step at a time. Our film teachers have repeatedly told us to focus on our Film II before we worry too much about our senior overview, and at first it was frustrating because I didn't understand why. Now I see that there's a certain order to the way things have been set before us, and certain tasks that need attention here and now before we can let our minds be completely in the walk, in the future.

Impatience; it's one of my worst struggles. It's not easy to not be worried about the walk all the time. It's a constant battle every day for me to focus on other things, like being a good RA and doing homework, things that I know are important and things I don't want to wish away too fast because I'm so impatient for the future to get here. Because then I worry, when it does come, am I only going to be worrying about what's going to come after that?

It's like that guy in that Sunscreen song says: "Don't worry about the future, or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum." I've never been very good at algebra, and I'm not a big gum chewer, but I understand the point he's making. It reminds me of the part of the Bible where Jesus tells us to calm down and let tomorrow worry about itself, because today has enough trouble of its own.

Ahhh, how true that is. Tomorrow (or later today rather) Lauren and I are screening the cut of our film before the entire class, and it's the last one we get before we unveil our finished product at the end of semester. Hopefully, it'll be good enough that our teachers will see how much work we've done on it and they'll be ready to help us get going on pre-production for our documentary, which we need to start soon.

As of now, the semester ends in eight weeks. The walk begins two weeks after that. One day at a time, everyone, one day at a time...