Persevere

I sit in a dark corner, mind racing on my next move. 

Notebook in front of me, one light shining.

I'm surrounded. Pressures of the future & the pain of the past sit on each shoulder. 

My mind stuck like a traffic jam, too many thoughts. Keep thinking like that and you'll go crazy.

Moans & groans of pain on the first floor, my family in need.

I jump between holding back and not giving a fuck. The pain sometimes feel too much.

But I can't give up.

You see my father never stopped, his heart did once but he never quit.

My mother wears her scarf to protect her from the negative. Their pain put me in a lead for first.

Sweat & Tears ain't nothing new to me. I drag us all across the finish line, but who's there to congratulate me?

The voices in my head pat me on the back but as I open my eyes they're the only ones to touch my spirit. 

And so I sit. Alone in this corner, I open the windows to be met with the midnight sky. I pray for a better morning but I've learned prayer ain't enough. 

So I go back to my corner and look at that notebook. The traffic jam in my mind clears up. 

"Construction ahead"

Move along there ain't much to see here 

Butterly across the Atlantic

The winds blow across the Atlantic, the cocoons in my stomach sprout butterflies, long nested inside they laid dormant.

I wonder who left them there. How blessed is your touch that I didn't notice, or I refused to. 

Your wings flap far across the Atlantic but many things you left for me to remember you by while you are gone. 

How subtle but powerful are the flap of a butterfly's wings. 

MY butterfly's wings.

Travel far and wide, a nest you always have in my heart. 

Oh how the butterflies you've grown in me,  alongside them passion and blessings have sprouted. 

No two butterfly's look the same and how blessed I am to have the greatest one. 

Across the Atlantic you are, only a flap of your wings is how far you really are when I close my eyes and listen to my heart. 

A note in my words that carry on the wind that goes through your wings I know you'll soar on them. 

My butterfly's touch is never too much. 

I can't help but think that the wind that hits my face once started off the flap of these gracious wings and it brings a smile to me.

Afraid of heights...

...my butterfly, she keeps me calm. 

As I rise she rests & as I rest she flies, 

Protecting each other when the other was most fragile.

Blessed be the man who's heart is held in someone else's hands and they choose to protect it instead of put it to the side. 

Kept warm my heart is, in her grasp. 

Thankful and blessed to see the butterfly grow her wings.

2015 Lessons learned, and what to look forward to for 2016

I've learned a lot like anyone else in 2015. I stuck with my one new years resolution: Trust my gut instinct and gained a lot of dividends. Now it's time to to look back as well as look ahead.

My main goals is to become better with scheduling and regaining my patience and learning when to be patient and when to make things happen.

As 2015 went on my schedule became more intense and I had to learn how to pace myself as well as scheduling things out to be more productive, something I'm still trying to learn now. I have lots of things I want to complete for this coming year and I know the best way to accomplish everything is proper planning. It's not just me, its my entire team working and we need to be on the same page. I cannot succeed without my team succeeding with me. All great teams that won a ring had great players playing together. Not just one person playing lights out. 

I'm a visual person and bought a whiteboard to make a visual calendar for me to see everyday. I can make notes in my phone but whenever I write something physically I'm going to remember it better than just typing and putting it away, call me old fashioned.

My main focus is learning the switch from being patient and having to make things happen. I've gotten a tad antsy, and part of that is living in this microwave society. I want to do so much I have to catch myself and understand my process. 

"If you rush too much you might not get where you're going" - Big Sean

"There's Beauty in the struggle" - J. Cole

There are times I need to slow down and be patient. Let things come to me, focus and that time to think and be patient actually helps me get what I wanted/needed. A good example is if I'm filming and trying to figure out the best lighting. If I'm rushing I'm not thinking clearly and whatever I shoot can end up wack. If I sit back and think whatever I film will be a masterpiece.

You can take this logic and apply it to anything really. If you're getting to know a girl and you aren't patient you might come off as annoying or too abrasive. Being patient allows you to be more inviting and clears your mind for whatever task is at hand. 

The opposite side of that i knowing when to take charge. Being patient sometimes gets confused with being complacent. If you see your team dragging their ass it's time to flick the switch and make something happen. Back to the example of getting to know someone. If you are too patient you may become complacent and won't have a plan to take it a step forward.

For any dream or goals you have their will be a time where you must lead and take charge. I've learned a lot this past year and refuse to make the same mistakes. I've wasted a lot energy on people who won't reciprocate the same back. But it's a learning process. That good energy will come back somehow regardless. One of the best things I've learned this year is reading people. Their energies and responses. People's reactions will tell you more about them than anything in life. An optimistic person will find it hard to truly bash something they didn't like and a narcissist will find it hard to give compliments to things. People show you there hand fairly easy and it's a life long process to learn who's being genuine and who isn't.

The lightswitch from being patient and knowing to assert yourself is one of the single things that can make you great at what you do. It's like hopscotch, you have to know when to jump in and out. 

Patience will come and go, it's something that you constantly have to work on to keep. Your hardest times come before you achieve your goal. A video games toughest enemies are at the end right before you win. 

Drop a comment on what's something you're looking to focus on this coming year. Most new years resolutions can be wack but whether you complete them is entirely on you. Whatever you tell yourself constantly you'll end up making it a reality. We make our own reality on the daily.

This is a video I found myself coming back to throughout the year and I probably will continue to come back to it when needed. Major props to Eric Oleka for sending me this earlier in the year, helped more than you know. 

2.24.15 D A R K S K Y P A R A D I S E PreOrder: http://smarturl.it/DarkSkyParadiseD http://uknowbigsean.com

'Shadows' Web Series Production Diary #1

*Welcome! This is the first entry to a weekly series of upcoming posts written about our upcoming web series "Shadows" and different aspects involved in pre-production, production and post production, written by Hussain Al-Khalil*

First team meet up was this past Sunday (May 31st, 2015). I got to say, it felt great. Everyone enjoys the story and are really engaged. I've been writing a lot of projects the past few years and this one seems to be the one to get going first out of them. 

Shadows is a mystery horror story that follows a young woman who meets a Private Investigator to assist her finding her sister which leads them through some dark and strange turns. 

I think horror as a genre can give a filmmaker so much freedom to tell a story and I've really enjoyed and grown to love the genre even more now as I write my own stories. 

I was blessed enough to have already had a team behind the camera and in front set up. I was working on another project that ended up stalling and I really wanted to shoot a longer length story this summer. I picked up the web series and reread what I wrote and immediately pitched the idea to my team. Luckily, they loved what they read and we set fourth on this web series. So far all but one location is taken care of. I really tried writing the script around things I knew I could get access to (friends apartments and different parks and woods I can shoot in for free) and also stretch and get locations I'd need for the story teaching me and my team more on securing locations.

As happy and excited as I am we gotta stay focused. I've come to notice just through life that everyone you know has an awesome, spectacular million dollar idea. Then you end up finding out why it didn't come to fruition or why it didn't come out the way they saw it. Everyone has a million dollar idea, but not everyone has a million dollar work ethic. 

In order to get this project done the best way everyone has to be on the same page, putting their all in it. That's the typical thing to say but doing those two things make everything else so much easier. I feel blessed to have a team around me willing to do that. I've worked and tried doing things on my own and that's ok to learn and teach yourself but I'd rather do things as a group. My group is small but it's the perfect number in my opinion. Everyone has there specialty, and can communicate well but small enough so that when we have to move and make things happen all that happens quickly.

This week we're continuing finding extras for the later episodes and finalizing some other locations to film in. I really want to see what the actors have to tell me about their characters and what they feel they want to bring to the character. I may write a character but that actor is going to be bringing life into that person, making them their own. It's a great way of seeing who is more engaged and who you may need to focus on when filming. 

I chose to do a web series because I noticed my best scripts are feature length, but this day and age a short film on the internet will get you more immediate attention but, you have to appease that small attention span people have on the internet. So what would work best? A web series. I can make a long form story but cut it into separate episodes so that it is more digestible for viewers and if you want to watch the entire thing you can. I met two of my leads, Kristin and Rayvon, on another short film I was working on as the crew and the third, Anthony, was referred to me by my producer. I worked a little with Kristin and Ray last year and I loved them both as friends and colleagues. 

This project is the best example of creating your own opportunity in life. Whether you're a creative or  not, nowadays you can truly make anything happen, you just need patience work ethic and a plan.

Anything in your life is gonna be hard to do, you might as well have a few hard times doing what you love then having some hard times doing something you wouldn't give a fuck about. I used to play football and I find myself either motivating myself or someone else a lot, and I thank a lot of that toward me working hard as a leader in football. That was the inception. When you were consummated and "made" for lack of a better term, a minimum of 40 billion to a billion sperm were released. Out of all those you were the one to make it. So you had a 1 in 40 million to a billion chance of you being you (the way you look, behave etc). How many things in your life are gonna have a 1 in 40 million chance of happening? You've already completed one of the hardest things possible. I'm rambling but it's my diary, dammit. That was to motivate you to do what you love. Do what you have to do to make that happen for yourself.

Next meet is this Sunday (June 7th 2015) to continue working and the 13th we start production. 

I'll try and take a few pictures for the next post next week.