"But life keeps moving..."

Want to know something sad? I haven't even looked in this in so long, I couldn't even remember the link to go to top pull it up. In my defense, I did say from the get go I would do a very poor job at maintaining this.  I think the problem is, though I recognize I have a crazy job, my life still feels pretty average and I have a hard time finding anything I could write about very interesting...let alone believing anyone else will. However, per my mother's request, I shall update this.

The pattern seems to be structuring the whole deal around "Since my last post, I...." since they are so few and far between. Which I will do. However, it will probably transform into a therapeutic tool for processing my life and who has to time to read all that? Maybe later. I'll just skip to the most important and exciting part.

My dear friend Jessica Dodd is a woman of many talents...among them is play, patience, kindness, and laughter. However, the talent we're looking at here is video editing. Well, to understand what's so exciting about this it would be real important to first explain a fundamental fact...Lindy and I are real big dorks. Like...a lot bigger than people even give us credit for. So when we went on our Europe trip last summer, we dorked it up big time. In fact, we had the super bright idea to document everything via iPhone video to make one big sentimental video, capturing the essence of our whole entire, monumental trip.  The biggest flaw with this logic is that neither of us know how to make such a video and I (in particular) am not very good at filming things.  This is evidenced by 1. the vast amount of useless and uninteresting footage we came back with and 2. the fact that the majority of our videos are filmed sideways, thus rendered almost completely useless to anyone who knows what they're doing. Oh well, you live and you learn.

Before leaving for our trip last year, our friend Chip had offered to edit the stuff for us as it was something he was dabbling in (quite well, I might add) at the time. However, we came back to America and several months later he up and had a baby with his new wife so that kind of (understandably so) bit the dust.  Now we just had 3 USBs worth of useless Europe videos and nothing to show for them.  I mentioned it to Dodd and she, as per usual, offered to do something kind with the utmost of enthusiasm.  She took the USBs and told me all I had to do was think of a song to set the sequence too. As anal as I am, I actually spent an embarrassing amount of time researching the song that I felt embodied all I felt about that trip: the excitement, the sense of adventure, the beauty, the laughter, the hope, all of it. Nothing. In fact, I took so long obsessing over it (anyone who knows me won't find that surprising) that one day I texted Dodd, perhaps months later, "this is embarrassing but I've been obsessing over this song choice and can't think of anything. I know it doesn't matter since you've probably long since given up anyway." She called me moments later to tell me 1. I'm always underestimating her and 2. I was, in fact, taking way to long, and she had chosen a song quite some time ago.  She asked me if I had any strong opinions of what I wanted in the video. I had a couple which I shared (none of which she included haha) and that was that.

Memorial Weekend rolls around (that's a whole other story) then back to work on Tuesday.  I was already less than pleased to be back at work but then Lindy posts an Instagram pointing out the fact that, exactly one year ago yesterday, we were on a plane headed to Paris to start our great European adventure in France, Germany, and Prague.  I was surprised by how suddenly sad I was. I think we can boil that down to the fact that I've had a hard time the past couple of months accepting the fact that I'm supposed to be a grown up now.  Lindy and I commented on the fact that, now that we've settled into our grown up jobs, we could sit down on a Sunday night and write out exactly what our week was going to look like and it would essentially be the same week to week.  Aside from the curveballs I regularly encounter case working, my week is fairly predictable.  For the most part, I'm actually in a season of life where I kind of appreciate that. I'm thankful for how God has provided for me post-graduation and am also thankful for a steady job that enables me not only to gain endless experience in a field I really care about and hope to pursue but also affords me the opportunity to gain my footing financially-purchase a new (to me) car all by myself, wean myself off of my parents financially, build up my savings for grad school, etc.  However, there are little snippets of time that sneak up on me, real quiet like, and whisper secrets in my air detailing the inadequacy that comes with a boring grown  up life and the fatness and apathy that is sure to follow.  I think the reminder that a year ago I was adventuring around Europe with my best friend in the world where as today I'm sitting in a tiny cubicle that makes me a slave to paperwork and deadlines served as one of those little snippets of time.

Anyway, in the name of routine, we were planning TND (Tuesday Night Dinner- every Tuesday our group of friends gets together for dinner and everyone takes turns hosting).  Lindy and I had food leftover from cooking out over Memorial Day and our new neighbor (Neighbs, as we like to call him) has a grill that is conveniently 20 feet from the bottom of our stairs.  He generously offered us his services and plans came together as usual.  Dodd at some point offered me the exciting news that she had finished editing our video and wanted to know when she should drive down from Jax to show it to us. I invited her to TND and she accepted and that was that.  

I spent all day rushing rushing rushing.  The bad thing about a long weekend is you come back and try to fit 5 days worth of work into 4 and it never goes well.  I ended up working later than I anticipated, rushing back from Hastings to get to Crossfit Bootcamp on time, leaving poor Lindy to plan and everything by herself and didn't think much about anything until I came home to all of my favorite people setting up delicious food in front of my garage.  My spirits were immediately improved and it was a normal TND-joyful and relaxed. I just realized how long this is...I am such a rambler. Basically, I remembered Dodd had brought it and asked if we could all watch it, in honor of our one year return.  She was shy about it at first and said I had to watch it first and could only show it if I was proud of it.  Well, I open the files only to discover that there are three videos.  The first one she shows me is posted below. Though I crack up laughing, I'm surprised.  I watch the second one, crack up laughing again (the more I watch it, the more impressed I am with the editing) but begin to wonder, "did she just make a bunch of videos making fun of us?" Turns out, no, she didn't.  The last one she showed me was the for real for real video and when I started it I just couldn't make it anymore. I made everyone watch it.

Me: In honor of that fact that one year ago today, Lindy and I were heading to Paris...

Zach Grant: You guys went to Paris?

Rob: Wow, you guys really are a couple.

Zach Grant: [to his wife] I think we need to be a couple more like Lindy and Caitlin.

But that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, we all watched it together and it was so perfect.  The video was perfect. The sharing our favorite memories with our favorite people was perfect. The reliving it was perfect.  After everyone congratulated Dodd on her good work and trickled out, Dodd, Lindy, Neighbs, and my friend Kayla hung back.  We showed Neighbs and Kayla all the footage Dodd didn't use and died laughing remembering all the things we hadn't thought of in a while...the time I almost got crushed in our Parisian hotel's rickety elevator. The time my dad hit an old Asian man in the glasses.  The time Lindy and I repeatedly tried to cross the street via underground tunnel to the Arc de Triumph and came out on the opposite side every time.  The lengths we went to record ridiculous things.  The time I drank too much wine and almost fell out of our fourth story window to watch a speeding bike procession down on the street.  It was such a good trip and I had such sentimental attachments to all the videos we took I couldn't help but be a little disappointed some of them had been left out.   To be fair, Dodd is completely right...a lot of them were uninteresting to anyone but us. Also, if she had included everything she would have had to time it to not just a song but every single song she knew.

The more we listened to her observations of the videos though, the more I loved what she had done. She stated she watched all of it and often laughed uncontrollably by herself because she started learning who was filming what just by how it was done.  She said Lindy was infinitely better at it than I am because she has the patience choose what she deems most important and focus on it intently until she gets the job done.  Her shots were steady, clear, quiet, and easily understood.  She stated mine were shaky, unpredictable, and often accompanied by some sort of uncontrollable breathing or incoherent utterances of excitement. They were too fast paced and all over the place but filled with joy.  She said it fortunately worked out that putting them together made something fun to watch.  We laughed and said it sounded as though she had just summed up the essence of our lives.

The other thing she laughed at was our continuous commentary of what was going on around us.  At the Glokenspiel in Munich there was one long video where we're just waiting and waiting for it go off until one of us whines, "When's it gonna 'spiel'?"  She said her favorite thing about that is that there was all these moments where something would be going wrong or at least, undesirably we'll say, and we'd get real sad about it. But then in the next breath, we'd either see something beautiful and get really excited and mesmerized by it OR we'd do something silly and crack each other up and forget immediately what we were frustrated by.  We laughed at that too saying it sounded as though she had just summed up the essence of our friendship.  After everyone left we got ready for bed and crawled in my bed (I swear to God we're not a couple) to watch them all again together so we were free to laugh obnoxiously at all the things no one else would think was funny.  Which we did. More than once. More than twice. Maybe more than five times.  

The more we watched the final one especially, the more we loved it.  We loved the song she chose (Imagine Dragons-On Top of the World), we love the shots she chose, we loved reliving watching the cute Austrian surf in the park in Germany, the cheers with the German teenagers at the Hofbrauhaus the night we drank too much beer, the magic of the Eiffel Tower at night, the beauty of the Seine River at dusk, the holy reverence of Notre Dame, the majesty of Weiden from the view of a single engine plane, the opulence of King Ludwig II's gardens at Linderhof, (the way I narrate life when I've clearly had too much to drink)...just the vibrancy of everywhere we went and everything we saw.  I remember feeling like it all had such a strong pulse, such an exciting heartbeat, and Dodd really captured that...down to her song choice. 

I’ve had the highest mountains
I’ve had the deepest rivers
You can have it all but life keeps moving

I take it in but don’t look down

‘Cause I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
Waiting on this for a while now
Paying my dues to the dirt
I’ve been waiting to smile, ‘ay
Been holding it in for a while, ‘ay
Take you with me if I can
Been dreaming of this since a child
I’m on top of the world.

I’ve tried to cut these corners
Try to take the easy way out
I kept on falling short of something

I coulda gave up then but
Then again I couldn’t have ’cause
I’ve traveled all this way for something

I take it in but don’t look down

Another thing she did well and what I love, perhaps most of all, is capture the energy with which Lindy and I have been doing life these days.  She captured our silliness, our lightness, our joy, and ability to bounce of one another in such a way we're able to enjoy what's going on around us no matter what.  This is perhaps just my perception and you're of course welcome to disagree, but it's something I feel like God has simultaneously used to bless us and also to challenge us.  We talk somewhat frequently about how we feel stuck some times..stuck in our jobs...stuck in our routines...stuck in St. Augustine...stuck in our romantic lives (ha ha) but also admit that if we had to be stuck with anyone, we are beyond grateful it's with each other.  

Anyway, after watching all of that I went to bed feeling so much better than I started the day.  I went to bed sore from laughing, grateful for the way the God lavishes love on us in the form of purely joyful and encouraging friendships, and realizing that sometimes the memory of something truly special and wonderful can be enough...even without the hope of a repeat on the horizon.

All that to say...Jessica Dodd is my hero and I've never loved any piece of social media more :) Enjoy my friends. 

Don't you love all that overly detailed build up for something that isn't nearly as fun for you as it is for me? Yeah, you're welcome. Well, I still enjoyed talking about it :)

And after alllllll that...the only one that will upload is the silly one from the Versailles one. Hmmm....

I'll work on it.

Well anyway...make sure you expand it to full screen to get the full effect :)