A Letter To 2014

Dear 2014,

I am excited for you and I am terrified of you. I've always been quite good at peering into the future and having a good guess at what the time ahead was going to be like. For example, in 2010 I could tell that a huge change was coming, right before my entire friendship group got turned on its head and I found myself in a much better, entirely different friendship situation. Coming into 2013 I knew that that year was going to be, well, 'defining' was the word I used, and I wasn't so sure what that meant. And, well it turned out to be just that. I spent the first part of my year on an absolute high. My community in Edinburgh was amazing, I felt more at home in that city than ever, I was making films with people I love and things were just going well for me. I found that I had become the best version of myself I had ever been. I was confident, enough so that I was able to tell my testimony on stage in front of hundreds of people the night I got baptised. I was closer to God than I'd ever been. I conquered many fears, which truly amazed me. However, in the months following and since, I began to struggle with my faith. I suppose the higher you get the harder you fall, right? I'm not going to lie, I'm still struggling a lot right now. Until the start of December I hadn't felt close to God in months, and it's just slowly starting to come back. But God is teaching me through this struggle, I know that. Through the good times and the hard times, it has been defining. I have learnt so much about myself and I am grateful for that.

But 2013 is over. Now it's your turn 2014. I want you to be a great year, 2014, I really do. And looking at my plans for the year, you have the potential to be the best year ever. I do have big plans for you. I want you to be the year that my filmmaking takes off. I want to release my documentary, Unboxed, and if I have the time I want to make another documentary. Joyful Mourne Media has been a huge dream of mine for years now, and it's slowly starting to come into fruition. That's incredibly exciting, but I feel in my heart it will have truly begun when I release Unboxed. That's where you come in, 2014. I'm counting on you to be the year that all this happens. To be honest, I'm absolutely terrified. I don't want to screw this up. I don't want to screw you up. I guess I don't know how things are going to turn out, but I can hope and I can pray. 

Aside from my filmmaking goals, I want you to be the year I come back to a good relationship with God. That's something I need above all else. I want to get back into journalling regularly; I want to be interested in reading the Bible again; when I worship, I want to be really worshipping, not just singing a song that I like; I want to pray and fast. My faith is the most important thing to me in my life, so I should start acting like it is. That's my goal. I need that strong faith to support all my goals, it's so vital. And God deserves everything, my all. So I should give it to him. Yes. This is going to be the year I fix my faith. 

And you know what, 2014? Let's make it fun too. Let's go rollerblading, let's go on holiday, let's make snowmen and take my sister out more. Let's go hiking, and photographing, and let's make more friends, while getting even closer to the old friends. Let's laugh until we cry, and not worry about what others think. This could be the best year ever. Let's do that. I'm going to hustle my way into a great year.

2014... It's a pleasure to meet you. 

Love from,

Jo. 

2014 Spade List

It's that time of year again... this is a list of 50 things I'd like to achieve in 2014. Every year I usually acknowledge that I'm not going to get all of them done, but there are always a few that are extremely important to me to complete amongst the not so important ones. I'll blog about those important ones later! In the mean time, enjoy -

1. Make a short film
2. Go to America
3. Get a new job
4. Read the LotR trilogy
5. Enter a film/photography competition
6. Host a party
7. Go to jazz bar
8. Learn basic Irish phrases
9. Buy a printer
10. Do something I've never done before
11. Hustle!
12. Release 'Unboxed'
13. Make a snowman
14. Go to something at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
15. Have a friend/family visit me in Edinburgh
16. Have a friend visit me in Northern Ireland
17. Have a photograph published / exhibited
18. Go to a concert
19. Get a tattoo
20. Learn Adobe After Effects
21. Give blood
22. Run 5k
23. Take up a personal photography project
24. Unplug for a week
25. Achieve a 'merit' in university
26. Build an amazing pillow/blanket fort
27. Write 40 blog posts
28. Watch the sun rise on Murlough
29. Feel competent in my painting/drawing ability
30. Bring a friend to church
31. Journal daily, even if brief
32. Take instant pictures
33. Do something to be proud of
34. Host a film screening of one of my own
35. Enter my final year of uni
36. Fast weekly
37. Fill a sketchbook
38. Go to France
39. Pull an elaborate prank
40. Read 30 books
41. Introduce my flatmates to Irish food
42. Celebrate my 21st
43. Spend a night stargazing
44. Get a flat stomach
45. Write a letter to someone telling them how much I appreciate them
46. Rearrange my bedroom
47. Watch 100 documentaries
48. Complete a YouVersion Bible study plan
49. Volunteer somewhere
50. Have a great year

Thoughts From The Irish Sea

Fun fact: I am currently writing this post from the middle of the ocean. I finished semester one of my third year of university on Monday and so now I am relaxing on the Stenaline Superfast, on my way back to Northern Ireland to spend Christmas with my family, boyfriend and friends. I could not be more excited right now! It's been a long semester, and I'm ready for what I feel is a well deserved break after all my work in the past few months. After a lot of work including a presentation, a 3000 word essay, two photo stories and a documentary film I am finished! Huzzah!

Yeah, remember that documentary film I talked about making? Well... I made it.... kinda. On the 2nd December I attended the screening on my film along with the films of all of my classmates. At this point I'm going to make a side note saying that I'm so very proud of all my classmates. They all made great films and it was so exciting to see everyone's hard work pay off. Making a film on your own (as I discovered myself) is a very challenging experience, and it was probably the most challenging thing I've personally done in university or school. So to see around 15 films that people made all by themselves, but were also of a really good standard, was really great. Perhaps if enough of them put their films up online I might make a masterpost of some of the films so you can watch them, cause they were really great. Well done guys, you did good!

Anyway, back to my film. At 17 minutes long, with three interviews, my own personal thoughts, some constructed scenes as well as other things, one could certainly make the argument that my film was finished. But personally, I don't think so. When I set out to make this film I was feeling very ambitious, I knew that I could make a really interesting film with this idea. However, as I went on and kept working at it, I realised that even while making a short film, I was never going to have enough time and resources to make this the film I want it to be. That was a bit disappointing, but that's not to say I gave up. Instead I started concentrating on just trying my best to make a film that would do well at uni. I did slightly feel that I was conforming slightly there, and I'm a bit ashamed of that. But, the reason I was doing that was because I decided that I would work as hard as I can and for as long as necessary to make this film the film it was originally meant to be, the film it is supposed to be. I know that it has potential, and I want it to reach that potential. I am now aiming to be finished in Spring. Not many people have seen the 'uni edit' of my film, but the final cut will be bigger, better and hopefully will glorify God more.

And so I'd like to introduce you to my upcoming documentary film - 'Unboxed'. It is an exploration of the gifts of healing and miracles, asking questions like - does God heal today? Why / why not? What can we understand about this concept? How can we be sure it's real? and more. As well as this, part of the film reflects on my own personal journey of faith, as I begin to learn more about miraculous healing. Now to make up for the fact that you won't be getting to see the film for a while, despite many people assuming it would be finished now, I've uploaded a little sneak peek. I'll be uploading more of these as time goes on. 

Unboxed - Sneak Peek 1 from Joyful Mourne Media on Vimeo.

And there you have it. I'll try to be a better at updating everyone with it's progress, I didn't do that as much as I'd like to over the past few months. Right now, with the production of this film going on, seems like a good time to I guess officially launch 'Joyful Mourne Media', the name under which all my films will be made under. For those who are all about the social networking, you can follow what we will be doing via these sites -

Website: www.joyfulmourne.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/joyfulmourne
Twitter: www.twitter.com/joyfulmourne
Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/joyfulmourne

And if you'd like to contact me privately about anything, you can do that by e-mailing me at jo@joyfulmourne.com