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9:13 AM, Monday, May 10th, 2021:
 
When I was in 3rd grade I was in some competition to make posters for the book fair. I designed this poster that was a bunch of books, with each one saying one letter to form "Take a look and buy a book!" I got 2nd place. When my mother and grandmother came to see all of the posters and saw mine next to the winner they both sighed and looked at each other. While I thought 1st place was a better poster, my mom knew immediately that an adult had made it. And that's when I looked closer and, yeah - it was overwhelmingly obvious what had happened. My mom just said "Hey, you did better than the other 9 year olds, don't worry about it..." And I didn't... but it never, ever, ever left me.
 
The inherent unfairness of a kid taking credit for something their parents did (although wildly common) ate at me. I knew one day, I'd have a kid doing a project and I knew I would have to fight the urge to "help" too much. Well, that day came when Vienna said she wanted to make her own "Journey" video and this was it. So I thought I'd show you a clip of what's honestly the most I helped in this entire process. If I had thought about it? I'd have filmed her voice overs, her keyboard playing, her googling for pictures (that was a bit sketchy without safe search - lol) and her camera work. But it was the fact that she sat at a laptop she had never used, used a mouse she had never used - I mean, this kid has never made a folder on a PC. Like - ALL of that and she never gave up. It's something I wanted to document because it means as much to me as the finished product:
 
 
So good. I'm so proud of her. As time goes on, I'll get her a laptop that she can truly practice on because that's the way you learn. You just throw shit on a timeline and fuck around. We had specific goals with this so it was way more intense... but you retain WAY less when you do it like that. Ya gotta make stupid shit. Ya gotta do simple shit. Ya gotta log and label your files until your brain is numb so it changes the way you shoot, etc. That's the actual process she has to learn.
 
But man - she pulled it off. So, so, so proud!
 
Adam