a life update upon reaching level 24.

is… is this thing on?

it’s…been a while i know.

iut damn have i been up to a lot in the past… (checks notes) 3 years?! (wait it’s been 3 years since i last wrote a birthday blog…fuck)

okie dokie then, so I have been up to a lot over the past 3 years.

Where we last left off, I had just turned 21. We were all in the grips of a global pandemic. I was probably at the lowest point I’ve ever been at. There’s no point in sugar-coating the fact that I didn’t see much point in being alive back then. I felt so lost. So confused about what it was that I should be doing. I was spinning so many plates on my own that at some point, everything felt like it came crashing down around me and I lost myself in all the mess. I’ll be honest, looking back, I’m surprised I even made it to 24.

What a difference 3 years makes!

I suppose there’s a lot that I need to cover to catch you up to how I made it from turning 21 to turning 24 and do I have a story for you so sit yourselves down, grab a brew and get ready for a good old life update.

From 2020 through 2021 nothing much really happened… well apart from that thing that we all went through! A global pandemic, crippling mental health, fighting my way through university and finding myself in a relationship (Holly got her own blog last year) was as about as exciting as it got. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I’d make it through that entire time in my life, it was a constant battle and I reached probably the darkest and lowest point I ever felt, even if it didn’t show on the surface. But I did make it through and that brings us into…

2022!

What a fucking year!

I was riding on a high at the beginning of the year, a stark contrast to the what came before. Despite many threats to quit and many other threats from my tutor Sara saying she’d hunt me down if I did quit, I wrote my dissertation for university on the cinema industry pre, during and post-covid pandemic and achieved an outstanding first on it, the highest grade I’d achieved yet, which gave me a pretty good chance at achieving a high overall finally grade.

I also found myself going into something new and exciting at Wentworth Woodhouse, which appears to have trapped me in since! I joined an amazing group of young people as part of Rotherham’s Children’s Capital of Culture, and we went through a six-month long program with the outcome of an amazing 25 minute long short film titled ‘Four of a Kind’ and an event called ‘House of Future Creatives’ which took over the entire house for two days and gave us a chance to showcase the creative opportunities young people can have as well as premiering our short film on a four screen experience. I’ll be forever proud of what we achieved together but it’s not what we did that means the most to me, it’s the people that I was with and what the experience did for me personally.

I got to meet and make some amazing friends in the ones leading the program Steve, Andy and Tom, as well as my fellow trainees Loui, Ed, Liv, Anya, the UCR legend Dan Shipway and my new creative bestie Mya, as well as spending time with my already fantastic friend James and the little shit I’ve known for nearly 20 years (fucking hell he’s nearly 20), my brother Rye, and it’s working with this lot on the experience that really helped me figure out just who the fuck I am.

By the end of the six months, I was a different person! I’d had a massive confidence boost and I finally felt good about who I was and what I wanted to do, but with that done and finishing university too, I was standing on a cliff edge of possibilities, I just needed to take a leap of faith.

And maybe I took a leap into the wrong thing, after applying for a PGCE to become a teacher in media, I realised it wasn’t right for me at the time, so I was back on that cliff edge, and I took a leap again into something different…

Well, I was kind of pushed off so I could work in the glorious world of R E T A I L, but in October 2022 I set up as freelance and Lost Souls Studios was finally born. I’d been sat on the name for over a year and half and after many changes in design, I hand-drew my little bedsheet ghost and it’s been that way ever since. I spent the time over the Christmas period working on Lost Souls while working in that glorious thing know as R E T A I L… and working… and working… alright too much working.

After all the stress and threats of quitting too, I finally graduated in November and after looking like a mix of Jack Black from School Of Rock and an absolute tit in the stupid graduation get-up, I came out of it with a first class degree, so that’s something to be proud of too.

But after a lot of shifts at Curated Makers and for Luke Horton and with Christmas done, then came 2023!

2023 has been just as big a year as 2022 was and filled with so much more work. I’ve been cracking on with freelance, not done much else to Lost Souls Studios yet but I have been working on something exciting!

Helping out Wentworth Woodhouse display what we did last year at a manifesto launch for the Capital of Culture, I had a run in with Granny Norbag and we discussed the possibility of working together on a TV series. After a bit of discussion and what we wanted to do and after shooting a bit for Rotherham Libraries, we set to work on creating the series together. We’ve already shot a lot of the first few episodes, and we hope to release it in the autumn, so we’ll see how that goes. It’s a fun experience though and I can’t wait to see what we do and what doors it opens up for Granny Norbag and for Lost Souls Studios.

Speaking of Wentworth Woodhouse, like I seem to have been trapped in! After the traineeship last year, I became a volunteer on the digital team to inject a bit of young life into the older group dynamic. After doing a few editing jobs and pitching a lotttt of ideas to Steve, a part-time job came my way to help take some of the pressure off and so I am now a digital projects officer which I share with good old Andy and as the Wentworth Woodhouse digital team’s premiere dynamic duo, we’re working with Steve on taking things to new heights. My main job is sorting out their YouTube channel to reach a wider audience and fully optimise it, whilst also working on new and exciting content that will be coming soon.

I also couldn’t escape the traineeship too, as I helped out a lot with this year’s group and got to know all the new batch of amazing people that I can’t wait to work with in the future and no doubt I’ll be there with next years and the year after too!

Speaking of creative people, that’s the other thing I’m working on at Wentworth too! After many discussions and ideas been thrown around by Tom with the two groups of trainees, the past couple of months has seen The Wentworth Woodhouse Filmmaker’s Club come to life. The idea is to come together as a group and create a short two-minute film every month, where we share different jobs and get to work on a fun little film every month. It’s exciting to see what we do and we already have a few ideas under or belt and a fair few members of the group so I can’t wait to see what we do for the rest of the year!

In another possibly career defining move, (and something I completely forgot I applied for) I’m a part of the Young Programmers ran by the BFI and Film Hub North, in which over the course of 12 months, I’ll be working another group of other young film loving people to learn how to program film screenings and eventually hold our own curated screenings at various places across the north! There’s a lot of opportunity for career progression for Lost Souls Studios so I can’t wait to see what comes of it all!

As you’re reading this though, I’ll have turned 24 and my 23rd year will be done. These last two years of being 22 and 23 have been the best two years of my life, even if there’s still been a fair share of downs that come with the ups. I’m not quite where I wanted to be at this age. I wanted to have been driving by now. Maybe have moved out. Go travelling. Not spend my money stupidly. But life hasn’t taken me down that path and to be honest, I’m glad it hasn’t, because this path I’m on now is fucking exciting and I can’t wait to see what happens by the time I turn 25 next year!

At the end of the day, life doesn’t end at 25 and we’re not supposed to have everything figured out by then. (ooo should write that one down, that’ll make a good film idea ‘wink wink’) So for now I’m just winging it and seeing what comes. My plan is to be sorted by the time I’m 30 and then I’ll know what path I’m on. That gives me enough time to figure out who I am further, get Lost Souls Studios and Eledyne Studios on a roll, be more creative and write and make as much as possible but also be kinder to myself and spend more time doing things I want to do rather than dropping everything to do what other people want to do, that’s my biggest goal for being 24.

Anyways, I think that’s enough rambling for now. Happy 24th Birthday Adam, from yourself a week before your birthday, I’m proud of what you’ve done over the last two years and how far you’ve come, keep going, you know it’ll be reyt in the end!