This year, I experienced two separate people I knew not have support systems or any real true friends. I watched both of them struggle, trying to make or keep threads of connection with people who were of low quality to begin with…because it was all they had. I watched them delude themselves into thinking they had connections with people who couldn’t care less about them. I watched as they mourned their loneliness, lack of connection, and inability to be heard because they didn’t have people who listened. And I watched them fall apart.

And I couldn’t relate. I could be sympathetic, and try to imagine that feeling…but my thankfulness on this day comes from being surrounded by people who ensure that will never be my reality. I have no idea what that feels like. I wake up this morning knowing I will spend the whole day with my family of choice. In fact, with more than one family of choice throughout the day. Today is a day that we all celebrate each other, and the blessing it is to have each other together.

Today I give thanks and I celebrate having a plethora of people in my life who are real, deep, true friends. People whom I laugh with until my sides ache, philosophize with until new pathways are carved in our brains, work with until we drop from exhaustion, and will always be there at 3am.

I treasure having these people around. People I trust to celebrate success with, but also mourn failure with. People who love me enough to take me to task when I’m fucking up – my friends are no “yes” men. A group of people who will mobilize on a dime to help if there is a problem, and have created a safety net for me so thorough that I can take huge risks. A brilliant, creative, loving community that welcomes me exactly as I am.
If you follow my twitter account (@denanicole), you know that (most) every Sunday I write up Sunday gratitudes. I started doing this because I wanted to ritualize the process of being grateful to help ensure that it was something was tasked to do. As I look back through the past Sunday gratitudes, I see a common theme. Almost every single one references someone amazing in my life, and a way they had affected my life in the previous week.
So, thank you, my friends. Thank you for being in my life, and thank you for being you. Each one of you brings a unique perspective into my world that I value incredibly, and my life wouldn’t be the same without you. You make this wacky, unpredictable and glorious life better on a daily basis.
Happy Thanksgiving.

So in the spring I started training. I set up a training plan, and it was going well.My goal was to do my first triathlon before my birthday (June) And then…life. Or, more specifically, work. I got hired to write and direct a documentary, and spent the next month flying all over the country, and to Europe to shoot, and then the next while on 16 hour edit days in order to make my deadline. Suffice it to say the triathlon got put on hold. I delivered on the the film and then had to make my peace with the fact that I hadn’t completed what I said I was going to do. The circumstances allowed to me let myself off the hook, and I set up a new training plan, and selected the triathlon I was going to complete now. I chose one up in San Luis Obispo on 9/29. Awesome. Not only will I complete the triathlon, but I will be able to check that off my list in the third quarter of the year, where it was placed before. Cool. Let’s do this!

see, everyone agrees. Let’s get it going.

And so, I started training again. Swim, bike, run. Day by day, I was checking off the mileage I needed to get done in order to make it through. Partway through the training, I did my first brick (bike then run…so named because of how your legs feel when you start the run) I won’t lie. It sucked. It felt like I was going to actually fall down for the first mile of the run. I swam in my gym’s horrible pool. I started driving to a further away gym to swim in a pool that wasn’t gross. I had my bike stolen, and had to replace it and get used to a new bike. I went back to running 5k’s and 10k’s to improve my running times. I mentally prepared for each transition. I was as ready as I was going to get. My only goal was to finish – I wasn’t looking for any kind of time.

Now don’t get me wrong, I was nervous. The transitions aren’t something you can really know about until you do them. I was going to be surrounded with people who knew exactly what they were doing, etc. I drove up to SLO with a friend and got my race packet. I looked at the course. Swim was 2 laps around buoys in the lake – didn’t look bad. Bike was around the lake and into town. One pretty big hill, but overall not bad. The run looked pretty rough, but that’s my strongest suit, and since I wasn’t looking for any kind of time goal – it seemed ok. Went to bed early, got up and got to the course. Nervous? Hell, yes. But I had done the training. I was relying on that to get me through.

Still nervous though! I’ve never done this before!

This fucking dog wouldn’t have had a panic attack swimming. Why was I having one?

Dawn over the transition area

and this is the face of someone who can now call herself a triathlete!

disclaimer: doing triathlons may be addictive. I have just signed up for my next one.

And then it happened. A week and a half ago, a call came in that would throw me into crisis mode. My assistant relayed the message to me, and my brain started to spin. All of a sudden, my world felt like it was crashing down, and I broke. It was nothing I could have expected – I was overwhelmed, and unable to think straight.

Now, I’m not someone who is normally in crisis. Even when bad shit happens, I tend to deal with it and move forward. Boy trouble, career woes, etc – I am strong and capable, and usually don’t get hugely tripped up. But this was different. Raw and vulnerable, I needed my tribe.

In the past week and a half, friends have changed vacation plans, driven hours to be in a different city with me, shown up at my house at 2am to give me hugs, taken time away from their jobs to hold my hand, and mined all of their resources to find information I couldn’t get myself. And I am humbled. I am humbled by the way my family of choice has stepped up and made sure that I am taken care of when I need it so badly.

Being someone who is a caretaker of other people so often, it’s easy to forget that other people are there for me, also. And it’s something I am so, so glad is true.

On Sundays, I normally tweet 3 gratitudes that I have from the week. This Sunday, I was so far in the depths I couldn’t see anything I should be grateful for. But today, I can see that in the past week and a half there is only one thing I need to give thanks for right now many times over, so that is what I’m doing. The people who love me, and the family I’ve created. I am so very, very grateful for each of you. I am amazed by each of you. I am thankful for you, and I appreciate you.

(If you are someone I know reading this, and want to know what happened, it is in a protected entry here. Email me for the password. I don’t mind anyone I know knowing, I just don’t want to put it on a totally public forum)

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oh, hell, yes. It’s a good day y’all.

Now my gf likes cowboys. As in REALLY likes cowboys. Which, let’s be honest, who can blame her.

Seriously girls…who can blame her?

Real cowboys tend to fill out a pair of jeans better than most men, and the culture is overall polite to women. Ahhh…chivalry. I’ll always be a fan. So she spots someone across the bar. Nice. Go get him. He and his friend come over, and start talking. They’re from Illinois, in for work for a couple of weeks, etc. The friend seems nice enough, and I wingman him away so the two of them can talk.
Now, here’s the thing. At the moment, I’m kind of the perfect wingman. Because I’m dating someone, I don’t (overall) care what the friend is like, but I can be charming enough to give the two of them some time. So we hit the dance floor, make some small talk, and then….THEN….
I ask how the Cowboy Palace compares to the places he goes back home.
“You know, it’s a little glitzy…but I like places like this because there aren’t any N****RS here”

CUE record scratch. WHAT?

horrifying!

Back the fuck up, buddy. Let’s start here. As midwestern as I look – I’m not white. Add on the fact that a good percentage of my cousins are filipino, and I grew up in a nearly completely hispanic community, and you are talking to the wrong girl about this. Not that ANY of that should matter. It should never have been thought or said no matter what.

Let’s just say the conversation devolved from there for the next few sentences, until I had to say – step the fuck away from me, unless you want to get punched in the mouth.

I tried to NOT do this.

You see, the entire article was about the idea of being busy. (Read the article here), and how as a society, we have filled our days rather than cleared them. I looked at my schedule. Although I had just finished delivery on a film, my next week was already packed, morning to night, with meetings, calls, and blocks of time carved out to read, do notes, etc. And I thought, is this the way I want to live? After all, in working for myself, isn’t one of the choices I have about my lifestyle? Or at least, shouldn’t that be a choice?

The next evening I went over to a girlfriend’s house for dinner. As her (gorgeous) one year old ran around like the adorable maniac that she is, we sipped wine and talked about how her life had changed. The past month for her had been that kind of busy. The non-stop, constantly obligated kind of busy that my life often is daily. And I could tell how worn out she was by it. All I could think is “is that how worn out I am constantly?”

A year ago I gave up caffeine. I LOVED caffeine. We’re talking double espresso followed by a pot of coffee throughout the day kind of love. I drank it morning until night. And when I stopped, it sucked. Headaches, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t get up, grouchy…the whole nine yards. But then, a couple weeks later, I woke up one day feeling so much better. I didn’t need to have a cup to start the day. I didn’t need a pick me up at 2pm. My body had righted itself with the natural way it was supposed to be.

And I think that’s where I am with busy. I have been busy for so long, that my body doesn’t know what to do without it. So as I try to cut out, and cut back, it rebels. My brain tells me I should be working when I pull out a (for fun) book at 9pm, and go out to the patio to read. I get antsy when I look at my calendar and I haven’t filled it 2 or 3 weeks out.

But at the same time, I can feel myself start…just barely start…to be more engaged with the things I am doing.

So, I’m not promising I’m going to be able to do this, but I’m giving it a try. Less busy.

The concept is this: in this industry, the most important thing is finding a group of people that you can work with. But how do you find those people until you work with them? So, in this competition, each of the filmmakers are randomly assigned to partners, and have to collaborate to make a film in a week. There’s a little more about the technical way it works in this piece on Yahoo Movies

This was the first year we had run it, and every step of the way was slightly terrifying. Would people sign up? Would they actually get films done? Would the (slightly complicated) rules work? Would anyone show up at the screening? Would the films suck?

But at each step, I was happily surprised. When we got the loglines in (each filmmaker submitted 5 loglines based on the assigned subject, and we then selected which one was the film they would make) I read almost 200 loglines, and had my faith in creativity restored. Then we assigned the filmmakers partners. Watched as people were generous with their talents and resources. Created something out of nothing.

Last night we screened the top films to a packed house at Harmony Gold (not a small theater!) I watched as the audience was amazed by the accomplishments of these filmmakers. I reveled in the fact, despite being given only a week to make the films, many of them were better than most shorts you see at festivals. I will admit, as the final closing credits came up, I cried a little. (but not much. I had to go up on stage and speak after that ) And being able to hand out $8000 to a couple of struggling, but talented, filmmakers to recognize their work made my heart melt.

So, all in all, the festival was a success. A rousing, fun, and ultimately productive success.

and now…back to the edit bay.

thank you to everyone who made yesterday and the whole weekend unforgettable. Spending the mornings at the beach, the days in an edit bay completing a film, and the nights surrounded with friends and family combined to make the past three days since I’ve been back in town an extended birthday celebration in which the end result is a million smiles and a tummy ache from all the laughter. I am an amazingly lucky girl.

Do you have any idea how incredible my friends are? Heather is taking over the world of law, and Danny's business is so busy he doesn't know how to get through it!

I look around at the people I’m surrounded by, and they are some of the most intelligent, creative, kind people in the world. All I wanted for my birthday was to be wrapped up in love from all of them, and that’s exactly what I got. Bliss.

The best. Pure happiness.