Happy New Year!

The rare second newsletter in one week! I have some awesome news that I just couldn’t wait until next week to share. But first, I just wanted to take a moment to say something to everyone.

2021 and beyond

I know that 2021 was likely not much better than 2020 for many of us. I had a conversation with a friend, and while it made me chuckle in the moment (it was on a podcast after all), there is something quite serious about the statement. 2020 proved to be one of the hardest years in many of our lives, no matter your age. From a global scale, the only thing that rivals 2020 is 2001. I think the difference there is that 2020 was hard for most of the year (and, let’s be honest, has bled into 2021) while 2001 was fine until 9/11. I don’t want to compare the two, they are completely different things; my point was to point out that as a 37-year-old, there have now only been two major global events that have made lives hard. On a personal level, 2016 was pretty shitty and may even be worse than 2020/2021.

Back to my point—2020 was not just a pandemic. The murder of George Floyd brought racism and police brutality to a major (and needed) ..focal point. Right-wing fascism was at its height. Time Magazine named 2020 one of “the worst years to be alive” in modern history. It’s OK if you weren’t as productive as you wanted to be. Heck, the same for 2021. If all you could do in 2020 and 2021 was survive and take care of your family, then you did exactly what you should have been doing. If you were able to get any work done on various projects? Good! That’s a bonus. It’s like I told my kids when they were fully virtual last year: “You’ve been asked to do something that no one you know has ever been asked to do before”.

Bottom line… if you had accomplishments and successes in 2021, celebrate them. But remember, we’re heading into year 3 of a pandemic. Don’t compare yourselves. If all you did was hold it together and survive, you still had an amazing year. I’m in awe of your resilience. It was, and more importantly, you are enough. As we head in 2022 (the aforementioned year 3 of a pandemic), remember that. I’m saying this as much for me as I am for anyone reading this… I’ve stacked some projects for 2022 that didn’t exist for the last two years. I’ve got a big hill and any progress I make is positive. Stay strong.

What couldn’t wait?

THE LOGO IS (nearly) DONE. Mike and I have been using Francois for logo work for the better part of a decade. While I personally have only worked with him a few times, he’s good. There’s a reason Mike uses him frequently. I knew instantly that I wanted Francois to be the one to work on Starbird Media’s logo. I say nearly done, because he’s preparing the complete logo package to send my way, but I’ve gotten the samples and…

I don’t know what I was expecting, but Francois blew all my expectations away. I’m not ready to share the whole thing with you, but I’ll end the year with a nice tease!

I gave Francois very few instructions and he nailed every single one of them but went way beyond them too. I’m sure you can kind of guess what that tease may be part of, but just wait until you see the final product.

While this tease shows most of the text portion of our logo, I assure you that when you see the full thing, it’ll make this look like kid’s work. And that’s not a slam on Francois’s work here, I just hid most of the logo.

And that’s a wrap

While I likely will be taking the rest of the year off with Starbird Media-related things, I do have some articles I’m prepping for Bam Smack Pow and That’s Entertainment. I’m not sure how many things, if any, will post before the New Year, but keep your eyes peeled on that stuff—your support of my written work means just as much to me as the support of my Starbird Media projects.

Have a very Happy (and safe) New Year! I’ll catch you in 2022!