TAKE 2

WELL, that was a bumpy ride. Yesterday's events and the days leading up to them... one for the books. What was supposed to be a smooth-sailing, Saturday premiere of TTBD's FIRST EVER VLOG was quite an #adventure with twists and turns, even thunder and blinking lights throughout my apartment. If you haven't seen the story coverage on our Instagram account @thoughtfuldozen, pause and give that a look. They are captured in the "VLOG" highlight on the account's main page. Let me also clarify that the following narrative sharing all of the events is not my attempt to justify the late premiere or shower you with excuses. This is a behind the scenes look at my life and the lack of preparation that capped off my 3 months long, first vlogging adventure.l#adventure with twists and turns, even thunder and blinking lights throughout my apartment. If you haven't seen the story coverage on our Instagram account @thoughtfuldozen, pause and give that a look. They are captured in the "VLOG" highlight on the account's main page. Let me also clarify that the following narrative sharing all of the events is not my attempt to justify the late premiere or shower you with excuses. This is a behind the scenes look at my life and the lack of preparation that capped off my 3 months long, first vlogging adventure.l

If one person aspiring to use YouTube as their platform witnessed yesterday's events and realized, "Wow! There's a lot more that goes into this than I thought. I need to account for all of these things so I don't find myself in Alex's shoes," then all of the madness would've been worth it. It was a real struggle, beginning with Thursday night. I held off purchasing the soundtrack to my vlogs until the very last second. I thought it over for weeks, bouncing between a list of over 40 tracks, then narrowing it down to 5 then finding the one I'd eventually purchase and questioning whether or not "it will invoke the feelings, enthusiasm, and good energy in viewers I'm looking for..." This final detail had me in knots. I wanted a track that is timeless/classic and would stick with me for at least the first year of my vlogs. I wanted people to hear a snippet of the track and say, "That's a #TTBDVlog. I know that unmistakable sound anywhere." I know, LOL, maybe I was overthinking things, but I finally made the purchase after a late shift at work and began toying around with volume controls and audio buttons I'd never pressed. THANK GOoDness for tutorials. I know the audio still needs some help, but without the tutorials, the audio from the embedded track would make everyone's ears fall off! Seriously, every break between my voice and the track was like listening to that one loud uncle that misplaced his hearing aid and has no concept of an "inside voice."

Friday's are my early days at work, so a late night before feels like a ton of bricks the next day. The sun was shining and the weather was decent; I'd venture even to say it was a lovely day. I worked until 3 pm, then joined my coworkers for a routine celebration and team building activity at the new MS Civil Rights Museum (if you're local and haven' visited yet, make it happen! It's an experience everyone will appreciate) followed by food galore at a Sports Bar. *Disclaimer: I don't drink alcohol. *Reason: I hate the smell of it, but I don't mind being around drinkers; people usually love having me around because I'm a guaranteed, designated driver LOL I hung out at this bar loading up on free food and laughing and singing and chair dancing and cheering on my coworkers as they did the same.

In all of my years working with this company, I've never worked over the weekend. This is due by in large to the fact that everyone agrees, especially my supervisor, that I have a sucky enough schedule during the week and there isn't much need for me to be in the office over the weekend when the likelihood of visitors is second to none. BUT, somehow my supervisor got me to agree to work THIS Saturday. Not even considering my promise to all of you in the #TTBDCommunity, I accepted her invitation to get 6 hrs of overtime pay and knock out one of our major goals (a HUGE metric used in determining our department's success). I got home that night with a BOOMING headache after listening to the loud music and eating crap tons of quesadillas, wings, nachos, egg rolls, and mozzarella sticks (not quite a nagging migraine), drank a concoction of water, beet powder, spiraling powder, cacao powder, MCT, and ashwagandha powder, and took some vitamins and fell fast asleep without setting my 2 hrs alarm as planned. I woke in a slight panic at 2 am, realizing I had only a few hours to render, export, and upload my media. Enter SuperMane (LOL, shout out to all of my Memphians!!!), my handsome Clark Kent of a boyfriend who got up and helped in the final stretch and even kept an eye on things as I worked that day.

Everything was looking good and on target when I got home ~4 pm. The export looked successful and the video was uploading smoothly, but slowly to YouTube. After switching to our home's wifi, instead of the standard Xfinity connection in our neighborhood, things really started to look even more promising! The estimated loading time jumped from 1 hour and 40 minutes to roughly 20 minutes almost immediately. I was turnt up to DAMAX! on a natural high out of this world only to settle back into reality when I got warning messaged that the video was rejected due to the fact that 1) I did not verify my YouTube account and 2) my video exceeded 15 minutes; both things I would HAVE LOVED TO KNOW FROM THE JUMP... But alas, I verified my account and tried a few more workarounds (to no immediate avail). It's past the 5 pm adjusted, premiere I promised you all and now there is a torrential downpour outside, complete with cracking thunder and a mess of lightning outside my office window. We let up our windows in the evening and in our absent-mindedness, neither of us closed the bedroom window and the carpet got soaked. It was at this point that I actually (some would say, FINALLY) panicked. I HATE wet, moldy, mildewy carpet and equally hate wet floors in general. I had a whole "moment" when my socks got wet and my feet got cold.

Back in the office I was slicing and dicing and karate chopping my video into two, sensible-ish halves. Not totally pleased with the split, but anxious to deliver the long-awaited footage, I began to render/export the first half. Thanks to the thunderstorm, our lights blinked 3 times and each time, I legit gasped the FATTEST gulp of air I've taken since my days of outrunning dogs that broke loose on my neighborhood walks to elementary with my older brother. My visiting family (who amazingly cooked a FANTABULOUS meal, which I ate after the madness) can attest to the fact that I had a full-on Sanford & Sons moment the first time it happened; I grabbed my chest and ran to the office to make sure my computer was fine. It looked as though the video processing hadn't missed a beat, but... I'd later learn otherwise.

Eventually, I was able to upload the video to YouTube and without even looking at the video (because I was hosting family and the food was done and I was hungry... Yeah, I know, I know... again, no excuses) I shared the long-awaited update that the blog & vlog were live. Those who are subscribed to the site already knew immediately. THANK YOU FOR SUBSCRIBING!

I woke up at the crack of dawn and watched the first few minutes of the video and realized, "OH SH*%! Something went wrong during the export/render process after all..." You'll notice that there are a good, three glitches in the video where my cheerful face is frozen on your screen. It's not your crappy wifi (I'm lookin at you Xfinity) or your subpar LTE (Sprint, I'm gonna need you to do better for $100+ a month, bro), it's just the broken transitions from my logos and images that should've appeared on your screens.

Rather than sitting, steeping in this, I got to work making sure the second half of the video was up to par. Aside from saying "tend to" a million and one times, rolling my eyes dangerously close to getting them stuck in the back of my head as my mom always warned me, and embedding a meditation chant throughout my audio with overuse of "UMMMMMM" throughout the video, I'd say it looks great. Dare I say it, I'm actually, kinda, sorta-ish proud of Uptown with TTBD Pt 2. I feel a sense of renewed purpose after overcoming so many, self-inflicted struggles. I am determined to never repeat these mishaps.

Thanks for reading.

If you haven't seen Uptown with TTBD Pt 1, be sure to do so before watching the second edition of the series.

Now that you know my first (TWO) vlogs' "birth story" LOL, here's a look at the better half: