Well as this is my first blog, and I've never been top of the class in creative writting courses, I'll just start with a basics by introducing myself. My name, is Jimmy Xander. I go to small private art school of less than 100 students. I'm 17 and still a junior -_- yeah...that story will come later. Moving on, I entered this school as a musician, however the school had no music program. My intentions where to bring music to this generaly visual arts school. I can post the story later if anyone is interested. Skipping to the end though, I failed, but I found a new calling, well two actually. I found that I had a passion for design and a passion for downloading and testing every piece of software I could get my hands on. Eventually I learned how to get myself photoshop, and was taught the general basics by my now Advisor/Mentor/Big Sister, Melissa St.Laurent (who will from now on be refered to as Mel.) Mel not only got me started in photoshop, but also helped me discovered flash, and to her own admission, through self teachings and a massive amount of text and video tutorials, I became more comfortable in flash than her. That is to say, I would begin giveing her tips, and she would begin refering her students to me for more complex questions. I loved this, It gave me a purpose and a feeling of belonging. Soon after, my skills had grown rapidly, and I was asked to join the yearbook commitee, and within a few weeks I had made assistant editor. However, from here on that is the height of my achievements. As I began to become more and more self obsorbed, putting priority more on my obsession with new software and less on school work and further improving my skills as a designer. This continued through to the summer. (2006) In my obsessive quest to find all the greatest software and software developers I stumbled across an interesting program called SecondLife. For me this was life changing, and I dived in head first. I was spending around 16 hours a day learning to design, build and script inside this virtual world. I completely shut myself out from the real world, SecondLife was all that existed. Until, sometime in July when it was time to go to summer camp. A camp that I was invited to by Mel, who is also a counciler there. Now this camp is known as MTC (Maine Teen Camp) And this was the turning point of my life, and I intend on writing an intensivley detailed blog about it in the future. But again, jumping ahead I came back to home with a whole new perspective on life. However, I had agian been seperated from the outside world. I came back to find that my fiance of two years had been sleeping around behind my back. This was a huge blow for me, emotionaly, but it launched me into this year of intense creativety and exploration. As school started again, I was back in yearbook, and back to improving my photoshop skills and my flash skills. Then I met "her" and I will refer to her as FemalA because I don't want to say her name. Well, I feel in love with FemaleA, and for about 2 months everything was great. Then, she dumped me, when we had an argument at the mall, which ended in a fist fight between me and two of her male friends. I was arrested, banned from the property. After I got over the heart break, I dove headfirst back into design. I began designing for Matt Brewer, host of the Mac Fanatic Podcast. Matt and I became friends and through Matt I was able to keep up with my obsession with software aswell as keep my focus on school. Also gave me time to really get to know a very interesting friend I met at camp, Lauren. Lauren is a photographer, and a good one, and for her birthday I got her Adobe's Lightroom. However , something unexpected happened, I fell in love with the software. So in love that it inspired me to do photography. The application was like that first breath you take after almost drowning. I needed it, I wanted it and I finally had it. I imediatly began taking out the schools camera every chance I got, I started shooting everywhere I went. On the city bus, at the station, around the city in the school, everywhere I had the camera. I then began shooting every School One event I could get myself to. I become the lead photographer of the yearbook. I was so proud. The yearbook had become like a child to me. The majority of the photographs where taken by me, and the rest where hand picked by me. Everything was going perfect. Then school ended, fast...too fast. I was soo caught up in myself I didn't even see it comming. I immediatly shut down. I spent the entire summer back on secondlife. 3 months on my bed, 16 hour days. I completely droped off the social grid as it where. No phone, no myspace, no email, no instant messenging. Then suddenly, I was thrust back into school, and no one had heard from me since prom. Which I had done the photography at. However when I returned to school. The 400 pictures I had taken for the yearbook of prom, where gone. Due to my niglect, they had seemed to disapear. I had really screwed up. Then on top of this I just found out that FemaleA was 8 months pregnant. So here I am starting school again for my junior year, trying to get myself back in the swing of things, survive the lonelyness of being the only teenage geek in the school, while dealing with real life issues of a coming child, finding a job, turning 18 and begining my own life. To be continued...
By the way, that picture at the top of the page, thats not me. Thats Julian D. an actor and a very good friend of mine. Its just a photograph I took that I really like.
