Cementum

This is going to be a big round-up post of what 2009 was, and what 2010 will be in terms of my personal life, my professional life, my creative life, my project based life, my novel writing and everything in between.

This post might seem a little involved, but it’s just me congealing things and solidifying a few ideas I’ve had in my head and on paper for a while.

2009:

Just over a year ago I posted what I wanted to achieve in 2009 and with my future in general, it was a gigantic list of bullet points that listed everything from novel writing to art, sculpture and life. A lot of it has gone undiscovered thus far, for example, learning the basics of architecture and designing my own house and have it ready for construction, I even find a roofing company called The Roof Clinic which was perfect for installing the roofs. However, I did achieve a lot of what was on the list in the last 12 months, and I plan on doing a lot more. Here’s 2009 in a nutshell.

• I applied for and successfully received a English Arts Council grant to the amount of £5,000

• I revised and edited away at my first novel, Concrete Operational, to the point where I felt happy I was ready to independently publish it

• I created the collaborative media project, Operation Concrete, in which I brought together five bands and five artists around five themes of the novel to produce an album of original music and an art book of original art coupled to extracts from the novel exploring human emotions including; Love, jealousy, madness, anger, desire

• I created a bespoke, handmade made package called The Collection, that includes the novel, art book and album together, in a limited number of 200

• I created a short film based around a monologue from the novel, with the amazing E T Cook at the camera and editing helm

• I held a launch night for the novel, art book and album, and short film at which the bands played, the film was shown, readings from the book were read and a seven day exhibition of art was kicked off

• I have now set up, and with this post will be officially recognising for the first time, my second entrepreneurial venture, Rawstone Media Industries, a micro-independent-publishing-house.

• I lived my first full year in the Big Smoke, London, working as a social media strategist and digital creative which has been an awesome third year in this industry

• I advised on, consulted with, talked to, built and initiated digital and social creative engagement for companies ranging from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe through to Universal Studios.

So, all in all, it was an extremely busy and successful year, other notes of awesomeness include hitting the two year mark with my amazing girlfriend, city hopping a little and hitting Madrid, Berlin, Marrakech and Edinburgh, hitting the ripe old age of 26 and no longer being able to apply for a young person’s rail card, and meeting all the amazing new people that I have met over the last 12 months.

2010:

I’ve still got the big list of challenges and goals that I want to achieve over the coming years, but they will remain where they are at the moment whilst I congeal the foreground and concentrate on a few new things over the coming 12 months.

• I am going to officially launch Rawstone Media Industries with a huge promotional push for the business, the first project, Operation Concrete, and the second project for the business and myself.

• I am aiming to do at least two projects this year, that currently seems like an absolutely massive goal, but we’ll see how the year goes

• First project of 2010? Loosely titled: ‘A reason to live’ is going to be about the exploration of the human condition and the reason people struggle to survive against the terror of reality, based around my second novel ‘Tastes Like Copper’

• I aim to bring together artists, musicians, photographers, cinematographers, animators, graphic novelists, and anyone else I can convince to join in around the general theme of, ‘Reasons to live’ such as; joy, revenge, beauty, family, sex, etc

• I am starting a new job as senior editor at the collaborative media agency Ditto, they are: “A UK based collective of multimedia artists and producers. With our online communities we are global in reach and work and collaborate with international artists entertaining audiences around the world.”

• My first project for Ditto is currently under NDA, but it is for one of the worlds biggest media companies and global in reach, split between New York, London and Tokyo. I’ve got an amazing opportunity here and I’m going to put absolutely everything I have into it.

Possible third and fourth possible projects involve:

• Champ the Bean Dragon – A series of children’s books about a dragon that breathes beans instead of fire and his adventures with various companions. Collaborating with musicians, artists and animators to bring together an immersive experience for adults and children alike

• CartoonCore – A series of 80’s styled cartoon introductions. Collaborating with animators, cinematographers and musicians to produce a series of 60-90 second long cartoon introductions in the truly awesome style of 80’s and early 90’s cartoons such as Transformers, Thundercats and Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors.

Other smaller things I aim to pick up this year:

• Photography – Put my SRL to better use and get out and get to the places I want to photograph around London and elsewhere and possibly do a few small projects

• Short Stories – Try to get out a few short sci-fi stories based around the ideas I’ve been noting down for ages now

• More online content – I’m drawing up a weekly schedule that I’m going to stick to for as long as I can of blog posts for here, for Rawstone Media, online video, and all the other gubbins like Twitter, Digg, Facebook, etc, etc, etc.

Anyway, this post is getting a little out of control now, so I’m going to stop. 2010 is going to be a great start to what I predict to be an intense and exhilarating next decade, wonder where I’ll be in 2020? I can’t wait to find out!

See you on the other side.