Whoopsie, another year has passed
...and it seems like a different life now.
Next week - on March 20th - we celebrate the Persian New Year. This time of the year is always like a second fresh start for me. It's my birthday shortly after so I can always look forward to that too. Days are getting longer and it gets warmer too. Springtime is really the best time and I can't wait to see what's to come in the next few months.
However, before we get excited for the future, now, when the Persian year of 1402 is coming to an end, I can't help but to look back on what I have achieved in the past year. First off, I started my first full-time job in my (second) dream industry. It is quite apparent if you have ever met me that movies are basically all my life evolves around but gaming has also always been on the top of all my dream boards (am I quoting Pitch Perfect 2 here? maybe). It's now been almost a year working at Microbird Games and developing "Dungeons of Hinterberg" and with the release approaching rapidly I can't help but to think what happens after that. It has definitely been an absolute pleasure so far to work on this incredible game, that even after playing it 8 hours a day I am still not tired of and just get more excited about sharing it with the world every day.
In my weekly obsession from CW17 2023 I talked about Killing Eve. Well. When I say that obsession has truly shaped my life for the past year, it may or may not be an exaggeration. The Killing Eve obsession made me go through Jodie Comer's entire filmography. What a treat. What an incredible actress. I could spend weeks just talking about her work. Anyhow, coincidently - I would say it was the universe - Jodie Comer was doing "Prima Facie" on Broadway during this time... *sparkly flashback music*
It was Friday 3am after a long day spent with my family. I was contemplating a re-watch of Killing Eve and checking how much it would cost me to spontaneously fly out to New York City and if I would have the guts to do that on my own. I had spent the days before thinking about how crazy it would be to fly out and go see her on Broadway. After all, it would be the last time anyone could ever see her perform that masterpiece of a play. Anyways, long story short: three weeks later I was on a plane to New York City, crossing the Atlantic all by myself and about to spend 5 days in NYC. And what an amazing experience it was, but I will leave that for another blog entry.
Summer continued. I spent a super chill week with my closest friends somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Soon enough details about Jodie Comer's next movies would be released. The End We Start From and The Bikeriders. Ultimately, The Bikeriders was moved back for a release in June 2024 but after going to New York there was really nothing that could stop me from doing fun, spontaneous stuff again - and so I did. In October I made my way to London for the London Film Festival, where The End We Start From was playing. All the crew was there for the European Premiere - except for the actors of course because of the actors' strike - and it was just amazing to see this beautiful movie at the Royal Festival Hall. My hopes however never died, that Jodie Comer would be there too, because she was an EP on that film as well. In the end however I got to meet and talk to the director Mahalia Belo and got my book signed by her, the author Megan Hunter and one of the producers Leah Clarke, which was awesome.
In the meanwhile I had agreed to fly out to Instanbul for DevConnect and volunteer for one of my best friends who was organizing several events there. While in London I met one of the other volunteers who I was going to be working with. To say she is one of the loveliest, most hard-working people I have ever met, would be an understatement. Getting to know her and the other volunteers (who I mostly knew already) and working together at these events awakened a certain spirit in me. Working at events is always a pleasure: getting to set up everything, run the entire thing, tearing it down and being part of every step is really one of my favorite things to do. On top of that, Türkiye was the 30th country I have visited in my life and even though the weather really didn't like us those days and I did get hit with horrible COVID, taking a week off from work to help out my friend and see a beautiful and fascinating city was one of the highlights of the past year.
Being the unreliable narrator, that Harley Quinn taught me to be: In summer I also FINALLY started/continued writing my first serious feature script. I had started writing several screenplays over the past 7 years but had never made it this far. It was mostly my trip to New York that inspired me to write my story but also it felt like I finally had a full story in my head worth telling. In one night I wrote a few pages and was up until 3am - where I famously get my best ideas. It would be another months until I would continue writing and in the months after I would be writing one page here and there and currently ladies and gentlemen and everything in between: We are at 49 pages, which I am really proud of and I can't wait to see how the script evolves.
Really, these are just a few of the things I think of when looking back on my 1402. There was so much more that made this year an incredible one. Not just major things like traveling and huge achievements but also the little things like managing to get a routine into my life that I only had before the pandemic. Just doing things, meeting people and broadening my horizon in so many different ways <3