It's been a funny old week, this week. It has certainly felt like the end of an era.
First I said goodbye to an old family pet. This was expected. Sylvie was old and the last time I saw him, he was almost blind and could barely hold himself up. We all agreed that putting him down was for the best and the kindest thing for him. I'm just glad I got to have a cuddle with him when I went home for Christmas. Sylvie was a huge part of my childhood and it won't feel right going home and not seeing him there.
Then a few days later, something totally unexpected happened. Some of my friends know how much I love Rooster Teeth. I've been watching Red Vs Blue since I was at uni. I also really like Monty Oum, having first seen his work 'Dead Fantasy', again, while I was surfing the net during my procrastination periods at uni. I watched it, spellbound, and thought 'the guy who made this was an absolute genius! How does a guy working on his own, posting videos on social media have the time, the resources, the sheer imagination to make this?' So when I learned he had started working at Rooster Teeth, I was really excited. Monty made Red Vs Blue into something absolutely astounding and when RWBY started, I was just as excited and it also became part of my weekly viewing habits. Every RT podcast seemed to feature a story about him and often we'd see the man himself offering a bit of dry wit and bad-ass martial arts and dance skills! His tweets were part lol, part sagely wisdom. But what I admired about him the most was his determination to enjoy his work; anyone who has seen his work knows that he loved it. He was just one of those things you expect will go on forever, so it was a shock to learn that he died this week.
Even though I've heard all about his strange quirks over the years, it's only now that I'm beginning to realise what an extraordinary life he led. He was always busy doing something and when he wasn't, he was thinking about what he was going to do next. He never wasted a single second. And for a man that brilliant to die so young is just tragic, but he achieved so much in such a short time. It's made me wonder.... What the hell am I doing with my life?
I'm living my dream: I'm in the country I've been dying to go to for years, and yet my Japanese is barely passable, my writing has fallen behind, my blogs have been neglected and my love life is at the very back of the closet being devoured by moths!
So I'm making a promise right here, to not waste another second. I will work every second so that one day I might reach my goal: to make a living doing what I love, to push the limits, to put passion into everything that I do. I WILL become the person that I want to be.
"There is no futility even in death." - Monty Oum
