Today is the first day that we get to share the heart of our project with you. Countless hours of hard work, thought, passion, and dedicated effort have come together to make this story and it’s telling possible. Every day we get to do this is a testament to a basic belief – that passion and a dream can change the world.  We have a simple goal: to tell a story about how living your dreams everyday is possible with friendship, hard work, and the unwillingness to ever accept defeat.  Through each episode we hope we can bring you along to see how far that tenet will take us.

I cannot express how grateful I am that we get to do this, a once in a lifetime project helped every step of the way by the support of family,  friends,  and the most dedicated, intelligent and passionate team I have ever seen in my life.  They have taken a daring dream and turned it into the story you see here.

Rob, Dan, Matt, Jed, Bryan, Kevin -  after all the long talks, planning, emails, spreadsheets, calls , saving, starving, brewing, folding, serving, selling, filming, editing, working,  and dreaming – we finally did it. We made it happen, and no matter what comes next it’s going to be amazing.

The guys just prior to departure.

Today is a very big day in this start-up’s history. The first episode of our show is now available on our front video page, and I couldn’t be prouder. We spent many long days and sleepless nights pulling this together, and to see that work finally materialize into a product is a feeling I could never adequately describe.

Episode 1 establishes the cast of the show and solidifies a few of our core principals: friendship, responsibility, and empowerment. You see our house, me moving out with Sonya, and the relief of leaving the place behind. You see the excitement and obviuos anxiety during our long trip. More than all of these though, I hope we communicate just why we are doing this.

It’s always nerve-racking to see yourself on film. I look painfully tired as I explain that Sonya is leaving; my posture is terrible in the interviews; I should have worn a nicer shirt. It’s easy to be too self-critical. I have noticed, nonetheless, that after 20 hours of filming a week, you stop carefully controlling your appearance. Looking at this episode, I can’t help but think of how many times I appear on camera immediately after waking up, or in any of a number of embarrassing states of dress. Jed is one powerful man.

I hope you all enjoy this episode, and we look forward to bringing you more. As always, please leave comments.

Every great journey begins with the shortest of steps. Not every great journey begins at SEA/TAC though.

The adventure begins.

Becoming a remote editor for a film production company presents several unique challenges for me.  Among them is that I have never worked as an editor.  So starting off doing it [i]remotely[/i] is kind of a kick.  It means a lot of emails.  A looooooot of emails.   To Vietnam.

That gets kind of tricky when [i]there is no internet in the entire fucking world[/i].  It would have been enough to have moved into my new place and found that the previous tenant had simply decided not to cancel his DSL service, thus leaving the house phone line tied up under the account of a man not currently residing in the same zip code.  No, the internet [i]itself[/i] has had to turn a cold shoulder to me.

MalcomOSX

That’s a photo of MalcolmOSX (my laptop; yes, that is an awesome pun, thanks) atop a table in an [i]internet cafe[/i] which has inexplicably lost its internet service.  I would have been more surprised had every single other public wifi network not suffered the same fate this week.  Clearly the fiber backbone itself is crumbling.

Me?  I blame those damned bit torrenters.  The result?  You get a whole bunch of backdated posts

Buzz, excitement, anticipation, adventure – such words have been the cornerstones of our vocabulary.

But one feeling that has crept slowly this final week – seeming to leak in between the tiny cracks in my crammed schedule – has been disorientation.  It is a curious mix of confusion (is everything going to change?), sadness (the departure of the familiar), even doubt (am I ready for this?).

I am still reeling from uprooting myself from the Bay Area and a network of friends 6 years in the making, from California and my family, from a 2-year stint with my first and only post-college employer.  Seattle simply never became “home” – 2 mere months in the haze of double jobs and a jarring low-budget lifestyle.

It all reminds me of the slow ascent up a roller coaster: excited chatter with the friends beside you, heart racing with anticipation, the slow metallic clicking as your feet leave the platform to hang in that intermediary space between the stable ground and the screaming ride.

So it is with a mix of emotions that I approach the end of that ascent.  In less than 6 hours, we will step down off the plane and start that descent.

Today saw an important completion.  Today is the first day that we have been a complete team.  Today was a day for for hellos and the first crazy steps of friendships.  Today was a day for sushi. Today was a day for tall Japanese beers. For Chinese bars.  For friendly birthday pimps. For vodka and tonic. Sea monsters. Burlesque. Subway. Breaking and entering.

Today was just the start.

For the last few days, we have been sitting and working in a chain coffee shop in Wallingford in Seattle. A few round tables and the bustling street in front of us substitute for a home, an office, and a place where we can enjoy our numbered quiet and restful hours.

Twelve to be exact.

Twelve hours until we’re sitting at SeaTac airport, taking our last, air-conditioned breaths of American oxygen, followed by 25 hours of transit over the Pacific Ocean. This is it. This is how it starts.