It’s the end of the world as we know it . . . and I feel fine. Kinda. Here's why.
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

Let's just keep this in mind for the next few days. Wake up, people.
The events of last week (shootings on both coasts, wars and rumors of wars, missiles being launched into space) have me down. And I guess I should be, since the Mayans tell us that the world is ending in a few days.
But I’m going to try and give you a silver lining, with the things that have made me stand up and take notice this past year.
TOP FIVE “WOW” MOMENTS OF 2012
Number One: Obama.
I will freely admit that I did not vote for Obama the first time around. I still believe that both major political parties are so beholden to big money that there is no way either party -- Democratic or Republican -- can properly represent the people who elected them. So I'm not that happy with either party.
But this time, the stakes were a little higher. And the right person won the election. (I know: my opinion, but this is my blog post. You write your own if you disagree.)
Surprising. It kinda renewed my faith in the American people. A little bit.
Number Two: Curiosity.
If you ever need reassurance that the human spirit can overcome just about anything, you should go two places: the slums, or offworld. In the slums, you have people like Mother Teresa doing incredible work; as soon as you leave our planet, you have people like Bobak Ferdowsi (mohawk guy) and John Grotzinger (Curiosity's project scientist) doing incredible things too. These people are scooping dirt and analyzing it on another planet! How much cooler can you get?
You may ask: why put Mother Teresa and a couple of JPL scientists in the same sentence? Because, like a true Trekkie, I believe that science is, in the future, going to be able to solve many of the socio-economic problems that plague our world today. (Obviously, that only will be true if we allow society to progress from where it is now.)
Number Three: self-discovery.
I am an artist. It has taken a long time to get there, but I have no reason to step away from it. I love art. I love creation. (I love getting paid to play music!) I love collaboration with other creators. If I had more money, I would employ more creators to collaborate with me. For now, I pay a few, and I work with a bunch for free, and we'll figure out the finances as we go. I still have a day job, and that provides me some money.
Number Four: family and friends and faith.
This has been one of the hardest years ever for my family, and yet here we are, still ticking, still plodding forward, still -- all of us in our own ways -- creating. Yes, I have a family of creators/artists, and that can be crazy-making sometimes, but my family is awesome. And my friends have helped keep me sane this year. Beers and friends after work have become more frequent, and that's a good thing. Finally, I have kinda “come back into the fold” -- or, I'm on a faith journey that I walked away from ten years ago -- and I'm cautious, but optimistic.
Number Five: the fullness of life.
Since I began this post with a quote from a 1990 movie (Joe vs. the Volcano), I'll finish it with a quote from a 1991 flick entitled Grand Canyon. Mary McDonnell's character is trying to make sense of her life, and she turns to her husband and says "Everything seems so close together…All the good and bad things in the world. Everything. I feel it in myself, even. And in us." And that's me. This world is so screwed up -- once a day I expect that someone is going to push a red button in some secret bunker somewhere and we'll all be dead; but every day, I also look up and see an incredible sunset, or have an awesome talk with a friend, or sit and play Boggle with my daughter, or sing an incredible song with my band, or watch some project that I work on do some amount of good in the world, or...
And that's it. The good and the bad are all mixed together. You can't separate it. You can't just have a perfect life. 'Cuz if you had a perfect life, you would never know how perfect it was, 'cuz you would have never seen the other side.
So go and live your life. Live it to the fullest. And enjoy the new year.
LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a rock-and-roll tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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