I have felt the need to separate a bit from the project as I ended up losing a lot because of it. I didn’t want what has happened to deter from the story. I think in a way I used my Final Cut editing software being down or moving around so much as an excuse when in reality I needed to just say I need to take a break.

I will never ever regret leaving to go to Alaska; it has brought me where I am. However, I lost a lot because of it. My relationship ended in great part because I left, it was too difficult on my boyfriend and we have now broken up. It is absolutely heart wrenching that my decision to leave was the catalyst for things to end. I go back and forth daily realizing I needed to go, but wishing I had done things differently or made the trip shorter or lots of things really. I think often times we take things for granted without realizing it. I remember my boyfriend told me that being in a relationship means you can take the other person for granted sometimes. I honestly don’t believe that to be true at all. In fact I think you can never ever take another person for granted ever because that is how you lose someone. I took him for granted. I thought he would be there and everything would be the same. I know that when I left it felt like I broke up with him and in a way I did. It wasn’t intentional or malicious, but I was so engrossed in me that I forgot about us. Now I want to be clear I am in no way placing all the blame on me. It takes two; he told me and many people I knew that he would be able to handle it and I thought he could… I have learned to also start listening better to my heart, but also to those around me whose lives I don’t realize I impact each and every day, my instincts are pretty spot on and I need to listen to myself more.

Now obviously there are a lot more factors here in terms of how and why a relationship ends. There were other factors. There were things that didn’t quite gel for either of us in terms of who were as people and perhaps things would have ended eventually anyway or perhaps not… I will never know. It wasn’t just my boyfriend I lost; I also lost my job, my home, my life, everything. You need to lose big in order to win big they say and hopefully that is truly the case.

I am insanely grateful for the time I spent in Alaska. It has helped redefine who I am and exactly what I want out of life. Kathy is and always will be an inspiration to follow your heart. Her heart led her to a new love, and she is still continuing to dog sled. As for me now it is time to finish. Finish editing, finish this story, finish unpacking a new apartment. It is also time for new beginnings. I have a great new job working for Zoic Studios where I write every day and create video content, and I am meeting new friends. I am also celebrating old friends and my life back here in Los Angeles. I don’t know how long I will stay, but I will cherish every moment I am here and be so eternally grateful to those that have supported me and loved me no matter what!

So the project started with a dedication to my old business partner and will end with a dedication to Sean, my now ex boyfriend. You have inspired me to complete what I started! I love you, and I will never regret the decisions I made.

Episode 12 and 13 will be posted on Monday come hell or high water!

Today is Kathy’s birthday. I want to wish her a fantastic birthday and you should too. Please comment if you want to send Kathy a birthday greeting!

Also in other Kathy news… she is currently still in Willow for the summer. She is still living in the house and most of the dogs are at dog camp. Dog camp is like going to kids camp for the summer where the dogs can play and hang out and also do some training runs. The camp feeds and takes care of the dogs so that Kathy does not have to incur the expense. Again it’s like sending your kids to sleep away camp for the summer=)

In other good news, Kathy has started seeing a very nice gentleman. I am so thrilled for her as she deserves all the happiness in the world! They started dating in May so I hope things continue to go well in Kathy’s dating life!

So the good news is that Episode 12 and 13 have been done and been waiting for upload for WEEKS now. The bad news is my Final Cut Pro is no longer working. So I tried putting things together via IMOVIE and it kept crashing and burning. So until I can get all my discs out of storage, which should be by next week, new video content has to wait. Unless of course some amazing soul has a Final Cut I could use=) Don’t worry I won’t tell if you won’t!

I can’t believe my trip started back in January. It feels like a lifetime ago and I feel like I have an entirely different life since then and well I guess I do. I have a new job opportunity that starts next Wednesday and have been apt hunting here in Los Angeles. Of course like all things, as soon as I get one opportunity another comes up that would have been pretty amazing, but sadly had to turn down.

It’s been an incredibly surreal few days here. I am coming up on 8 years living in Los Angeles and it feels like I am coming to live here for the very first time. Not only have I changed, but the people around me have changed and the city itself is changing. Everyone seems to be leaving Los Angeles with the vacancy rate higher than ever and a lot of people are struggling to find work. Things are definitely NOT the same.

Yesterday as I was driving around a neighborhood at night to see if I would want to live there, a car came down the street and took out my driver’s side mirror. I tried to chase after him, but to no avail. He was too fast and I was still in shock by what happened. I’m fine and so is Fran, but in that instant I had feelings of both anger, fear and instinct to connect to people. I wanted to call my boyfriend, but he was out of town. I thought about calling my best friend, but he no longer lived in Los Angeles. Finally I thought I should call my parents to let them know, but they were on a plane flying back east. In that moment I truly felt like I had 8 years ago upon first moving to Los Angeles. Now I am not going to equate a hit and run accident with moving to a new place, BUT I will say the same feelings when I first came here rushed through me. The need for connecting by calling people I knew so I felt safe, the fear, the shock that I had actually made the move in the first place. The rush of emotions I felt were the same I felt 8 years ago when I first came to Los Angeles.

After I checked the vehicle and made sure Fran was ok another feeling washed over me, gratefulness. Thank goodness I was ok, thank goodness nothing more happened to my vehicle and thank goodness I knew the fastest route home. The truth is things are very different here, but things are also the same. Sometimes it is hard to determine, which is more scary. However, once you push past the fear things are always better than what you thought!

Something that many people reading this blog may not know is I have one dog of my own, a Boston Terrier named Fran. Leaving her behind for three months to document this journey was one of the harder decisions I had to make. Leaving my boyfriend and friends were very difficult, but I have to say leaving Fran truly broke my heart. I fortunately had the kindness of my roommates and boyfriend to take great care of her, all of whom knew her quite well. Hanging out with Kathy’s dogs as well as her lap dog Charm felt like I was betraying Fran. I know I know it sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Here I was hanging out with 28 dogs and poor Fran had to stay back in Los Angeles.

When I came back for a brief visit in February Fran seemed a tad disinterested in me at first, but then after a few minutes warmed back up. Fran is one of the sweetest dogs. Granted every owner thinks they have the best dog because well they do. Fran is sweet, but she is crazy. I am the first to admit it. She has a Napoleon complex, hates small dogs, is very dominant even with big dogs, she licks everything all the time, and she jumps up when meeting people. She has definitely settled down a lot since I first got her, and she could definitely use more skilled training. As her owner I always warn people about her and she is stubborn, but all in all a really good listener when I give her commands.

The story of how I came across Fran is one of my favorite stories to tell. I was looking to adopt a dog and initially had planned on adopting a pug or pug mix breed. I had down a lot of research and knew they would be very loving and playful. I had my heart set on a pug mix, a male I had seen at an adoption, but someone claimed him. So I kept looking. Upon my research I also looked into Boston Terrier breeds. They were more active than pugs and apparently smarter and easily trainable. One day when I was looking at petfinder.com, an online pet adoption site I found a Boston Terrier, not a mix, which was rare to come across. She was at the Baldwin shelter and the moment I saw her I thought this dog is MINE. I called the shelter, they told me to come by, and to remember it’s first come first serve. They closed at 6pm and the earliest I could get off work was a little before 5pm and the shelter, though only about 25-30 miles away was at least an hour away in traffic. I left a little before 5pm, sat in bumper to bumper traffic and got to the shelter at 6:01pm. The shelter was now closed and no amount of pleading helped to let me in to see my new dog.

The next morning I called the shelter and was told that someone had picked up the Boston Terrier I was inquiring about the night before. I was heart broken. There was something about the look of the dog that was perfect and someone else had taken her. So my search continued… or so I thought.

That day I got a call from an organization called Boston Buddies. I had filled out an application a few weeks prior on a whim. They said they received my application and had rescued a Boston Terrier last night from the Baldwin Animal Shelter, a pure bred, and if I would be interested in taking a look. I was shocked. Boston Buddies had my dog! The next day was a Friday and a representative came to my home to make sure it would be suitable. I was asked various questions and after was told I could meet Fran tomorrow, which was Saturday. I met the Boston Buddies rep and Fran at the Community Vet Center in Burbank. The vet tech told me they had found over 100 ticks on her and that she was a bit timid. There was suspicion that she had been beaten because when you went to pet her, she would cower, turn over on her back and almost play dead as a defense. The vet had named her Francesca. The vet tech brought Francesca out to me and that was it; I had found my dog! I filled out some paperwork, the Boston Buddy rep took me to Petco to get her a crate, a harness and collar as well as a tag, some pet food, bowls, toys and treats and let me go. I decided I would call her Fran for short and it seemed to suit her better. This was October 2005 and have loved her since.

In the almost five years I have had Fran she has been with me through two moves, travels cross the country twice, she has seen her fair share of bee stings and subsequent cortisone shots. She got into one scuffle with another dog when she got loose during a party and the first week I got her I thought I lost her when I had accidentally left the front door to my apartment open and she was nowhere to be found. I went all around the building and then down the street, called her name and off she ran towards me! I grabbed her, hugged her and made her promise she would never do that again. She never did. Anytime I call for her she comes no matter where she is. If she is in the backyard playing in the dirt, if she is rummaging through the trash or if she tries to go into the neighbors yard, she always comes running to me when I call her name.

The last few days I have been here in Las Vegas visiting my parents who have two beautiful cats. However the cats and Fran don’t get along. They just don’t know each other well enough. Two days ago when Fran was in my room I opened the door just enough and she was able to get out tearing ass through the house and getting into a scuffle with the cats. My dad grabbed Fran and put her back in my room. I checked her out and she looked ok, just a little red in the back from what looked to be a scratch. Well suffice it to say, three vet visits later, Fran had been bitten, is fighting an infection and is back to the vet once again today to get some stronger medication. I know she will be ok. Fran is really resilient, but this is the first time she has been sick for more than a couple hours. It is heart breaking and maybe one of the most stressful experiences a pet owner can go through, having a sick pet. The biggest concern is that Fran is allergic to almost everything. Plus unfortunately as I have learned in my research, a cat bite is worse than a dog bite in that the bacteria from a cat can cause some pretty nasty infections. I am back to the vet yet again today as the infection Fran has seems to have gotten slightly worse even with the antibiotics.

What I took for granted is Fran’s pep and zeal for everything. She is lively and jumpy and though I often treasure the times I had to board her at the cage free facility so she could run and play and get tired so she would sleep all day, right now I would give anything to have her back to normal!

So this post is dedicated to all the pet owners out there and especially to Kathy who had to take care of so many dogs and whose heart broke anytime one was injured or sick.

More later…

Coming up in Episode 12-14 you get to see Denali Highway and get to see Cantwell as well as picts of Mike Santos and his dogs. (MIKE I promise I will get you this stuff to use). One of the people I met while up in Cantwell was musher Mike Santos who I have mentioned in this blog before and his site is below.
Wolfs Den Kennel

Like so many people I met in Alaska they all say the same thing… follow your heart! Mike is no exception. The man single handedly built his dog kennel from the ground up and both he and his wife were two of the kindest people I met. Just now Mike offered me his house to stay in if need be=) The thing is so many people have offered to help me any way they can that are up there. Many of the people I met don’t necessarily have a lot of money, but they have huge hearts and are always putting themselves out there to help you! I can’t thank everyone enough for that… every time I have a bad day or things feel like they are simply not going to work out, someone who I met tells me to just hang in and have faith… thank you for the reminder!

Here are some picts of Mike and the dogs below

So I went through my spam filter on the site and low and behold there were a whopping 7 posts that were not spam. SORRY folks for not commenting and I appreciate all of you new folks who have been starting to tune into the content. Will be keeping a better eye out for comments from now on… now back to my regularly scheduled edit

I have a lot of people tell me I should turn this project into a feature. I don’t disagree, but that takes finishing funds so want to talk to you about goals for this project.

1) Finish the episodes! I have eight more which should take me through July. Then I can work on the proposals I would need to potentially secure the funds for post production to turn this into a feature. There are grants, and pitch meetings to be had… 2) an idea I like better is to write more MUCH more so much more that this becomes a novel. I want to take a lot of the blog posts and on sending queries to various publishers to see if they bite.

So those are the immediate goals. What do you all think? Would you be interested in watching the feature version of this project? Would you spend $9.99 to buy a DVD copy? Would you want to read a more in depth version of what happened while I was in Alaska?

The other thing is a lot is up in the air personally right now. It’s interesting this whole year so far has been me living this sort of nomadic existence, mostly out of suitcases and never really being settled. This has proved challenging, but I am doing my best to hunker down and get things done as best I can. That being said this is now a call for assistance… again. I need help promoting this project. I need PR help, marketing help. I asked once before and no takers so I am going to keep asking and putting it out there. Also as things wrap up on the episodes I would want to talk to some editors out there with feature doc experience about putting this bad boy into a longer version… and in general if you want to help out with something let me know what and I am open to it!

Now back to editing Episode 12!

New content all of June! Here is Episode 11- The Don Bowers Race.

The Don Bowers Race is in honor of musher Don Bowers. You can read all about the race here
Don Bowers Memorial Race

The race was 200 miles starting in Willow to Talkeetna and back to Willow. 15 mushers competed (two dropped out prior to the race) and the race is not a qualifier for the Iditarod though it used to be. Enjoy the new episode and stay tuned for more content next week!

If you are in Los Angeles you should come to the Shangri La Hotel in Santa Monica CA. Here is the link to RSVP to the mixer/ screening and type in the discount code: shareyourstory to attend for FREE!!!

Screening/ Mixer

Would love to see anyone who can attend! I am excited to not just screen the first four episodes, but have a Q and A after with everyone there. It’s going to be a great mix of people so COME OUT and mix it up=)

It’s been one month that I have been back in Los Angeles. It’s f***ing weird. Here is the thing, it isn’t about living in Alaska vs. living in Los Angeles. The truth is I can sort of live anywhere and adapt pretty quickly to my surroundings. I have always been able to do that. For me it’s missing the sense of community I had there. I can’t see myself picking up and moving to Alaska. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my time there. I had a blast and was able to really push myself in ways I didn’t think possible. It also gave me a sense of my value as a producer and creator of content. Coming back has been a transition. I knew it would be, but it’s finally really hitting me now.

As soon as I came back to LA I jumped head first into line producing and production managing a web series. It was a lot of work, but I jumped at the chance to make some money as soon as I got back. I am so glad I had the experience, but it helped delay some of the feelings I am currently experiencing. I was so wrapped up in work I didn’t have time to think about or deal with being back in Los Angeles after being gone for the first part of 2010. Being gone changed a lot of things for me and put a lot of things into perspective. The whole time I was in Alaska I was really careful about not putting too much of myself into this project, but as I get further into it I realize it is inevitable. The project helped shape and change me in ways that I can’t take back and why the hell would I?! It gave me a sense of confidence and refreshed perspective on what the hell I want to do with my life…

So here I am finishing up Episode 11, out of work, moving out of my apt, and every part of my life completely and totally up in the air. The reason being is I decided to leave. I decided to take a risk, put everything on the line to go move to Alaska and document someone’s life who I believe in. Some would say that takes balls and I am slowly realizing they are right=)! I put my relationship, my friendships and my whole life on the line to do this project simply because I believed in it. I want to keep taking risks and challenging myself because frankly… if I don’t then what the hell is the point.

I’m slowly settling into the idea of not having a job. It sucks and is scary, but I know I will be ok. I am finishing the project; I am packing up my life and putting it into storage and I am trying to figure out what comes next. That being said, I also think taking life one day at a time right now is what I need to do and whatever comes my way… let it come!