Jen smiles, sings, & shares.

No money? No problem. (kinda) MAKE IT WORK.

During the filming of the “Your Year & Happiness” Music Video, so much was going on. There was the Formula Arts crew, Instant Noodles, Marshall the director, a bunch of extra friends, hairstylists and makeup artists, a stylist, dancers.. and all of us were crammed in (an amazing) loft for one goal = to make the music video happen.

All the odds seemed like it was against us.

1) There was no budget, LITERALLY. I spent about $50 bucks on snacks for the cast/crew (thank the Lord for Costco) but besides this… everyone literally contributed what they could to make this possible.

2) Rounded up a cast/crew the week of in hopes no one would back out last minute

3) We were on a time crunch because we had to get out of the space by a certain time and we could only designated two days to shoot everything.. (day one were my solo shots, day two was with the dancers and extras) but with everyone just cooperating and working hard, we actually got out hours EARLY. This is pretty unheard of…

Mom was a dance teacher and with the little English she knew, she somehow managed to raise Joe and I on her own. I think something my mom taught me was the importance of cultivating relationships with people. When you genuinely admire someone and believe in what they’re doing, there really isn’t much that can stop you from helping that person. A lot of people saw how hard my mom worked as a struggling dance teacher trying to raise two kids.. they saw her talent as a performer.. and they saw her heart. A lot of people helped us along the way and to this day they are friends I now call family.

One of them being my “aunt” (no real dna relation) who I live with now in LA. She doesn’t have kids, but considers me one of her own. She’s been a friend to my mom since I was in the womb. She knows how everything went down between my parents more than I did. She used to live with my family in the bay when I was younger but soon after moved to LA. Whenever I visited Southern California she would be the person we stayed with.. she was the one who took me to Disneyland.. and she was the one who bought me my very first MacBook (The very one I started uploading videos with on YouTube.) We recently reconnected and after graduating college she opened up a room for me to be her roommate. I help with rent but she still takes care of me a lot more than when I was on my own during college and a year after that. It blows my mind how people can have such big hearts and learn to love others without really expecting anything back. Unconditional love, ya dig?

Wow, I went off on a tangent. But it goes back to this thought: basically the reason why I thought about that is because I want to encourage any of you who think it’s hard to “make it” because of your circumstances. It isn’t any easier for me now. I still am learning my way around this big ass world as a young adult and if anything it seems to get harder. But if you surround yourself around the right people it will be not only be bearable, but worthwhile.

Every person that was part of the making of this Music Video project GENUINELY did this out of the goodness of their hearts and because they believed in SOMETHING. Whether it was that it would be fun, something that they could put on their resume, something nice to do to help out a friend, or something to do to just.. make art.. they helped make it happen. Some were people I’ve known for a good while and others I knew the day of, but FOREVER will you have a special place in my heart.

Thank you for being a part of my journey. Meet you at the top.. or perhaps by my side as we continue to truck along (: