From Me To You

Dear Reader,

I thought you might want to know a little about this guy whose posts you have been reading, so here we go.

I was born in Knoxville, TN but grew up in Fort Mill, SC (a suburb of Charlotte, NC). So, I am a southerner through-and-through. I got good grades in school without a ton of effort and went on to college at the University of South Carolina. To this day, much to my wife's chagrin, football season will always keep me on the couch on Saturdays with chicken wings in front of me as a watch my Gamecocks dominate the competition (hopefully).

My affinity for watching and making movies grew through high school as I made short films with my friends. I never had really seen it as a viable career path, though, so I majored in Criminal Justice thinking I would be a federal law enforcement agent. As I worked toward my degree, I decided that there are plenty of people that make a career in film so why couldn't I? I kept my major as Criminal Justice, but made my cognate focus Media Arts. That's where I first fell in love with screenwriting. I love telling stories and I love movies; so, screenwriting is the perfect medium to wed those loves.  That led me to, after college, move completely across the country to Los Angeles. Well, technically I lived in South Pasadena, but it's in the Greater Los Angeles Area.

There, I worked for an indie director as her personal assistant and, since that didn't pay a lot, I also worked as a security guard in Santa Monica. The LA area is expensive! I also picked up crew gigs on movie sets (nothing that you would've heard of) and got my first paid screenwriting gig. That was a great feeling!

Eventually, my indie director boss couldn't afford to keep an assistant so I moved on. A few months later, after a series of unfortunate events, I found myself jobless which is not a good way to be in such an expensive place. It just so happened that an opportunity opened up at that time for me to play drums in a band with good prospects to "make it". The only catch was that I would have to move to South Carolina to pursue it. With nothing tying me down to LA, I moved across the country again. With that band, we played one show in Spartanburg, SC and one in Myrtle Beach, SC. That's it. So much for "making it".

Despite not being a rock star as I thought I would be, moving back to SC was a great thing because I reconnected with an old college friend. Her name was Kristi Eichelberger but we started dating, fell in love, and her name is now Kristi Collins because we got married. It's funny how things work out. If I hadn't lost my job in LA, I may have never even entertained the idea to move back to South Carolina to play drums, then I wouldn't have reconnected with Kristi or married the love of my life.

Now, I have been married just over a year, we have the cutest puppy in the world, and I have not become a famous screenwriter. I do, however, continue to write and edit screenplays for various independent companies and I also found a new creative outlet:  as a jeweler. I got a job in a jewelry repair shop knowing nothing about jewelry and now I can do most repairs and even customize some things. I never thought I would enjoy working on jewelry as much as I do but it combines three big parts of my personality:  creativity, problem solving, and competitiveness.

I hope I didn't get too long winded here and I sincerely appreciate you reading this and getting to know me a little bit. I look forward to getting to know you as you comment on posts and we talk about movies and pop culture over Facebook and Twitter. The first thing you can do to let me get to know you a little is leave a comment on here telling me what your favorite movie is and why. That will get things started!

Best,

Nolan