Operation 365... Blog 364

For the last long time, the header on my blog had read this, "from Thanksgiving 2010 to Thanksgiving 2011, Jefferson Jay in his role as "The Host Who Posts" will share his wares with YOU! Each day, just to see what happens."

Now it reads this, "From Thanksgiving 2010 to Thanksgiving 2011, Jefferson Jay shared 3 videos - an original song, a cover song & an archival video each day. What happened?"

What was the point of the 365? What happened?

For years, I had dreamed of creating an internet network, sharing my original content and telling the story of a group of friends who came together in a very special and musical way over the last five or so years. While I was researching the network idea, my friend, director Dylan Avery, suggested I import all the video I filmed at my shows (there was a lot of it) as that would be necessary to post any of it. I imported and imported and imported, for days. It took, and still takes up, about 5 big hard drives worth of space. Once it was imported, all that was left was to share.

Adding the blog, which I did one week into the 365, gave me the pen and the place to write the story. The videos made it real. Discussing my friends like Don Truesdail and Robin Lee is nice, but a distant second to being able to hear them and see them play. Through their songs, they get to share their perspective on what happened. It allows people to get to know them and feel the vibe in those rooms, as much as possible. There was a lot of love. It is hard convey love, much less what someone's personality is like, with words alone, but the combination of the imagery, the music, and the explanation, makes it as tangible as I could hope.

So sharing this footage, and telling this story in a way, for me, is a dream come true. I dream that someday, enough people will have taken the time and interest to absorb this story. I dream that someday I can discuss Don and Robin and the times all of us shared with someone who didn't know any of us and was never there. That is a million times more possible, thanks to the 365.

Another life-long dream of mine was to wake up each day with music to do. I love writing songs, I love recording, I love performing for an audience. I love entertaining. Through the 365, I was able to do that every day. If I was in a good mood, I could be silly, If I was upset, I could write a song about it. I was never artistically backed up. In my dreams, I would have a paycheck to show for all this work. In reality, I have a series of priceless experiences and unforgettable memories to show for a year of consistent, hard work. It was a discipline and I think it was good for me. Plus, the game's not over yet. Maybe I still Will get paid for all this effort, somehow. Either way, it was never about money. Ironically, that's the main reason I think it may make me some, somehow, someday. Pure intentions and hard work can lead to those sorts of realities arising. Did I mention I think the Operation 365 could make a good movie? I do.

For me history is an interesting subject. That's why I got a Master's in it. But more than that, it is a way of life. Since my first band, Chameleon Stress, from back in UMASS, broke up and I didn't get copies of all the recordings I wanted, I vowed to never let that happen again. It hasn't. I like knowing what happened, the big things. I like being able to share it, reflect on it, and learn more from it after the fact. That's exactly what I'm doing right now.

I wanted to share my work, the performances and friendships I had accumulated, the songs I'd written, the skills I had built. Our story. I had written many songs before starting this project, but only about 45 of them had been shared on my 4 CDs. I probably had about 200 tunes when I started the 365, last November. One of the challenges I knew I would face, would be coming up with new songs once those ran out. I welcomed it. I'll try to count soon, but I probably wrote about 150 songs for the Operation 365. Now those are shared too. I like it.

Besides my own personal gratification, I generated through this work, the positive feedback I received was the richest reward. Some folks said they'd read the blog every day. Others said they read it occasionally. Some folks posted encouraging comments on Facebook, where I often posted my vids. I was also able to express appreciation for friends and family members with birthdays, weddings and other noteworthy occasions that arose. It seemed like it meant a lot to some people sometimes and that gave me the strength to press on.

It was nice to have a soapbox, a pulpit if you will, to share my views on a variety of issues on my mind. Often spurred on by current events, I enjoyed having a place to share opinions on chemtrails, "Occupy," Osama, the alleged rapture, and many other current events. The mass media shares misinformation with millions every day on every channel. I can't do too much yet about it, but being able to balance the ledger, even in a small way, felt important. I felt like I was doing my part to inform folks and make things better. That is what I'm alive, I believe. It seemed to have a positive effect on some people. Hopefully, some folks were inspired by the example I set of consistency, expression, and individuality. I feel like we all have responsibility to give back and I guess I did that in a big way these past 12 months.

I am a big sports fan. Since I was 2, I enjoyed reading statistics on the back of baseball cards and interpreting what they meant. I still look at stats all the time. Tomorrow, I am planning one last evaluation of this project for my final blog, Blog 365. This will be a more numerical evaluation of the 365. I am calling it "Operation 365.. By the Number." Exciting.

What I learned?

I learned you can do almost anything if you put your mind to it.

I learned once you put something out there in the universe, you have no idea how it is going to affect people. I have received views from around the world and comments from people I didn't know, some professing to be profoundly affected by my work. That can happen. You never know. There were times I felt it was pointless, until I realized it wasn't. That was a nice revelation.

I learned a lot of cover tunes. The main reason I added the cover tunes component to the 365 was to bring in an audience who might not otherwise have an interest in the originals or the archives. I also added the covers, because I rarely retain other people's material. I still don't so much, but I had fun playing a lot of the tunes. I could probably learn most of them back quickly, if I chose. There's probably some I remember that I don't even realize.

I learned what I call the "Buzzkill" lesson. If you do something every day, you become that much more likely to do it the next day. It becomes a way of life. I like that. I think that theory can be used to impact people's lives in a limitless number of capacities. Eating right, exercise, being kind, these are all things we can inject into our lives in a serious fashion just by doing them some amount each day. It works.

I learned you never know what is going to happen in this life. Life is insanely unpredictable and always will be. That is its nature. I'm not sure I learned that from the 365 so much, but I learned it this year, and this past year and the 365 will be inextricably linked for me as long as I'm breathing. So who knows if I learned it from videos or living, but with a project of this magnitude, it is hard to see a difference.

I reaffirmed my believe that sharing is caring and I care a lot. I feel that if people would take the lessons we teach children to heart and live by these simple credos, it would go a long way toward reshaping the world into a much, more rewarding place to live. We would never sit idly by at a school and watch some students stuff themselves to obesity, while others starve to death before our eyes. That is exactly what is happening in the world though. Maybe it is not directly in front of our eyes, but it is close enough. We all have an internet full of global access and most of us have seen those horrifying late night infomercials starring that silver-haired guy and starving kids. The ultra, obscenely rich need to be made to realize that their 75 boats, 90 cars and 30 houses directly equal 75,000 children (a guesstimate) dying in avoidable ways across the globe. We all have a responsibility. We need to make these people who feel they deserve such luxuries see that no one deserves such obnoxious excess while others humbly struggle just to live. The happiness they'd receive replacing greed with generosity, would repay them for whatever capital they lost, several thousand times over. Maybe they could become happy. Maybe they could sleep at night.

We all have a responsibility as humans to do something about it, the "it" being the world in which we live. Putting this out there is what I'm doing (to help) right now. Not everybody has to donate all their money to fix these problems. We can, and should, all contribute in our own unique ways. That is human nature. We are all different and this makes us all like precious jewels, one of a kind treasures. It also makes us like snowflakes and Thomas's English Muffins, which are also both wonderful in their own right.

This is what I live for. This is my reason to be and I intend to keep pursuing it through my last breath on Earth. I hope as I move forward, I'll continue to find more and more like-minded souls. I dream that we can make an impact, a positive difference here, before it's said and done. People deserve to enjoy their times here on this planet. Many don't. With some changes, some additional selflessness, it doesn't have to be that way.

So let's look back, was the "experiment" a success? Unequivocally, yes. I did not have any "goals" for what should come of it, so that frees me from being able to fail. I wanted to put stuff out and I did. I created hours of entertainment and wrote dozens and dozens of new songs. I entertained people and hopefully offered valuable insight. I shared the story of some wonderful people, that otherwise may never have been told. I shared hours of video from one of my best friends, who died. That alone means so much to me.

The beauty of it is, like anything else you put out in the world, now, it can continue to grow. People can enjoy my work on their own time, anywhere on their computer, anywhere in the world, as least as long as the powers that be still the say the internet is OK. There are stories out there this week, that they might be changing their mind on that. Great...

Life is unpredictable. Thus, it should not be judged by perceived "results." You never know what will happen so things must be done for the experience, for the journey rather than the destination. Maybe, someone will see one of my videos and take a song for a movie. Maybe someone will see how amusing and talented I am and give me a platform to showcase my skills. Maybe I'll even make a living through it, somehow, someday. But, maybe not... and that's why the gratification has to come from the "experiment" itself, not any pre-conceived ideas of what should follow from it. Life decides that for itself. All we can do is put ourselves out there and enjoy every instant of our trying, as much as possible.

The highest height a human can hope to achieve is to love everybody and everything unequivocally at all times. It is a goal we can spend lifetimes reaching for. It is a wonderful stretch to attempt. Every instant we spend trying, we grow and accumulate incredible experiences, to show for our lives. I did a lot of that on the 365. Thank you for sharing that with me.