Feel GOOd Story:
A life, a story, a vision
The Origin Story
After growing up in foster care and overcoming family struggles throughout my education path, I was given an award and a small grant for college from the local Sunrise Rotary Club in the town where I grew up. While I certainly appreciated the acknowledgment and gesture, my foster brother and I joked that the presenter's delivery was a bit condescending, with a tone of "wow - you actually made it." As my other friends and I continued to affectionately joke about it, we began referring to the award as the "Feel Good Story Award," with my life becoming the namesake for the "Feel Good Story." I even still have an Xbox account from 2005 with the "Feel Good Story" handle locked down.
But what started as perhaps a glib joke amongst friends became something more profound during 2020. With the social trauma that so many of us endured during the pandemic, I saw a unique opportunity for people to find common ground and truly empathize with one another again. I felt a calling to leverage my past experiences living within different family structures and witnessing their respective struggles to work with people holding vastly different world views. My aim is to show others that they shouldn't be alone in their struggles. Instead of my life being the "Feel Good Story," I finally found purpose in striving for a truly "Feel Good Story" for all of us.
What's in the works now
I am currently working on a documentary-style production that engages with social oppression, corruption, and anti-democratic political developments. My explicit desire is to connect with citizens across the political spectrum and show how much we have in common despite constantly being told otherwise. In a time where propaganda seeks to focus on individualism to isolate us and stoke fear, I firmly believe that most of us share much more in common together than the forces that seek to separate us.
Currently, I am still in the writing stages, focusing on applying my educational background in research and writing to ensure that everything is well-documented and appeals to as many people as possible. Given the theme and overall nature of the project, the focus will be on encouraging more thoughtful discourse and critical examinations of money's passive influence on our current human existence. As such, I plan on making this project non-profit to encourage transparent and money-free discourse on such topics to regain public confidence.
What's down the line
As I begin to wrap up the research and drafting phase, my goal is to put together a strong enough message to reach out to experienced voice acting and video editing professionals. This will ensure that the production value lives up to its lofty ambitions.
Looking past the video, I also plan on finishing a personal story about my life growing up through foster care with different families - and the unexpected emotional struggles that come from having to cut a toxic family out of your life. Having spent time working with Boys & Girls Club and throughout college at an after-school program seeking to help at-risk youth, I've been on both sides of experiencing how isolated kids and young adults dealing with family trauma can feel. I also understand how discouraging it can be to see anybody in the world who shares some of your life experiences and resulting world views. Sharing my story will help some feel not so alone and hopefully inspire others to avoid some of the mistakes I made as I tried to make sense of the world by myself.
In the future, I hope to use proceeds from the book to start a grant that will fund other youth and adults who might otherwise not be able to share their own stories about their respective journeys.