a nice Lil Charlie Brown tree at my parents' place.

Hey Friends, 

First of all, thank you very much for supporting this newsletter blog thing, especially this early on. It's very cool of you.

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Something happened on the flight home from the holidays. It's obviously taken me a minute to put it into words but when I landed back in Atlanta, there was a joy? that sparked in me. We're already 3 days and a serious war crime into the new year, and the joyspark? hasn't gone out. I suppose all that to say that I'm feeling good about the new year, despite not much changing from a hellish 2019.

A large contributing factor to this joyspark? is probably due to the success of my friends here cramming Steven Universe down my throat. Namely in the form of Steven Universe The Movie. If you're resistant like I was to take on another children's TV show, give this song from the film a chance that provides some much-needed exposition for the series, while also being a 5-minute pure burst of joyspark?

My incredibly dope sister got me a film camera for Christmas, and I've been obsessed with it since. No idea how or if the photos will turn out, which is depressing but exciting. However, if you see me around and want a celluloid portrait, right now I'm taking those and seeing what happens. The first roll of photos I'm developing is from a disposable camera, and those will be shared here first when I get them. 

You can follow her poetry and film photography at www.instagram.com/bear.x.dance

My other incredibly dope sister got me a mic stand, which was waiting for me when I arrived home. This means I can podcast with a friend once again, and some record dates are set for this week. These will be new episodes of Meet My Friend with Tyler Scruggs 

Shamefully, there are only 2 episodes in existence right now, but I hope to drop 5 or so this month all at once and think that's a manageable goal.

Someone added Natalie Wynn's powerful new feature-length video essay/vlog Canceling to Letterboxd (the website where I rate films like they're restaurants on Yelp) and can't help but agree with the argument that it's a film rather than your run of the mill video essay/vlog -- but there's plenty of debate to be had! Especially with the content of the gosh darn thing itself. 

https://letterboxd.com/scruggernaut/film/canceling-contrapoints/

What do you think of little journal life update blogs like this? Do you like it? I think it's gonna be what the writing portion of this newsletter blog thing is gonna consist of. 

As far as writing goes, I have some contract work that I've been procrastinating, school that I need to make some decisions on, and a draft outlining a disagreement I had with a certain Netflix web series creator that happened last night. It was weird. 

As I said, a lot of the fires in my life are not quite put out, and my environment has not tectonically changed since the clock struck midnight on January 1st, but it feels like things are moving in an upward trajectory. I'm thankful you're a part of my 2020 and I hope we get some company soon. 

Also, I just read this article about Dirtbag Leftists and I find the conceit very interesting and it's an ideology I can definitely identify with but I think psychoanalyzing whether or not I'm a dirtbag leftist and being hesitant to take on the name for the sake of mainstream appeal is not very dirtbag leftist of me. Maybe I'm like, a fannypack leftist or reusablebag leftist. Something a little more Disney. 

Ok see you later I leave you with this song by Harry Styles

Tyler Scruggs is a writer, musician, and millennial swashbuckler navigating the digital frontier through internet content like this and love songs for your Zune. He brews his own coffee now and doesn’t feel it’s safe enough to go to the movies as much as he might like.

Feel free to validate him on Twitter (@TylerScruggs), Instagram (@Scruggernaut), and YouTube.

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