Life only moves in one direction.

1/3/2021 – Welcome to 2021! It would appear that we are bringing many of the challenges from the last year into this year. As with many others in the hospitality and entertainment industries, it has been a year of heartbreak and struggles, triumphs and victories, and most of all – change.

I am no stranger to change. Or heartbreak, struggle, triumph and victory. My life has always stood outside the expected standards, so I have never felt an enormous desire to “fit in” with whatever peer group I happened to be around. My early struggles left me with a determination to see the good in people while doing my best to filter out the toxic entities, and all throughout my life I have been the champion of the underdog, the cheerleader of those who never give up (even when they really want to). My personal travails didn’t go away when I reached adulthood. Rare periods of relative calm were interrupted regularly by outside influences that had little consideration for my plans and ambitions. But if I learned one thing from all those adversities, it was that if I keep moving forward and working on growing and developing even when I don’t feel like it, I often come through the other side of that challenge knowing that in the very least I didn’t let whatever it was hold me back from achieving something. And those hard-won achievements have often led to better situations overall.

So…2020….yeah….

2020 was quite the doozy, of course. Going into the year was very exciting. 2019 was its own bag of stress, dealing with a very ill family member and a subsequent, unplanned move to be closer to the situation. My partner, my daughter and I had stumbled into the new year ready for serious growth, as we had spent the preceding months preparing to absorb and grow a new aspect to the business and were looking ahead to the beginning of the Spring season. I had also spent a good deal of time over the previous years becoming acquainted with other creative industries and was looking forward to bringing more of those projects to the forefront.

I won’t go into all the details of the confusion, stress, and helplessness we felt, watching multiple businesses that we had invested in for decades become forced to shutter. Had the virus not struck, we would have been positioned to bring hundreds of events to success and would have helped provide several people with work. Instead, though, we accepted that we were going to be sidelined for at least part of the year. And that has turned into nearly a full year at this point, with several more months yet until we can treat events with the same openness we did previously.

The world stopped… but growth continued!

So what did I spend 2020 doing? Creating content and taking advantage of the platforms that now allow us DJs to bring our music to the masses. I also started a new Web TV talk show, interviewing amazingly talented personalities and business people from around the world. It is currently featured on e360tv, and will soon be available on even more streaming platforms. You can find all the episodes on my YouTube channel, or stream them on e360tv via Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and more!

So for 2021, another year of growth and change. We found out New Year’s Eve that a close family member was diagnosed with Coronavirus, and can only wait and hope that he makes it. So the challenges continue, but so do the triumphs. And I will never give up hope. Hugs to the world, wear your masks, and let’s make for a brighter 2021 wherever possible! – Vanessa aka DJ Audioprism