I Am in[TEN]se

TODAY IS THE DAY! :D The sun is shining, the books are here! THE BOOKS ARE HERE! Well, they've been here, but today I can buy MY yearbook!! Ya'll have no idea on how EXCITED I was to go pick it up! I couldn't stop thinking about it all day today, and the second school got out at 2 I ran to my car and made it to DRHS by 2:30 where I stopped by the Seminary building for a bit and chatted with my soul sister Katie! I totally forgot she has seminary 7th hour, and I didn't recognize her with her dark brown hair! Oh my goodness! I haven't seen her since February!! It was absolutely lovely talking to her again! I shook Bro Pickeral's hand and said hello, then went on my merry way to the Yearbook room. I passed by the trippy art mural, and then walked inside, and no one even saw me for a few minutes... they were so busy getting boxes on to the carts. Finally Michelle saw me and freaked out and then Briseyda did! I ran over to an open stack of books on the countertop and smelled the lovely ink and glue fumes and just admired its beauty on every page.... man, I was SO HAPPY!! Seriously, I couldn't stop smiling and gasping and saying OH MY GOODNESS! This looks soooooo sexy!! :D Then Hearne walked past, and was talking to me saying I should get one, then kinda realized who he was talking to and then he freaked out! Oh man! I've missed him so much!! I felt like my heart and soul was complete and full again when I was in that room with my yerds! :') They mentioned me as "Editor in Spirit" since I designed most of the book. It was so sweet of them to do that! I wasn't thinking they were going to, but Hearne made sure it got put in there! Isn't he the best?! I noticed that my green handprints on the Editor's wall was washed off.. I've got one word for you that starts with a C... and her name is Christine... this girl has HATED me since the first day of my Freshman year. Why? Because she's threatened by my superiority and natural talent for design, and she is totally jealous. She tried to undo everything I've done since being on the staff, and since I was gone this year, she had the perfect shot. My cover was supposed to be orange, (notice that Tangerine Tango was the 2012 PANTONE color of the year... did I mention I can predict the future? I KNOW what I'm doing, Christine!) but she fought against it and now for the third year in a row, we have a black, red, and gray colored book. It's not a problem, but orange would have been a fun addition to the La Cordillera collection, ya know? Don't get me wrong, the gray and red looks gorgeous, but it's all in the matter of she got her way.... AGAIN. I don't know what her deal is, I've never done anything to make her dislike me, it's her own fault... Yearbook is my passion in life and it's something I'm REALLY good at, and I have a hard time being humble with it, too... haha! ;) She just can't have someone be better than her, I guess!!
Anyways, she gave me this dirty look when I walked in and ignored me the entire night. The reason why everyone loves this book is because it looks LEGIT. Not because your name is all over it, sister!! People like pretty things, not reading material about high school students. This is a fiery topic for me, sorry.
We moved everything to the cafeteria, and of all people in this world, Meaghan Lawyer was there! I was not expecting her to be there, it was super nice seeing her again! It's so weird, she's 4 months pregnant... wake up call there! Hearne is leaving to write his books and keep his spot on the NY Times Top 10 Best Selling Author's List (LEGIT, I KNOW!!! I KNEW HIM FIRST! ;)), all the editors are graduating, no one from the staff is coming back, and I'm at QCHS.... basically, Yearbook is now officially a lost art in DRHS. It kills me to see it go, those were the highlights of my high school years!! :(
When I was waiting for the party to start, I began reflecting on my life and how much YB has been apart of it, looking at all my yerds, looking at my crazy teacher, looking at my old school, knowing what was going to happen in a few short hours.... it really got to me and I had to hold back my tears a few times during the night! No one understands my drive for this... I fell in love my first day, and I'm still in love with it and it kills me that I've had to go a year without it... worst mistake ever!! I obsess over beautiful fonts/ligatures/serifs/anything graphic design related... oh goodness, I am a freak, but I do not care! This is what I love. This is what I'm good at. This is what I'm going to do. Hearne, Michelle, and Briseyda would think to themselves everyday that YB was not the same without me, like the life was sucked out of it after I had left... AWWW! They would just say little things like that to me throughout the night...

Wanna know the best feeling in the world?
It's ranked up right next to that moment when I was campaigning my theme for this year last year and when it was a unanimous vote for my theme... it's giving away the yearbooks, and looking at people smile and laugh and flip through those freshly inked pages with their friends, remembering things... you just look out at the whole cafeteria filled with your peers, all loving something that you've worked so hard on, dedicated so many hours and thoughts to.... it just makes me all choked up and nothing feels better than that feeling right there!
Hearne talked with me and only me for about an hour while signing my book... I really loved that! We would just laugh about all the strange things that have happened, all the nerdy things we've come across, our favorite slab serif fonts, how he is moving on to bigger and better things, how he thinks I should carry on with this kind of stuff, we'd laugh about kids at the school, about we missed each other, about those times with his Jamaican and Russian accents, reading gruesome children's storybooks in the hotel lobby in California almost 2 years back... just the good old times when Yearbook was at its peak! And I was a part of it, the little crowning glory! :')
Man, this book is BEAUTIFUL. So clean, modern, sleek, and just the right amount of my own personal touch without it being too feminine. ;) It's really my best work... well, my best idea because some of the pages are messed up, it's unavoidable... but I am so proud of it and all the hard work that went into it to keep it as beautiful as I left it a year ago. It kept me up at night, and I'd sketch it out in my classes... This is my life, right here!! I'm so heartbroken that it's all at an end now... the past three years of my life... and all that's left is paper, ink, and memories... Which is fairly decent, it's not like I got nothing from it! I got all my nerdy obsessions from Yearbook, it's made me who I am and I wouldn't trade that for anything!!

All in all, I just want to let people know, that I AM A YERD. And proud to be one, too! I don't care that people may think it's weird that I drool over fonts, especially slab serifs and the letters Q,g, and m! I don't care that I use fancy design terms like pica, gutter, white space, placeholder, colophon, and folio on a daily basis! I don't care that Macs and Adobe software give me the chills when I get to use them! I don't care that I will hate on prints that look utterly horrible! I don't care that I can name practically any font out in the open and criticize a company based purely off the fonts they use! I don't care that my flash drive has images of the latest design ideas! I don't care that I spend hours looking at graphic designer blogs! I don't care that I scour the internet for free quality fonts!  I don't care that I am a complete geek at heart! These quirky traits make me who I am. I'm a yerd. Forever!