People that know me well know this about me: I sleep very little. My days tend to start at 7am, and my days off at 9am, even if the day before only ended at 5:00am. When people hear that I average only about 4-5 hours a night, there is usually two questions I get. The first is how on earth do I function running on so little sleep? The answer of course being that I eat very healthy and just happen to have the right genes that let me run on half a tank of sleep all the time.
The second question anybody will ask me is why. The truth is, when I do let myself sleep, I definitely sleep more. If I am particularly tired, I sleep 8 hours uninterrupted, and if I really set my mind to it I could easily have 9 and 10 hour nights on the regular. But even without an alarm, after 6 hours of rest my eyes pry open. My mind starts moving and I start feeling the need to get up. The reason I don’t sleep is because what drives me in the daytime keeps me from sleeping, even if I could.
And for the past four years, in between classes and the start of a career in marine biology, it has been Project Bucket that has woken me up in the morning and kept me awake at night the most.
Step one of any passion project is just that: passion. And so from the beginning, I knew if I was going to make a documentary about my experiences at UNC, I needed to care about this documentary, and care so much that it made other people care. For every late night I asked of the team, or favor I worked towards as a part of the UNC Community, I doubled it for myself. From coordinating with members of the community to publishing a video of a bucket list item on YouTube every week, there was no free moment that I have had over these past four years that I wouldn’t be willing to devote to Project Bucket.
Project Bucket began four years ago, as nothing more than an idea. With our idea, we started a project. And with our project, we defined the decisions I would make for four years of my life filled with adventure, filming, late nights editing, and now: Producing and editing at every waking hour I can find.
Our crowdfunding campaign is now on it’s final day. What that means is that the dream that I first saw with four of my closest friends is going to be real. I can’t wait to get started!