As my husband William embarks on this new adventure, I thought I'd share some thoughts about his journey (and ours). I met William four years ago during a particularly dark time in my life. My late husband of many years had just weeks before passed away after a terrible battle with cancer. Most of you can imagine the darkness that could envelop a person during this kind of life event. However, God took care of me, and a great guy said hello in a chat room one day and we ended up meeting for coffee. It wasn't long into that coffee date that I knew William was something special. That coffee date turned into sitting up-all-night, watching movies, talking, laughing, and having fun together for hours and hours.
Our coffee bar...
Well, he never went home, and I'm happy to say that we're still on that first date four years on. The journey hasn't always been easy, nor did it come cheap for William. He took on a new relationship, a new living situation, a new home, stepkids, a new extended family and all that comes with these things at the same time that I was just starting to realize my loss and begin the grieving process. He has been more than supportive and patient, and more than a great husband and partner...he's also been a wonderful friend and companion. He's one of the most talented people I know, and I've seen him create some astonishingly beautiful stained glass,
Watercolor
some really beautiful art, has decorated our home with great taste and style, and created dishes in the kitchen that made it a challenge to maintain my waistline.
A little over a year ago, I read about someone starting a YouTube page, and suggested that he try doing that to share his art with the world.
One of William's Paintings
I thought this would be a perfect fit for him, as he's been a stained glass art instructor in the past, and he's got the personality for it. Well, William thought about it a lot and chewed on the idea for the last year. In the meantime, life marched on and he fought a huge battle with Epilepsy, which has mostly been won but is ongoing. I've never seen anyone with a better attitude, and who wants to beat an illness the way he does! He's been through brain surgery, doctor visits, pills, medical tests like you wouldn't believe, etc., and has met it all with courage and persistence. A few weeks ago, he brought up the idea of doing a YouTube page again, and this time he was ready to run with it.
Spring Door Arrangement
Well, we've stumbled through the process of getting this started together, and started acquiring cameras, lights, microphones, tripods, and all sorts of other stuff needed just to get started. We were determined that if we were going to do this, it would not be just holding up a cell phone and talking.
Not long ago, we set up our cameras, lights, and equipment in our tiny kitchen and Billy taught the world how to make the amazing Greek salads that he makes me for lunch almost every day. He assembled all the ingredients and we were off to the races! What I saw when that camera rolled made my jaw drop. He transforms into a great host, and his real inner personality comes pouring out by the gallon. He not only educates but watching his show makes one feel warm and invited. It is entertaining to watch even if you never want to cook a thing, which describes me to a tee!
Since I'm the technical side of our duo, I dived into learning how to edit video, make trailers, opening intros, making logos, finding music and templates and presets for the production, and setting up the IT infrastructure that was needed. Fortunately, I had a powerful professional workstation under my desk which helped a lot, though it had never been used for Video or Graphics before except the occasional game! I found out quickly that I had to learn how to do this if I was going to teach William how to do it.
Fast forward just a couple of weeks and William has just released his third video and has two more filmed and being edited. Episode three was the first that he edited himself, and he did a fantastic job!
To enable him to do this, we needed to get him a good workstation to use, because his 7-year-old Walmart Desktop PC wasn't cutting it! I found a several-year-old, retired, very high-end business grade graphics workstation for sale on eBay for just a few hundred dollars, and now he's got a 12 core Intel Xeon HP Z800 workstation with 96GB of RAM, 12TB of disk space, a powerful video card, and all the software required for the job.
William has started getting organized. He's finding recipes, making test-runs of great food in the kitchen, and he's asking lots of questions about what tools to use to get organized and plan his episodes, so I know there are great episodes to come. Here's the other great thing....he will never run out of things to film.
One of William's Stained Glass Pieces
This is a guy who cooks like a master chef, makes stained glass windows, paints really wonderful pictures, sews, quilts, gardens, creates gorgeous bouquets of flowers to decorate our home, and he never runs out of ideas...just time to pursue all of them!
I could not be more proud. I know you'll be seeing plenty of William in the weeks and months ahead, and you'll see what I'm talking about. It is my prayer that what he does will touch and bless each viewer in some way and that a small part of the person I am so fond of will make his mark on the world.
I'm more than confident that this is going to be a prayer that God answers mightily. I hope you all enjoy his work!
Bobby
