Let's Go!

Howdy!! 

Joshua here. I have good news, and bad news today.

Let's start with the bad news, no Elite vlog this week. I know, tragic. Life happens HAHA. It picks you up and then leaves you in the dust with nothing but... Okay, I'll stop while I'm ahead.

But as for the good news: there is a new website!

Let me explain: I spent a few hours today building a site for my brother Kadin's music!! It's really simple, but I'm glad that it's there, and I hope that it serves him well for many years to come, lol. 

https://music.wwstudios.org/

And yes, I bought the wwstudios.org domain because it finally was available! Yay! (There might be a domain redirect coming one of these days??)

Even though there isn't much to post here yet, trust me when I say, there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes. I've been praying a lot, working on exciting ideas, and staying ever so busy. So, till next time! The only way forward, is straight ahead, so onward we go! May the best be yet to come... I think this quote from the Hobbit is fitting lol:

“Go back?" he thought. "No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!"

God bless,

-- Joshua Whitney

For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. - Matthew 7:14

I started 2025 by panicking.

It was 1 o'clock in the morning and I should have been excited! It was 2025! Finally! Something this big only happens once a year! A new year meant a new you, right? The sinking feeling in my chest told me I wasn't so sure this time.

Honestly, I felt stuck. Really stuck. I had been here before. I had been there and done it. Over the last few years, I had stayed up late writing out my big goals and romanticizing the work I would accomplish. Also, over the past few years, I would at the end find myself putting on a smile, only to save face as my heart sobbed big crocodile tears well-seasoned with bitter self-loathing. "DO BETTER THIS TIME JOSHUA!" I hated that feeling of... failure.

But this year... (this morning honestly) was different. I felt like a person who had dragged themselves through miles of mud - back and forth for no reason only to be told to do it again. Why? Well, maybe it was to learn something. Pfft. No, that's too... that only happens in movies, right?

Though I was half delirious - I found myself looking at my Bible. A few hours before, my mom had mentioned that I should have a Bible verse for 'WW Studios'. Honestly, what was 'WW Studios'? Out of all the perfect verses in the Bible how was I supposed to pick one for something that I myself was struggling to cast a clear vision for in my own head?

You see, over the past few weeks, I have been going through a change. Crazy, I know. If you thought it was strange for me to write out a blog post instead of making a video about it then you have only begun to experience a small taste of the upside-down world I've been stuck in. As strange as it sounds, I've found myself writing in my journal. I never do things like that! Guys - hear me out: I READ A BOOK. Do you know what it takes for me to sit down and read?! Yeah, nothing short of a lightning bolt burning the very stone in front of me producing the words "Go and read a book, son" would have made me consider reading.

One of the books I've read in the past few months was called "Me, Myself, and Bob." It's a great read. Both funny and eye-opening on the do's and don'ts of running an animation studio. Yet by the time I had finished the book, something was bothering me. You see, back in the 1990s the cost of technology was the big hindrance. I didn't have that problem. I had both the software and spare time. I had - I HAVE everything I need to create an animated feature film... but here I am. Maybe I just need to add a bit more time to the equation. Or maybe it was something else... I felt like I was lacking... a vision.

Phil Vischer, who wrote "Me, Myself, and Bob" and voiced Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber mentioned something about that whole vision thing. It had been a problem for his company Big Idea, when VeggieTales went big. He never had time to write a vision he was satisfied with. Maybe that is what I was missing... a clear vision.

Proverbs 29:18 famously says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." If there was one thing I knew for certain, it felt like my dreams were perishing... My YouTube channel wasn't monetized, I was looking for a real job. I had failed to finish my feature film and was somehow stalling on the rewriting process. I was a mess and I did not know my left from my right. What now?

I'll be honest. It's strange writing about this in the past tense. Frankly, I'm just putting some of these things together as I write. This is an active situation here. I'm reporting live from the scene of the chaos if you will. Seeing the shattered shards of my dream world slowly rearrange before my eyes to form something different is weird. Talking about it as it is happening is... even stranger but even more than strange, therapeutic. It lets you see things from a top-down view and gives you a different perspective. Maybe that's why I'm writing this.

I'll cut to the chase here. One of the things I have written down to work on in 2025 is 'WW Studios'. But, what is 'WW Studios'? Right now 'WW Studios' is just the name of a website and the handle for my YouTube channel. What does 'WW Studios' stand for, and what is its target market? Why does it exist?

Those are some pretty big questions and the only person who can answer them is me. This year, in 2025 I want to answer some of those questions for myself. For my sake, I need to clear up what I want to do. I need to cast a vision for the future and I'm praying that the Lord will help me do that. I can't do it without Him. God help me!

For the first time, I am thankful for the thousand ways I have failed.

• I'm thankful that I have failed to grow my YouTube channel into a reliable stream of revenue.
• I am thankful that I never went viral and raised $100,000 for my film.
• I am thankful that my dream world has crashed and burned leaving me with nothing but to move forward.

Why? Because there is a way out of the burning building. There is hope.

A few weeks ago I told my friend Lily that I felt like I was in the 'Dark Night of the Soul' of my journey. When I said it, I really meant it too. The 'Dark Night of the Soul' moment happens in every good movie. It's when the hero thinks all is lost. It's when they look death in the eye and see no way out. They lay down in the dust... they are going to die. Until... BOOM.

At the last possible moment, things turn around in a way you never thought they could.

It's my favorite part of almost every movie. Something about it makes all the pain experienced by the characters worth it. But back to reality - that 'All is lost' moment happens near the end of the movie. Does that mean my journey is nearly over? Honestly, a week ago I might have said yes. From the way I saw it, my dreams died in 2024 and I didn't have the heart to pick the charred remains.

But what if, those dreams needed to die to give way to something bigger? No, surely that couldn't be the case. What if I need to wake up from the dream to see the greater story? In many ways, I'm afraid to hope for that, but that doesn't stop me from praying for it to be true. Over the last season of my life, I've found myself being extremely narrow-minded and hyper-fixated on what has gone wrong and I failed to see that, despite my many failings I wasn't at the end of my story. It's just beginning. Crazy what you miss sometimes.

Technically I'm only 20 years old. Technically the sky is the limit. Technically everything I have worked on over the last 5 years has been a series of life lessons that have brought me here to this very moment in time, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I don't need to regret the many times I've failed to deliver on my outlandish goals. I can look ahead with confidence into the future and know that there is something better on the horizon. I don't need to know what that better thing is - God's got it all under control even when I don't.

So yes, I am a very, very thankful person today. 

Now, this is one of the longest posts I have ever written, but it began with the desire to tell you something else. A few days ago I had a crazy idea - 'what if I did weekly elite vlogs this year?' I know! It might sound like a bad idea (I was just on a rant about how my crazy goals nearly became the end of me...) but I promise NOT to overthink it.

Like this post, I hope making them will be therapeutic in one sense. I'm thinking that they'll be pretty short, very raw, and ultra-chill. The best part is that I'll finally be free from the algorithm!! No stressing about making a great hook, catchy title, or mouth-watering thumbnail. Just me and you:) What do you guys think?

Whatever happens this year, in 2025, I want to be thankful like I am today. For both the highs and lows.

God Bless and enjoy the journey!

-- Joshua Whitney

"But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." - Joshua 24:15