Friday, December 15, 2000
Tonight is a good night. I actually have time to sit and listen to music.
Right now I am listening to Medeski, Martin & Wood, only after prying the new U2 disc from my CD player. Either I just enjoy repeatedly listening to it, or there is a mechanical misfunction occuring with my CD player. Whichever the case, it doesn't stop Mark from egging me on. He's been my friend for 9 years and has always tried to get me to listen to U2. Only now do I buy my first disk, which brings him to just give me a copy of The Joshua Tree. He got one of those 24k gold CDs of it and doesn't want the "normal" one.
How anything can be "normal" in our lives lately is a mystery to me. Only today do we actually know who our president will be, and it's not even what that MAJORITY of the nation wanted. Well. You can blame me. I know everyone else says "don't blame me," but I am asking you to. I voted for Ralph Nader, knowing full well he wouldn't be put into office this time around. By the time the Green Party gains the support it needs to lift a person to run the worlds "biggest" nation Nader will be far too old to care.
What a joke. We're a laughing stock. Most people have hit me with "Why throw your vote away? Why not vote for something that counts." Well, I did. I voted for what I felt to be a possibility of future democracy, because what we've got kicking right now is anything but.
But I digress, which is something I should probably practice at, because lately I don't seem to talk much at all. In the last week I have gone from having 4 jobs to having 1. Granted, I didn't really start one of them until this past monday, and the 3rd one never really started. I was going to go to Grand Rapids on the weekends to transfer people's home movies from 8mm film to video, but for some reason people didn't spend money on that this year. Usually there are 20 jobs a day coming in starting at thanksgiving. This year, there's been about 4 jobs SINCE thanksgiving. So that fell through. I quit two jobs this week because I didn't want to drive back and forth 40 miles after already working one shift. If I feel like getting a second job in the weeks to come, I'll get one somewhere close to the first job. I really dig on PLANNING things and this whole freelance lifestyle isn't easily "planned." I guesss I live my whole life like that so why should work be any different?
The funny thing is I haven't even saved any of the money to come of it. I am really really really in debt from various purchases I probably shouldn't have done but I had fun doing anyways. Most of which consisted of traveling, eating, "invented nessecity" which is a term I just invented, even if I can't spell it. Consisting of things I pretend I need, like the Sega Saturn, which I never really paid for yet and I think I paid $400 for it when it came out.
The one surprising thing is that I haven't used any of my credit cards to pay for any film shooting. That would cause me problems. But I'll work 4 jobs to pay for a $2000 sound recorder. I'm pretty much stuck until I do. But it gives me more time to re-write, and then there's the whole getting lost in life and forgetting what you were trying to do, which is something I'm feeling a whole lot of lately. Months ago I called it my "disenchantment" but now it's more like I can see multiple paths before me, some of it looks familiar, and more of it looks like it's never seen the
light of day by anyone before me.
I just gave up pure comfort and assuring feelings to pursue something that probably won't pan out. Almost like the friend you thought would be there
and got busy when you needed them. I feel like the place I just started doesn't quite have what it needs to survive on its own, and I am unsure they will let me step in and fix what needs to be done. It's not even more money than I was making before, and I'm definately going to be getting less hours.
The cool thing is I actually get to do some Animation, which is supposedly my SPECIALTY. Hopefully I can get some sort of portfolio together before the place folds. Oh, wait, I should have a more positive outlook, right? Sorry.
I'm not even guarenteed work. I'm considered CONTRACTING right now, which means they might tell me on tuesday that I don't work for the rest of the week. That's a whole lot of fun. It reminds me of working freelance film work in the Detroit area when I first moved back home a long long long time ago (circa March 2000) Okay, well it feels like a lifetime ago.
Sometimes I have to take a breath, remove myself from my current position in space and time and willingly realize that time is going by and I am not doing enough with what I'm being allotted. I took over three months off of work this summer to "complete" a film that I barely started. The only thing that subsides the feeling that I might not be cut out for this, is that David Lynch took 5 years to make Eraserhead, and Stanley Kubrick made a film about every 6 years or so.
Okay. I'm done with you.
Right now I am listening to Medeski, Martin & Wood, only after prying the new U2 disc from my CD player. Either I just enjoy repeatedly listening to it, or there is a mechanical misfunction occuring with my CD player. Whichever the case, it doesn't stop Mark from egging me on. He's been my friend for 9 years and has always tried to get me to listen to U2. Only now do I buy my first disk, which brings him to just give me a copy of The Joshua Tree. He got one of those 24k gold CDs of it and doesn't want the "normal" one.
How anything can be "normal" in our lives lately is a mystery to me. Only today do we actually know who our president will be, and it's not even what that MAJORITY of the nation wanted. Well. You can blame me. I know everyone else says "don't blame me," but I am asking you to. I voted for Ralph Nader, knowing full well he wouldn't be put into office this time around. By the time the Green Party gains the support it needs to lift a person to run the worlds "biggest" nation Nader will be far too old to care.
What a joke. We're a laughing stock. Most people have hit me with "Why throw your vote away? Why not vote for something that counts." Well, I did. I voted for what I felt to be a possibility of future democracy, because what we've got kicking right now is anything but.
But I digress, which is something I should probably practice at, because lately I don't seem to talk much at all. In the last week I have gone from having 4 jobs to having 1. Granted, I didn't really start one of them until this past monday, and the 3rd one never really started. I was going to go to Grand Rapids on the weekends to transfer people's home movies from 8mm film to video, but for some reason people didn't spend money on that this year. Usually there are 20 jobs a day coming in starting at thanksgiving. This year, there's been about 4 jobs SINCE thanksgiving. So that fell through. I quit two jobs this week because I didn't want to drive back and forth 40 miles after already working one shift. If I feel like getting a second job in the weeks to come, I'll get one somewhere close to the first job. I really dig on PLANNING things and this whole freelance lifestyle isn't easily "planned." I guesss I live my whole life like that so why should work be any different?
The funny thing is I haven't even saved any of the money to come of it. I am really really really in debt from various purchases I probably shouldn't have done but I had fun doing anyways. Most of which consisted of traveling, eating, "invented nessecity" which is a term I just invented, even if I can't spell it. Consisting of things I pretend I need, like the Sega Saturn, which I never really paid for yet and I think I paid $400 for it when it came out.
The one surprising thing is that I haven't used any of my credit cards to pay for any film shooting. That would cause me problems. But I'll work 4 jobs to pay for a $2000 sound recorder. I'm pretty much stuck until I do. But it gives me more time to re-write, and then there's the whole getting lost in life and forgetting what you were trying to do, which is something I'm feeling a whole lot of lately. Months ago I called it my "disenchantment" but now it's more like I can see multiple paths before me, some of it looks familiar, and more of it looks like it's never seen the
light of day by anyone before me.
I just gave up pure comfort and assuring feelings to pursue something that probably won't pan out. Almost like the friend you thought would be there
and got busy when you needed them. I feel like the place I just started doesn't quite have what it needs to survive on its own, and I am unsure they will let me step in and fix what needs to be done. It's not even more money than I was making before, and I'm definately going to be getting less hours.
The cool thing is I actually get to do some Animation, which is supposedly my SPECIALTY. Hopefully I can get some sort of portfolio together before the place folds. Oh, wait, I should have a more positive outlook, right? Sorry.
I'm not even guarenteed work. I'm considered CONTRACTING right now, which means they might tell me on tuesday that I don't work for the rest of the week. That's a whole lot of fun. It reminds me of working freelance film work in the Detroit area when I first moved back home a long long long time ago (circa March 2000) Okay, well it feels like a lifetime ago.
Sometimes I have to take a breath, remove myself from my current position in space and time and willingly realize that time is going by and I am not doing enough with what I'm being allotted. I took over three months off of work this summer to "complete" a film that I barely started. The only thing that subsides the feeling that I might not be cut out for this, is that David Lynch took 5 years to make Eraserhead, and Stanley Kubrick made a film about every 6 years or so.
Okay. I'm done with you.
