Okay, so the time off and away from the daily grind and groans of a 9 to 6:30pm, Monday thru Friday job has been nice.  I won’t lie.  I’m sure my good friend Chuck felt something similar when he saved up all of his hard earned pennies and went on a soul searching mission that lead to a Pigeon Documentary, spending time with his parents, and eventually starting from scratch in Portland.  I haven’t had a year long search.  I’m kind of hoping that this four week stretch of unemployment isn’t going to take that long to come back around to steady paychecks and a healthy binge of music purchases (perhaps a macbook pro upgrade).  I have however finally taken my ass out of neutral and starting maniacally driving through the fog of “thirtysomething” again.  I finished my martial arts training video with a little help from my friends.  I’ve actually made some headway on the whole “rotoscoping my short film” excuse I’ve panned for far to goddamn long.  Yes, I’ve actually taken several hours at a time to rotoscope and it sucks.  It’s making me realize, once again, that I don’t have the patience or desire to sit in an edit bay day after day after day after week after after after.  The HD season of MoneyTrack just took it all out of me.  I took away an amazing amount of knowledge from that battle.  Part of that knowledge is that I can’t sit in a room staring at a computer and troubleshooting bullshit that should have been done correctly the first (or second time) for hours on end for something that I didn’t have any creative input in.  Some would argue that I had the ability to touch it last and therefore had the most creativity.  Those that would take the time to argue that, should find better ways to spend their time. I’ve wasted a lot of time with sloth and excuses over the last two years and lost sight of my goal.
I’ve placed my resume on job connection sites.  I’ve even gone so low as to post it on craigslist.  I can share with you what I’ve learned with that failed experiment?  Unless you’re looking to purchase a stolen and/or used piece of shit – craigslist is a waste of time.  However, posting your resume on craigslist does take the one thing you need to desperately get rid of on a job search… your sense of pride.
So, whilst waiting for projects to render and burn to disc, I’ve taken up another half-assed project that desperately needed finishing.  Painting.  I kind of “owed” someone a duplicate painting previous to moving.  Today I took the time to finally place the finishing touches and put it to bed.  This act also got the creative juices flowing again and I knocked out another one within a couple of hours.  Part of what you see posted above in vibrantly insane color is the fruit.  It sparked some inspiration that might help me get through this low period that is radiating just beyond the horizon.  The general plan is to finish another one tomorrow (or at least start it – as I’ve been told I have to take the wife to REI in preparation for her trip to Africa).  Yes, yes… I know what most of you are saying, “it’s crap.”  Well, art is subjective so, you can go blow a goat.
Other than that, I’m going to take another stab at working through the manuscript that I started on alcohol fueled writing binges at the age of 24.  Yes, 10 years later – I cannot remember what was put to pixel or page.  I have notebooks full of shit that will one day have to be culled through and ripped apart and burned.  I scribbled on a mountain of pulp and I’m relatively certain that it will come back to haunt me.  At the very least, I can make some veiled attempt at editing the troubled seas of a lost and whiney little boy into some form of entertainment.  Maybe that’s where it all starts.  It’s certainly not happening with craigslist.
-B