I am somewhat unclear on the ramifications...

I have begun to sleep with my Camera. As of right now we do not have a carnal relationship but everything has happened so fast between the two of us one never knows.  If I had any close friends, the type I confided in, they might be concerned about this affair but since I walk alone no one wonders...

She came into my life so quickly, one minute an empty box at the check out stand at COSTCO, the next minute the object of my affection, central to my dreams and compliant to my every whim.  She isn't simple, you just have to look at the size of her manual to understand that, but their are so many subtle nuances to her that she never cease to either fascinate or amaze me.

I have gotten smutty with her of late, and she likes it.  At night, when I am alone, I surf the web for toys for her.  I look at the RED ROCK MICRO site and think how sexy she would look in one matte box or another or how a certain set of handle might set off the glint in her one, smooth alluring eye. The eye through which she shows me the world not so much as it really is but how I want it to be.  We both look through her unblinking eye at a world that is both terifying and mundane at once.

Then at night, curled up together, we plot how we will change it for the better...

This is what I have always wanted to do.

...and I don't mean drink whiskey

Put up or shut up

In 1985 I bought an Air Force Compressor and an IWATA HP_B airbrush, the first of many IWATAS.  I had a head full of 80s imagery from the pages of PAPER MOON and ideas from the pages of William Gibson, who I had recently discovered and who I thought was a prophet of the coming age of technology.  I had been dabbling with airbrush art but had suffered from a dearth of quality tools to work with.  With the purchase of the Compressor and the airbrush I had no further excuses.  I had board, I had paint and I had the tools.

It was time to put up or shut up.  I launched on 5 years that shaped the face of my life to date, it led from a duplex on Arden Way in Sacramento to Skywalker Ranch.

I have a secret though, I never really wanted to be an artist, I wanted got be a filmmaker.  I want to tell stories.  Specifically I wanted to be a Documentary filmmaker.  Like everyone else with these inclinations at the time though I got distracted by VFX, then by a career in computer games.  Then to the transition of Computer Game development from Geekdom, to Rockstar to multinational commodity, the guts of it simply off-shored.

Fast foreword through a lot of years I would rather forget to the present day.  I am working eveyrday now in the field I actually went to college to study..when Carter was President.  I now have a camera I can hold in my hand that will shoot feature quality work.  After years of working for other people though, years of abusing my body, years of fighting demons and holding onto things from my past I should have let go long ago I am only missing one thing.

I am missing a place to point my Camera and I am missing a story to tell.  So what do I do?

After all, it is time to put up or shut up.

Taking a breath

I have worked as a production artist all of my professional life.  Right now I am using all of that experience at my latest gig with a Marketing Start up here in Petaluma.  Long days seem longer though with my body in such horrible condition.  I find myself frustrated that my desire to do the work, coupled with my excitement about actually to do what I wanted to do (filmmaking) so long ago, run into the physical frailties I have foisted on myself.  I was given a great body and I ill used it.

Last night my boss made a joke about me becoming a real "9-to-5er" and I really have.  Up in the morning, in to the studio to work, home at night and the painful thing is he is right.

Happy Tuesday

So I started to react to something I saw over on FACEPLACE this morning...then I stopped.  The whole idea of getting off that site was to go back to having fun on the internet, treating it as a playground rather than a gulag.  That may sound naive to some but hey you gotta roll with what you got, right?  For me, especially after yesterday (I apologize for the TMI and will reign myself in the future) I need to put some serious efforts into lightening up.

Yesterday was good though, after a bad start.  How bad can it be if I get paid to play in After Effects and Premiere al;l day, honing my skills for whatever I feel like doing for myself after hours.  I may actually get this whole "9 to 5 job" thing eventually.  Additionally I had the pleasant surprise of feeling like, at least for a bit, that the people I work with "had my back".

Turning my passion into my job for all those years only succeeded it dulling my edge and driving a flaming stake through my passion.  Now I am trying the alternative and it is kinda cool. 

Part of that is getting back to working on my own projects, which when you are employed means something different then when you are freelancing.  When you are freelancing, well then you have to consider all the possibilities of "monetizing" your work...which is like creative saltpeter to me.  When you have a "Day Jobbe" though, and thus a source of income outside of your creative endeavors, you are free to let your mind wander.  Doing something that is not commercially viable is often good for your soul, if you are freelance though it can be hazardous to your health.

Well said Mr. Puttnam

"...I Like T.I.E.Fighters! T.I.E. Fighters are COOL!"

So As I wrote over the weekend I spent part of the weekend recovering and part of it playing in my 3D Modeler, MODO.  I also shared that I was finding some catharsis in the fact that I was actually able to start building a TIE Fighter (given my checkered past with LFL and Star Wars in General). In light of all that I thought it was very productive that I was able to actually act like a fanboy, set the digital bit in my teeth and model me up some SIENAR fleet system goodness.

What I found even MORE cathartic is that after a certain point in the modeling process, when I was happy with the results and having fun doing something I loved a lot (3D Graphics) that I was able to say:

"Well enough of that, now let's move on and do some work on my own ideas"

This is real progress because I have finally started to shake the George Lucas Homunculus off my back, where it had lived for all these years sucking my creativity out of my spine with a silly straw.

I often have that image, clients or employers taking something from me that is more than a little intangible like it was a readily identifiable commodity that you could pick up in any shop.

...just an update

Have made it to work and have discovered I have an angel on my shoulder.

Just another Monday

So I am still not QUITE 100% ut I am going into work anyway.  Last night I got a screaming text from a contractor who was livid that I had not made his life easier so I am not really sure how today will play out. After I got the message I went for a very long drive...in the dark...in the rain.  I succeeded in getting myself pretty well lost and was only able to find my way home thanks to a friend on the phone and GPS. Got to sleep late, woke up early...yada,yada,yada.

This contractor is a personal friend of my boss and I am pretty sure there will be repercussions.  Mondays around the office are usually pretty stressful because we have so much to do.  Last night as I was ling down to sleep I entertained the concept of what I would do if I lost this job because of all this.  Now I am not really sure that is an option, unless I do something stupid like quit over principles.  In the past that would be my reaction to this.  I would puff up my shirt like some lout in an old cartoon in PUNCH, yammer on and on about how "I won't be treated like this" and other such nonsense and then I would storm out.  In short I would let the bullies win.  Just like I have let them win for most of my life.

The trouble is manifold now though.  Nick is accepted to his expensive design school and whereas I wish he were going to go into a field I didn't know so much about (game design) I will support him in anything he does as long as he follows through.  I never got to go away to college so he NEEDS TO.

Additionally there is the fact that this job is, well what I trained to do in college.  It is what I have built my skills up for in the intervening years.  In filmmaking they call it "carrying cans" (referring back to cans of film stock) and in other professions they call it "paying our dues". I have already paid my dues in other fields, but those fields are closed off to me now and in fact they don't interest me anymore.  I set the next few years aside to work at this job to pay my dues (and pay my son's way through college). I can't let the bullies take that away from him...(in these matters I am collateral damage, Nick needs to go to school). By extension then I need to deal with this.

Finally there is the simple fact that I like the people I work with.  They are quirky at times, infuriating at other but in the end they are always good people.  At the same time this contractor has something the company needs, the studio he rents out and we use to impress the clients. So that fact, combined with the mercurial nature of Mondays in the office leaves me wondering once again if I will be employed at the end of the day.

All the years I hid in the WESTFALIA I think was because I knew in my heart (the broken one) that if I went back to work with other people that there was a real possibility I would have to deal with this sort of thing.  I kept sleeping in the van because freezing my ass off was easier than dealing with the simple fact that I am incapable anymore of doing that exact thing. The realization than behind all the grey hair is just a scared kid, who doesn't trust anyone and feels all alone. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant, it is what I perceive and perception is reality.

Getting Pissy

There are some things that follow us through our lives, pet peeves that morph through the years without really losing their meanings...or their ability to piss us off.

So do you remember standing in line for the hot lunch at school?  When I did it the food was served from steamer tubs with no corporate affiliation and the tub contained actual food, to the best of my knowledge.  We won't talk about the "Mystery Meat" issue, there are some things man was not meant to know. So when you were standing in those lines, maybe chatting with a friend (or sizing up the girls, for reasons your hormones only knew at that time) and someone "CUT" in front of you in line.  Now this could have been by force, in the case of a bully, or it could have been by co-incidence when someone ahead of you started chatting with someone they knew who had arrived late (and then used the conversation as a way of sliding in front of you).

A queue is a kind of Social Contract, without it their would be anarchy (or at least "Black Friday" everyday).  Violation of that contract though is often over looked, and even more so if someone points out that said contract is being violated the plaintiff in the case is often the one vilified.

My morning at the local Mermaid Coffee shop started with the violation of this contract...by people of my own age and in a manner so blatant I wanted to scream.  But I didn't, I let them do it.  Another social contract down, another yet to go.  It did not help that when I went out to the Passat the battery was dead (seems the headlight warning bell is somewhat easily distracted).

So my question is this, if even normal people in this day and age cannot be expected to respect something as simple as a queue in a coffee shop on a rainy day how can we expect them to respect any other Social COntract?  Am I in fact an ANTIQUE because I actually think that Social COntracts are important, or do I just sound pissy?

Things are moving...

Back when I was working at Totally Games on the STAR WARS games I was tasked with doing a series of designs of TIE Fighters for the game of well, the same name.  I want you to think about that for a minute, a fan boy was paid to design TIE Fighters for two weeks.  Yeah, it was cool.  Three of the designs were finally used and the rest languished.  My involvement with the STAR WARS universe was severed when I left TG due to personal reasons.  As my life got harder to deal with my memories of the whole thing go acrimonious and all the memories of all the great times got sad.

...but I held on to the book, subtitled "Bucky's Big Book of TIE Fighters".

So there is a lot of movement these days, Jay Leno Moving on and Jimmy Fallon Moving in to fill the vacuum is in the news a lot ( the media is a narcissistic monster after all and LOVES reporting on everything it does to give those actions added weight).  Now I have always been a Letterman kinda guy but have not watched him kn years, he has gotten to bitter and self aware.  I met Jay Leno at the ROLEX Historic Races in Monterrey once, he was loud and kind of obnoxious.  I never watched Jimmy Fallon, but when I saw particular clips from his show I thought he was pretty amusing.

So it was when I saw this clip on a review on NPR over on FACEPLACE...(or whatever that other site is called)...I was charmed.  Even though Disney now owns the MUPPETS (and the mouse is doing its best to spread marketing guano all over the name as fast as it can) this made me smile big time.


Why? Well I guess because it reminds me of the old MUPPET SHOW. I guess because it is obvious that Jimmy Fallon loved the MUPPET SHOW as much as I did. Most of all though because it is sad and happy at the same time, in well balanced measure. The world is a nasty place these days and there is no WAY enough joy in it to go around.

So Jay is moving on, Jimmy is moving on and I am moving on. I like moving back to the "BLOG-O-Sphere" and away from FACEBOOK. Facebook strikes me now as Blogging for people who cannot use BLOGGER, and if there is no investment in the action then the quality of the content must be called into question. Too much vitriol and too much posturing and not enough positive interaction. Too much pomposity and not enough fact checking.

Oh, and there was a reason for mentioning the TIE Fighter book.  For the longest time I spent so much time trying to make a living out of 3D modeling and animation that I lost track of the love of it's aspect that hooked me so long ago.  The last few days as I have labored under the yoke of a cold (and a fair dose of exhaustion) I started sitting at my workstation and damn if I didn't start to model a TIE Fighter.  Not just model it but ENJOY the act.

"...take a load off Marty.."

Personal Growth #1 - Recognizing Resistance

If you are a creative type I have two things to ask you:

1)Why are you reading this instead of working?
2)Have you read Steven Pressfield's books "The War of Art" and "Do the Work"?

If you are doing the former then you obviously have not done the latter.  Get thee to Amazon or, better still Audible, and pick both of them up.

The reason I bring this up is that of late I have been identifying a plethora of artifacts that form the backbone of the RESISTANCE that keeps me from doing the work my soul needs (I mean REALLY NEEDS) to do.  I won't go into what RESISTANCE is, get the books, suffice to say it is like that brick wall that stands between you and your creativity.

I mention this now because I was just sitting here watching a HOW TO video about Spaceship modeling and I suddenly realized I was wasting my time, that I know how to do that and was, in fact, one of the first guys to do it. The fact that I am watching the video, aside from it helping me become more facile in the toolset, is an artifact of my insecurity and the beleif that I can't do something that I am, by myt very nature, more than capable of doing.  Add to this the peccadillos of PERFECTIONISM (NOTHING is perfect and if you go looking to make it so you are just wasting time) and fear of failure (meaning some a**hole might say you did something wrong and it wasn't good enough).

Get out your billshit knife friends and neighbors and cut a great hole through the dung and get back to work.

We can remember your time on FACEBOOK for you...wholesale.

After months and months of dry air, both broiling hot and frigid, it is raining nicely here in Sonoma county.  Big heavy wet drops that hit the ground like jelly beans and spreading into puddles that both amuse and freeze my bare feet when I invariably go out to get something from one of the cars or move the laundry. It's nice but considering the months of dryness I cannot see it doing a whole lot to offset months and months of dryness.  I have lived in California the majority of my life and I have never experienced a year that was so dry.

FAST FOREWORD:

A couple of hours later.  I just finished watching TOTAL RECALL, the new one not the Arnie movie.  It was actually a better movie than the original and felt more like a Phillip K. Dick story.  I have loved Dick's work since college, I guess it spoke to my innate paranoia.  It is disturbing though that a lot of what his psychotic, drug altered brain pictured in terms of a dystopian future has become so close to the reality that we live in everyday. I think if Phillip were to rise from the grave he would take one look at the world, shrug his shoulders and say "I Told you so".

Almost to the end of my first week pretty much unplugged from FACEBOOK, aside from the odd "like" or comment, and my brain seems to be coming out of a social media haze and into the light of reality.  During all those months when I was trapped inside with no transportation and no gas money if I did have have wheel I began far too reliant on social media for human contact.  The trouble was the contact was filtered heavily and if there is no actual air between you and the person you are talking to the contact can't really be considered "human".  At best it is "human like".

We have been flooded with a storm of "Your Facebook Movie" links the past few weeks.  I even looked at my own.  An interesting attempt conceived by a marketing wag to automate intimacy, using cherry picked artifacts freely shared on the site (easily garnered by stored information) combined with a sentimental soundtrack to create an automatic tear generator.

"OOOO! Look I remember that!"

When I was working in games I used to have to remind the programmers that every person we were writing the games for did NOT have a top of the line computer on their desk and that we this had to "dumb down" aspects of the game to compensate for that.  Sadly, there is no such rational voice in the halls of the marketing department of FACEBOOK telling their staff to tread lightly on the hearts of their users.