For Posterity

So I'm starting this again (after a three year long false-start) in the hopes of actually being able to use it for something constructive. And really, at this point the constructive thing I'm referring to is just to keep tabs on what I'm doing.

I've realized lately that I've undergone a little bit of stress-induced memory loss over the years, and I have whole chunks of my life deleted from my memory, but with just scant clues of what it was I'd been doing.

For example, I'd been dumping an old iPod to my computer today, and I found on it a song I'd recorded that I simply had no recollection of recording. I mean, it's obviously me, an clearly I wasn't drunk at the time because I can't PLAY like that when I'm drunk, but there is an awful lot of pain being externalized there, and yet I can't remember the recording of it, or indeed the time of my life that it went down.

So I'm just gonna write here. And I'm not gonna pull punches. This is for me, and for posterity. You like it, great. If not... well, you've been warned. Not to say that I'm setting out intending to be an asshole, the kind of guy who deliberately hurts feelings in the name of "just being brutally honest." No, those folks are just pricks. I'm not a prick.

My musing of the moment:

I'm about to leave a job mainly because of the stress that was involved in it. Love all the people I work with (mostly), but this is a job for someone without a relationship, or any pets that need attention. LONG hours. Lots of running-around-type-stress. Not much being done to fix it.

So know this, workers of the world, when you hear the term "dynamic, fast-paced environment," run away if you don't like a stress-filled job with a lot of unpaid overtime. I'm going to a job that will be sufficiently less stressy, and I'll have a lot more control over the creative, and over what I'm doing, and how it gets done. I guess we'll see how it goes!

The Credits of the Last Feature

The last few years were tough.

2006 - Everything exploded. Shock and awe.
2007 - Life was a smoking ball of shit. Lots of substances abused, therapy, and poor, poor decisions.
2008 - Figuring out that alone is better.
2009 - Figuring out that alone isn't necessarily better than being with the right one.

I never went anywhere in that time. Not for fun, anyway. Work flung me to and fro, and I carried out a lot of mercy missions and weekend road trips, but never really getting off "the island". Then the planets lined up and time and money clicked together just so, and I said, I'm taking the plunge. Out to Cali, doing the southward drive with the top down and nobody can stop me.

Nagging me at the back of my mind while coalescing this plan was the subtle knowledge that if I didn't do it right now, I'd NEVER do it. I'd never have this opportunity again.

So I broke a heart or two and told a few people vying for the job that I was going and going without them and that life is tough, but I had to live for me, etc. And I left. Partied like a rock star in San Fransisco for three days, then got in the convertible and drove south - with the top down, as I promised myself. Great music blaring, hairpin turns around cliffs that no sane person has the right to negotiate. Hit Los Angeles a few days later, reuniting with many old friends, partying like a movie star in the hills, taking in museum spectacles, and generally having a great time of it.

I hopped a train along the coast to San Diego, rode in first class drinking "Arrogant Bastard Ale" all the way. Deposited myself and my belongings in a hotel room that nobody short of Louis XIV (the king, not the band) has the right to rest his bones in and reflected on how glad I was that I did this right then and there.

Would you believe that it was not three hours later that she literally walked out of the night and into my lap?

Someone even has a picture of it somewhere. Too bad it's nobody we know.

A New Beginning

When I'm happy, I am not funny. And I tend to only want to write when I'm funny. And thus miserable. My girlfriend today saw a snippet of my older journal and said, "Your bitterness is amazing. Well, snarkiness."

And so I'm attempting a new beginning.

I'm a guy who was born right on the back end of the Generation X raft, and as a result I kind of snark on everything as a means of coping. Our motto might as well be "I ridicule, therefore I am." But honestly, I truly feel that I've embarked upon a new chapter in this life, and as a result I feel the need to start anew. No baggage, no preconceptions. So here we are at the origin. Zero, zero, zero, zero.

I think here I'm gonna run down recent events which led me to this pass. And a lot of things have changed lately.

It all starts with a conversation thread on an internet forum, a drive south from San Fransisco to San Diego, and an amazing little English girl who came walking out of the night.

Stay tuned, true believers.