Discouraged, I am not...

Discouraged.  That's what I'm trying not to be right now.  I've had a couple of hits in a short amount of time and I'm trying to turn my mood around because, after all these years of plugging away at this, I realize that it does me no good to dwell on negativity. 

An exercise then.  To list what's bothering me so I can go ahead and decide how I'm going to deal with it all.  First off, my mandolin somehow broke itself while sitting in its gig bag on the floor beside my bed.  We use it on an acoustic version of one of Lacy's songs and we may have to perform said version at an impromptu show next week.  I'm sitting here hoping I can find one to borrow because I do not have the money to replace it and will find out tomorrow if I have the money (and the time, for that matter) to fix it.  My day starts out kind of wonky and several tiny things get under my skin while making breakfast and while heading to yoga, to which I was late because the train sucks.  On top of that a fairly new pair of boots I have been trudging around in broke today.  We're talking two months old pair of leather boots, salt stained from walking over snow and ice-treated sidewalks and streets that I bought on sale for $40, and the sole underneath the right heel cracks and breaks apart from the uppers and I'm walking crooked for the rest of the day.  It's true that I go through shoes a lot more quickly now that I walk everywhere but two months is absurd.  Add on top of all of that, that I finally got around to listening to the competition for that remix contest I entered tonight at work and everyone sounds amazing compared to me.  I feel like I'm standing naked in front of thousands of people who have on really nice tailored clothes. 

And all I have at the end of it all is a gluten free beer and a cat on my lap to comfort me...oh, and the promise of money from the government in a few days in the form of my tax return, which isn't going to come anywhere near paying off my credit card debt, especially considering I now need a new pair of boots and possibly a new mandolin.  I really want to crawl inside a cave right now and hibernate for the rest of this bleak winter until the sun returns. 

But, I realize that this is detrimental thinking.  I can't get discouraged.  No, this is supposed to be an awesome year.  I just picked up a freelance job at TruTV and will hopefully be starting in March, I'm able to afford gluten free beer, my cat still loves me, I'm still making music and learning tons from the people I'm up against in that competition and elsewhere, getting closer to finding my niche even.  I can still get voice over jobs and, though I sometimes can't tell, I'm getting better at it, I think.  Boots and mandolins are replaceable and sometimes fixable.  Life goes on.  And besides.  This shit day ended about 30 minutes ago.  And next week, there's a strong possibility that I'm going to rock the eff out.  In Philly.  So with that said, I go to sleep and tomorrow welcome a new day...and none of this neg-head downer crap!    

A Sea Change...

At the end of my work week here and I'm trying to accept that it's not all productivity and milestones.  But then I'm also constantly trying to remind myself, when I'm sitting here idle, at a slow moment in the work evening, that I did accomplish a lot earlier today (voice over auditions and work on re-editing one of my demos...oh, and rock star yoga class at noon before work) and that it's no big deal, as awful as it feels, that I'm getting nothing else done today.   It's just too distracting right now at work and so many of the things I have to do, I need to be in the home office/studio to be doing them.

I'm on at least 5 major tasks right now that are preoccupying my time:
Working on the remix project which is due Feburary 8th
Submitting VO auditions on an almost daily basis if I can
Rehearsing for the upcoming CD release parties with Lacy
Networking with filmmakers to try and get another film scoring job
Revamping some of my voice over demos and creating a promo demo so I can ultimately start soliciting agents

...and I think that's it...maybe I can count trying to clean up my apartment on a grand scale.  Right now I'm on the donating clothes leg of that race.

So, you see, very few of these things can be done at work.  I guess I can be researching filmmakers and writing emails right now but everything else needs to be done at home.  I'm in a phase with the remix contest where I really can't be doing anything in headphones.  I need my monitors.  I could be doing research on agents, too, I guess.  

But all this comes with the sinking feeling that, with a potential change in my work schedule here, I may have fewer chances to get any of my work done during the day unless I adjust my routines.  I've always been good at that though.  A while back, I lost the overnight shifts, sorry, got rid of the overnight shifts and while it is nice to be rid of them, I did get a staggering amount of work done there.  During the weekdays here it gets far too busy for me to have my laptop out and, lately, I haven't even been getting breaks because of how short staffed we are.  Having more seniority when we finally get our new hires in here, I stand to completely lose all weekend and late evening shifts, which would be nice...I mean it'd be effing great!  but the notion of doing any kind of work other than administrative stuff, and sending emails would be all but gone.  Maybe I could get away with the occasional mixing and editing of music tracks on my break, or voicing auditions in edit bays, something I haven't done in a while.

Ultimately, depending on what my new shift is, I'm going to have to figure out when during the day I can do things like submit to VO auditions and compose and mix audio.  Shutting the door to my room works but sometimes it's still too distracting when Katrina and I are home at the same time, which could happen, say, if I get a 10am - 6pm shift.  Don't get me wrong it be a rock star shift and I'd eat it up.  Imagine!  Being able to get off work at dinner time and go home and cook dinner and eat it right away instead of this shit where I make three portions of the same meal and carry it all to work, risk spilling it in my bag (happened yesterday with chicken soup), then have to microwave it later so that the vast majority of dinners I eat have been reheated.   Imagine, getting up at the same time every day and going to yoga at the same time and then having weekends off so I can hang out with people who have 9-5 Monday through Friday jobs.  I've been on horrible dates that were my weekend night but the other person's middle of the week or vice versa (worse in my opinion).

But I digress.  This blog is about my own productivity.  I see it as a challenge that, with all the things that could potentially change with my schedule, I may have to do my freelance work at less optimal times of day.  So far, I've actually enjoyed and actively benefited from working nights.  I wake up fresh, go to yoga, then come home and work my face off and then go to work my night job feeling accomplished and in a good mood, get off work, maybe have one drink and sleep and do it all over again.

I suppose I'm getting a tiny bit wistful but, ya know, one door closes another opens, yadda yadda.  I guess I'm going to post this blog and then get to doing my research.  Later on!

 

Creative clutter...

That's what my girlfriend calls it.  And I've actually started to embrace the amount of crap cluttering up my desk and my room in general.  I've never seen myself look so fondly upon a stack of wound up ethernet cables and bills sitting on my desk before.  What's come over me? 

I think I really just need things to happen right now and I can't spend any of my valuable time filing bills or restowing ethernet cables underneath my bed or just generally tidying up, dust be damned.  Why are there ethernet cables on my desk anyway?  Oh right, that's left over from the massive week long troubleshooting session to figure out what was wrong with my Macbook.  That's an interesting story. 

I just got it back from the Apple Store and it turns out what I had assumed was the almost worst case scenario, a fried airport card (worst would have been a fried logic board), turned out to only be a fried airport card cable.  The culprit.  Olives.  A few weeks ago, right before this wifi always cutting out and airport card not being recognized business, Alexa and I were at the Tippler eating an over large bowl of olives that we just couldn't finish.  One can only handle so many olives.  I just get thriftier around her perhaps and wasn't willing to send them back to the kitchen, though, to get trashed, so I asked if they had any kind of container I could carry them out in.  They produced, eventually, one of those plastic take out containers that you usually save because they're sturdy enough.  I mean, these things are supposed to snap tightly shut and everything.  But, no.  Olive oil leaked in my bag and some of it soaked into the neoprene case that I keep my laptop in inside my shoulder bag.  When I had the thing open the other day, I learned a little about the anatomy of the interior and located the airport card, cable and antenna.  Only the next day did it dawn on me that that was the exact corner of the laptop that was probably sitting in olive oil the whole ride home that night. 

At any rate, it only cost me $10 for the part and $40 for the labor.  And one OS reinstall that has set me back while I sit here and wait for all my files to be copied back over to my Macbook from my PC.  That's going to take all night and then I have to reinstall all of my audio software and that's going to take all day tomorrow.  With any luck by Wednesday, I'll be back at full operating status and going strong again.  And someday maybe I'll clean up this clutter...but it sort of becomes my state of mind right now. I don't need clean right now, I need focused.  But I also need, yes, sleep.  Eyes = Heavy. 

Decluttering and Destressing...

Sitting at home on a Saturday night working on a piece of music, taking a little break for an update. I got done with a lot of small tasks on this particular piece I had set aside for tonight. Things like fixing a few mistakes I'd caught, writing a few new parts and finishing re-entering parts of the score from the printed copy that were missing from the older copy I had to revert to after the virus. Now, I'm getting to the point where I'm taking a step back and listening to my ideas, thinking about what the piece is missing. I have a lot of logistical things with this piece, like sampling and looping the orchestra parts, that I'm trying to work out as I write it, but some of the logistics I can't really bother with until the piece is written anyway. So, now it's time to rethink a few things. The structure of the piece is there but it's lacking in some places...there's no real arc yet.

Anyway, so right now my other big thing has been this ongoing battle to get the room to a point where it doesn't feel so cluttered so I can work in here more effectively. I had a discussion with my roommate/cousin about all the things that are hanging about with no real home and cluttering up the common space and it started to make sense to me to rent a storage space for these things. The only big things are my beer equipment, camping gear and window AC unit...so now I have to justify other things that might go in there. Some of the boxes under my bed come to mind. Musical instruments are all staying here, of course.

If I'm going to stay in this apartment another year or more, I do want it to be comfortable, so it's probably best for me to just stop fighting the fact that my bedroom is so small and start really working to solve the problem. I have a friend donating her flat screen monitor to me soon, so I imagine that this monitor I'm looking at now that takes up 1/4 of my room by itself, will probably go in storage until my dad takes it back.

But blah blah blah. The best news of the week is that the six piano sketches are all done and ready to be performed...better yet, published. That's the next thing to do. More on that later.

Additionally, I've done my second volunteer training session at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. Mainly, I've just been "directing" which entails merely, listening to the narrator, catching mistakes and marking page numbers. It's fun though, and I'm learning their conventions for how they read certain passages. It's interesting to note that they are required to describe photos and diagrams in these text books as they go along. I've met some nice people there so far and hope to be doing it once a week until I get fully trained and then maybe once or twice a month.

What else is there to tell? It's getting cold in the city and will probably snow soon. Work is going well but taking it out of me slowly for all the schedule switching but I could be doing something a lot worse for a company that sucks quite a lot more. The company isn't bad, though. They threw us another great Christmas party and I even won one of the raffle prizes and then danced my face off while full on some excellent catered food.

I should get back to work though. I may be burnt out on the orchestra piece but I think I'll work on some electronic stuff. Laters.

Blurb #15

It seems like my blogs of late are always beginning with the fact that I've been working a lot. I'll skip ahead and assume that you've already divined as much since I haven't blogged in a bit. It's late so I'll make this short though. I have a friend coming into town this weekend, one who is considering moving to NYC in the near future, so you can imagine this is going to be fun for me. I've already been having these moments where I start thinking about where I was and in what mindset, etc. this time last year. There was a great deal of scouring craigslist and job search sites going on, daydreaming and internet research. But now I get to watch another friend go through it. From a different perspective. It is a great feeling though to look back on your own journey and see how far you've come, especially if you can distinctly remember bouts of hopelessness, where you thought you'd never make it and how you trudged on through them and how now you can say, I did it!

Anyway, other news, I may have a roommate for next year, tentatively speaking. Won't say too much because I don't want to jinx it. My apartment is clean and enjoy living alone but it's time for a transition in my lifestyle to something more cost effective.

And as for music? I've played my piano the past few days...and thought about some pieces. Really, I've been that busy. Sometimes the most creative I get is during my down time at work when I find myself drumming on various surfaces, which prompted an idea. Instead of buying a drum pad or an electronic drum set to perform drum lines for my recordings, it might be a cool idea to build a few drum pads into my computer desk and have them swivel out, have a kick pedal under my desk and have it all wired in via MIDI cables so that, when I get bored sitting at my computer, and I catch myself drumming some awesome beat, instead of having to map it all out manually or get up and walk across the room to a drum set, I could just play it by drumming on my pads and using the kick pedal under the desk. Sound crazy and like a lot of work to achieve something creative? So?

That having been said, I should go to bed...this wasn't really a blurb was it?

Work work work work work....

I did it again. I looked up and I realized I was in the middle of a 16 day stretch of work. This time the places I did said work were a little less diverse, however. No film shoots. Ever since I got back from Raleigh, 9 days ago, the bulk of the work has been at NY 1. And today I would have been off from work but Technicolor called me to come in and cover for the full time projectionist because he had a death in the family. Tomorrow and Friday I'll be working both jobs.

I've been busy like this for so long, especially since the last film score was finished, that I've been wondering when I'm going to get a nice full day to just dive into some of my own music projects. Over the past few days I have been tinkering with my new software synths and coming up with melodies here and there but I feel an itching to really get something done in the way of coming up with a compositional plan for at least one or two new pieces, either chamber or electroacoustic. I've said before that I don't mind (in fact, that I see the benefit of) working in spurts, an hour here an hour there. But it would be nice to really have some time to finish something. Or at least finish starting something.
It's going to be all about balance though, over the next couple of months to year. I need to work obviously so I can eat but sometimes it feels like it's taking away from my music time.

I'm increasingly aware that the next big musical step for me is to really start writing again. I've made a ton of contacts in my first few months here but I feel like I need to shift back to creating so that I can have fresh stuff to show these contacts and so that my musical output doesn't stagnate. That would be horrible. I find myself trying not envy people who just seem to have it going at this age so they don't have to work full time jobs for the man. But I also have to keep reminding myself that J.K. Rowling was a depressed single mother living in poverty when she was writing the first Harry Potter. Not that I think I'm writing the next Harry Potter or anything here. I'm just trying to find some like minded people to create music with, either for the cinema or television or for the concert stage and/or people's mp3 players.

And speaking of that kind of music, I had an opportunity to get together and jam with a fellow composer this evening but Technicolor blew that out of the water. I ended up working from 830 this morning until 715 this evening so by the time I would have gotten out to Fort Greene the first game of the world series would have been on and we probably would have ended up going to the bar to watch that. And I have to be up for the 8am shift at NY 1 tomorrow.

Soon, I'll iron all this out, my work schedule and whatnot. Then, I'll be able to more easily work my freelance jobs plus my musical endeavors into the picture.

I'll try not to get frustrated meantime.

And I had thought about, since this blog is a blog about being a composer, not bothering to write an entry again until I got started writing music and maybe even had an mp3 or two to post up here. But since this is also a blog about moving to a new city, namely New York City, I figured I shouldn't leave out parts of the journey that are happening now. Like the adjustments, the pitfalls, the mistakes etc.

So now I work for the next 7 days and then I have a friend visiting and then, I promise you, I will get to work on the many musical ideas floating around in my head.

Scroll down past the computer talk unless you care...

I need a break from trying to work on this scene. My computer's been acting up recently and I'm a little disheartened by it. I put so much time and energy into building this computer last year and it was supposed to be a brick. It was supposed to be able to handle all of this software I'm using on it and not crash on me. And yet, I'm just having so many problems lately. And I hardly have the time to trouble shoot them so I've just been dealing with it.

Here are the specs for those who care and know a little about it: Asus M2N-MX SE Plus mother board, 4 GB of RAM, a 2.61Ghz AMD Athalon 64 bit dual core processor, and I'm running Windows XP 64 bit. I also have a Creative SB Audigy Soundblaster sound card.

I've been having problems where I'll occasionally hear a crackling in the speakers on start up and sometimes when running audio programs that use a lot of processing power. I thought I had a conflict between the sound card on the mother board and the one I installed in the PCI slot but I don't want to go messing around in the Bios to try and shut down the one on the mother board if I'm not entirely sure that's the problem. It could be anything else. I seemed to somehow have resolved it by getting rid of a component that was opening on startup, something called Realtek HD Audio, which I know came packaged with the sound card I installed (I got it years ago for another computer and just moved it to this one and updated the drivers). But occasionally, I still hear it. Mainly when the processor gets really taxed. (I should also mention that I run the audio from my audio and synth software through my Tascam US-122L Audio/MIDI interface to cut down on latency from the MIDI software especially...I still run Windows Media and system audio through the sound card though).

Now, the main problem is that this new software I have sometimes is pretty processor intensive but I was under the impression that my processor could handle it. But I've been having crashes lately when I try to edit while the program is playing back audio and sometimes just whenever I try to run video in Sony Vegas, which I never had big problems with before. Now, the obvious first thing to check is that I don't have other background programs running that might also be taxing the processor simultaneously. I can't see that there are. Maybe I had Firefox open and Windows Media and for a bit there my task manager showed that something related to google talk was using up a chunk of RAM.

But I'm at a loss. I guess this is the life of a PC. Occasionally you have these idiopathic things that don't happen often enough to really indicate what the big problem might be. They only occur long enough to annoy you and then the thing runs great for a period of time.

At any rate, I do have other things on my mind besides the health of one of my investments. I found out today (and this was my suspicion all along) that CNN really is too good to be true. My boss informed me that I'd be coming in on an as-needed basis and that they didn't have any freelance work right now. I had half-expected that because it's just what one gets when one boasts a little about something and I'm not going to lie. I did a little boasting...or maybe it was just a little well deserved patting on the back. Either way, I let my guard down and relaxed for a second and got a little ahead of myself, counted my chickens before they hatched, as it were.

At any rate, as I've mentioned before (in so many words), there's nothing like a long stretch with nothing to do but think (like a train ride...or a long day at work with a lot of down time) to set your mind right. I decided I'm not going to do the easy conventional thing and lie down and start being negative about it. That's comfortable and sort of a cop out. I need to get creative. Then something occurred to me that's right under my nose. I've succeeded in taking advantage of connections up here more than I realize and there's no shortage of those. I should worry more about making as many connections as I can now while I'm actively seeking jobs because that can only serve to help me down the line, should I ever become unemployed again. And it's always nice to be able to pass on connections to friends, too. Besides, as much as I'd like to have a full time job and security, my mother said it best, this schedule lets me work on my music a lot more, and it allows me the leeway to work a bunch of different jobs (where they're available) and make a lot of different connections. Besides a foot in the door is a foot in the door no matter in what capacity I'm working there.

So, I'm slightly crestfallen, but not defeated. No, never defeated. The funny thing about accomplishing your goals is that the more of them you have under your belt, the less likely you are to give up the rest of them in the face of adversity. You can more easily tell yourself that, hey, you've done it before, why not again?

So there's your pep talk for the evening. I gotta get some rest, one more shift at CNN tomorrow and then it's a whole lot of uncertainty about when I will work there again. We shall see. I leave you with a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones tune that is running through my head and kind of fits the situation.

Trouble and Strife

One day at a time...

Walking back from the train this evening, the smell of soap wafts down from someone's apartment (not the first time I've noticed this) like they have a giant bar of Ivory in their apartment and it's perfuming the entire block...at least it's not everyone's garbage. That's usually Monday and Wednesday. And at least there are no children playing dodgeball in the street at 2am tonight. (They were thankfully at the end of my block and thus, out of hearing range, the other day). And although the apartment door is wide open when I come home at least it's back on its hinges. They've been redoing the lobby the past few days. And although it's humid as it can get in my apartment to the point that sweat beads up on my forehead the second I step inside (I know, I need a fan), at least it's not as hot as my friend's place in the Upper West Side where I was last night.

I had great train luck coming back from Karishma's this evening, and by train luck I don't just mean that the train was in the station upon my arrival at both Franklin Avenue and Atlantic Avenue. It was, but since I had to run down the stairs both times, the luck I am referring to is that I didn't trip and fall either time.

I'm feeling quite on a roll these days despite everything...well, mainly quite recently because, first, I won a poker game for a change last night and this morning I found out that my new job at CNN is going to pay really well. I can only hope that I'm also going to be working there enough to be able to tell that it pays well. I must wait until next Tuesday to know for sure.

But as it stands, I have the next few days off and I'm going to try and enjoy myself. I didn't do much today because my new software came in the mail and I spent about four hours installing everything. And I'm still not done.

When it is installed though, I'm going to have a fresh new palette of sounds and instruments to work with. I'm like a kid in a candy store. And I have two projects going on simultaneously. One should have been finished months ago but, as there's no deadline, no one's exactly rushing me.

Anyway, this CNN job, and the circumstances surrounding it, are about the closest I've gotten to my latest goal...which is to break even and maybe put some money into savings one of these months. I've realized, too, that maybe that's what this whole adventure is about and what life is about, making little goals before big goals can be achieved. Taking things one day at a time. I think I'm okay with that, as that's about all I have the energy for anyway. When you have a mind as active as mine and you think so damn much, it's relieving to be able to tell yourself that you don't have to get there right away. I likened it once to realizing that to get up over a wall, you need a ladder and what is a ladder but a bunch of individual rungs, rungs that you can't skip over and have to take one at a time?

I should get some sleep or I'll make a bad habit of staying up until 2am every night.

Here's a song that's in my head:

Weed Party

Things calming down, Coney Island and my inability to take care of electronics...

Good morning. First day off in seven and I'm just finishing laundry and eating lunch. Also finally working on a piano piece that will be part of a cycle that I intend to submit to the SCI 2010 conference. August 1st is the deadline. I have the first piece in the cycle written and the second piece is in the works. Three is the magic number so I'm planning on writing a really simple ending piece in the next week while simultaneously finishing the current piece.

Distractions have subsided a little bit. The basketball goal is no longer outside so I've been sleeping a lot better lately and learning to chill the #$%&*@ out. I realize that, in the wake of my little freak out about my rent, it was too easy to find reasons to hate this place and convince myself that the only possible solution was that I needed to get out, no matter the cost. But now, I'm trying to look at things in a different light now that they've calmed down a bit. I'd be much better off sticking things out then adding more complications to my current situation. After all, I do like living alone, for now, and this neighborhood is not nearly as bad as I make it out to be. Let's face it, when you're the only one you have to bounce your own thoughts off of, there's no one to tell you that you're over reacting, over thinking, or just plain off the mark except yourself. And it's really hard to be honest with yourself at these times. The simple fact of the matter is that things could still be a lot worse. In fact, these hard times of having to scrimp by are teaching me, as they should be teaching the rest of America, how to live within your means. This is a valuable lesson and honestly, if I had a little bit more money and were a little bit more comfortable, my first thought would be that I had license to spend more and then I'd probably end up right back where I am now, through my own carelessness. If this is instilling in me a certain sense of caution then maybe this is the best place for me to be right now.

I'm not saying I wouldn't mind having a little more money to work with here. I've figured how long it would take me to pay off my debt if I were working full time hours...10 months. But it would require me to be working full time. There is good news on the job front, on all sides actually.

First, I got called for an audition for some paid extra work today and I'll be going in for that tomorrow. Second, Part time vs. freelance employment is on the horizon potentially at one of my jobs (I won't say much more because I don't know anything yet for sure). And third, a co worker recently asked me to help him finish off a score for his short film. So I'll start that soon.

Good things come to those who wait.

In the meantime, I went to Coney Island finally yesterday. I am twenty minutes away from the beach and I haven't even realized it all this time. I was certain it was at least a thirty minute train ride. Karishma and I basically walked up and down the boardwalk, purchased some disgusting cheese fries from Nathan's Hot Dogs, walked out onto one of the piers and finally dipped our feet into the ocean before heading back. Coney Island is dirty by NC standards but nowhere near as bad as some Florida beaches I've seen. I'll have to go back now and ride a few of the rides, though. Seems fun. Here are some pictures from the occasion, taken with the camera I've owned for about two years which has, regrettably just been fatally wounded while riding in my bag. Nice big crack in the middle of the LCD screen. And this is one of those cameras that has no viewfinder. I was heartbroken. As I was when I sat on my 8GB iRiver MP3 player a few weeks ago. Do I have some kind of problem with taking care of my electronics? Here are the pictures:

Coney Island best

My productive evening, a lack of postage stamps, Bastille Day and Softball (?)

Whew. I think I've done quite enough for one night. Got off work, marched straight down to the West Village to pick up my paycheck from Technicolor (it came way late, and wouldn't have come at all if I hadn't put their feet to the fire!), then I took the train back to Sunset Park and jumped right into my music. I spent the greater part of the evening putting the finishing touches on a mix of a song called Daresay, that I wrote back in 2004 and have been tweaking ever since. The main thrust of the song is the same, all the notes, etc. I've just built a whole new drumline and synced the tempo to the old synth lines. Then I remixed and remastered the whole piece.

After I was finally satisfied with that, I uploaded it to my myspace page (from which it had been missing while I worked on the remix), a new site called Indaba that I'm trying out (basically a place where musician's can collaborate and work in online recording sessions), and finally on my newly unveiled Facebook fan page, about which I'm very excited. Mainly because of the huge exposure it could garner me. Plus it'll be nice to let everyone know what I'm up to more easily.

I'm about to dive into sketching out a little bit of a piano piece that will be part of a cycle that I will hopefully finish in time to submit to the SCI conference for next year (deadline is August 1st).

Slightly put off by the fact that I just tried to go and buy postage stamps to mail this paycheck of mine but the post office is completely closed. I can't even go in the front of the place to buy stamps at the machines. The grocery store closest to me doesn't sell them, and by the time I get back to 5th Avenue from the post office, the Key Foods is closed. So, I don't know when I'm going to get this check in the mail. I would have preferred it if they retained my direct deposit info and done it that way, instead of cutting me a check. Such an antiquated thing, mailing a deposit to your bank, it seems.

Blah, enough about my current frustration though. How about an explanation of why my arms are so sore? I asked myself that question yesterday out loud while hanging out with Karishma the other night and seriously could not remember that after the Bastille Day celebration on Smith Street, Mike, his girlfriend, her friend and I went to Prospect Park for Mike's softball practice. A bunch of people he knows from work play together on a team so he invited us to practice instead of ditching us at the festival. The festival was good and all that but there was only so much to see. It stretched three blocks from Bergen Street to Atlantic Avenue and two of those blocks were covered in sand and set up in a series of courts for the Petanque tournament. Apparently this festival is still known as the biggest Bastille Day celebration in the U.S. Read more about it here (select Special Events and scroll down). Here are my own pictures from the event sprinkled with a few pics of our softball antics in Prospect Park.

Bastille Day and other stuff

Anyway, it's been years since I've even attempted to hit a ball with a stick, so the one shot I got at hitting about twenty softballs is the reason my arms are so sore. Who'd've thunk?

Hipsters in Bed Stuy and Chubby Basketballers in Sunset Park...

Like a lot of people I know, I like to think things happen for a reason, even if that reason is so that another thing can happen for a reason and on and on until you've gone completely mad wondering where the hell your life is going.

It seems as though this stuff only started to get bad (sure before it was stupid but bearable) once I had already come up with the idea of getting out of here. I was inspired to get out of here for purely monetary concerns initially but now, it's making more and more sense to do it.

If they're going to be out there later and later every night playing basketball (last night it was 330 in the morning or later when I finally called 311) then I'm just going to go mad. 311 is not very effective, I can't go out there and talk to these thugs and expect results (I heard them making fun of someone else who said they had to work in the morning) and I tried cotton balls and sleeping with my hand over my ear and my other ear buried in the pillow. None of these work.

So, maybe it's just a sign that I'm on the right track thinking of getting out of here. Maybe I needed more inspiration to get out of here. Because I may not survive at this rate paying this much in rent but I was hesitant to do it before because I

I had a heck of a time last night though before coming home to those idiots. I went to a Rubalad party in Bedford Stuyvesant with my poker night friends. Basically it's a huge loft building with multiple floors, bands and DJs in different rooms on each floor, art covering every inch of the place (including things like a papier mache cave in one room and slinkys and other random things hanging from the ceiling) and sweaty hipsters. It was wholly impromptu on my part as I wasn't even invited until about 9:00 that night. The party started at 11pm or so and we arrived shortly after. Read more reviews here. I can't seem to find an official website for it and all I could find out for any reason behind the party was this blurb in the email that was forwarded to me:

"20 years ago this summer, 200 eastern European picnickers broke through the iron curtain into the West. We celebrate them, as we exercise our freedom to celebrate."

Their was an option to come in costume. The theme? Picnics. We opted not to try and figure out what that could mean and devise some kind of costume ourselves. Instead we just went as is and people watched all night. But what a weird scene it was. I wish I could say more. After hanging out on the roof with the friends I'd come with, I went back in with a few of the guys, into the muggy dimness of the rest of the loft, I wound up waiting in line for the only bathroom for about twenty minutes. Well, the only bathroom that had a door and was not a mere sheet labeled "pee tent" draped over a structure on a corner of the roof. It was wild.

But anyway, back on the topic of getting the heck out of here. I also have a few options for places to stay cropping up. A friend that I made at a party back in March is looking for someone to fill a spare room where he and his girlfriend live. I'm going to proceed with caution on this one because it might not be for me. It's a three bedroom for one, and I think it's in Bed Stuy, the neighborhood I was in last night (famous for being seedy...seriously there's a Billy Joel lyric about this place), and also it may be too small for me and my stuff. I've decided, though, if I end up cheap enough on rent, wherever I end up moving, I should have enough extra money to rent a storage space for the stuff I can't bring.

And so the logistical nightmare begins. But I'm okay with that. I guess I have to pick which nightmare I want to deal with right now. And I think a little bit of shuffling of my stuff around is worth potentially removing myself from a place where I have to endure a couple of tubby high school kids playing basketball shirtless outside my apartment until 4am, then I'm game. It's goes without saying, of course, that any place I do move to must be quieter in that respect, i.e. a few floors up or at least not street side.

And so and so forth. I'm going to the West Side tonight with Karishma to watch the fireworks. Hopefully, it won't be a total cluster and hopefully we'll be there soon enough to actually catch them. Wish me luck. Pictures ensuing to include my day around Madison Square Park with cousin Katrina.

Okay, so I'm still thinking about that plan in the last blog entry...

I decided tonight that I'm going to stop looking at my situation as a disappointment that I can't do anything about. And start looking at it like this. I came to NYC, yes. But in many ways, I'm not here yet. So I shouldn't consider the experience of living here as though, I got to NYC and it's nothing like I expected and I actually hate it. This is just about where I'm living, where I call home. There are so many aspects of living and working this massive city that have shattered all of my expectations. But the place I live is not one of them.

Sure it's comfortable enough but, living in this neighborhood, I feel apart from everything, as though I were living in the suburbs. I thought about this tonight as I strolled through Sunset Park and it felt like I was in the South Garner Park of New York City. The neighborhood of Sunset Park feels to New York City what Garner felt like to Downtown Raleigh. But on a grander scale and therefore worse in some ways. The morons who litter and make noise and call each other "n____" and play basketball directly outside my apartment. The idiots who pulled up in a Lincoln Towncar last night and parked in front of my apartment(and I'm sure they'll do this again) and blared their Mariachi music while belting out the lyrics at the top of their lungs, all the while spilling beer out the side of their car and smashing the bottles on the pavement. (Yeah, I called 311 for the first time last night) All these, I'm sure, have some kind of counterpart down in Garner. I remember moving out of Garner to North Raleigh for similar reasons. There was domestic violence and after hours noise, etc. so we just broke our lease back then and moved on to better things. I don't intend on doing that here, breaking my lease, nor do I think I could.

Anyway, I've decided to look at my present situation as a step along the way instead of a dead end. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to be far away from this shit. Nor do I think there's anything wrong with expecting things to be different in another neighborhood. I'm well aware that I may find some other things not to my liking in a new place, but, honestly, if I could wake up for once to my alarm and not to the person across the street, who has one of those warning beeps for reversing on his van, sitting with his car in reverse, the beeping incessant for about five minutes straight, then I'd be slightly more content with my situation. I could transcend all of this and agree that I shouldn't let it bother me as much. But then, well, you try it sometime. It's actually quite maddening.

So, the plans begin. I've got a little time to think calmly about how to most easily get out of here and to get advice from people who've sublet before. I've even got time to really take care with where I live next and whom I live with.

I suppose I could stick it out until March next year...but that's 7 months away. No thanks. I'll keep updating about this aspect of the New York Experience, the whole discontent with my living space. It's sure to raise some interesting stories. The basketball game is still not over and it's almost midnight. It's turning into a f@#$in' block party out there. Oh, save me from this.

Gruesome details about cat potty training ahead, followed by me somehow tying it all into my life as a whole...

I think Penny's almost got the hang of toilet training. I was getting frustrated but then I had an epiphany. Let me start a few weeks ago. I got started back into training her again because I ran across some websites that dealt with toilet training and had some new ideas that were essentially post criticism of what most of the books say. I thought, "Great, some new insights." The first thing they say is to use a pan or a bowl that fits into the toilet. This I did but I had to improvise on how to keep it from falling in to the toilet because it was only just wide enough to hang on the lip of the bowl. What I did: Strips of cardboard that overhang the toilet bowl between the bowl and toilet, held in place by the sheer weight of the toilet seat. Worked like a charm and the bowl hasn't fallen in the toilet at all. Then they say that, if the cat sits in the bowl instead of on the toilet seat, then you have to train them to put their feet up on the seat. Penny does not respond to this at all. You try to move her feet and she whines and jumps down. It is crucial to make her sit on the seat because the next thing you do is reduce the amount of litter in the bowl/pan until there's nothing left and (and this is where they differ from the books) eventually replace it with water before finally removing the bowl. You can't have the cat sitting in her own excrement at this stage and then tracking it all over the house. First time I did reduce the amount of litter she did just that. It was inevitable. And you also can't have the cat always expecting to have the bowl be there and then get confused when it's not there. So, anyway, I would subsequently try to be there when she used the bathroom so I could train her not to sit in the bowl, but I have failed every time this week even though I've been home. And any attempt at showing her how to sit on the toilet when she doesn't have to go has been a miserable failure. But then something occurred to me. It can't be pleasant for the cat to basically pee on herself and she's a lot more intelligent than I give her credit for. After all, every time she pees outside of the litter box she attempts to find some place where she can conceal it (a rug, the bath mat, anything that resembles dirt or the ground). She's astute and observant and almost ritualistic sometimes. She can figure it out on her own. She has to figure it out on her own to really do it right, incorporate it into her routine, so to speak. So I cleaned up the mess and then just continued to use less litter but not so much less that it made a mess whenever she went. After a few days, I'm not seeing foot prints in the litter after she's gone so I'm thinking, she must have figured out how to squat on the seat on her own. I didn't need to show her after all.

Now, hopefully this'll keep up. I keep watching these videos on youtube and seeing cats doing their duty in the bowl but then I see one or two where the cat slips and almost falls in (Watch this one to the end). Penny is inherently clumsy in her middle age. Hopefully, it won't ever happen to her to the extent where she gets too terrified of the toilet to go back and starts to revert to more dirt-resembling places to relieve herself.

Anyway, how does this relate to my life at the moment? It's a lesson that can be applied elsewhere for certain. My general frustration is that I can't make things happen the way I want them to (even though we've been over this before it still lingers). With Technicolor, I hassled them a good bit before I just let it go and finally they called me. I can only assume that the rest of my endeavors may play out like this. As long as I'm doing my part in looking for opportunities and applying, I can't do much else. I need to let things unfold, as agonizing as that can be.

Only things is I find myself asking the question, "how much time do I devote to any given endeavor before moving on?" That's where I currently am. You can give so much energy but not see any results and then sit and wonder if it's time to move on, move on and then get a call from a job and have to either turn them down or give them the run around before taking the job. Ultimately, though regardless of what happens and when it happens, it's probably going to make sense which job to take, money being the big issue.

Anyway, in other random news, I got my hair buzzed really close. Decided to embrace the receding hairline and bald spot instead of persistently getting a haircut that just doesn't look good. Since there's no one around and the cat isn't so skilled at photography, this is the only time I will take a photo of myself in the bathroom mirror and post it online.

Frustration, Disappointment and Music...

Gloomy night up here. But sometimes I like that kind of weather. Call me weird. I've got a lot on my mind tonight and I have no idea where to start. I'm feeling a little off because, for one thing, I'm trying to figure out how to deal with difficult personalities at work. These are some of the most contagiously bitter and almost inhumanely catty people I have ever dealt with. But the main problem is that I'm finding myself responding to them the way I see them responding to others because I'm not thinking first about my actions. I've gotta fix that. The other thing is that I find myself getting frustrated with the way in which they train me, i.e. as though either they must think I'm an idiot for not getting something (or not seeming to) right away or they just think that I need to be shown how to do the most rudimentary tasks even though I've mentioned on several occasions how long I've worked in a newsroom and how much of their equipment I've used before. This is probably a sensitivity issue on my part, at least to an extent, but I will say that it certainly feels like a large number of my coworkers don't seem to get that I've got it and they continue to frustrate me by leaning over my shoulder and telling me how to do things as I do them. I probably shouldn't let it get to me.

I figure in time they'll stop but meanwhile, I suppose I have to accept things as they are and not get catty along with them. Because the other thing that I noticed the first week I was there, was their collective tendency to talk about their coworkers behind their backs. This immediately made me uncomfortable because I can imagine they'll eventually find something about me that they can talk about behind my back. And that's just not conducive to a good working environment. Unless I just don't take part in it. It's not as though everyone there sucks. My new friend in engineering is one fine example. Even though we spent the other night after her band's show talking about work and what is wrong with it, I feel like she's at least level headed about it. It's okay to talk about the fact that everyone talks about everyone but it's not as though we were joining in singling out certain people for their behaviors. In fact, we were discussing on a philosophical level what leads to that kind of disharmony in a work place. Mostly it's people being badly trained to think it's okay to do the bare minimum (I'm getting an image in my head of Mike Judge's character in Office Space telling Jennifer Aniston that she needs more pieces of flair) and then passing that lazy attitude on to other people. Someone said to me, "Don't worry so much about doing your job exactly right." Whatever the hell that means and never mind the fact that I was being spoken to by someone several years younger than me who probably is working her first professional job at the station. Pardon me for being a little frustrated with that. I did just come from probably one of the best working environments I've ever been in (News 14 people, where you at!?). But essentially, everyone wants to try and get by doing as little as possible and they keep passing work on to other people, (for example, every single time there's a problem with a piece of equipment, or there might be, everyone jumps to the conclusion that the next logical step is just to step away and call an engineer to fix it, even if there's a huge probability that it's a user error type of situation). Then, everyone gets frustrated by those who do it, even though they do it themselves. I just don't work like that though. I like to know how to do things and be able to fix them instead of succumbing to helplessness and whining to an engineer that something's broken when it probably isn't.

Anyway, enough about the frustrations and disappointments in my life right now (except that I feel I should mention my cat peed on my rug [that rug really tied the room together, too]. Toilet training her is a trial). I had a good time out at Bunny's show, The Spines. They sound like The Ramones meets The Frogs and their singer plays an auto harp which I found pretty innovative. There were a few songs that I really enjoyed, the rest were typically 80s punk-inspired fodder. The hole in the wall was called Lakeside Lounge and it exists on the lower east side, right off of Thompson Square near the Life Cafe which was sung about in Rent the musical and was used as a location in Rent the movie (I love this city). Lakeside had $3 PBRs so it made my night a little easier. And they also had a pretty formidable juke box which I will be having a closer look at upon my inevitable return visit.

Tonight, I went over to a place called LIC bar and met a guy named Gus who, I think, forgot that I was coming to see his show and the bar at which he does booking specifically to meet him and other music types. Gus is a guy whom I myspace-met through a coworker, George, who gave me a list of music types to contact. When I met him tonight, he seemed to not realize who I was and was busy mingling with his friends. So I left and took a horribly long train ride home from Queens on the G train. I liked the bar and I liked Gus' music (he played a right handed guitar left handed, which I've only ever seen one other person do before) but I was ready to get out as I had gone by myself and I felt like, having another beer and waiting to talk more with the guy seemed stupid as it was going to take me an hour to get home and he didn't seem to remember that we had even exchanged emails. Whatever.

Tomorrow (more aptly today) I'm having Bunny over and we'll probably jam for a good bit. I'll blog to let you know how that goes. Wednesday I'm going to try and see Mike Edelman play some jazz and Banjo Jim's on the lower east side. Looks like I'll be heading back to Alphabet City again, where the avenues have letters instead of numbers. Once again, I love this city.

Fear not the ob - STAC - les in your path...

I did a lot of thinking today. Could have had another freak out about how badly this recession is affecting everything. I found out this morning from my contact at Technicolor that they're all being forced to take mandatory vacations and the soonest bid for work they have is June. I've been seriously afraid of doing my budget for the next month, I was afraid of what I might find out. But I just made myself sit down and do it anyway. And now, I have a nice little strategy. Instead of freaking out that I won't be able to pay everything on time without dipping into savings, I decided to look at it in figures: how much I cost, how much I know I will make at the one job and how much more I will need to pay for myself. That third number is the important one because knowing that I can realistically take a look at all my endeavors and figure out which one will make that amount up and focus all my energies on it.

Now, I know that the above is very rudimentary accounting and any idiot who's ever had a rent payment could figure it out but that's not the point. The point is that the third number, instead of being how much I'm short, it's how much I need to make. It's all about perspective. If I stop looking at it as a barrier that's blocking me and start looking at it as an obstacle I can overcome with a little ingenuity, then it becomes much more surmountable. Suddenly, nothing is impossible. Or was that always the case?

Of course, the logistics therein, i.e. actually finding the missing income in the sea of, sorry, let's edit that...small puddle of jobs out there, are a little foggy. But today, I applied for yet another job and Thursday I'm getting my head shots done for free at a studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn so that I can start finding casting directors for extra jobs.

Today, I also got a chance to look at the short that I'll be scoring. I met with B. Warzak at Think Coffee on Mercer Street and we plugged up his lap top, with some difficulty in finding an outlet, and watched through, talked instrumentation and timing ideas and generally spotted the picture. He still has some editing to do and almost all of the ambient sound needs to be done but I've got an idea of where I want to go with it. Sometimes when there's no ambient audio, it's hard to think of how the music will fit into the picture. It comes down to certain things sharing frequency ranges and one noise overpowering another. I can still come up with basic thematic material and ideas about where music should go and how it should mesh with the dialogue, whether it should be present at all when there actors have lines, etc.

I met Karishma afterward and ate at our new lunch place: this hole in the wall Chinese place on 38th Street in Manhattan near the corner of 38th and 8th Avenue. $4.50 gets you a Styrofoam plate with rice, two meats and a vegetable. It's extremely substantial and cheap and right next to Karishma's work place. It occurred to me that we're probably pretty brave for eating there for all of the sanitation laws they might be breaking. I left the bathroom with still damp hands, mumbling about lack of soap before using my hand sanitizer (germ juice as I like to call it), all the while thinking about the kitchen employee who had left the bathroom before I used it...hoping that he was able to wash his hands somewhere else. Meh.

At present, I'm eating the rest of Karishma's birthday cake to me. It was a divine chocolate torte that she acquired at Trader Joe's, which is also quickly becoming my go to for cheap drinkable beer among other things (cute cashiers from Charlotte being one of them but never mind that for now). Their cans of "Simpler Times" Lager are $3.99 a six pack. I'll bypass the slightly cheaper Miller Lite and the like for that any day.

I've gotten in touch with two of my coworker's music friends so far. Monday night I'm going to schlep to Queens to check out the LIC bar, where one of his friends books bands, and chat music and musicians with this guy. Bunny, the engineer at work who plays bass, and I might jam next week as well.

Things are looking good. All monetary crises aside.

Obsolescence...

Those who know me well, know I'm prone to spasms of anger at my weakest moments. Spasms that often result in things breaking. My phone was the latest victim of what was, this time, a targeted attack. I've been dealing with dropped calls more than I ever have with Verizon service and, though I usually cool off once I get the person back and have bitched for a few minutes, followed by a deep breath, this time I think I was just too distracted and, in a fit of rage and annoyance, I hurled it across the room. Not one of my better moments. It works fine, except I've been sent back a few decades in terms of functionality. The screen has a crack in it. I have no idea who's calling (remember what that was like?), I can't receive text messages (what? no text?), and I have to enter in people's numbers manually, or remember where they were on my contact list. That or I can voice dial...that's the one futuristic thing I still have on my phone.

I'd have gotten a new phone sorted out by now except, I'm eligible for another free one in two weeks. Why spend extra money? As I've been sitting here coming to terms with what I'm going to miss, and figuring out what I've taken for granted all this time, a thought occurred to me. Why not check freecycle and see if someone's getting rid of a phone? Turns out I'm not the only person trying to find a Verizon phone to activate and replace a broken one. Something tells me that they design these phones to fall apart right before you reach two years so that before you're eligible for a free one, you have to buy another. Granted, I was the pulverizer here but in all fairness, it was starting to go downhill before I taught it a lesson. Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

On another note though, this is the core of what I think is wrong with consumerism and why our natural resources are slipping away. That companies actually design things to be replaced in a few years. Entire industries manufacture things that are eventually going to be thrown out, much sooner than anything should be. Think about plastic cutlery and plastic bags, granted these things can be reused but often times they have the word "disposable" written on the box, like, "go ahead, throw it out." Think about clothing, too. Same case only it's perceived obsolescence. Would you wear something that was made in the 80s if you weren't trying to make some sort of retro fashion statement? No one in their right mind would wear stone-washed jeans anymore. And any pair of surviving stone-washed jeans still in existence is probably riddled with holes and unwearable anyway. Not exactly designed to be worn your entire life.

I guess the other thing is that phones are constantly being upgraded as far as capabilities anyway. But is it so impossible to design something that can continue to be used and upgraded? A plastic shell than can be added onto when new software becomes available? But then what would the plastic companies do for business? And wouldn't your phone start to look ridiculous as other phones are getting smaller and smaller? I'm reminded of a phone that a friend of mine had in 2001 that looked like some kind of two way radio, bulky and green. She said it was just for emergencies. No kidding, she could have hit a mugger with it and just about killed him.

The point is, sure, some things are designed to be obsolete within a few years of their creation, but this is usually perceived obsolescence. Planned obsolescence, on the other hand, especially when it comes to cellular telephones, seems a bit forceful. Why can't they design a phone to last so that we can make a choice as to whether or not we want to upgrade after the proscribed two year period?

And again, I'm not talking about user induced malfunction, as in my case. I'm talking about the phone not going to the dark side after a year and a half (or a year, 11 months and two weeks), dropped calls, battery not holding a charge, buttons malfunctioning, screen going blank for no apparent reason and then coming back for no apparent reason at random. Raise your hand if you've ever had a phone do this that you haven't dropped on the ground.

I think I already know the answer to this question. I'm sure I'm not the only one complaining about it.

End rant.

Frugality and Job Hunting

I have internet back for an indeterminate amount of time so I'm going to frantically type out an update of the past few days. It's been the same routine day to day of getting up to jog, then coming back and surfing the internet for jobs when I have a signal, interspersed with forays out into the neighborhood to pick up various things so I'm not stuck inside all day getting frustrated with the computer. Things like a universal remote control for my free DVD player and TV (which was a mess to program), a light bulb to replace one that blew (only to come back and have two more light bulbs blow after realizing that what I had bought was a sub par CF bulb that gives off an eerie blue light), and dish soap. Another time, I ventured up to Verizon at Atlantic Avenue to have my phone reprogrammed to see if I could fix the problems I have been having with dropped calls and low signal in my apartment. It didn't fix the problem. And Karishma came over a few nights ago to hang out and have dinner.

I've realized that these little annoyances (the internet being sporadic, my phone crapping out mid conversation and half my calls not getting through) have been upsetting my daily flow. Of course, it's never a big deal; if the internet is out, I take it as a sign to get out of the house and do something. Whenever my phone calls don't get through I just get the message and call back. When I lose calls, it's never a big deal because I can almost always get back through. I have been getting a little antsy and frustrated over it, though, so ultimately, I finally decided to buy internet. Hence my phone call to Time Warner the other day. Cablevision will be here tomorrow.

With what I'm doing daily, not just job hunting but also sending files to the guy I'm working with on the commercial and other money making efforts that are based on the internet (which I'll tell you about in a second), I can't sit here and wait for someone in the building to leave their computer on so I can access the internet.

As for the phone, Verizon told me I'm eligible for an upgrade on April 17th, so I think I'll hold out until I can get a new phone before I do anything drastic there.

That's been another theme this week: learning how to not spend money when I don't need to. When I can get by without spending money, I've made sure that I don't. The light bulbs are a good example. The light in the kitchen went out and I had one to replace it with already. But then, the bathroom light went out so I felt I had to go get a bulb and did so without thinking. The one I bought didn't fit in the bathroom fixture, though, so I tried putting it out in the kitchen and putting the one in the kitchen in the bathroom. Then I noticed that the new light wasn't bright enough for the kitchen and was giving off an eerie blue glow. Kind of a sub par bulb, it was a CF bulb but must have been older technology before they got the warmth thing right. Anyway, then the bedroom light went out next. Now, I had already gone out and bought one light bulb but, when the bedroom blew, I thought for a second before I went back out to find more not so blue bulbs. There's a floor lamp in my bedroom with two bulbs in it. I took one of those out and put it in the kitchen with the blue light and realized that I never use the overhead light in the bedroom. This saved me having to go out immediately to buy light bulbs. Yes I know bulbs are not that expensive and the CF bulbs last a looooooong time. But the point is, I'm thinking ahead to what I'm going to need to use that money, if I don't get a job in the next few weeks. Frugality is the word. Every time I buy something, I ask myself, "can I eat this?" It's a good rule. I was killing time in Target while waiting for my phone to get programmed and I kept seeing $5 DVDs that I wanted, some of them double features. But I stopped and thought, "can I eat this DVD?" "When I'm out of groceries in a week, am I going to be glad that I have this DVD?" The answer was no.

I know I'm not hard up just yet, but I think it's a good rule when unemployed to think like you're unemployed and you have a finite amount of resources to sustain yourself.

But anyway, speaking of employment, now for the good news: I have an interview at NY 1 next Tuesday! They want to speak to me about a Media Operator position, which is not the one that I applied for but it's very similar; tuning in live satellite shots, making sure the video looks good and working with the assignment editor to organize the feeds, etc. I'm hoping this one pans out but I'm also going to keep on Technicolor about their job. I could get frustrated about the fact that these are part time gigs, both of them, but I decided to look at it as a chance to learn a lot of other things I can do and maybe even try out some unconventional sources of income. Maybe unconventional is the wrong word. Alternative. We'll go with that. No I'm not talking about adult entertainment (that's a joke, mom).

I'm talking about doing more freelance work and using the internet to my advantage. I started looking into getting a job as an extra on a few sets. I explored Talent 6 first, but they don't seem to be very focused toward what I want to do. They go on about how it's a good way to break into the industry as an actor, and I keep saying, I don't want to be an actor, I just want to make some extra money. Then their casting calls are so incredibly diverse and the list massive yet, if you search for just the keyword "extras," you only get about 10 in your area that aren't already expired and most of those aren't paid. So Talent 6 is a dud. The deal is they make you pay a monthly fee after 2 weeks to gain access to their list of casting calls...but then they post them all on craigslist anyway. But they tell you you can't apply to them unless you're listed on their site. So I get listed and I find out that not only are there not enough casting calls up there now that are paying (sue me, I'm only in it for the money), they also have a pretty user-un-friendly interface. You can't attach a resume to any of your submissions. You just fill out your profile but you have limited space. How is that going to get me a job on one of these shoots if half of them explicitly ask for a resume? So I'm fed up with that and am going to quit their directory and try another casting agency.

I'm also looking into being a guide for Cha Cha. One of the Emilys got me into the idea of doing it but I'm only now getting set up to do it. People text in any kind of question to the web site and it's your job to look up the answer on the internet and send it to them and they receive it as a text message. Mobile answers. Sounds like fun, right? Just a couple hours a night of doing that, I'll make a decent little chunk of change.

Beyond that, there was, of course, the Shutterstock thing which I'm going to back burner for a while, but also, the idea of doing some voice over work occurred to me because there were a few casting calls up on Talent 6 for voice work. I can't count the number of times someone has said to me that I should do voice over or radio. So, I've been reading through this, a document about getting started in the voice over industry and thinking about recording a demo of some sort.

Beyond that even, is the Sittercity.com site that lists you as a pet sitter (or babysitter for that matter) which is free and you can get money for recommending parents and pet owners. I haven't seen many hits on it. I suppose a lot of people aren't using it yet for pet sitting services. So, I may have to back burner that one for a while even. But, eventually, I may pursue other avenues of finding people in need of pet sitters.

I know, the interesting thing about this list of schemes is that none of it seems to be music related. While I am doing music gigs now on the side, for no pay, everything that I've been exploring for actual sources of income are not music related. Is this because I'm too insecure to go for paying gigs right now? No. I'm still applying for those but I'm being realistic here. I'm spreading myself out a little and I may find out that I'm spreading myself out too much, that my ambitions are too diverse and that my head might explode trying to juggle all of this stuff. Well, hopefully, it won't get that far. I think I need to do all of this to really get a sense for what kind of day job will sustain me while I work on the music career. I need time to hone my craft, no matter what anyone says. Even if there's someone out there who might pay me for my work, I still feel I have work to do. And perhaps I will start getting paid soon.

I've just finished reading this horoscope that set my mind at ease about a lot of things. Never mind the fact that it was incredibly eerie how right on point this horoscope was. Usually, they're fairly vague and I only read them for recreation and amusement. But I've been getting daily mailings from a site called Daily OM. It's great for lovers of eastern thought. This horoscope was talking about being frustrated about the pace of things. And here I am reading it just as I was sitting here getting so frustrated that I can't get out of my apartment when I get antsy because I don't know enough people here to go out with and I can't justify going out whenever I feel like it because I don't have a job yet. And here I am being assured by a horoscope about something that should be obvious. But that's what I'm going through right now, if you want the raw truth. I'm constantly wanting things to start happening here but then realizing that it's going to take time. Here's a quote from the end of the horoscope:

"It may be that we are less concerned with our relative pace, and more interested in bypassing those challenges that frighten us most. Yet it may be that these are a vital element of our development and necessary to our ongoing growth. To skip over them would serve us little, and our lives would be irrevocably changed as a result."

No kidding. I'll leave you with another quote from Walden, that I giggled at the other night, that seems strangely pertinent tonight:

"It is impossible to kill time without injuring eternity."

Why, oh why, bureaucracy? Why, oh why, faceless institution?

Man, am I talkative today. I really would like to punch Time Warner Cable in the face. First i fax a request for a free month of cable (on my realty agency) and then I wait. Then I call and find out that they're not servicing my building at present so I put in a request for serviceability at the suggestion of the person on the phone. Then I wait some more, meanwhile, furtively stealing internet from my neighbors in the building. Finding that I can't upload files to my website today, I get frustrated and I finally call them back to check on it, feeling proud with my 9 digit confirmation number and everything, and they tell me, flat out, that it looks like they're not servicing my area and that I need to call Cablevision. Someone could have effing told me!!!!!!!!

Far too much rambling for a Friday night...

So today was my last day at Technicolor. As some of you may know it was always going to be a three-week probationary period during which they took a look at my work and decided between me and some other guy. I left today without any definitive idea of whether or not I'm going to get it, just advice about when to call them back. It looks like things will probably pick up for them in April, as she explained to me today, and at that point they will want to bring "someone" in to work freelance until they decide they want to make it a staff position. How's that for definitive (sarc.)?

They have to do what they have to do. I'm not too fussed about it but now I have to delicately hassle them, when I just heard from a source that that's what the other guy has been doing. Except maybe not so delicately.

Have to come up with a strategy there.

Now, I think it's time for me to deal with the slight funk I'm in. I find that it's best to just first sit down and try and put my finger on everything that's bothering me, when in a funk. Then, I can begin the work of dealing with those things or writing them off if they're not important enough to be bothering myself about. So here goes. It'll be like an exercise. This should be fun.

Okay: I don't have my windows covered. That's bothering me, I realized, because I'm spending all my time in my bedroom at my computer because I don't want to hang out in a room where people outside can see in. So I have been neglecting that room, damn-near avoiding it. So, essentially, half of my living space is "off limits." I feel confined. This can't be good. I just have to deal with that though until I can finally block out unwanted eyeballs. It does help to know that that's the root of it all.

The rest of the things that I realize are bothering me are seriously trifles and aren't bothering me terribly bad, but I'll list them for the sake of the exercise:
I have a cold sore, and also a cold. My hair is falling out more since I've been using that shampoo and, even though I can see new hairs growing in where my old hairline used to be, it's still sort of harrowing (at least they're not all gray already). I asked a girl out a few weeks ago (this one was bothering me up until tonight) and she's been out of touch so I've not gotten to go out with her yet, in fact, I figured she was just not interested at all(turns out she's really busy, as her friend told me, finding a new place, then moving within the city, but also out of town visiting family etc.).

Funny how most of these things either resolve themselves or have simple solutions. Almost not worth worrying about them. ;)

Anyway, I've got a week or so of no work and I can choose to do just about anything with that time. However, I'm going to spend most of it job hunting. I think I'll fan out and look at film jobs, even if they are sporadic and not sustained. Of course, I'll keep on TV stations and I'll keep pestering, lightly, Technicolor, because I really liked that job.

Not every second of these upcoming weeks will be spent glued to the internet search pages, however. I'm going to be touring the city a little with a friend who goes to Columbia and has her spring break next week. MK is really cool and has lived here five years. And her neighborhood is great, up on the Upper East Side. I've been up that way a few times already and I really like it.

Tonight, I visited another Manhattan neighborhood. Really, just lightly scraped the surface. Murray Hill. I was there meeting Farah, my cousin's roommate, at a restaurant called Rice. I'd been to the one in Nolita with Karishma (the first night here, in fact) so I suggested it for tonight because I was taking Farah out for dinner as a thank you for her letting me stay with her for three weeks.

It was a good night, fun conversation with Farah, great ambiance in the restaurant, cool area in general. As I waited for Farah, standing on the corner of 28th St and Lex Ave, I could see the Empire State Building, the Chrysler building and another building which I had never seen before but whose spire was magnificently lit. Indian Restaurants abounded, joined by the occasional Mexican or French restaurant and residents hung out on their fire escapes smoking and chatting. I passed a Bollywood CD store on my stroll around the block. I love how this city and its boroughs are so diverse. Straight down to the things that annoy you. Two nights ago it was wannabe gangster rappers standing around across the street with their stereo booming at midnight while they all took turns saying "mother f@#$er" but tonight two Chinese people were chatting loudly directly outside my window. Tomorrow, I'm sure the Mexicans will be setting off their car alarms accidentally again. But I jest. It's a great neighborhood in reality. I think I'm going to go jogging in Sunset Park tomorrow morning. It's been over a month since I've jogged. For now, I should end this ramble and sleep since I've been up since 6:30 this morning. Good night.

I need to cover my windows

Too frazzled to blog right now. But I will say this:

Finding mini blinds should not be this hard...don't go to Azpartsmaster.com. They take forever to ship and they don't send you the traditional confirmation email. I've been waiting and waiting for any mail to come and it occurred to me I never got a shipping confirmation on them. So, I thought maybe the order didn't go through and I reordered. Now I have to call them tomorrow and cancel one or both of the orders. I'd love to just walk into a store here and buy them. Maybe I'll try that next. That or curtains.