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can't sleep. had to get out of bed. need to do something. need to *create* something. something inside me is trying to get out. i need to write. i should write more.

and so it begins.

ishouldwritemore.com

08/04/2005 22:47

... i need to go to sleep. i'll start this tomorrow. bad fucking timing.

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09/13/2005 01:05

okay, so clearly i'm bad at this. maybe i'm just going through a period of my life when i've got very little to say. i don't know.

looking for employment. not really looking per se. more like thinking. for a while there i was blinded by the light (and when i say light, i mean salary). you see, it seems that i could quite possibly be earning a fair ransom with my skills, but i've been to some interviews and i just haven't been able to get into it. I convinced myself that ii'm a really good actor, and maybe i am, but it's like pretending to be someon else to get a girl to like you, it just doesn't lead to good things. i know that if i were in a position to hire me, at least for the jobs i've been interviewing for, i know i wouldn't. my personality doesn't match that of the person needed for those type of companies. i never really considered myself to be someone with scruples or a moral standpoint, but i guess just the fact that i have thought about it means that i have more than some. i can't help but hear the lyrics to pink floyds 'welcome to the machine'. and i can't help but share in the sentiment of the song. there's got to be something else out there...... there's got to be?

i find myself back to the state of enjoying unemployment. it's not that i enjoy doing nothing, but i enjoy being my own master. i enjoy being my own boss. you see i like responsibilty, and it's easy to forget that we live in a world where people rarely even have the responsibilty of looking after their own life, their own time. i need to find something where i can retain that. i need to be in charge of my own life. i'm tempted to say 'in charge of my own destiny' but i fear i may sound too melodramatic. i've never been much of a 'go getter' but i think i'm reaching a place where because of the ease at which you can lose any of this feeling when indulging in a relationship, i think i'm finally coming to a place where because of the extremity of that, i'm ready to go out there and do something. to 'go get'. just what to get, that's the question. it's like being told you've won a supermarket sweep (is that what they call those things) and i'm running round the store with an empty shopping trolley, no walking (i'm not frantic yet).... i'm walking round, and i don't know what to fill my trolley with. i'm a little too indifferent to be healthy.

but like i say.... it feels like there is a change coming in the air. and i've been waiting for this moment all my life.... oh yeah. (!) sorry, phil collins possesed me for a moment there. no i haven't been waiting for this moment all my life. it's not the time to hype this thing. it's just one of the many crossroads you find yourself at in life. i don't even feel like ralph macchio. it's not a case of selling my sould to the devil to learn the blues. it's simpler than that.... maybe. the difficult thing is walking the line. finding balance between keeping that thing that is looking more and more like it's integrity, and selling out just enough to get by. maybe i've got it all messed up. maybe it's not selling out at this low level. but i can't help but feeling like it is.

the game. it is a game afterall isn't it. i need to remember that. problem is, i've never been much of a competetive person. but i do need to play. i need to remember that i can either play, or be played, and certainly working a nickle and dime job that give me nothing in return, and does nothing for the greater good, is being played. player like a fool. i want to find a middle ground. i want to find a nice quiet spot outside of the noisy ball park where i can go about my business and not be interupted by those who are trying so hard to play and win the game. but i've also got to make sure that i'm not put off so much by the noise from the park that i go hide in a cave somewhere far away.

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02/19/2006

THE DYSFUNCTIONAL AMERICAN DREAM: Maybe i just want to fly want to live, don't want to die. i don't know why this line from the Oasis track Live forever got me on this thought train... i watched the gore verbinski movie 'the weather man' last night. not the worlds best movie but it did have it's own profound story. what exactly is 'good enough'? when should we get to that stage of sitting back and saying to ourselves "this is good enough", or "this will do, this is as good as it's going to get". i fear that as i sit here writing this, i am amongst a generation of people taught, for some reason or another, that nothing is good enough. that, to paraphrase a james bond movie, the world is not enough. so how does one get satisfaction when everything that they achieve is not enough. that what they seek is constantly beyond their grasp. i guess one could keep in mind that it's the journey that's important, not the destination, but i fear that the envelope has been inflated so much and at such a rate that even so, one feels the need to move so quickly along ones journey that they don't have time to enjoy it. as the wise man ferris bueller once said "life moves pretty quickly, if you don't stop and take a look around you might just miss it" -- could the wisest words ever spoken have really come from the mouth of a character in an 80's teen movie. have we all been looking in the wrong direction for the answer?

maybe the real key to life - a life that one can enjoy - is to be in control of your envelope. to be the one who dictates how far to reach is far enough, and when to be happy with ones achievements. salary. sexual conquests. car. house. we're all clambering over each other to get the most like a supermarket sweep gone wild, and why? none of us know what we're doing, or why we need all this shit, but for some strange reason it's the one thing that seems to keep us calm. satisfied - to an extent.

the human race. the biggest joke there is. we're like a dog running for the ball that wasn't thrown. it's still in his hand - i think. maybe there never was a ball, i can't remember i've been running for so long. gotta be doing it for a reason, right?

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04/19/2006

Up Down Turn Around, Please don't let me hit the ground. Feeling good about things. Not sure there is any particular reason to. It's my day off. Hers too, though she's out. Oh, i've never met anyone quite like you before. Want to take some photos. Not sure what to do about it. Only really like taking pictures of people. But don't like posed photography, and don't like talking to people. Oh, to have that invisable camera. To be able to record what i see. How i see. To show you how i see things... Need to carry a camera around with me more often, so it becomes another limb. So people don't notice it.

been thinking about using the video camera to photograph. no sound though. emphasis needs to be on the visuals. no sound. can't handle the sound right now. too real.

had good pie yesterday. need to go out for pie more often. good visuals. photograph pie eating. buy photographic paper. - snapshots as souvenirs of daily life - need to use the lomo more. very unimposing. people don't take it seriously. i shoud though. more often than i do.

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06/07/2006

They Live! - Sitting here working on some graphics for a friend. Her brother and his wife are staying with us for a few days so i'm wearing headphones. They're Infra-red. The kind that has a base unit that uses the same method as your TV remote to transfer data. They're not RF. I just got up to go take a piss and as i turn the corner out of the living room into the hall the signal crackles slightly and then gives out. Infra-red works by line of sight. I guess it bounces around the room a bit so that you can kinda be standing around the corner and it's still okay.... well, you get the picture. Anyhow, as i'm standing there taking a piss in the silence, i realise i can hear something.... a..... voice....... and he's talking about darwin and intelligent design, and the lord.... oh lord! what the fuck?? How? What am i even picking up? Infra-red is part of the electromagnetic spectrum the same as radio waves, but nobody broadcasts via infra-red! It's used in things like TV remotes and some headphones like these. It's short range. Like 30feet. I walk into the kitchen and the voice dissappears..... it's not in the bedroom either. Only when i'm standing in front of the toilet..... Man. Videodrome seems crap compared to this! Picking up rogue religious interference in the toilet over an infra red frequency. Kinda freaky and creepy. WAY COOL!

"i've come here to chew bubble gum and kiss ass; and i'm all out of bubble gum."

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06/09/2008

Letter to an ex-colleague

hey. it's taken me a few days to be able to formulate cohesive thoughts enough to know what to say. What do you say in such circumstances? I realise though, that whilst i didn't get a real chance to know you that our short interaction was a very valuable one, for me at least.
I realise that i've been hiding my creativity in the cupboard. Your simple recognition of it and its potential woke me up, and now my eyes are wide open. The developments of the past week have also woken me to the sober reality that whilst people may seem to be your friends, this is not necessarily the truth. Why some people think they can run a business in this way and not pay the price is baffling to me. I see now that the people who run this place are arseholes, and more concerning; that they're idiots. They can smile and be personable but i judge people by their actions, and their actions fall very short of the way i would run a company. Your own situation aside, how they think they can remove positions whilst promoting themselves and not be seen by the rest of the company as self serving is beyond my comprehension. My biggest gripe was that there were not enough designers, so you can only imagine my feelings now.
I know that there are better places out there and if there aren't then it's up to people like you and me to create them. Just the knowledge that you were willing to broaden your teams appreciation by taking them to shows like 'the birth of cool' tells me a great deal about you and your view as a designer. i don't have to see your work to know that i like your style ;)
The wife has been renting DVD's of a show called 'Mad Men' about manhattan advertising executives in 1960 - if you haven't seen it, it is truly inspiring. The episode we just finished watching about the kodak carousel moved me greatly, and this is not without its own timely lesson. I realise that i need to be more passionate about what i do - that what i do has to have more meaning.
We just put in an offer on a house today that if it is accepted will be our first home so i am not without my own job concerns, but for some reason as i write this i feel calm. I know the nature of the beast. I know that there are other, better, opportunities out there, and thanks to you i have revived confidence in myself. I'm certainly no idealist, but i realise that there is better.
I wish you all the luck in finding a better source of employment. It is difficult in this country, at this time, to find people who appreciate good design, but that just makes our job a little more of a challenge and i know we're both capable of doing that. I look forward to crossing paths again, and for maybe a little longer next time ;)