My Life is Exploding & Boba Fett Ukulele

June14-June24

First and foremost, go give the SSA money.  They are the best, they deserve at least five of your earth dollars.

The timing of my getting a blog here is not totally ideal — I’ve had to abandon my house and move in with my mother because I’m allergic to it, I have to be out entirely and into a new house by the end of the month, I’m coming up against the final deadline for a class, I’m leaving Thursday for 10 days of traveling, and I’m about to start another class.  I don’t know if you’ve ever been massively sick with allergies, but I can tell you that it’s not good for productivity or creating a will to live.

How I've felt for 3 weeks

So, this spot may just end up hosting various and sundry not terribly deep things for the next two weeks, including pretty travel pictures, links to interesting things, and perhaps a few things I dig up from the vault.  I scheduled this post ahead of time to prevent myself from blogging at all today so that I will get some work done.  We’ll see how that goes.

My Life is Exploding & Boba Fett Ukulele
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Busy!

Have you ever had one of those weeks where there was just too much going on?  That’s the sort of week I’ve been having.  It’s been good, great even, I’ve just had a lot on my plate.  I love the freelance writing I’m doing but, between working full-time and tutoring and trying to attend local freethought events, my weeks are already too full.  Then I got a special assignment from Social Axcess to cover NCAA Social Media for March Madness — so that required a lot of research, because I don’t know much about American sports, and I know even less about college sports.  This is because I resented being forced to go to prep rallies when I was in high school — I have a block when it comes to school sports.

Then I was learning a courier route at work, meaning I spent all day in a car driving, so I was working overtime and not in front of a computer. And I had a 1500 word piece due.  And I got laryngitis.  And it’s spring, so my allergies are in full bloom.  And someone wanted to consult with me about an editing project, which I just can’t take on right now, but it’s interesting.

Exciting news!  I’m going to the SCA Conference in Washington, DC right before my birthday.  Which reminds me that I need to put together some information on Social Media Strategy for them in the next day or two.  I hope I get the chance to see a little of DC, I went when I was in 8th grade and that was before I’d seen The West Wing and thought that there was something worth seeing in Washington.

And the world is apparently falling apart, but I haven’t really had time to absorb that.  CNN has just had one too many “Where is God in Japan” headlines for me to stomach trying to follow the daily news cycle.  And the Nicholl opened, and TAM registration opened.

So it’s Sunday and I still feel on edge, like I should be working, and there’s still plenty on my plate, but I’m taking a day off.  Of course, my brain is still going a million miles a minute — I don’t really drink, but maybe I just need a drink.

Nothing to do with the rest of this post
Busy!

Hollywood: Not for the weak

I very rarely get into anything particularly personal on this blog.  One, because it’s public, and two, because it rarely seems relevant to my career, which is the focus here.  But sometimes the personal and the public are a bit intermixed, and that’s what I want to talk about.  My health versus my career.

I have for the last few months been really struggling with extreme fatigue, dizziness and nausea.  This isn’t totally out of the norm for me, I have several chronic conditions which often take the wind out of my sails: allergies, asthma, depression and hypothyroidism.  Any of those on their own is usually manageable, but they pack a bit of a wallop all together.  On top of this, I’ve been to the doctor a half-dozen times since this started and they’ve tested for everything they can think of and they can’t find anything wrong.

This last week has been totally lost.  I was so fatigued that I cannot actually remember most of it.  It is extremely frustrating.  I manage to go to work which fortunately is a very low energy sort of job, but I struggle even there.  I haven’t managed to do much editing because I stare at the project and get overwhelmingly tired or motion sick.  I basically come home and lay down.  Last night I went to bed at 10pm and got up today at 1pm; it’s not yet seven and I am barely awake.  Obviously it is quite difficult to be productive, in writing or in anything else, when you’re that exhausted.

Film and TV are not careers for people with low energy.  If your personality doesn’t naturally exude the sense that you’re on speed, it’s a really tough business to be in.  It is probably a miracle that I got through the two years of film school with as little collateral damage as I did — one broken bone, one major case of bronchitis, three total emotional breakdowns, and three months of vomiting for unknown reasons that led to my current state as a vegetarian.

I could imagine nothing worse than letting my health dictate what it was I could and could not do with my life.  But sometimes, especially after weeks like this, it’s very difficult to believe that it’s not going to do just that.  Sometimes it’s hard not to go to the dark place and wallow in self-pity.  Hard to remember that this is just my struggle, and, though it’s different for each of us, it’s never easy.  I want to be able to offer advice to others, to make it and say, “See, my health didn’t stop me, and it won’t stop you!”  But all I know is that right now it’s really hard and sometimes fighting to survive in the film business just sucks.

But here is something nice, from a fellow writer at myothercareer.wordpress.com

Hollywood: Not for the weak

Airlines: Does anyone understand?

Actually, it’s kind of sad. They had the flight attendants selling Visa cards up and down the aisles before take off.

There should be some sort of public health announcement that you shouldn’t wear ass loads of perfume and/or cat hair when you fly. Actually, those should just be rules for life. I’d like to buy hypoallergenic seats in the plane.

And another thing. When I was booking tickets, it was going to cost me like 150 more to be on the flight at 7:40AM out of Charlotte instead of the 9:45 one. But when I get to the airport and say “Can I switch?” They’re like “Yeah, there’s 50$ baggage switchy fee. You down?” And I’m like “Yes. And also wtf.”

Maybe my H1N1 live vaccine will infect everybody.

Airlines: Does anyone understand?