new and old

last january, i had a go-to-pieces. i cried for about two months straight and now i have the wherewithal to realize that i was in mourning. i was letting go of my ambition i'd had since i was about fifteen.

i left film. or it left me. i don't know, but it was kind of a bad breakup after a rocky last year. the last few projects i worked on, i felt used and abused with nothing to show for it. actually, the last three projects i worked on (two features and a documentary), are still not finished - and if they were, i probably wouldn't care enough to sit through them.

so my life changed a lot since then.

we bought a farm, which isn't a farm.

we got married.

and i started a real-life job where i leave my hobbit house every morning at the same time and sit in an office. i'm in accounting. at a nonprofit. i have an office, but no window. and i actually really like it. it's nice to have a steady paycheck for the first time in five years. it's nice to be proud of the work this company does (we're building a park system on the outskirts of town) and there hasn't been one moment when i've regretted this change...

until this moment. right now.

the office is quiet because everyone took their vacation time and has stayed home with their families. i don't have vacation time, but i don't have much to do as i sit through the calm before the storm, which is january in the accounting world. and so i've been spending a lot of time on facebook and comparing my life with every other human being who walks the earth. i've compared my life with friends, acquaintances, and total strangers and what i have learned is that i'm a barely functioning adult who sits at a desk and is bored and owns a house she doesn't live in that's full of mold and still can't always figure out what steps to take in life.

and instead of continuing the search for the many people who have more interesting and fulfilling lives than i, i decided to write on this humble blog whilst i fill the time up at my job...my real job.

i think the one thing that remained in all my struggles in working with film, is that i liked what it did for my ego. i liked being a film producer. i liked being the one on a film set who had the answers, who was included in the meetings, who was involved in the major decisions.

and i don't really have that anymore. i'm definitely back on a lower rung of the ladder i had passed a long while ago and i got really used to my hours being packed in with responsibilities and deadlines and fires to put out. i'm making a better income than i made from film, but i'm not allowed to leave when my work is done, i have to sit and wait for the clock to get to some arbitrary time so that i can then leave (see: right now). and now, i bring my lunch to work and i rarely have the opportunity now to eat in a smelly, mildewy tent, next to a space heater laughing with friends and wishing i'd worn long underwear to set that day.

and who knew that stress and pain and crying and chaos was such a great diet.

i thought working in an office with some structure in my life would open it up for other things, but now i don't seem to know how to have lunch with someone since i'm no longer free all the time when i'm not on a project. weekends seem way too precious with the farm and just not going to work. i bring my scripts to the office and attempt to work on them, but overhead lighting and paranoia of blatantly not doing my work isn't exactly the greatest thing to get the creative juices going.

so that's my life as i sit in a small room, and think about my life as the days slowly roll towards a new year.