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.

you shall see...

here are a couple pictures of the farm (that's not a farm) to let you see what it's like. it's about two and a half acres of yard and then two acres of trees, or something like that. i haven't measured it myself.

first, here's the house. it's the ugliest house that ever was. when the old woman moved out of it last year, they found six dead snakes in the basement. snakes are fun. and there's moss growing in the corners and the foundation is all kinds of fut up, which is why the place sat on the market for so long and ended up going to auction.

but here it is...

and it smells. really bad. and the floor is wobbly and there are loads of dead flies in the bedrooms. and the kitchen floor sticks to your feet.

but it's ours.

then there's the land.

it slopes and is always about ten degrees cooler than the city.

i still have to get pictures of the woods and the path.

it's slowly going and going and going. so far, we've purchased a mower (apparently, they are worth more than some human beings) and this week cowboy has been pricing all the materials to fix the garage.

we've pulled probably a ton of scrap metal out of the creek bed (beside the garage) and made a trip to the dump, which, for some reason, i highly enjoy. i think i just like standing on the back of a pickup truck and chucking anything and everything as far as i can.

we're now planning on having a dig party on some saturday in the near future. we're going to dig a trench around the garage to put in a drainage system to keep the place from flooding. and we'll cook meat.

oh, the country life.

---kate and amy, does this suffice?----

oh! and we're getting married in a few weeks....

a house that is not a house

we bought the farm. cowboy and i.

it's only five acres, but it has rolling pastures (kind of) and a walking woods. and it's always cool and relaxing and in a few years, i'll be able to put my feet up on something inside my home and look out at the beautiful land around me and be happy.

at the moment, the house that sits on our lovely farm is old (but not the pretty kind of old) and ugly and has mold and a faulty foundation and smells like stale cigarettes and old kitchens.

my sister and best friend saw the place (at separate times) this weekend. they both live in new york. and they both loved it.

and seeing the farm made them both ask when we were going to have a baby...which is funny.

anyhoo...

so, with my new adulthood in check: land ownership, (almost) full-time permanent work, out of school, and (almost) married, i suppose now we will see what happens next.