As of right now, the last proper review I posted was done at the end of April 2015. At that time, I found myself simply not enjoying writing blog posts anymore, not liking the idea of throwing my opinions out there with no guarantee of getting any kind of response. And who am I that my opinion really matters all that much anyway?
I still post my opinions on things, but in much shorter form on twitter. It feels right, and also seems a better way to find like minded people to discuss it with you. People just don't really blog like they used to, and "Never read the comments" has become gospel for so many that they certainly aren't going to leave any either.
I left blogger in March 2014 for my own personal site, but with my lack of interest in doing reviews, podcasts, videos, etc, I see no more reason to continue to pay for that site. As such I've backed up the posts I had over there here, back dated to when they were written. The sad part is there's no good way to import the comments over there on to here short of copy pasting them.
Is this the absolute end of my writings? Time will tell, most likely when another Stephen King adaptation gets released and I see whether or not I feel like doing another Castle Rock Companion piece on it. Or maybe some day I'll be looking to write a more personal journal entry, and I'll come here. Who knows. I'm an introvert, and writing things down has always been part of my nature.
Until then, if you've stumbled upon this site looking for something to read, I hope you find something you enjoy in the archives. I've tried to tag them as best as possible to help people find things. And there's the archive of my other projects in the banner at the top as well.
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Monday, March 2, 2015
Thoughts on removing clutter and the Popeye movie
Some time last year I had the realization that I had two options: start paying for a storage unit or start getting rid of things. I've had the collector's mindset for quite a long time, but my house is only so big and I can only hold on to so much. So I've been going through purges on and off, donating some things, putting others on eBay, or even just flat out throwing things away when necessary.
The process has not been as difficult as I originally thought it might be. I've found that I've lost that "gotta have it all" collector's mindset, and it's really helped. My biggest hurdle is that there are things, especially media, that I would like to review before just flat out getting rid of. The main project of the last few months are the DVDs, Blu rays, and video games that take up an entire wall in my living room. I'm skipping television series for the moment and focusing solely on movies. There are some I know sight unseen that I've either outgrown (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) or were an impulse purchase I really shouldn't have made (I went through a period of thinking I needed every Disney animated film, and I don't), but I'm also forcing myself to review old favorites to see if it's really a movie I need to have on hand to watch whenever I might want to.
Some movies are good, but just not something I'm going to return to. The first Pirates of the Caribbean film, for instance, is a really fun romp, and there's good parts in the sequels as well. But it just doesn't hold a lot of emotional importance for me, and the CGI effects are no longer as exciting to me as they were when new, and holy crap why did we think all movies had to be two and a half hours around the turn of the century. So since I had a hard time sitting through film one, I made the executive decision to get rid of all four. Similar decisions have been made down the line, as well as ones I kept without reviewing, because no way am I getting rid of the Indiana Jones trilogy.
Last night I watched Popeye, a film I had purchased on DVD because we had it on VHS when I was young and I remember us watching it repeatedly. Watching it again as an adult, I'm amazed I sat through it as a kid. The film just sort of meanders from scene to scene. I think they were trying to go for something that would recreate a bunch of Popeye shorts, perhaps, but he only eats spinach once at the very end of the film, so it doesn't exactly work. I think as a kid I must have mostly sat around waiting for the songs, which while not exactly the best musical score ever recorded, are quite cute and clever in places. Ray Walston and Robin Williams playing off each other toward the end when they finally meet again is also quite funny.
One of the pieces of advice I've seen in articles encouraging you to reduce your clutter is that the memories are far more important than the objects associated with them, and you don't need the object to keep the memory. That's certainly very true, but in the case of film, you have to admit that without viewing it, you're not always going to think of those things. So here's some recollections of what I remember about the Popeye movie:
That's not a very long list, I know, and that's probably why I won't be keeping this one. By comparison, I decided to hold on to Roger and Hammerstein's Cinderella, because that one is a lot more fun through out and has much better songs. It's another one I visited repeatedly on VHS as a child, but I think holds up a lot more to viewing as an adult. Short Circuit is another that will be coming up soon enough, and that one is going to be tough to decide on for very different reasons (hello, uncomfortable Indian stereotypes being portrayed by a white man, why did you still exist in the 80s?).
The process has not been as difficult as I originally thought it might be. I've found that I've lost that "gotta have it all" collector's mindset, and it's really helped. My biggest hurdle is that there are things, especially media, that I would like to review before just flat out getting rid of. The main project of the last few months are the DVDs, Blu rays, and video games that take up an entire wall in my living room. I'm skipping television series for the moment and focusing solely on movies. There are some I know sight unseen that I've either outgrown (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) or were an impulse purchase I really shouldn't have made (I went through a period of thinking I needed every Disney animated film, and I don't), but I'm also forcing myself to review old favorites to see if it's really a movie I need to have on hand to watch whenever I might want to.
Some movies are good, but just not something I'm going to return to. The first Pirates of the Caribbean film, for instance, is a really fun romp, and there's good parts in the sequels as well. But it just doesn't hold a lot of emotional importance for me, and the CGI effects are no longer as exciting to me as they were when new, and holy crap why did we think all movies had to be two and a half hours around the turn of the century. So since I had a hard time sitting through film one, I made the executive decision to get rid of all four. Similar decisions have been made down the line, as well as ones I kept without reviewing, because no way am I getting rid of the Indiana Jones trilogy.
Last night I watched Popeye, a film I had purchased on DVD because we had it on VHS when I was young and I remember us watching it repeatedly. Watching it again as an adult, I'm amazed I sat through it as a kid. The film just sort of meanders from scene to scene. I think they were trying to go for something that would recreate a bunch of Popeye shorts, perhaps, but he only eats spinach once at the very end of the film, so it doesn't exactly work. I think as a kid I must have mostly sat around waiting for the songs, which while not exactly the best musical score ever recorded, are quite cute and clever in places. Ray Walston and Robin Williams playing off each other toward the end when they finally meet again is also quite funny.
One of the pieces of advice I've seen in articles encouraging you to reduce your clutter is that the memories are far more important than the objects associated with them, and you don't need the object to keep the memory. That's certainly very true, but in the case of film, you have to admit that without viewing it, you're not always going to think of those things. So here's some recollections of what I remember about the Popeye movie:
- I remember thinking it was so odd that the film version of Popeye didn't like spinach when he always loved it in the cartoons. Even as a child, I was judging adaptations against their source material.
- This was, as far as I know, the first time I saw a proper reproduction of an octopus. I was so used to the cutesy simplified version you always see in cartoons, and I didn't understand why the one they used here looked so strange. His eye looks so very mean too, that even though it looks super fake to me now, I remember being scared of it then.
- Even though it's explained by the characters in the film, I remember asking my parents about Bluto's clothes turning yellow as he swims away in the final scene. "Why would it make his clothes turn yellow?" My extremely logical child brain wanted to know. Funny enough, the way Bluto sees Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Sweetpea all in red when he's angry didn't seem to bother me as much.
- There's a background cast member (I don't think he's ever named so I can't identify him via imdb) who Bluto smooshes down when he's angry. The scene was striking enough that he looks odd standing up straight to me. I also have really clear memories of the way the guy Popeye uses like a punching bag shaking. The attempts at making cartoon violence real in this movie are actually pretty freaky.
That's not a very long list, I know, and that's probably why I won't be keeping this one. By comparison, I decided to hold on to Roger and Hammerstein's Cinderella, because that one is a lot more fun through out and has much better songs. It's another one I visited repeatedly on VHS as a child, but I think holds up a lot more to viewing as an adult. Short Circuit is another that will be coming up soon enough, and that one is going to be tough to decide on for very different reasons (hello, uncomfortable Indian stereotypes being portrayed by a white man, why did you still exist in the 80s?).
Friday, December 5, 2014
I Wrote This?! - a series reviewing my older writing - Static
This installment of I Wrote This?! is a mishmash of the last two, sort of. No, I didn't bring the dark elves into the same universe as the X-men and Batman, let's not get totally crazy. What I mean is that this is just a small piece of story, an intro based on an idea for a new character that I started and never picked up again. And it is still set in Claw's world and she is still ridiculously overpowered, even showing off a power or two that I don't think was ever brought up in that other story.
The date of the original wps file I have for this story is from 1998, though it may be from earlier if I made a few edits somewhere along the way. I imagine that's reasonably close though.
The date of the original wps file I have for this story is from 1998, though it may be from earlier if I made a few edits somewhere along the way. I imagine that's reasonably close though.
Friday, November 21, 2014
I Wrote This?! - a series reviewing my older writing - Unfinished drow story
The title for this series (suggested by Jak Locke as I am terrible at titles) is a good one because while with last week's entry it can be said in disgust, it can also be said in pleasant surprise. This week's pick is the latter.
In high school, I was exposed to the fantasy genre in depth for the first time. While I had seen The Last Unicorn and loved it as a child, I didn't see any of the girth of 80's fantasy films until the 90's. I also started reading R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden novels and particularly loved The Dark Elf Trilogy, with its in depth exploration of drow culture. An evil society full of creatures who cared more about ambition than anything else, ruled by women no less, absolutely fascinated me. While I loved the character of Drizzt, I was actually more fascinated by his father Zaknafein, who also didn't agree with drow ways but chose to live within the society and prosper as best he could. I eventually decided to try my hand at writing my own story set in the Underdark. I think I was either 16 or 17 when I wrote this, though I'm not 100% certain. With less to nitpick, I've just included my thoughts about this one at the end.
The girl walked down the crowded streets. Today was the dawn of her twentieth year. This held no importance to anyone except herself and her mother, because after all she was nothing more than a drow commoner. She wore a hooded cloak, which covered her completely, and those who past her saw only her red glowing eyes. She was on her way to the house she served as a soldier. It was only the twentieth house, not very formidable, but the matron mother was known to be gaining the favor of Lloth, the drow goddess. The girl cared little of this, as this was the third house she had ever served, and no doubt would not be the last.
Friday, November 7, 2014
I Wrote This?! -a series reviewing my older writing - X-men Mary Sue fanfiction
Ever since I abandoned The Hinges of Destiny, I've faced a bit of paralysis when it comes to my writing. I can't get over the idea that I failed at my dream of becoming a writer, and that specifically these characters I had created and tweaked for so many years were done. I'm trying my best to get past this fact and try again, but before that, I wanted to take a step back. Because the characters referred to as Elizabeth and Max in The Hinges of Destiny started out as Claw and Wolf respectively. Claw was 100% my Mary Sue insert into the worlds of fiction I was very much in love with at the time, and Wolf a companion character for her. I had never heard that term before, and would not hear it until I put this story online a few years later and a friend politely asked if that was what I intended this to be. It was pretty soul crushing at the time, but it was also an important step into my journey of building more realistic characters.
This story is pretty bad and probably one of the worst I ever wrote, but there's also glimmers of potential here too. Grammar, spelling, and spacing errors have been fixed, but otherwise the story has been left alone. Numbers in the story on the left mark the notes in the right.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Re-evaluating my priorities, and what that means for my posts on here
I've been unhappy for a few months now. Super unhappy, having a really hard time getting excited about much of anything, feeling like I was worthless. So I've been searching for an answer, and I happened to stumble upon this episode of the Cracked podcast last night, and it got me thinking super hard about the way I've been spending my time. If you've had any doubts of your own, I recommend listening to it.
A Return to the Dreaming
I've said before and I'll say again that I hate editing podcasts. I love doing them though. Guesting on other podcasts has always been the best because it means I get to show up to discuss and then do nothing afterward. For my own, I definitely don't want to present the idea that I hated doing Strangers from the Internet or A Return to the Dreaming. I love talking to Bethany and JD (as well as our guests on SftI) and I think we had some really great discussions on both shows. As I listen again to edit, I enjoy our discussions again. There's nothing cooler than when you're sitting there listening to a show you recorded a while ago, and a topic comes up and you're thinking about the topic while you edit and then a little while later, boom, that thing you were thinking is right there because we're awesome people so of course it occurred to us then. It's getting down in the weeds, having to clear up every single stutter and verbal tick, listening to a sentence three, four, five times in a row as you slowly clean up those things and make sure it still sounds like a normal proper sentence. Deciding if it's better to leave in that goof up because taking it out may make the rest sound stilted or odd without the context. I know from listening to other podcasts that too many verbal ticks can drive a listener crazy and I want to provide a quality product, but the tedium of editing means I can't do it for more than small bits at a time. So far I have kept A Return to the Dreaming to a once a month schedule but every time it feels like I'm going to end up taking longer. And knowing I've still got five episodes to get through after the one I'm on isn't helping things, it feels like there's no end in sight.
My point being that I am committed to getting the episodes out, but I don't know what kind of schedule it will be at going forward. If past history is an indicator, it may stay on schedule. This may just be a mental thing I need to get over, is my point. Stop imposing a deadline on myself for no good reason.
Bill Murray Project
Here's an honest confession. I care a lot about what other people think. Way, way too much. I frequently set expectations from myself based on how I think others are going to react. An image that I feel like I need to uphold. "If I don't post frequently, people will forget about my blog entirely." Ha! As if there's ever been a large number of people paying attention anyway. "If I abandon a project, people will think I am irresponsible/somehow worth less." Because all those people I know who start projects and abandon them are totally hated by the people who follow them, right? Yes, it's true that when those people announce a new project, internally I'm thinking "we'll see how long this lasts" but so what? It's their time and they can do as they please with it. Ditto with my own.
I came up with this project because there are a few Murray films I want to revisit. I added in all Murray films as a way to "post more often." I switched them to videos in an effort to make videos again even though I didn't have the time to edit. Also because I quickly found out there's only so much to be said about most comedy films. I look at the remainder of Bill Murray's work, and I still see some of the movies I want to revisit, but I also see some I feel no need to revisit because I know I don't like them (I'm looking at you, Coffee & Cigarettes) or because I know perfectly well that they're enjoyable, and most of them are popular enough that you don't need me telling you that Ed Wood is good and you should see it.
So going forward I plan to revisit the films I want, check out some of the others I haven't seen before that look interesting to me, and I will post about them if I feel like there's something I want to say about them.
I also plan to find a way to use the "5 minutes about..." videos in another fashion, because I really do enjoy talking to the camera. The time limit has already proved helpful for Pop Culture Revolver, where Jak, JD and I all felt like knowing that we were limited on time kept us all on point and focused for the discussion.
Beatlemiscellania
Unlike the Bill Murray films, I'm interested in all of these because I'm a big Beatles fan. Even the ones I've already seen I want to revisit, and even if hardly anyone is listening, I just like explaining Beatle references and talking about them. These have obviously already been on a "whenever I feel like it" schedule and will probably continue as just that.
Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange
Once a month I sit down to watch a film and then talk to Jak and Noel about it the next day. Some of the choices haven't been particularly enjoyable for me, but I still like the idea of the project, I enjoy talking to them both, and I see no reason to change anything about it. I would say the main possibility is if I feel like I run out of movies to share.
Castle Rock Companion
Noel and I already worked together on the Golden Years posts and I enjoyed them. I listened to The Gunslinger audiobook because I want to revisit the series, and conferring with Noel he agreed I should cover it for CRC regardless of whether or not an adaptation ever appears. Basically, the name of the project is vague enough that it can encompass any and all King related works we wish to cover. Like the Beatles, I really enjoy King and I will continue to talk about his work in one form or another. The most likely change that could happen would be not posting so regularly.
No Game New Year
A large part of what started this post is that I started drafting a post for the end of the year, a "what I have learned" kind of thing. And the ridiculousness of waiting until December 31st for things I already know now began to seem super-duper ridiculous to me. So I asked myself why, and once again it's all related to these promises I made to myself and not letting myself down, which in my reality means not letting other people down or the imagined "other" down. So yeah, that post will probably go up pretty soon and I will lift this foolish embargo. Because giving up on new year's resolutions before the year is up is normal and human, and I'm not going to win the love and adoration of millions just because I make it all the way to December 31st. Especially if there's a game out there that I have the time and money to play. And I haven't had the time lately because I've been forcing myself to do these other projects.
Wolverine and the X-men posts
The X-men are up there with the Beatles and King for me. I love them, and will always want to talk about them and share my love with others in some fashion. I'm going to keep re-watching this series because I think it's great. Will I keep writing about it? I'm not sure. I've noticed that my last couple of posts were really just me recapping the show, pointing out some cameos. Some of which I have to confirm through Wikipedia because I missed a good decade of X-men comics. I think I just took that from a "not sure" to a definite "no," unless I find something I really want to say about them.
Pop Culture Revolver
I think what you can kind of tell over all is that a lot of the above is about slimming things down or slowing them up. A good portion of them could even be incorporated into Pop Culture Revolver instead - for instance once I get to the end of Wolverine and the X-men, I could invite on anyone else who has watched the series to talk about it. I don't feel like I need to force myself to watch The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou or Moonrise Kingdom again because I know I like them, but that doesn't mean I couldn't do an episode about Wes Anderson films in general. There are many Sandman related comics not directly written by Gaiman that JD and I didn't do an episode for, but could totally be covered here without giving me yet another episode to edit. My general idea is to do this podcast every other week, but we'll see how realistically that can be upheld.
Things that have nothing to do with posting on the internet, gasp!
I have multiple Excel spreadsheets that I use to organize my time. There is "Week Schedule" where I have columns for Monday through Sunday and rows for hours that I'm awake. I block out the time when I'm at work and use the rest to plan my meals and activities the rest of the time. There's "Creative Projects and Ideas" where the first tab is a calendar where I fill out what posts on what day and the remaining tabs are separated by project and I organize what needs to be done for them. There are abandoned projects, current projects, and possible future projects. And one thing I noticed is that recently I've been adding tabs that are not necessarily related to something I could post on here.
- I'm tracking which of those gifted comics I've read regardless of whether or not I'll review them.
- I've got my Netflix disc queue prioritized so I can see when I can realistically discontinue that part of the service.
- I recently put my amazon wishlist in there, seeing what I can change from physical media to digital, to see what I can experience through a streaming service instead, and whether there's stuff there I truly want/need.
- I've got a list of movies I only have via VHS to determine whether I should get better versions or just copy them over via a VCR/video camera hook up.
- I've got a list of books sitting around my house that I've never actually read
- The No Game New Year tab is really just a list of games I haven't played yet
- I've got some helpful links on how to make a t shirt quilt out of some old shirts that no longer fit me but I'm too attached to part with.
The point is, my house is currently full to the point that I can't get to things easily. And I've realized I'm just not that attached to things as a I used to be. I'm not going to know what is worth keeping and what's not unless I have the chance to go through these things, and going through them often gets deferred because "I must edit" or "Gotta watch this so I can make progress on this project" while I allow myself to be continually miserable because I feel cramped in my packed house.
It's stupid behavior. I have to stop making myself guilty if I want to be a consumer rather than a producer. I have to stop telling myself that cleaning up the house isn't an accomplishment because it's not a creative endeavor.
I'm not going to be rich and famous. I'm not even going to be internet famous. Honestly, the idea that that is somehow a good thing to be is ludicrous when you see how those people get harassed and criticized on a regular basis. Obviously it means enough to them to continue, but I'm so tired of putting things out there and being disappointed because people didn't get excited about it the way I hoped they would.
I've been really stupid. I started doing videos because no one reads but people like to watch videos, so maybe if I make them they'll love me like they love those other people! I sit around like an asshole and think "Oh well, Igor and Noel will like this, but no one else will notice" totally under appreciating the fact that I do in fact have two awesome friends who enjoy what I do. And they're not the only ones, they may be the ones who comment the most but sitting around expecting comments is just sitting there going "Love me! Validate me! Need me! Convince me I'm special!"
There's a line from a Liz Phair song. She's talking about something else, but she says "If you do it and you're still unhappy, then you know that the problem is you."
So this is the point where I say no more. No more putting something out there in the hopes that others will notice. I will write when I want to write and I will work on videos when I want to do them and I will discuss things with my friends and record them when I want to. And if I want to sit at home and play a game or watch a show or read a book I will without stopping to think about whether or not such thing is something I can review. And the world will not end! Imagine that.
Monday, December 30, 2013
New Year's Resolutions
My Christmas was horrible. Since I promised myself I wouldn't focus on the negative here, I'll just say that I hope it means the worst Christmas of my life is now behind me. It has left me with some unanswered questions regarding what I want to do in regards to my more extended family, but at this point I've got until March 1st at least to decide. We shall see.
For now, the year is almost over and so I'm thinking about next year, and what I'd like to accomplish. It's always around this time that I have to give myself a nudge to quit procrastinating about things. This time around it's things around the house that are overdue: the tub in my second bathroom is stopped up and unusable, my gutters are in severe need of cleaning, and other such fun things. I've got plans in place to start tackling these various things one by one which should help.
Another thing I've decided is I really need to stop being embarrassed about who I am. I've gone to conventions the last two years as my major vacations, and every time at work I tell people I'm going to visit friends. It's not a lie exactly, but when I come back from Washington DC and haven't visited a single monument or museum, it must seem a little odd to them anyway. So I'm not going to pretend anymore. This is starting with bringing in the Marvel Superheroes 2014 calendar that I got as a Christmas gift. The Avengers was such a huge movie, it's really quite silly at this point to be embarrassed by it. Yes, it's drawings rather than pictures of Robert Downey, Jr and Chris Helmsworth, but is it really that different?
Part of the problem is that a former friend who used to work here told me once that my coworkers were laughing at me for liking anime. The silly thing was I'm pretty sure they decided that based on some webcomics I was reading where the artist just happened to be following that style. I do like anime, but I never watched or brought it here. So there's a part of me that has that feeling they're going to be mocking me behind my back again if I've got Spider-man on my wall, but seeing as how they apparently already look down on me, what have I truly got to lose at this point? I'd rather have superheroes up than some boring scenic calendar I got from my A/C company.
I also plan to extend this into not being embarrassed to tell people about my writing, podcasts, etc. There's a part of me that feels like people will think I am weird for doing it. I guess it's because when I post those things on Facebook, so many of the people I know and see day to day ignore them. So I assume they think it's stupid. But I really need to stop caring about that. I don't mean rubbing it in peoples' faces all the time, but when someone asks me what I've been up to and the answer is editing a podcast, why not just come out and say it?
As long as I feel embarrassed about the things I like and the things I do, I can't feel confidence in myself. In reality, most of the people who know the things I like do not shun me for them. Even if friends don't read my blogs, they know I like movies enough that they will ask me my opinion on various films, or recommend some to me that they think I would enjoy. Nearly everyone that has entered my home and seen my movies, action figures, and posters on display thinks they're awesome. And most of the people who have reacted negatively are people I don't have much in common with and don't need the approval of anyway. I am far too old to keep worrying about what other people think.
It's possible something else will strike me soon that I'll turn into a goal for the year, but for now it's going to take a bit of courage to follow through with what I've said above.
For now, the year is almost over and so I'm thinking about next year, and what I'd like to accomplish. It's always around this time that I have to give myself a nudge to quit procrastinating about things. This time around it's things around the house that are overdue: the tub in my second bathroom is stopped up and unusable, my gutters are in severe need of cleaning, and other such fun things. I've got plans in place to start tackling these various things one by one which should help.
Another thing I've decided is I really need to stop being embarrassed about who I am. I've gone to conventions the last two years as my major vacations, and every time at work I tell people I'm going to visit friends. It's not a lie exactly, but when I come back from Washington DC and haven't visited a single monument or museum, it must seem a little odd to them anyway. So I'm not going to pretend anymore. This is starting with bringing in the Marvel Superheroes 2014 calendar that I got as a Christmas gift. The Avengers was such a huge movie, it's really quite silly at this point to be embarrassed by it. Yes, it's drawings rather than pictures of Robert Downey, Jr and Chris Helmsworth, but is it really that different?
Part of the problem is that a former friend who used to work here told me once that my coworkers were laughing at me for liking anime. The silly thing was I'm pretty sure they decided that based on some webcomics I was reading where the artist just happened to be following that style. I do like anime, but I never watched or brought it here. So there's a part of me that has that feeling they're going to be mocking me behind my back again if I've got Spider-man on my wall, but seeing as how they apparently already look down on me, what have I truly got to lose at this point? I'd rather have superheroes up than some boring scenic calendar I got from my A/C company.
I also plan to extend this into not being embarrassed to tell people about my writing, podcasts, etc. There's a part of me that feels like people will think I am weird for doing it. I guess it's because when I post those things on Facebook, so many of the people I know and see day to day ignore them. So I assume they think it's stupid. But I really need to stop caring about that. I don't mean rubbing it in peoples' faces all the time, but when someone asks me what I've been up to and the answer is editing a podcast, why not just come out and say it?
As long as I feel embarrassed about the things I like and the things I do, I can't feel confidence in myself. In reality, most of the people who know the things I like do not shun me for them. Even if friends don't read my blogs, they know I like movies enough that they will ask me my opinion on various films, or recommend some to me that they think I would enjoy. Nearly everyone that has entered my home and seen my movies, action figures, and posters on display thinks they're awesome. And most of the people who have reacted negatively are people I don't have much in common with and don't need the approval of anyway. I am far too old to keep worrying about what other people think.
It's possible something else will strike me soon that I'll turn into a goal for the year, but for now it's going to take a bit of courage to follow through with what I've said above.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
On creating video reviews
One week ago, I received a notice from Blip.tv that they would be deleting both of my accounts "in accordance with their terms of service." I put it in quotes, because that's all the reason they gave, not actually explaining why they chose to do so. It wasn't completely out of the blue, as they had been talking for quite some time about changing the purpose of their site to being a place for "high quality web series." Basically, they want to be seen as something higher in standards than Youtube. But they also swore they weren't just looking at numbers alone, and that they were also looking for low scoring series that had the potential for growth, and that they would even help them to achieve higher numbers.
Well either that's a load of bullshit, or I have no potential in their eyes. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that my numbers were great. I had not earned enough money from my videos for a single payout. But I really thought my series was good, and viewership was growing, slowly but surely. I was initially pretty upset, and then I was pretty pissed. Because they think people who nitpick and screech are "quality entertainment" and my honest, well thought out critiques aren't. Of course, even if they think that method of "reviewing" is stupid, they probably want to keep them simply because they make money from them. End of story. There are some good reviewers on there who are also staying, it's just frustrating when you look at their front page and see who they are promoting most heavily. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what their reasoning is, as I don't have a choice. They're deleting my account in three weeks time.
I had started putting all my episodes on Youtube as well as Blip some time ago, mostly in an effort to expand my reach. I've run into a couple of issues where videos got flagged as soon as they were uploaded there. Some kind of scanner, I'm sure, that looks for content from the various movie studios that Google has deals with. While I suppose I could dispute them on the basis of fair use, I'm the more cautious type and would prefer to not deal with that at all. I haven't had to deal with that in months, but it seems pretty obvious to me that it could happen again at any time. I've started primarily talking over the video clips I use, removing or lowering the original audio, and I think that goes a long way to help it but the fact of the matter is that you're still playing games to try to make things work okay rather than just producing what you want to produce.
All of this made me sit down and think. I started doing videos because of my admiration for James Rolfe's movie reviews. While it's always been a challenge, that was part of the appeal for me. I've learned a lot over the past year as I worked on them. I put a lot of time and effort into them, improving scripts, my delivery, finding the best setting in my house to record, using a high quality microphone, and even purchasing an HD camera to improve the quality of the video.
I've created thirteen episodes so far, seventeen videos, and I'm working on the next episode which is also a two-part episode. It's the most theatrical of all of them as it's a Halloween special and I decided to do something different. I am, quite honestly, pretty scared as far as how it's going to be received. I'm taking a risk, and while the two people I showed it to loved the idea, that doesn't mean everyone else will. But once again, it was a challenge for me, something new and different, and so I jumped on the chance to do it.
Youtube being Youtube, I have received occasional negative comments on the Castle Rock Companion reviews I've put up there. I hate to be the type of person who blocks comments, because it suggests you can't take criticism or insults. I'll admit my skin is thin, but I'm doing my best to harden it and it's not going to harden if I block everyone from commenting. But it is an annoyance, and usually a pretty sharp contrast from any other feedback I receive.
So while I could just continue as I have been with CRC, uploading the videos to Youtube from now on, hosting the ones they block on my website as an alternative, it doesn't really seem desirable to me. There is also the fact that, this Halloween episode not withstanding, CRC isn't much of a challenge to me anymore. I've got it down to a science each step of the way, including the video editing. It's time-consuming, but not difficult. While I could attempt to come up with some kind of gimmick for each video, I really don't like it when others do that. I have lost count of the number of reviewers I've watched where I wish they would just drop their attempts to be funny that 9 out of 10 times fall flat and just focus on the review. They're great at reviewing, they're not so great at comedy. I'm pretty much the same way in that respect, so I'd rather do my best to execute that 1 out of 10 opportunity and leave the rest as straight reviews.
So I asked myself, how important was the video aspect to what I was doing with CRC? Yes, I use it to show examples of what I'm talking about, but are they essential? Could they just as easily be talked about in written form? In my opinion, while movie clips make a video far more interesting than just watching a person talk at you, they are not truly essential to the review itself. Looking over the scripts I have for future episodes, most of what I discuss could be shown just as easily with a screenshot than with a video. Images are a good thing to have in written reviews anyway, as they help break up the wall of text.
I know a part of my decision to try out video reviews way back when is I felt like some people don't like to read. Well, having done videos, I've found some people don't have time to watch them. You can't please all the people all the time, so you might as well just do it in the format you want to do it in.
The number of people who follow the series is also irrelevant to me. I love doing it and I can't stop myself from doing it. I read a Stephen King book, I watch the movie adaptation of it, and I go over the differences and what's better in my head. I put it out there now in case a few people want to join the conversation and discuss it. No joke, I had a friend who wasn't aware I was doing it come to me and say she wanted to start a blog doing the same exact thing. So clearly I'm not 100% alone in doing so, and I'm happy with the few people who do participate.
That all said, I have no intention of stopping making videos all together. I enjoy them immensely. Long before any of this bullshit happened with Blip, I had every intention of starting another series. The first episode will be up on my blog tomorrow. It's related to a type of media that Youtube is far more friendly toward, so I shouldn't have to worry about it being taken down. What kind of comments I will get is another question, but we will see how that goes. Honestly, I don't expect many people to take any notice of it at all in the beginning. I've started new projects often enough that I know the score.
I'm also debating possibly doing something else, something closer to the Halloween episode I'm working on. Probably not a comedy, but definitely something more original than a review. I enjoyed acting in Targeted a little too much to make that a one time deal. Obviously that will take a lot of planning and a good solid idea first, but I'm planting the seeds in the back of my mind now to see what develops.
Well either that's a load of bullshit, or I have no potential in their eyes. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that my numbers were great. I had not earned enough money from my videos for a single payout. But I really thought my series was good, and viewership was growing, slowly but surely. I was initially pretty upset, and then I was pretty pissed. Because they think people who nitpick and screech are "quality entertainment" and my honest, well thought out critiques aren't. Of course, even if they think that method of "reviewing" is stupid, they probably want to keep them simply because they make money from them. End of story. There are some good reviewers on there who are also staying, it's just frustrating when you look at their front page and see who they are promoting most heavily. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what their reasoning is, as I don't have a choice. They're deleting my account in three weeks time.
I had started putting all my episodes on Youtube as well as Blip some time ago, mostly in an effort to expand my reach. I've run into a couple of issues where videos got flagged as soon as they were uploaded there. Some kind of scanner, I'm sure, that looks for content from the various movie studios that Google has deals with. While I suppose I could dispute them on the basis of fair use, I'm the more cautious type and would prefer to not deal with that at all. I haven't had to deal with that in months, but it seems pretty obvious to me that it could happen again at any time. I've started primarily talking over the video clips I use, removing or lowering the original audio, and I think that goes a long way to help it but the fact of the matter is that you're still playing games to try to make things work okay rather than just producing what you want to produce.
All of this made me sit down and think. I started doing videos because of my admiration for James Rolfe's movie reviews. While it's always been a challenge, that was part of the appeal for me. I've learned a lot over the past year as I worked on them. I put a lot of time and effort into them, improving scripts, my delivery, finding the best setting in my house to record, using a high quality microphone, and even purchasing an HD camera to improve the quality of the video.
I've created thirteen episodes so far, seventeen videos, and I'm working on the next episode which is also a two-part episode. It's the most theatrical of all of them as it's a Halloween special and I decided to do something different. I am, quite honestly, pretty scared as far as how it's going to be received. I'm taking a risk, and while the two people I showed it to loved the idea, that doesn't mean everyone else will. But once again, it was a challenge for me, something new and different, and so I jumped on the chance to do it.
Youtube being Youtube, I have received occasional negative comments on the Castle Rock Companion reviews I've put up there. I hate to be the type of person who blocks comments, because it suggests you can't take criticism or insults. I'll admit my skin is thin, but I'm doing my best to harden it and it's not going to harden if I block everyone from commenting. But it is an annoyance, and usually a pretty sharp contrast from any other feedback I receive.
So while I could just continue as I have been with CRC, uploading the videos to Youtube from now on, hosting the ones they block on my website as an alternative, it doesn't really seem desirable to me. There is also the fact that, this Halloween episode not withstanding, CRC isn't much of a challenge to me anymore. I've got it down to a science each step of the way, including the video editing. It's time-consuming, but not difficult. While I could attempt to come up with some kind of gimmick for each video, I really don't like it when others do that. I have lost count of the number of reviewers I've watched where I wish they would just drop their attempts to be funny that 9 out of 10 times fall flat and just focus on the review. They're great at reviewing, they're not so great at comedy. I'm pretty much the same way in that respect, so I'd rather do my best to execute that 1 out of 10 opportunity and leave the rest as straight reviews.
So I asked myself, how important was the video aspect to what I was doing with CRC? Yes, I use it to show examples of what I'm talking about, but are they essential? Could they just as easily be talked about in written form? In my opinion, while movie clips make a video far more interesting than just watching a person talk at you, they are not truly essential to the review itself. Looking over the scripts I have for future episodes, most of what I discuss could be shown just as easily with a screenshot than with a video. Images are a good thing to have in written reviews anyway, as they help break up the wall of text.
I know a part of my decision to try out video reviews way back when is I felt like some people don't like to read. Well, having done videos, I've found some people don't have time to watch them. You can't please all the people all the time, so you might as well just do it in the format you want to do it in.
The number of people who follow the series is also irrelevant to me. I love doing it and I can't stop myself from doing it. I read a Stephen King book, I watch the movie adaptation of it, and I go over the differences and what's better in my head. I put it out there now in case a few people want to join the conversation and discuss it. No joke, I had a friend who wasn't aware I was doing it come to me and say she wanted to start a blog doing the same exact thing. So clearly I'm not 100% alone in doing so, and I'm happy with the few people who do participate.
That all said, I have no intention of stopping making videos all together. I enjoy them immensely. Long before any of this bullshit happened with Blip, I had every intention of starting another series. The first episode will be up on my blog tomorrow. It's related to a type of media that Youtube is far more friendly toward, so I shouldn't have to worry about it being taken down. What kind of comments I will get is another question, but we will see how that goes. Honestly, I don't expect many people to take any notice of it at all in the beginning. I've started new projects often enough that I know the score.
I'm also debating possibly doing something else, something closer to the Halloween episode I'm working on. Probably not a comedy, but definitely something more original than a review. I enjoyed acting in Targeted a little too much to make that a one time deal. Obviously that will take a lot of planning and a good solid idea first, but I'm planting the seeds in the back of my mind now to see what develops.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Accomplishments and failures
I took last week off of work, like I do every year. It's a bit of a no brainer. Thanks to Labor Day and our revolving schedule, I use 3 vacation days and end up getting 9 days off from work in a row. I started doing this shortly after purchasing my own home, so I tend to call it Home Improvement Week. My goals aren't just limited to housework though, I try to get other things done too.
Here's what I managed to get done:
All in all, that's quite a bit I got done, along with streaming a lot of video games during the week, seeing a show with my friends, having Ethiopian food with my brother, and going out to the movies to see Riddick.
As the subject suggests, I did screw some things up too. They're really not that serious, but they did end up seriously upsetting me at the time, so I figured they were worth writing about in a "what have we learned" sense.
I wanted to try my hand at cooking steak to see if I liked it. After having strange carnivorous cravings (I usually eat far more veggies than meat) I thought it might be time to try steak again, but didn't want to spend a lot of money at a restaurant for something I might not like. So I bought some thin eye of round steaks and started looking up how to cook them. Somewhere along the way I guess I got mixed up. I tenderized them by marinating them, and was all set to put them on my grill when I pulled the lid off it and found the plates looked rusted. With that out of the window, I was looking online and saw most people suggested slow cooking. So I scrapped the idea to make them that night and instead put them in the crockpot the next day. I think the page I was reading online must have been referring to an eye of round roast or something, because those steaks ended up so badly dried out they were inedible. Very disappointing. I think I'm going to stick to making roasts and hamburgers from now on when I want red meat, because I'm pretty good at making both of those. I'll find a moderately priced steak at a restaurant and try that instead before I try making another one at home.
The other failure was related to streaming video games. We're still in our infancy with doing this, and very much figuring it out as we go along. In trying to figure out what games to do, the discussion inevitably comes up that RPGs are just right out of the question. This isn't something just Jak and I talk about, I've seen it discussed online, both in relation to streaming and let's plays. They're boring and tedious, is the usual reasons given. The problem I have with this generally accepted idea is that I really love RPGs. They are my favorite type of video game. Beyond playing a lot of them, I've also spent a lot of time watching other people play them. I watched my brother play when I was young, and near the beginning of our relationship, Jak and I tried to play through the entire Final Fantasy series and we traded off who played which game, which meant I watched him play half of them.
I understand there's nothing interesting about watching people grind to level up, but I thought that maybe an RPG that didn't take long amounts of level grinding could still be interesting. So even though all the signs were telling me not to do it, I insisted on streaming Final Fantasy Mystic Quest one night last week. In an effort to add more to it, Jak and I added the stipulation that whenever we saw the overworld map, we would pass the controller. It didn't help. We had a few people watching at first, but they all politely told us they had something to go do and signed off after a while. Jak and I ran out of things to say, and while we had originally planned to make it to the second crystal, I elected to turn it off after the mini-dungeon before it.
I got really, really depressed afterward. I knew the odds were against me, but I had really, really wanted to make it work, to prove that these games were fun and likable. Because I love them, so why wouldn't other people want to watch them? No one likes to be proven wrong, even when they know the odds are against them.
So why did it go so horribly wrong, even though I thought for sure the game was fun?
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is an entry level RPG. While this does mean remarkably less level grinding and no random battles, it also means everything about the game is simplified, including the story. You enter a scene, someone tells you to go somewhere and get something or talk to someone, end scene. From there you fight enemies until you find who/what you're looking for, and you're immediately given another task to go complete. While there is a bit of humor, there's no real emotion to the story at all.
The way the game gets around the "no random battles" aspect on the overworld is by setting up battlefields. You enter a battlefield 10 times, fighting 1-3 enemies and gain gold and experience. It's abbreviated level grinding, but it is still level grinding. And once you get inside the dungeons, the enemies are there and blocking your path so you fight them to continue. While there are fun sound effects and adorable graphics as the monsters change as they take damage, it still equals repetition that isn't necessarily the most fun to watch.
Perhaps, if Jak and I had been doing this a lot longer, we could have kept the commentary flowing seamlessly regardless of the duller game play. But we found ourselves running out things to say, and then realizing the large gaps of saying nothing was just making me all the more self conscious and making me do that thing where I was blurting out stuff I shouldn't just for the sake of filling up space. My disappointment was pretty evident in my voice, and no one wants to listen to a person complain or even worse whine about things. This last part in particular is why I deleted the stream from Twitch's archive of the show and only have a copy as a private file on my youtube page that no one can see.
So as of tonight, we'll try again. Zelda II is a hybrid between a sidescroller and an RPG, so while there's a lot of action elements there are also points in the game where you have to grind for experience to give Link a chance to survive. Jak is the only one playing this time, and he's already done a bit of grinding, as much as you can without really starting any of the true levels of the actual game. But we'll run into that point again, and this time we decided it might be fun to get some people on via Skype, to keep conversation going while he does that. Time will tell how that goes. I'm hoping well, as we'll essentially just be chatting with people while having the game as a backdrop.
Here's what I managed to get done:
- I had about 15 empty cardboard boxes just hanging out in my attic, miraculously with no signs of roaches or mice building nests out of them. Some of them were boxes from electronics (does anyone else even notice when items tell you to keep the original box for warranty purposes?) but others were boxes I had used in my move four years ago. I don't plan on moving again for years and yet I was holding on to these things "just in case." They are now gone, and I have a lot of free space in my attic.
- I also took down the Halloween decorations while I was up there. They haven't been put up yet, I'll probably wait until October for that. But I hate going in the attic so now they are in the spare room.
- Dad came over with his edger and took care of my severely overgrown grass and helped me fix the edger I bought last year and used once before it messed up. He also brought the pressure washer and I started cleaning up the driveway and some of the house exterior. It's technically not complete.
- I recorded my video segments for my Firestarter review and also guested on an I Hate/Love Remakes episode about Scarface.
- Hung up some paintings/pictures that have literally been leaning against the wall for months waiting for me to do just that.
- Put my suitcases back in the closet that have been sitting out since the SGC trip in June.
- Took down and threw out the mini-blinds in my bedroom that Bad Cat aka Logan had ruined by chewing up the strings that hold them together. I decided to just stick with the light blocking curtains for now.
- Cleaned up my Mac hard drive by moving a lot of stuff to the external drive. Between Targeted and my video reviews, it fills up fast.
- Cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen. I'm a serious procrastinator when it comes to taking care of this kind of stuff, but I'm trying to keep up a better schedule with it from now on.
- Filed and shredded a bunch of documents that were making the office look like a disheveled mess.
All in all, that's quite a bit I got done, along with streaming a lot of video games during the week, seeing a show with my friends, having Ethiopian food with my brother, and going out to the movies to see Riddick.
As the subject suggests, I did screw some things up too. They're really not that serious, but they did end up seriously upsetting me at the time, so I figured they were worth writing about in a "what have we learned" sense.
I wanted to try my hand at cooking steak to see if I liked it. After having strange carnivorous cravings (I usually eat far more veggies than meat) I thought it might be time to try steak again, but didn't want to spend a lot of money at a restaurant for something I might not like. So I bought some thin eye of round steaks and started looking up how to cook them. Somewhere along the way I guess I got mixed up. I tenderized them by marinating them, and was all set to put them on my grill when I pulled the lid off it and found the plates looked rusted. With that out of the window, I was looking online and saw most people suggested slow cooking. So I scrapped the idea to make them that night and instead put them in the crockpot the next day. I think the page I was reading online must have been referring to an eye of round roast or something, because those steaks ended up so badly dried out they were inedible. Very disappointing. I think I'm going to stick to making roasts and hamburgers from now on when I want red meat, because I'm pretty good at making both of those. I'll find a moderately priced steak at a restaurant and try that instead before I try making another one at home.
The other failure was related to streaming video games. We're still in our infancy with doing this, and very much figuring it out as we go along. In trying to figure out what games to do, the discussion inevitably comes up that RPGs are just right out of the question. This isn't something just Jak and I talk about, I've seen it discussed online, both in relation to streaming and let's plays. They're boring and tedious, is the usual reasons given. The problem I have with this generally accepted idea is that I really love RPGs. They are my favorite type of video game. Beyond playing a lot of them, I've also spent a lot of time watching other people play them. I watched my brother play when I was young, and near the beginning of our relationship, Jak and I tried to play through the entire Final Fantasy series and we traded off who played which game, which meant I watched him play half of them.
I understand there's nothing interesting about watching people grind to level up, but I thought that maybe an RPG that didn't take long amounts of level grinding could still be interesting. So even though all the signs were telling me not to do it, I insisted on streaming Final Fantasy Mystic Quest one night last week. In an effort to add more to it, Jak and I added the stipulation that whenever we saw the overworld map, we would pass the controller. It didn't help. We had a few people watching at first, but they all politely told us they had something to go do and signed off after a while. Jak and I ran out of things to say, and while we had originally planned to make it to the second crystal, I elected to turn it off after the mini-dungeon before it.
I got really, really depressed afterward. I knew the odds were against me, but I had really, really wanted to make it work, to prove that these games were fun and likable. Because I love them, so why wouldn't other people want to watch them? No one likes to be proven wrong, even when they know the odds are against them.
So why did it go so horribly wrong, even though I thought for sure the game was fun?
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is an entry level RPG. While this does mean remarkably less level grinding and no random battles, it also means everything about the game is simplified, including the story. You enter a scene, someone tells you to go somewhere and get something or talk to someone, end scene. From there you fight enemies until you find who/what you're looking for, and you're immediately given another task to go complete. While there is a bit of humor, there's no real emotion to the story at all.
The way the game gets around the "no random battles" aspect on the overworld is by setting up battlefields. You enter a battlefield 10 times, fighting 1-3 enemies and gain gold and experience. It's abbreviated level grinding, but it is still level grinding. And once you get inside the dungeons, the enemies are there and blocking your path so you fight them to continue. While there are fun sound effects and adorable graphics as the monsters change as they take damage, it still equals repetition that isn't necessarily the most fun to watch.
Perhaps, if Jak and I had been doing this a lot longer, we could have kept the commentary flowing seamlessly regardless of the duller game play. But we found ourselves running out things to say, and then realizing the large gaps of saying nothing was just making me all the more self conscious and making me do that thing where I was blurting out stuff I shouldn't just for the sake of filling up space. My disappointment was pretty evident in my voice, and no one wants to listen to a person complain or even worse whine about things. This last part in particular is why I deleted the stream from Twitch's archive of the show and only have a copy as a private file on my youtube page that no one can see.
So as of tonight, we'll try again. Zelda II is a hybrid between a sidescroller and an RPG, so while there's a lot of action elements there are also points in the game where you have to grind for experience to give Link a chance to survive. Jak is the only one playing this time, and he's already done a bit of grinding, as much as you can without really starting any of the true levels of the actual game. But we'll run into that point again, and this time we decided it might be fun to get some people on via Skype, to keep conversation going while he does that. Time will tell how that goes. I'm hoping well, as we'll essentially just be chatting with people while having the game as a backdrop.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Horrible dream
So I know I said this blog was mostly for positive things, but I can’t help but to write about the way my brain managed to horrify me last night.
I was somewhere, and for whatever reason a bunch of girls I had gone to elementary and high school with were also there, and we were all wearing these evening gowns with satin gloves and high heels, all the same color and design. The girls were being paraded out one by one, and eventually my friend Melanie, who died on her 16th birthday, was among them. She gave me her normal small smile when she saw me, and then kept going. She was sort of limping as she walked, but I chalked it up to the fact that she wasn’t used to wearing high heels and let her go on.
A little time passes and my friend Nicki has this panicked look on her face, and is gesturing ahead. In my mind, I knew what she was referring to without her saying anything. We were caught in some kind of time loop, and Melanie was about to die again. I broke into a run, and of course it was that special dream form of running where it’s slow motion and it’s like you’re trying to run under water, gravity is too heavy and you can’t go as fast as you want. Other people were streaming past me, all of us trying to reach her.
But we were too late. There she was, lying on her back, arms splayed out, dead, in that same evening gown. I screamed a high pitched scream and was able to move at normal speed again, and I cradled her head in my lap and cried. “Too late! We were too late again!”
Mind you, Melanie died in a car crash, and she was dressed in her normal clothes at the time. It wasn’t a drunk driving scenario, just a guy who lost control of the car while driving in the rain. No one could have predicted it happening, and there wasn’t any way we could have prevented it. But damn if that dream didn’t feel real at the time.
I’ve had dreams with her in them before, but they are usually much more peaceful, just situations where we’re hanging out again and everything is as it was. I’d like to have those kinds of dreams again, please.
I was somewhere, and for whatever reason a bunch of girls I had gone to elementary and high school with were also there, and we were all wearing these evening gowns with satin gloves and high heels, all the same color and design. The girls were being paraded out one by one, and eventually my friend Melanie, who died on her 16th birthday, was among them. She gave me her normal small smile when she saw me, and then kept going. She was sort of limping as she walked, but I chalked it up to the fact that she wasn’t used to wearing high heels and let her go on.
A little time passes and my friend Nicki has this panicked look on her face, and is gesturing ahead. In my mind, I knew what she was referring to without her saying anything. We were caught in some kind of time loop, and Melanie was about to die again. I broke into a run, and of course it was that special dream form of running where it’s slow motion and it’s like you’re trying to run under water, gravity is too heavy and you can’t go as fast as you want. Other people were streaming past me, all of us trying to reach her.
But we were too late. There she was, lying on her back, arms splayed out, dead, in that same evening gown. I screamed a high pitched scream and was able to move at normal speed again, and I cradled her head in my lap and cried. “Too late! We were too late again!”
Mind you, Melanie died in a car crash, and she was dressed in her normal clothes at the time. It wasn’t a drunk driving scenario, just a guy who lost control of the car while driving in the rain. No one could have predicted it happening, and there wasn’t any way we could have prevented it. But damn if that dream didn’t feel real at the time.
I’ve had dreams with her in them before, but they are usually much more peaceful, just situations where we’re hanging out again and everything is as it was. I’d like to have those kinds of dreams again, please.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Finding passion
We had the full blown seminar yesterday for those strengths I posted about last month. Obviously the main focus was about thinking about those things you're good at and being proud of them and also putting them to the best use. It's also supposed to be helpful for managers because it shows them how you work and how to relate to you, as well as how to group people together to make sure you've got all the bases covered, so to speak.
He mentioned near the beginning that a lot of us go about trying to be someone else, or trying to be what other people want us to be. While I've never tried to explicitly copy others, the latter is definitely true for me. When I was really little I wanted to be a teacher, and by the time I hit 13 I really wanted to be a writer. Everyone in my family tried to discourage me from both of those things as often as they possibly could. Teachers' salaries are abysmal and fiction writers don't make anything unless you're really lucky.
"You can do whatever you want, but it's really a good idea to go for a major that will guarantee you a job out of college" is what my dad said to me over and over again. I love my dad and I respect him and I wanted to make him proud of me. While there was a point where I considered going for psychology, I was once again told that the only way to make money from that was to be a psychiatrist, and the fact of the matter is that I hated school. I was always good at it, but I hated it. Learning has always been fun to me, but testing not so much. The thought of going through that many years of school was not appealing to me at all.
So I went with business, because business was the easiest way to get a job out of college. Nearly everyone in my family did something business related, so surely I must be good at it. I took BA 1000 and the only topic amongst management, marketing, finance, and accounting that made sense was accounting. Plain and simple numbers and reporting. I was always good at math. So I focused on that, and sure enough I was good at it.
I got to my senior year of college and found I truly hated it. I looked around me, baffled at the people who seemed to actually be energized about this stuff. It's just numbers, I thought. How can they truly give a damn about it? With the typical ignorance of a 21 year old who thinks they know everything, it never struck me that maybe I was the one with the problem.
When you combine my social anxiety with the fact that I didn't truly give a damn about the subject, it's no surprise that I couldn't get hired at any of the accounting firms I interviewed with. I signed up for an accounting temp agency, but of course everyone wanted someone with previous experience, so they passed me off to their general office temp staff instead. After a couple quick data entry jobs I got a temp to hire clerical job which landed me at this company. I've since been promoted to a job that combines both clerical and accounting work, so I'm at least using my degree in some form.
There's also no denying I'm good at it. I get glowing performance reviews every year. My boss, a bit of a perfectionist, trusts me implicitly to do my job right. He jokes that I have all 500 of our property IDs memorized, but that's not true. I only know the ones for the leased properties since I make the payments for them every month. Much like school, I know my job inside and out, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it.
This strength finder exercise has shed a lot of light on that fact. Input means I like to learn, and after 7 years in this position, there isn't anything new to pick up on. Intellection means I like to think things through, debate them, discuss them.. but there's not a whole lot to discuss. Consistency means I want fairness, but I deal with landlords who are trying to cheat you out of money and tenants who can't be bothered to pay their rent on time. Restorative means I want to solve problems, and while that does occasionally come up, most of the time it's pretty smooth sailing around here. We have our processes and we stick to them.
Meanwhile, I see a lot of my strengths related to the reviews I work on in my free time. I don't just read a book, watch a movie, play a game, whatever. I head to Wikipedia, imdb, etc. to research it, find out what's going on behind the scenes, what went into making it. I think about what the work is trying to convey. I try to explain why others should also appreciate it, why even things with a bad reputation deserve attention, what we can learn from things that go wrong and sometimes even suggest ways in which faulty works could be fixed. I love storytelling in all its forms, and my reviews allow me a way to work through them. Doing the podcast with Bethany or the MMME with Noel and Jak adds another great layer, because I get to hear the opinions of others and interact with them about these things that I feel so passionate about. Sometimes people comment and it continues like that. I love it, I get a charge from it, and it truly makes me happy.
The problem is that today's technology allows anyone with a computer and internet to write blogs, anyone with a microphone and recording software to make a podcast, and anyone with a camera and editing software to make videos. So a lot of people do. Supply is much greater than demand and so the pay for such things is minimal. People who have amassed a following I would kill to have are complaining about how the average person uses ad block software to cut through their means of income. I can't entirely blame them, because no one likes ads. We only tolerate them when we have to, and it's natural that only a small portion of your customer base is going to be the type willing to sit through them so you can make money off them.
I've been doing reviews in one form or another since 2009, and I've yet to earn anything off of them. I have ads running on my blog and through both my youtube and blip accounts, and the earnings are so tiny that at this point I don't expect to ever get a pay out from any of them. To do otherwise would be madness.
Another part of the session yesterday was telling us not to quit and not give up hope, that you can follow your dreams at any age. He gave us a lot of examples of people who failed when they first started, but went on to be extremely successful. I have no intention of quitting. Working on my reviews, analyzing and discussing and writing about fiction is basically the only thing that keeps me sane at this point.
But I find it hard to see how I'm ever going to make a living off it, and as long as I still have to work this job, I'm still going to be dissatisfied with it and be one of those disengaged employees they don't want to have. Switching jobs seems like a huge gamble, as it basically means losing the benefits I've earned after being here so long and possibly still being dissatisfied. I also think it would basically be impossible for me to go back to school now. I certainly couldn't do it while I was working here without imploding from stress, and I don't have the luxury some people do of having a spouse support them while they stop working to go back. And what would I go back for?
I do still have an interest in psychology, but I'm not sure it's enough to work in the field. It seems like it has the potential to be a really stressful job, and I have to admit that any time I try to give friends or loved ones advice I feel like I don't sound confident enough to help them. Or worse yet I get impatient with them. I would imagine they help you with those things, but once again, that's a lot of school that I currently don't have the time to go back for.
I don't really have the interest in teaching that I used to have. I think it was something I thought about when I was little because that was what I was surrounded with. When I got a little older I still thought it possible because that's what Stephen King did until he got big, but seeing as how I've lost the drive to write fiction anymore I can't see that happening.
That loss is another huge part of it. For a really long time I had this dream in the back of my mind, but then I actually sat down and started writing it and I found it tedious. Perhaps the biggest problem was that I made an open ended story, something designed to go on indefinitely, and the weight of that started to get me down. But I also haven't had any new ideas for stories in a long time, and my focus shifted to doing the reviews because I was getting more enjoyment out of it. But I can't say I have a dream to be known as a famous critic like Roger Ebert or someone like that. So I kind of feel like I have no dream at all.
Perhaps I am just in between dreams, but this has been ongoing for six months to a year now. How long am I supposed to wait until I find that new thing?
He mentioned near the beginning that a lot of us go about trying to be someone else, or trying to be what other people want us to be. While I've never tried to explicitly copy others, the latter is definitely true for me. When I was really little I wanted to be a teacher, and by the time I hit 13 I really wanted to be a writer. Everyone in my family tried to discourage me from both of those things as often as they possibly could. Teachers' salaries are abysmal and fiction writers don't make anything unless you're really lucky.
"You can do whatever you want, but it's really a good idea to go for a major that will guarantee you a job out of college" is what my dad said to me over and over again. I love my dad and I respect him and I wanted to make him proud of me. While there was a point where I considered going for psychology, I was once again told that the only way to make money from that was to be a psychiatrist, and the fact of the matter is that I hated school. I was always good at it, but I hated it. Learning has always been fun to me, but testing not so much. The thought of going through that many years of school was not appealing to me at all.
So I went with business, because business was the easiest way to get a job out of college. Nearly everyone in my family did something business related, so surely I must be good at it. I took BA 1000 and the only topic amongst management, marketing, finance, and accounting that made sense was accounting. Plain and simple numbers and reporting. I was always good at math. So I focused on that, and sure enough I was good at it.
I got to my senior year of college and found I truly hated it. I looked around me, baffled at the people who seemed to actually be energized about this stuff. It's just numbers, I thought. How can they truly give a damn about it? With the typical ignorance of a 21 year old who thinks they know everything, it never struck me that maybe I was the one with the problem.
When you combine my social anxiety with the fact that I didn't truly give a damn about the subject, it's no surprise that I couldn't get hired at any of the accounting firms I interviewed with. I signed up for an accounting temp agency, but of course everyone wanted someone with previous experience, so they passed me off to their general office temp staff instead. After a couple quick data entry jobs I got a temp to hire clerical job which landed me at this company. I've since been promoted to a job that combines both clerical and accounting work, so I'm at least using my degree in some form.
There's also no denying I'm good at it. I get glowing performance reviews every year. My boss, a bit of a perfectionist, trusts me implicitly to do my job right. He jokes that I have all 500 of our property IDs memorized, but that's not true. I only know the ones for the leased properties since I make the payments for them every month. Much like school, I know my job inside and out, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it.
This strength finder exercise has shed a lot of light on that fact. Input means I like to learn, and after 7 years in this position, there isn't anything new to pick up on. Intellection means I like to think things through, debate them, discuss them.. but there's not a whole lot to discuss. Consistency means I want fairness, but I deal with landlords who are trying to cheat you out of money and tenants who can't be bothered to pay their rent on time. Restorative means I want to solve problems, and while that does occasionally come up, most of the time it's pretty smooth sailing around here. We have our processes and we stick to them.
Meanwhile, I see a lot of my strengths related to the reviews I work on in my free time. I don't just read a book, watch a movie, play a game, whatever. I head to Wikipedia, imdb, etc. to research it, find out what's going on behind the scenes, what went into making it. I think about what the work is trying to convey. I try to explain why others should also appreciate it, why even things with a bad reputation deserve attention, what we can learn from things that go wrong and sometimes even suggest ways in which faulty works could be fixed. I love storytelling in all its forms, and my reviews allow me a way to work through them. Doing the podcast with Bethany or the MMME with Noel and Jak adds another great layer, because I get to hear the opinions of others and interact with them about these things that I feel so passionate about. Sometimes people comment and it continues like that. I love it, I get a charge from it, and it truly makes me happy.
The problem is that today's technology allows anyone with a computer and internet to write blogs, anyone with a microphone and recording software to make a podcast, and anyone with a camera and editing software to make videos. So a lot of people do. Supply is much greater than demand and so the pay for such things is minimal. People who have amassed a following I would kill to have are complaining about how the average person uses ad block software to cut through their means of income. I can't entirely blame them, because no one likes ads. We only tolerate them when we have to, and it's natural that only a small portion of your customer base is going to be the type willing to sit through them so you can make money off them.
I've been doing reviews in one form or another since 2009, and I've yet to earn anything off of them. I have ads running on my blog and through both my youtube and blip accounts, and the earnings are so tiny that at this point I don't expect to ever get a pay out from any of them. To do otherwise would be madness.
Another part of the session yesterday was telling us not to quit and not give up hope, that you can follow your dreams at any age. He gave us a lot of examples of people who failed when they first started, but went on to be extremely successful. I have no intention of quitting. Working on my reviews, analyzing and discussing and writing about fiction is basically the only thing that keeps me sane at this point.
But I find it hard to see how I'm ever going to make a living off it, and as long as I still have to work this job, I'm still going to be dissatisfied with it and be one of those disengaged employees they don't want to have. Switching jobs seems like a huge gamble, as it basically means losing the benefits I've earned after being here so long and possibly still being dissatisfied. I also think it would basically be impossible for me to go back to school now. I certainly couldn't do it while I was working here without imploding from stress, and I don't have the luxury some people do of having a spouse support them while they stop working to go back. And what would I go back for?
I do still have an interest in psychology, but I'm not sure it's enough to work in the field. It seems like it has the potential to be a really stressful job, and I have to admit that any time I try to give friends or loved ones advice I feel like I don't sound confident enough to help them. Or worse yet I get impatient with them. I would imagine they help you with those things, but once again, that's a lot of school that I currently don't have the time to go back for.
I don't really have the interest in teaching that I used to have. I think it was something I thought about when I was little because that was what I was surrounded with. When I got a little older I still thought it possible because that's what Stephen King did until he got big, but seeing as how I've lost the drive to write fiction anymore I can't see that happening.
That loss is another huge part of it. For a really long time I had this dream in the back of my mind, but then I actually sat down and started writing it and I found it tedious. Perhaps the biggest problem was that I made an open ended story, something designed to go on indefinitely, and the weight of that started to get me down. But I also haven't had any new ideas for stories in a long time, and my focus shifted to doing the reviews because I was getting more enjoyment out of it. But I can't say I have a dream to be known as a famous critic like Roger Ebert or someone like that. So I kind of feel like I have no dream at all.
Perhaps I am just in between dreams, but this has been ongoing for six months to a year now. How long am I supposed to wait until I find that new thing?
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Birthday weekend happenings
Saturday
I started the day by seeing Iron Man 3 with my parents. The nice thing about Iron Man is that while I know names here and there, for the most part I have no expectations about how things are supposed to go, and I'm able to just enjoy the movies as is. And I did enjoy it, quite a bit. I'll discuss it in more detail on our eventual Strangers from the Internet episode
After a disappointing lunch, Dayna called almost as soon as I got home to see if I was ready to head to the local comic shop for Free Comic Book Day. I was. I picked her up and we headed over. The place was fairly crowded, but mostly because it's not a very large space to begin with. It was good to see that many people out and interested in the whole thing, and I think the female presence was almost equal to the male there, which was nice. We browsed a bit before I decided to get Saga volume 1 (a present from her as she had told me to pick a TPB) and also The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born. I believe she got a Batgirl trade as well as issue #1 of The Movement. We also grabbed what they had left of the free comics.
I dropped her off at home and headed back to my neighborhood to go vote. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I ever voted in a non-presidential election (I voted for other things besides the president, but always because I was already there) and this was a vote related to the toll bridge and property taxes, so clearly I am officially old in order for me to care about such things enough.
From there on I helped Jak with the storyboards for our film shoot the next day while also watching some horrible season 4 ST:TNG episodes. I went to bed early since we were getting up early for that.
Sunday
I tend to keep logs of all our filming days so I won't go into too much detail here, but we were short handed and had nature against us but we still managed to get the whole scene done.
Since I had taken off the next day we weren't ready for our day to be over, so we called up our friends Hood & Corie and crashed their apartment. We goofed off in our usual way, watching old videos and being exposed to the music of a woman who apparently records soundtracks for Skinemax flicks and also went out to eat at Peppers, which is a pizza place and not a Mexican restaurant as you might expect. We were not going to drive ourselves crazy by going somewhere like that on the day that white people suddenly pretend to like Mexicans just because it gets them beer and margaritas. I got macaroni and cheese as my entree, made grown up and amazing by the inclusion of caramelized onions in it. One of these days I will have the patience to make my own caramelized onions and I will just put them on top of everything I eat. Overall the visit was just a really good time.
Monday
Being my last day of freedom before work I mostly did chores but I did have a chance to read Saga. I can understand why it has been getting all the hype. While certainly for adults only, the art is gorgeous and the universe these characters inhabit is very imaginative and full of possibilities. I plan to start getting the rest of the series via individual digital issues.
I started the day by seeing Iron Man 3 with my parents. The nice thing about Iron Man is that while I know names here and there, for the most part I have no expectations about how things are supposed to go, and I'm able to just enjoy the movies as is. And I did enjoy it, quite a bit. I'll discuss it in more detail on our eventual Strangers from the Internet episode
After a disappointing lunch, Dayna called almost as soon as I got home to see if I was ready to head to the local comic shop for Free Comic Book Day. I was. I picked her up and we headed over. The place was fairly crowded, but mostly because it's not a very large space to begin with. It was good to see that many people out and interested in the whole thing, and I think the female presence was almost equal to the male there, which was nice. We browsed a bit before I decided to get Saga volume 1 (a present from her as she had told me to pick a TPB) and also The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born. I believe she got a Batgirl trade as well as issue #1 of The Movement. We also grabbed what they had left of the free comics.
I dropped her off at home and headed back to my neighborhood to go vote. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I ever voted in a non-presidential election (I voted for other things besides the president, but always because I was already there) and this was a vote related to the toll bridge and property taxes, so clearly I am officially old in order for me to care about such things enough.
From there on I helped Jak with the storyboards for our film shoot the next day while also watching some horrible season 4 ST:TNG episodes. I went to bed early since we were getting up early for that.
Sunday
I tend to keep logs of all our filming days so I won't go into too much detail here, but we were short handed and had nature against us but we still managed to get the whole scene done.
Since I had taken off the next day we weren't ready for our day to be over, so we called up our friends Hood & Corie and crashed their apartment. We goofed off in our usual way, watching old videos and being exposed to the music of a woman who apparently records soundtracks for Skinemax flicks and also went out to eat at Peppers, which is a pizza place and not a Mexican restaurant as you might expect. We were not going to drive ourselves crazy by going somewhere like that on the day that white people suddenly pretend to like Mexicans just because it gets them beer and margaritas. I got macaroni and cheese as my entree, made grown up and amazing by the inclusion of caramelized onions in it. One of these days I will have the patience to make my own caramelized onions and I will just put them on top of everything I eat. Overall the visit was just a really good time.
Monday
Being my last day of freedom before work I mostly did chores but I did have a chance to read Saga. I can understand why it has been getting all the hype. While certainly for adults only, the art is gorgeous and the universe these characters inhabit is very imaginative and full of possibilities. I plan to start getting the rest of the series via individual digital issues.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Birthday
Things don't always turn out the way you planned. Such is the case with today, where I had hoped that I would get a chance to go to the zoo and maybe also hang out with some friends tonight, but both plans fell through outside of my control. However that doesn't mean that the day wasn't good. In fact there was lots of good.
Starting at midnight I changed my twitter picture and name and began roleplaying as Rosalind Lutece, a character from Bioshock Infinite. The Luteces are hands down my favorite characters in the game, speaking in riddles and thoroughly confusing you until you reach the end and what they are saying suddenly makes sense. Jak and I have been playing around with mimicking their speech patterns in real life, and after I saw my friend Devin do his own roleplaying on his birthday, I thought it would be fun to take it to Twitter. It was, We thoroughly confused everyone in a wonderful way.
I've recorded all our interactions below, along with links to references I made. Things marked with an asterisk are game references that will spoil you if you go searching for them.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
The beginning
The beginning [NOTE: this post is so named because it was the start of a personal journal originally posted on another blog site.]
At work they recently gave us access to a test that is designed to find your strengths. The point of view of the people who came up with it is that too many studies talk about improving your faults or negative qualities rather than focusing on the positive.
My results were not too particularly shocking for me.
1. Input
Much like Johnny Five, I thirst for knowledge. I spent a good ten minutes yesterday discussing with a coworker how clouds form. She is a former pilot and therefore learned a lot about weather conditions, and so I was quizzing her based on the little I could remember from school.
Once a stray thought got me thinking about twins which led me to Wikipedia to read about them and I learned just how inexact a method human reproduction is. It’s so easy for so many things to go wrong that it’s kind of amazing. I get what Doc Manhattan was saying to Laurie.
That’s just two examples off the top of my head, but basically I’m always storing information like this in my brain because I love to learn.
2. Deliberative
It basically means I am cautious and will review all the risks of something before I dive in. Sometimes it means I play devil’s advocate just because, other times it just means that I’m not going to move forward on something until I’ve researched every angle. It is exceedingly rare that you will see me make an impulsive decision. It also means I don’t share very much of myself with other people beyond a few close friends.
3. Intellection
They should really just call this one introversion, because that’s essentially what it is. Needing alone time to think things through and being better at expressing my thoughts in written form. It also means I have an aversion to small talk, and would much rather focus on things that matter.
4. Consistency
Both an aversion to favoritism and a desire for things to remain constant. It applies to both my nature to treat everyone fairly and put myself in the other person’s shoes, as well as the fact that I’m a creature of habit and generally follow a similar routine every day to create more and more efficiency at those processes.
5. Restorative
I’m a problem solver. When I first got into this job there were a lot of imbalances in some of the accounts related to what I do, and digging in deep and through the years to see what went wrong and how was a lot of fun. The fact that those problems are pretty much all resolved now is actually a little disappointing to me. This also means that I look for things wrong in myself, always trying to fix them. The problem with that comes in when I find things too deep to be fixed easily, and become disappointed in myself when I can’t fix them right away.
One of their suggested action items for #3 was to write a journal. I’m combining that with a way to improve #5, because I had a livejournal in the past and I mostly used it to complain about things. I don’t want to do that. Instead, this will be a chronicle of awesome, interesting, or positive things that happen to me or maybe just some new bit of knowledge I found or a deep philosophical matter I’ve been pondering.
If you want to hang around and read or comment, you’re more than welcome to. All I ask is that if things do go near political, religious, or other sensitive matters that you treat everyone respectfully. My consistency will probably not tolerate it otherwise.
I’m not going to promise that I will write here everyday because that’s usually a guaranteed recipe for failure, but I will try to write often.
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