999

A couple of posts ago, I talked about the yacht race. This is how many days I have left, before I say goodbye to the company I've worked for for eight and a half years. It'll be 11 years almost to the day by that point. The exact starting date of the race hasn't been announced yet, and probably won't be until January of that year. But I like to have things to look forward to, so 12 Jun 2015 is the most tangible date I can give myself. I don't know which ports we'll end up sailing in to. I don't know where I'll go at the end of the race. And I'm actually excited about that.

I've had a career. I decided when I was pretty young that I wanted to do theatre professionally. I've been a lighting tech, run sound, automation, stage management, even acted and been paid for it. I started my own company with a couple of friends, wrote scripts, built sets, hung lights- and on one memorable occasion, a snow machine with a squirrel fan which blanketed the audience. I've loaded and fired pyro.

I've programmed automation for three Cirque Du Soleil shows. I've gone from an hourly employee, to Show Lead, to Assistant Head. I've gone from having a problem with authority to being the authority.

And I'm only 32, and ready for something else. Automation, theatre, is comfortable for me. I have no problems operating a multi-million dollar system with people's lives in my hands, while two thousand people watch in awe. I'll take a screwdriver or a wrench to just about anything, especially when I've got a bunch of people waiting for me to either continue the show, or cancel it.

So the way I see it, I've got 999 more days until the end of my career. Will I continue to progress in that time? Who knows. My bosses know I'm making this trip, so are definitely less likely to consider me for promotion, but I'm fine with that. I have 999 more days to work on finishing some of the writing projects I'm working on. I have 999 more days of 2am shopping, and 24 hour bars, and showgirls and slot machines.

I have 999 more days of paying for the trip.

Hair...not the short story

I'm proud of my hair. I'm 31, and have a full head of the stuff. There may be a couple grey strands here or there, but who's looking? Me, actually, every week or so. They first appeared. . .at an earlier date, but once thirty hit I felt I could admit to them. And now thirty-one is here, well, fair enough, I have some grey hairs. At least I have hair, unlike some of my contemporaries. My hairline hasn't changed in about six years, so I'm pretty sure it's staying where it is. My father and grandfather both have a full head of hair, so I'm good.

My one concern is when I shave it all off in March, it'll come back greyer. I'm not ready to look distinguished. Give me another couple of years before that, please?

Oh yeah, I'm shaving my head in March. Been talking about it for a while now, and it's for a good cause. It's to raise money for the St. Baldricks foundation, which raises money to fund cancer research, specifically to help kids. The last couple of years I've been to the event, in McMullans pub,but this year I'm taking the plunge, joining the Cirque Du SoBald team, and shaving it off. Never had a completely shaved head before. Dad used to make us get buzz cuts when we were younger, but right now my ears have disappeared under the three musketeers look I've got going right now.

Anyway. Shaving head. What is it with this year, me being all impulsive and taking the plunge over and over? Well, whatever, at least this one's for a good cause. Here's the link to my page, click on it and donate money to help kids with cancer!

http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/participantid/421456

Timing

I've been spending the last twelve days convincing myself that it's not my fault, it's just bad timing. Again. And once I almost had myself convinced of that, I thought more about it. Maybe it's not bad timing. Maybe it's good timing. Maybe it's pushing me in the direction I need to go, which is away, outta here, once more unto the beach, dear friends. There was a shitty movie made about my life a couple years back. I say shitty, but in the interests of full disclosure I never saw it, because I don't like Dane Cook. Good Luck Chuck, the story of a guy who could shag you, and the next guy you met would be your true love. Except I don't even need to shag 'em, all it takes is a kiss. I'm on seven now.

But this year, with it's terrible timing, has led me to a decision. I'm going to apply for the Los Angeles Show, an as-yet unnamed production that I'm not sure how much I can talk about, what with Cirque's penchant for secrecy and spectacle. The jobs aren't posted yet, nothing's set, but even the decision to apply makes me feel better. I'm going to see about getting out of Vegas, changing my pace and my surroundings. And if it doesn't happen? Well, then it's not the right time.

Is there such a thing as bad timing? You get stuck at a red light, the first car stopped, and that's bad timing. But then in front of you a car hits a patch of oil, swerves out of control, and runs into four other cars, five if you'd have made the light. Your son chooses to slam the car door, but your hand is still in it. Crappy timing, unless you have some sort of disease that is slowly rotting your bones in that hand, and you wouldn't have found out if it weren't for the little bugger (true story, that actually happened to a friend of mine, I forget what the medical problem was tho).

So timing's what you make of it. I'm writing about timing for my hundredth post. Good timing? And while the. . .coincidence? of my timing with these seven women seems pretty shitty from my end, and has caused me more than a bit of self-doubt over the years (I mean, at what point is it you, and not just chance?) I'm working on not letting it get to me. I'm telling myself that rather than running away from this last incident, I'm letting it guide me, propel me towards something new. It's reminding me that Vegas really isn't the sort of city I would choose to live in.

And not to belabour the point, but speaking of timing, some of what I'm writing here will work for my book. One of my characters, Brokes, has to make a decision, and I haven't been sure of how to go about it, and now I think I know.

There are so many things that do work out, which is pretty fucking incredible when you think about it. If the universe has been around for billions of years. . . hell, if you believe in Genesis timing, and think the world's only been around for six thousand or so years, it's pretty incredible anything happens at the right time. I think of an instant as the time it takes to go from now to then. Say a millisecond. There's three point six million of those in an hour. And there's been more than fifty-two and a half million hours if you believe in Genesis. Whatever you believe, that's a metric shit-tonne of instants, so why is anyone surprised when things don't work out? Nothing should ever happen right if you look at the odds. And when you bring space into it too, and the chance of being in the right time and place, I'm surprised we even bother.

But there have been those times. Things do work out. Events conspire, bring two people together for a moment. Even if all that's left is the memory of lips brushing together and a lingering tobacco taste, things worked out, and now things are working out still, convincing me to get off my arse and get out, get better, get on with it.

I'm getting on. I'll get book one back in the next couple of weeks, and then I'll get online and start submitting. The timing's right.

Success.

I'm not there yet. Not by a long shot. But I think I've made a pretty good start on it. The hardest part was deciding what I wanted out of life, but for now I've mostly decided that. It's good, it gives you something to strive for. I've decided I'm going to be a writer. Scratch that, I've decided I am a writer, just not a published one yet.

I know I've listed them off before, but I'm going to do it again because it keeps me focused on it. I'm currently working on four novels (although one hasn't been looked at in months, it's still there waiting to be written). I've got four short stories I consider ready to be published (and I might just throw a couple up here in the meantime, see what you think). I have three short screenplays that could be filmed tomorrow. I'm working on two feature screenplays, with one more I need to start and a fourth I'm thinking about.

Now, none of this is success, because one of the purposes of writing is to be read. I'm not Kafka. I want it all published, even the stuff I don't finish before I die (and just a heads up, I am so going to fuck with people and deliberately leave something bizarre unfinished). I haven't been successful yet by my definition as a writer, but I think I'm on a good track and it'll come.

I've been working in theatre for eighteen years. From being a chorus member and giving a hand at weekly set builds, to programming Automation for a Cirque Du Soleil show, and being the TD for a theatre company I helped found, I've come a long way. That's pretty successful, I think.

But there's one aspect of my life that I feel is a failure right now, and it's bringing down the rest of it. I feel like my personal life is a shambles, that I'm failing at something that used to come so naturally to me, and it's buggering up my focus and my motivation.

I always thought I was a good judge of character. I prided myself on working out who someone was, and what they were like, and whether they were worth my time. Moving around as I did, this was really handy; I didn't have years to develop friendships, bouncing from one place to another. I made a lot of good friends, most of whom I still have today. But it's been living in Vegas, and doing so well in every other aspect of my life, that has made this stand out recently. I still have a few good friends here, but I've always been better at focussing on the negative rather than the positive, and it's the friendships that have fallen by the wayside, that have revealed themselves to be less than I thought they were, that I can't get out of my head. It's the people who declare friendship, but then only remember it when it's convenient, or they need something. And I feel that it's my failure. I don't understand people any more, I don't get how they can be like that. I feel like I'm disconnected from the human race, standing outside looking in, and scratching my head in confusion.

It turns out that the search for alien life has been a success. You need to stop looking off-planet, because I'm here, living amongst you, watching, making mental notes, and trying to understand. Although whether or not it's intelligent life is debatable. . .

Gonna.

I'm hoping that history repeats itself. When I was in University, I lived in Kenna Hall. We'd have parties there. But one particular party, I went outside for a breath of fresh air, and took a walk along the bluff. (The University I attended, University of Portland, is situated on a bluff overlooking the docks in Portland) I walked out there, in a mildly alcoholic haze, watching the lights below me and just able to hear the sounds of machinery as the kept working late into the night. The activity was almost all focused on a cruise ship in dry dock. I made up my mind there and then that I would work on a cruise ship when I graduated. I went back to the party, and started telling people that I was going to work on ships. I thought about doing it for a summer or two, but going to Salzburg for a year got in the way of doing that, so it would have to wait until after graduation. But for three years, I told people I was going to work on cruise ships.

I joined my first ship in July of 2001, six weeks after graduation, and worked on them for almost 3 years.

While working on ships I learned Automation. That is to say, I got taught the order in which to push buttons on an Automation console, which is what passed for training. The learning happened later, when things broke and I had to pull some sort of show out of my arse using a couple of joysticks and no variable speed, or overnight phone calls to London from the middle of the Pacific Ocean to troubleshoot problems. When contractors were sent out for jobs that were too big to do on the ship, or we went into dry dock ourselves, I tried to pick their brains and learn more about the systems (and generally realized that they were bluffing as much or more than I was). It was my first contract, before I learned Automation, that I learned about Cirque Du Soleil, from an Argentinian guy I worked with, Jeronimo. He talked about the shows they put on and the equipment they got to use, so I decided, like him, that I would work for them some day and started telling people this.

I started at Zumanity 10th June, 2004. (And Jero went on to get a job with them on tour).

So now, I'm going to be a writer. I've been telling people that for about two years. I'm not sure when I went from just writing for the hell of it to deciding I want to make a living doing it, but I did, and I do, so I will. I know everyone keeps saying it's hard to get into it, it's hard to make a living at it, but I've been successful so far when I've put myself out there by saying 'this is what I'm going to do.' There's no point in aiming to have just one thing published, make enough for a week long vacation in the Azores and then going back to your regular life. Sod that. I'm going to make a living as a writer.

Now maybe I should start making other statements of intent, if that's the right phrase. Statements of desire? Statements of . . .of the future? I intend to be a writer, I desire to be a writer, I shall be a writer? Well, whatever statements I'm making, I'm also going to start saying I will get in shape, I will travel more, I will make it to space one day.

There, I've said it, so now it's going to happen. I'm just not going to lie back and wait for any of it, I'm going to work for it. Now.