Worth a try.

I'm going to try to write every day again. At least for a month. I didn't manage it for November or December but it's a new year all shiny and fresh and all that. So there you go. I don't know if it's a good idea or not. If I don't put arbitrary rules in place then I end up not writing at all. If I have the rules then I end up writing every day just for the sake of writing. It's like that with everything, when I do my 365 project or any of that photography related stuff I take a photo every day and most of the time I'm "phoning it in" as they say. At least I think that means something that makes sense in that context, and of course, when I don't have a project, I hardly take them at all. I don't know, if there was only something in the middle, where I'd do things, regularly, but when I do, do them properly, maybe it's just not in me.

Well, I have this year started 2 photography projects, or plan to. I started another 365 days of photos, but not self portraits this time, just photos. So far I've snapped some shots for the sake of it, well I used one just after midnight blurry shot for yesterday and after looking at a few what I thought might be ok photos on the computer and seeing they were actually crap I took a shot of Cooley. So I'm kinda just doing it for the sake of doing it again, and I don't know, but so far, taking random photos seems harder than self portraits. And I thought I'd do a 52 week self portrait project but I haven't really even looked at groups for that or decided on rules, but I'd like to keep doing them regularly, only actual good ones, you know. I'll see if I actually do that one, or continue doing the other one.

Second day in already, and it all seems the same. Of course, it is Jan, which is generally pretty dreary. I'm hoping it's the Jan thing that's making it like this because I really hope this year will be better but for now it's kinda.. bleh.. boring every day stuff to worry about and you know I'm a mess and my life's a mess so it's the more annoying everyday stuff. The usual new year messy inbox problem where all my emails from December revert to having an all digit date including the year, except this time that year is that number, the number of the year the one that just passed and I have to stare at that every time I look at my emails. For a while anyway.

And no one seems to be around, but that's not much of a difference from any time of year.

Another avenue of pleasure closed off for me.

Regular readers of this blog will know, and recognize me as an artist, they may suspect that I am quite brilliant in more than one creative capacity, and if they saw, heard or experience much if any of my accomplishments they would know so.. or possibly they would, hard to tell, as I've done little as of yet, but it's all in there..

well.. recently I've been in a bit of a slump, no acting jobs, nothing to write about, not much going on with "the project" (you know the one where I'm supposed to do tons of videos and stuff yeah that one, if you recall I used to write a lot about it and promise a whole lot).. it's not that different than it is usually, but it is vexing all the same.

I always had photography though. There's always something to photograph, I can do it on my own, in my own time, and present it to the world via this web thingy with no need for input from another living soul.

You do need a camera for that though, and one that works, and for good photography you need a camera that isn't necessarily an excellent super expensive one, but one that works quite well, which doesn't wear  your batteries out after a few shots, or that doesn't work at all if you haven't charged the batteries at least in the last half hour or so, whether you've used it or not. I don't have one of those.

tenth o' the tenth o' the tenth..

It's a very exciting day for those of us who make a big deal about arbitrary dates where the numbers line up in a seemingly meaningful manner, ie nerds who make a big deal about.. etc etc etc. Ie, people that are not limited to, but include people like me.

I began this historic day by looking at my phone about 8:46, hoping I wouldn't miss 10 minutes past 10.. and luckily I was awake when the 10:10 10-10-10 appeared at the bottom of the phone. It was an exciting moment.

But it wasn't a lazy Sunday for me, no, not for us hard working thespian types... I had a reading in the morning, well at 2pm which is close enough to morning as far as I'm concerned, for the film I'm in. Still at the "reading" stage, and the might need new people stage, but we'll see. I walked up the hill to meet people just to wait for them, so we can wait for more people to show up who didn't come, and then go down the hill to the place we were doing the reading. Luckily I live around this area because we needed to go to #64 of the street the meeting spot was on, and you kind of have to be familiar with the area to know that when you get to the fork in the road, the bit that looks like it turns off is the same street, and the bit that keeps going straight is another street, or they'd have been real confused, as that other street doesn't have a #64.

We did the reading. Had to read multiple part due to the non presence of 2 actors, but what can you do. After that I came home, and after a short reprieve went back out to do my 10/10/10, 17:30 steps project sp. It's something I do.

Then I needed to meet someone at the top of the steps, who was late, and kept me a while by telling me stuff he's going to repeat at least 4 times when he comes here tomorrow morning. Went back down the steps, met one of the tea house cats who kept me still longer by moving about too much and not posing for a photo properly. The nerve!

Then I went to "rehearsal" which is, meeting someone from class in a nearby park and talking at each other in the Meisner fashion. It was ok, I was distracted but it's practice and I need practice. We did behave like 3 year olds for a portion of it, which is a way of doing it right, so I think we get some points for that.

And now I'm home. It's quite cold outside, despite the sunniness of earlier on, it's autumn proper and the trees are giving us a golden performance of.. ok I'll shut up now.

Update

Goodness, it's a long time since I posted anything.. and even longer since I've actually written anything! Bad blogger.. bad! Oh well, not a lot has been going. Actually that's not so true, I mean, it's true but it's never stopped me from blogging before.

Anyway, like I said, there's not much going on. I haven't been going to class, I missed a semester.. (I know that makes it sound all important and stuff, but it's just what they call the quarters that you pay for full in) and then I missed the beginning of the next one because I stopped getting communication from them. Oh well, when the next quarter starts, I'll join again. Maybe.

My acting career has slown down a bit as well. Yes, I know.. how can you slow down from nothing? The only thing I've done, apart from meet with people for films that didn't end up happening is appear, or rather hang around the set for a short film one of the guys in the aforementioned class made. I was an afterthought addition afer I met some of them at a beer garden a few weeks ago, and I played the caterer, who was supposed to be hanging out in the background and getting into the conversation occasionally. What I really did was hang around in the background and that's about all. Oh I did make coffee and tea for people and set up all the food stuff.. so I was a caterer actually, in a small way, I just didn't really play a role in a movie. I did take a lot of photos that day though.

Speaking of, that's one thing I've been doing a lot of. I'm still up on the photo thing, walking around everywhere, I discovered a colony of cats nearby, and even was in the country for a day which was all very exciting. I'm sorta kinda talking about thinking of doing more filming, especially since Flickr has video now, and I have a lot of ideas for short clips that I'll definitely do. Some time. I plan on making my own short films too some time or rather.

And I'm moving soon. This will be a good thing.

Ah yes, the blog.

Well I'm back online, finally. If there's anyone out there still bothering to read I've been offline for almost a month now. You might remember me popping in just to let everyone know I was still around once during that time, but mostly I just haven't been able to update.

I was working most of the month, as Santa Claus came to town for the first time ever, at least in the capacity he was here, and I was required to take his photo with children who came by. It was an interesting time, fun, boring, tiring, frustrating, unusual..

It was as bit of a learn as you go sort of thing, it was a bit of a shambles to start with, too many people hanging around, hardly any people wanting our services, but it slightly came together, and by the end of the first week we'd figured out how to get the lighting right, had fixed up Santa to look something like Santa, and I'd learnt a bit about this whole photography thing so our photos were looking pretty good.

We still had some problems though, a few extra helpers around who were just there to be paid and get in our way, people who either didn't come at all or came at the same time, a problem because we printed the photos out on the spot which took some time, particularly when people wanted more photos or the larger photos, and you can't print and photograph at the same time, so people were waiting.. but we figured it out, and once it actually got sorta busy, right near the end of our time there, we had a sort of system, and the only problem then was that our main cashier/hostess left, disgruntled over something, and left me to do the cashier job as well as the printing and photography, as well as 80% of the greeting and explaining work to be done, as the 2 helpers we had with us daily didn't seem to happen to be around when that was needed, or if they were they happened to be looking another way.

It took me about 2 days before I could do the register thing without screwing something up, but hey.. I'm an artist, I shouldn't have to work under these conditions. Ok, so for the first week I couldn't figure out how to take a decent picture.. but I did learn these things in time.

So that was most of the month, I also had my usual business to tend to, which I didn't do a whole lot of, seeing as I was offline and at work all the time, and I had a visitor. That was fun. Then there was christmas, and now I'm back online.

Don't fret folks..

I'm still around. I am working quite a lot with Santa and the little people, but that's not the reason I've been neglecting you. I'm offline. Well.. not right at this minute but the regular way I do the internet is not happening right now so I'm not on as much as I usually am, thus things like letting my audience out there know what's up with my life is falling by the wayside.

So, apart from not being online I'm working a lot. I was supposed to be in a film today and yesterday but that fell through just like the others, instead I worked with Santa which I've been doing since December 1.

I'm getting reasonably good at this portrait photography thing, I totally sucked to begin with but after 2 or 3 days they started looking kinda good. After another 3 days they looked almost good and in another 3 days I might be able to call them good.

Been kinda slow so far, which is rather good really because we're learning as we go along, but tomorrow might turn out to be a busy day. Who knows.

I don't have any photos to show because the dude who runs it hasn't sent me the photos yet, and there are some good ones, particularly those of screaming scared kids who's parents insist on them being photographed with Santa. I've taken some of the place and the people there with my own new camera, but I can't upload them because I'm not on the internet. I mean I am now, and actually had a few photos prepared on a disc but this particular cafe doesn't accept no foreign objects.

That's all for now.

It's off to work I go.

It's been an exciting couple of days. I had a birthday on Thursday. I really didn't need another one, I've had enough of those already, but it came all the same. I had a relatively relaxing day, mostly stayed in and only got a little drunk, but it was fun.

Yesterday I got a new camera. This is extremely exciting. It's got a big zoom and everything, and it's got a memory card that fits like.. 1 million photos so I can snap and snap and snap and snap and not worry about it. I'm gonna have fun with this.

So, in about half an hour I'm off to meet Santa and friends, to get ready for the new job, which is "photographer". Sounds very swanky, but it's very simple, the camera's sitting there on a tripod and I just have to snap. Nevertheless I'm nervous, I'm naturally quite incompetent and manage to screw up the simplest of things, so I'm glad I'm going a bit early to go through the whole thing again. I had a sort of training on Wednesday where a guy came in and babbled out quickly how to use the printer and camera to about 8 people, and I'm not sure I picked up so much.

It's the first day, so hopefully it will be really, really, really, really slow. That will give me time to get used to the whole point and shoot and fiddle with the functions to print and then print again, all while being presentable and nice to people, I really need that time.

Damn... gotta go soon. Back in the evening.