Bad Neighbors – Thoughts from February 27 and March 18, 2003

February 27, 2003

I’m almost done with my Storyboarding class. It wasn’t exactly like I thought it was going to be. It hasn’t been bad; it just hasn’t been as creative as I had hoped. We’re doing two scenes from Kim Possible, a show John, the instructor, works on. One is a talking heads scene (with two people talking to each other). The other is an action scene (with characters running around). Because of the lack of creativity, I haven’t really been in to actually doing the storyboards. Many weeks, I have done nothing on the boards. We only have about two weeks left, so I need to work hard this weekend to finish them. The whole thing scares me. We had two storyboarding guys, one from television and one from features (movies). They talked about what it’s like in the animation industry. In actuality, I may not like it, but it’s better than what I’m doing right now. And, according to one guy, the money is great.

As I discussed in the last Thoughts paper, I’m not working at Disney, and we still haven’t renewed our annual passes. We’ve been missing the Friday trips to Disneyland. Also, from what my instructor, who works at Disney, and one of the storyboarding people, who works with my instructor at Disney Television, says it is not the most creative environment there. I need to draw more, so these decisions are more realistic. In the end, I think I do like to draw, but think nothing I draw is good enough. Well, back to the drawing board.

I always like to come clean in these situations. I actually wrote this paragraph on 3/5/03. I know it’s like I’m cheating, but it’s cheating on me with myself, so it doesn’t seem so bad. My current job sucks. That’s actually what I intended to have as the first sentence. Why does it suck, you may ask? It’s work. It’s bad enough I have to be at a job that has nothing to do with my desires in life. Now, the work actually takes up the whole day. Before, I could walk around and talk to people (increasing my social skills). I could work on side projects and look on the internet for jobs because my desk was in such a way that I could see when someone was getting close enough to see my screen.

Now, I’m wide open to other co-workers and clients (from a distance). Besides the work, I also have to answer questions about a department I don’t even work in. My desk sits where the public can see me, but there’s no attendant much of the time, so I become the attendant. They call across a room in which I can barely hear anything. If I answer a question for one person, the rest of the people in the room assume I’m the help desk person and start asking me questions. Beyond that, I really hate the work. Well, I have to get back to it now. Think at you later.

March 18, 2003

For the historical record, our house was robbed last week on Monday, 3/10/03. They didn’t get a huge amount of stuff, but they got Patti’s laptop, her jewelry, her video camera, my digital video camera, and some other things. They were interrupted before they could get anything else, luckily. We took all the rest of the valuables out and put them into storage. Now we’re definitely looking at getting out of that house, out of that neighborhood, and OUT OF THAT TOWN! We have hated living there for a while and were planning in the next couple of months to move into a real house (where we’re not renting). The one good thing about this incident is that it pushes Patti and me into really pursuing a house. We need a better area and better neighbors. It’s one thing to be poor, but it’s another to be low-class. As Russell on Fat Albert used to say, “You’re like school on Saturday. No class!” (Future note: Remember when Fat Albert could be quoted, and you didn’t have to feel bad about quoting Bill Cosby? We were so innocent then. Patti and I were violated just like Bill Cosby’s victims.)

I’m taking another semester off from The Animation Academy. That was the right thing to do. I would have hated to leave the house and Patti to go to class and leave her even more frightened than normal. Originally, the plan was to take off because I had no time to do my own projects. I’ll still do my own projects, but I won’t be able to use the computer, etc., to do them. That might be a good thing. It will force me to focus on just the creation of the ideas and not the computer input of the ideas. I bought a very nice Wacom Intuos tablet so I could draw into the computer. Now, it’s back in its box and stored away. It’s truly back to basics for me. I’ve had complex too long. I need a simplistic change of pace.

Speaking of which, I’m going to get to some creating right now. Smell you never!