count your goddamned chickens

Last night was Mong's birthday. Highlights are as follows.
Andy (to me) "I was trying to ask what you wanted for a drink, but you gave me a lapdance"
Jim's too-soft hug. This is a guy who I thought would someday through me off a roof. He still may.
Soggy pizza was still welcome to my palate. Tasty too.
Me (to Aaron) :"If you were to buy a present of booze, for your wife, what would it be?"
Bradlee (paraphrasing) "I am not puking anymore!"
Jeff telling me to enjoy my sobriety as a different kind of drug.
Overheard: "I am not used to playing chess in real life - it's so much easier for me to understand when it's on a computer screen!"
---and so on, and so forth---

I think this is the beginning of my third week out of work. It's alittle hard to mark time, as I've said, but that seems to feel right (wrong but right). If it helps, I am doing laundry, and my sink is disarmingly void of dirty dishes. Go me! So, same as usual, I have been living in my website, pulling and tweaking and finagling. I have to say, all things considered, I am really happy with how it's all come out. I have a little more tweaking with it to go (as I usually say) but it's within sight. I feel like "stop writing this and go fix it NOW!" But it can chill out for a couple of minutes. Job-wise... I have applied for 2 jobs, thus far. One is in Leeds, Scotland, for the GTA team (that'd be a rocking job, which would probably be crazy and weird as hell, but it'd be stellar for my resume at least). I dunno anything about scotland, except like.. Trainspotting, so if anyone has some good heroin stories to share then I am all ears mates. As well I have sent an application to a local "mystery job" which has divulged next to nothing about their identity or project, other than the usual vaporous promises "we are made up of industry vets, but we are DIFFERENT from all the others..." Yeah, well, we will see. I will hear them out at least, so far they have said they liked my resume, I expect we'll have more words over the course of the coming week. I have a few local places to send out to as well, maybe like 5 or six other places off the top of my head which I am actually interested in talking to right now.

I sent out two resumes to studios in Japan, becuase.. well, just for the hell of it (I visited Tokyo and Osaka a few years ago, and I loved the cities.. the style was immensely intriguing to me, plus honestly it's the birthplace of the modern videogame! Mecca!) I expect no response from such inquiries, but hey why the heck not apply, maybe someone over there wants to flavor up their product a little. Who knows. Well, my lack of Japanese Language doesn't help matters at all, so no worries there.

I called my friend who is working in NYC today and we had a lot to talk about. I didn't get any bright glowing reassurances from him as far as "there's a job waiting here for you NOW!" but he did share much important information with me about the story out there, the majority of which wasn't dampening to my desire to head out that way. As with anything else, it's just talk right now.. it is important for me to be examining these options at this moment though.

I have another friend who, along with his wife, is sort of the "blueprint" for working, traveling for another job, working at another new place, relocatiing again, etc. Okay, I know a few people who have done this to different capacities, but this fella definitely fits the profile f what I am feeling like right now in this particular regard. He recently came off a jaunt to shanghai for a good chunk of time (I believe it was just shy of a year) and while that is an option as well, an enticing one no less, I am doing some research to see what it's all about before I start getting my fingers into that just yet. Anytime one considers moving to a different culture,with different language/etc there's quite a bit of consideration that must be made - and while it is exciting, it must also be dealt with rather carefully. Headfirst is good in some cases, but at this stage in the game for me I want to be rather particular with how and where I take my next critical steps.

I have a friend in SF where they are also hiring (Lucasarts) - ehhh yes, the dream job of many nerds, I know, I know. To be honest, everyone loooOOOooves SF all the damn time and while I've been there a couple of times (brief moments) and could appreciate it, I didn't really get a huge strong sense that it was "my" kind of city right off the bat. It would be a cool notch to have on the headboard, no doubt, and I would certainly love to see what is on order up there job-wise. Definitely quite an active scene in my industry up there, maybe less so than down here in socal, but still quite happening, to be honest. In spite of it all, more affordable than NYC as well, and closer to my west-coast base of operations, socially.

And of course, the whole staying-in-Hollywood thing. Yes, okay, so I have gone over this argument no les than 45 times in the past week in this journal, but what's a 46th? Well, it may sound tiresomely repetitive, but it's no less valid now. If anything it just keeps eating at my thoughts more and more, as things grow from fantasy into actual possible impending reality. Yeah, I have a lot of really good friends here. I have a girlfriend here. I have a lot of seriously important career hookups over here. Less importantly (but still valid) I have an apatment, I mean a GOOD fucking apartment the likes of which you have to stab your mother in the larynx to acquire, or thereabouts... I have my "stuff," I have my car of nearly 10 years which is still running really well (if i move to NYC or outta the country, that thing's gonna be gone, man).

Hollywood is a no-brainer for my career, if I stay here I WILL get my success guaranteed, so long as I keep working and pushing as I do, and don't mess it up terribly somehow.. and I know this. And I am in such a great position already with lots of the factors in my life already worked out, that it's just sort of "sit back in life and watch it go by." That's sort of what was nice with that last job I had, and why it's such a tragedy to be no longer in my life, it was truly a meal ticket, and a fun and exciting one in a lot of ways. I still get to reap some notable rewards off of it, I suppose.. But yeah the other side of the coin. There's a B-I-G world around us, one which is getting smaller to me, and I want to uncover more of it. I want to do it smartly though. I have detailed many of my rough options above.. I think, inthe course of the next week (or two weeks, or so) that my options will only increase as I start throwing my resume around a little more.

Sigh.

I need a vacation. Like I was sayin'...

Anyway, I wanna finish reading about Shanghai, and then do those last tweaks to my website. And so it goes, and so it goes, and it went, and now it's just gone.