Homesick

I had a strange dream last night. I went to Burning Man and realized that I forgot all my gear! It was a fairly typical anxiety dream. Whats odd is that I just started a new job as a supervisor in my waking life and had not a single worry or anxiety about that. Anyhow in this dream I went to Burning Man and it was all indoors at some dusty old convention center. It was small and lame and felt like a low energy Trekkie convention or a trip to MySpace. It was really sad and I was trying to convince my friend Cooper that it wasn't so bad, and that we could recreate all the good times of old once again. I think its time to start my annual Burning Man poster.

The Deep End

After 2 and a half years of being mostly out of work, Im suddenly swamped!! A few months ago on a whim I sent an email to a guy I'd freelanced before. Actually I also used to work with him fulltime about 10 years ago. Anyhow he got swamped with work and needed some help. I was there every day last week for about 12 hours a day. In the middle of the week, I got a call from some folks I'd interviewed with over at Art Center. They want me to work there on a permanent basis!! I now have 2 jobs, one semi full time and permanent at Art Center and one freelance contract job. I've told both employers about the other and theres no conflict. I'll be at Art Center in the mornings and working at Hipzone in the afternoons and early evenings.

The first job is Art Center and its not a teaching job but a staff position. I'll be running the prop room and telling the student employees what to do. I'm a manager now!! There are a lot of great things about this gig , though the pay isn't one of them sadly. I worked in the prop room when I was a student so that makes it much easier as I know exactly what to expect. My old supervisor Wendy who used to do the job I'll be doing, moved up to model office supervisor , and she'll be my boss once again. Shes really cool and fun to work with. Another perk is being in the Art Center environment. Its like the Shaolin Temple for artists and theres a lot of good energy and inspiration there.

The second job is Hipzone. That's the contract work. Hipzone is the complete opposite of the Art Center job in that the only good thing about it is the pay. Though they've been pretty understanding and flexible about giving me the room to come in after my other job to work there. Its not a fun laid back place to work. It's a small , stuffy entity which outsources most of its labor to China. The rest is divided up between one office in monterey park , and a photo studio over at the Brewery in downtown. Its high end photo retouching (China does all the simple stuff).

Its been pretty odd going from sitting at home unemployed to being swamped. I've found it a major task staying focused and concentrating on a job all day. It feels like I've dived into the deep end of employment. I'm pretty exhausted from the last week and have spent most of the day today gearing up for the coming storm of work. I've been making food, doing laundry etc. I'll need to go to bed early as I start at the school tomorrow at 7 am. Im really excited about the new life I'm about to start. I'm looking forward to having money again. I've got endless holes of debt that need to be filled, but it'll be nice not having to always borrow money from people. In the back of my mind, I'm already toying with ideas of what to do with my extra money. Maybe I'll get a smartphone. As it is I dont even have a phone of my own, just the family landline. Maybe I'll take a vacation somewhere, or get an i pad. Wit my schedule as it is, I won't even have time to go out spending. For now, that's probably a good thing.

Hope and Fear

Last week was all about the fear.
First it was my usual worries about job and money, which I have neither of. I had worries galore and then the worries all went away as I saw the prospects of getting a job. There is an opening at my old school Art Center in Pasadena. Its not a teaching job, but just a staff position. Id be supervising the prop room looking after students who've enrolled in the Federal Work Study Program. Its a roll I am quite familiar with as I used to be in the program when I was as student. I'd be working for my good friend Wendy who was the supervisor when I was in the program as a student. So all around good prospects there. My fears dissolved and were soon replaced by another...
Shortly after getting home from the interview, another worry took over. We found a stray cat had taken residence under our house. There is a little crawl space and after some recent rain and cold weather, this cat had decided it was a good place to camp out. So after some coaxing and persuading we got the kitty to come out and we isolated him in the garage. This was no alley cat, this was clearly a well fed and groomed domestic kitty. Now my worries about job and money had been replaced by the cat. I have a huge softspot for cats and considered it my obligation to take care of this cat. The cat was starving hungry, but in pretty good shape. We put him in a carrier and spent the afternoon and evening going around the neighborhood trying to find if the cat lived locally. Eventually we found that the kitty had come from a house around the corner and down the street. The people who owned the cat were quite retarded and backwards. They had big dogs which lived inside the house, and a little kitty who lived outside the house. I only met a young boy who seemed to be home alone and not especially thrilled that the cat had been brought back. I told him that if I ever found his cat wandering the neighborhood with neither collar, nor nametag, that I'd come back in the middle of the night and kill him and his parents (like I said, I have a softspot for cats). My fears dissolved and were soon replaced by another...
I got an email from a friend. This was an economic forecast. It was pretty grim. Now I've heard whispers of rising oil prices leading to higher food prices and the effects it would all have on the recovering economy. Now the last time my friends warned me with economic forecasting, it was about 8 years ago, and they told me that the economy was about to crash and that I should invest every penny I had in gold. I wish I'd had more money to invest at the time, but what I had I put into gold. I doubled my money in about 5 years. That was good. The current forecast for the economy is not so good. Mostly its the problem with rising gas prices and the global reserve currency. The US dollar has been the consistent global reserve currency for decades, but lately as our economy has been failing, more and more international trading has been done using other currencies. This is very bad for our economic recovery and the more I look at it the more likely I think things are just gonna get worse. Rising prices of gas will lead to rising food prices which could even lead to food shortages and riots. Its a big complicated mess and Im no expert, but my intuition says that things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
This week has been all about hope.
I spent the last 4 days helping my friend move and I always feel good when I have the opportunity to help a friend in need. I've been kicking back today and for the next few days I've got some freelance work. I get to go back and work for some people Ive worked for in the past. Its not a fun job, but it pays well. That gives me hope. I've not heard back from the folks at Art Center but Im hopeful about that as well.