Good and Bad

Good: My new job is a 20 minute walk from home, so now I'm walking to work most days. Yesterday, for example.

Bad: Sometimes it rains here in Silicon Valley. Sometimes not starting until the afternoon. Despite what the forecasts say. Yesterday, for example.

The Valley Of Fear

Next week filming starts on The Valley Of Fear. This is an ultra low-budget, digital, direct to DVD indie horror film that my playwriting instructor, CW, has written and is directing. She started doing films a couple of years ago, but this is her first production that is both full-length and which involves a sizable cast (I think both of her previous full-length works were one-person).

This will be my first acting for film since the student films I acted in when I was in college. And now that I have some experience, I may actually do a decent job. I really need to do some script analysis, though. And maybe find a book on acting for film (which is, among other things, more subtle than stage acting).

This film is being shot at CW's ranch in O'Neals, CA, which is about 40 miles north of Fresno. For those of you unfamiliar with California geography, here is the 162-mile route from Mountain View to O'Neals.

That's right. 162 miles. Each way. I'll be going up there five or six times over the next few months, including the first three weekends of February. I'm not going to complain, though, as CW drives that route for the Wednesday night playwriting class every week school is in session. That's 36 times a year. For the trip back, she leaves at the end of class on Wednesday at 10:15pm, which means she gets home at 1:30am.

So, no complaints.

There is one segment that will be shot at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, in May. This segment will also require lots of extras, so if you live in the area and are interested in being an extra, keep watching this space for more information.

Writing

There are two reasons why I didn't update this blog much last week:

1. The biggest thing in my life is my job change, which I didn't want to write about until Friday.
2. I've been doing a lot of non-blog writing.

As I've mentioned before, I write plays. I had a couple of short plays produced at Foothill College last year. I finished my first full-length play last year as well, and last week finished the first draft of a second full-length, called (for now) The Arrival.

Whenever someone asks a writer "how do I become a writer?" the response is "write every day." So that's what I try to do. I try to set aside an hour every day to write plays, and I feel like I've done well if I've written 500 words. A full-length play is about 9,000-10,000 words, though, oddly, it always take a lot longer than 20 days to finish

So I get home from work, procrastinate for far too long, then do my hour of playwriting. By the time that's done, it's 8:30 or 9:00 and I don't feel like writing anymore (and even if I do, often I feel I should update my private journal instead).

Tonight and tomorrow I will work on revising the aforementioned draft. The end of Act II feels rushed and unrealistic, probably because I was pushing hard to finish it last week. I'd like to get it revised before my playwriting class on Wednesday, as we'll probably have a cold reading of the entire act.

And, because I started my new job today, I owe myself a detailed journal entry.

My Desktop

The meme of the day, from Chad Fox: post a snapshot of your computer's desktop. So here you go:

Yes, that's gay. Very, very gay, in a mid-90s sort of way.

The picture is one I took of the very large rainbow flag that flies over the Castro. I don't remember exactly when I took the picture, but it was one of those rare occassion when I'm in the Castro during the day. I'd guess Pride 2004.

Work

Today is my last day at my job.

Work is one of the things I'm generally not willing to blog about. I don't want to get in trouble at work over what I write here. But since this job change is the biggest thing in my life right now, I figure it deserves at least a mention. I'm not to describe why I'm leaving, or where I'm going, but suffice it to say that it's a good move for me for a variety of reasons.

I will say that I'm not second-guessing myself as much as I thought I would. This is the first time in eight years that I've actually quit a job (I was at my last job for five years, until they went bankrupt), so I wasn't sure what to expect. But it turned out that giving notice was the hardest part. The last two weeks have been remarkably stress-free, and I feel like I'm leaving on good terms with just about everyone here (the doughnuts I brought in this morning can only help).

I start my new job on Monday. Everyone asks if I'm taking time off between jobs, but I like to start new jobs right away, so I don't spend a week or two worrying about the new job. Besides, some time ago I quit a job on a Tuesday and started the new job the next day (they really wanted me right away). A weekend is long enough.

Filters

First, a big thank you to Atari_Age for posting my blog's first comment. You should all go read his blog, The Lost Find.

And yeah, as he said, I've got filters.

For a long time I wouldn't even consider blogging for this reason. Then I said "hell with it", got a LiveJournal, wrote in it every day, but never got around to telling anyone about it. Even now, there are probably only a couple of my real-world friends who know about this blog.

Why? I don't know. I'm like this in real life as well: a private person who doesn't like to talk about himself. Oh, I'll talk my job, my acting, my travelling, but the point at which I shut down and stop sharing comes a lot sooner than most people.

Unfortunately, this applies to my Internet persona as well. For me, the on-line world and the physical world have always felt almost equally real. Maybe because when I was a closeted teenager the computer was a refuge from having to deal with being gay. Maybe because I'm a big-old introverted engineer. Maybe because I don't really believe in anonymity.

In any event, while many (most?) people can partition off the online world, creating alternate personas and being a lot more free online than in real life, I have never been able to. Hence my reluctance to blog.

But that's something that I'd like to work on.

Read This

Here's my first post on my LiveJournal. It's not a bad introduction, in case you've just joined me.

Though the play is long done. So ignore that part, or read the rest of the LiveJournal.

At Least They Care

Last month I sent out all my Christmas cards. Today, I got back the one I sent to my friend Don in San Francisco. Actually, technically, I got only half of it back:

The note on the left says "Return to Sender" because "Insufficient Address". Which, you know, happens when you tear the envelope in half.

Good news, though: the USPS cares:

Don, I'll get you this card...at some point.

Let's Try This Again

Okay, let's try this again...Big Red Dave the blog, second attempt.

My first attempt was a LiveJournal which had two problems:

1. I made a point of posting every day, which led to somewhat boring posts.
2. I never told anyone about it.

So, for 2006, I'm going to try the blogging thing again, with a new blog on a new site.

Let's see what happens.