Day 24: Facebook… a new addiction

SATURDAY
30 August 2008

Facebook is like crystal meth. Use it once and you’re addicted. At Darrell’s suggestion/command from Thursday night – “Have a profile up and running by 7am tomorrow” – I was working on the computer Friday morning until 5am. I’m fascinated with the colleagues, college friends and random people I’ve found, and the infinite ways you can search for folks. It could easily be a full-time job just keeping it current. Between writing my web site, writing this blog, building my Facebook page, researching the industry, responding to work opportunities, sending emails and watching porn 15 hours a day on the Internet, how am I supposed to find time to actually work?

The past few days have been productive. There are at least 10 jobs I am applying for tomorrow alone, and these are only the ones I’ve found so far. In short order I’ll find more. The Facebook thing also opens up opportunities to connect with people who would likely be much more difficult, if not impossible, to reach without an agent, a hand-written note from my mother and a decree from the Pope.

Another sojourn today to fun a few errands. In the garage, I put the top down on the BMW with the flip of a single button, marveling at the fine German craftsmanship and technology. I haven’t been this enamored with a German export since three days in Amsterdam last summer, but that’s another story. One moment while I relive some of those memories and reapply… <sigh>

At the library I looked through back issues of the trade papers, feverishly writing down names of all the studio and production company heads I’ll be working with at some point. I wouldn’t really qualify this as a celebrity sighting, but I’m fairly sure one library-goer I saw has made his mark in… um… ‘art films’ of a very specific genre. I use the terms ‘art’ and ‘film’ very loosely. These are the kind of productions that make unconventional use of industrial machinery, law enforcement tools and highway traffic cones. Ouch. Not that I’ve ever seen any of these visual masterpieces. I’ve merely heard about them around the water cooler at Friday night Bible study. So… this dude was scanning the animated films the Children’s section. No snarky remark here. I’m just giving you the facts. In fact, I can see how repeated viewings of Disney’s The Little Mermaid might take his mind off of ‘work’ for a while… at least until Triton starts waving his huge trident all over the place.

Sitting at the worktable with all the other laptop users, I recalled being there a few days earlier and watching one gentleman make a stir when he realized his iPod had been stolen. Turned out he’d plugged it in to charge next to the copy machine (the only accessible outlet available for computers in the library… grrr), then wandered around the library for an hour-and-a-half, only to come back and find it missing. Whaaaat??! Someone at a public venue in a major metropolitan area stole a valuable electronics item that’d been left unattended for an extended period of time? What’re the odds? I departed soon after that because I remembered I’d left the BMW in the parking lot with the top down, keys in the ignition and a sign on it reading “FREE,” and clearly this neighborhood is teeming with untrustworthy thugs. Thank God it was still there when I came out to the lot. Talk about dodging a bullet.

I worked the rest of the evening. Exciting, right? Tomorrow I’d like to try to head to the ocean just to sit and watch the waves roll in for a while. Turn my brain off a bit and recharge.