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02/01/2005: "WWBBD: What Would Bill Belichick Do?"

Music: Neko Case "The Virginian"
Mood: Determined

It is a pretty cool thing to have a website. For all intents and purposes, it is the cheapest means of free speech left in the United States of America, and can be seen by anyone on Earth with an internet connection.

Some people use it as a way to keep in contact with their friends, to spill their guts out to the world, or to post nude pictures of themselves. Personally, as internet personalities go, I have always been a lurker- I rarely if never post anything about myself, preferring instead to throw outlandish statements out into the void, comfortable in my anonymity. The one place where I took off the cloak and pretended I am who I say I am was here at athenaverse.com. I had a dream of being an independent filmmaker and financing my projects with the profits of the paid gigs that would naturally come flowing in.

That portion of the life of this website ended when I packed up a small portion of my things and moved with my girlfriend to Los Angeles. Whenever I have made the journey to Southern California throughout my life, interesting things happen, and I learn a lot about who I am. Right now I have a job managing a "dog ass theatre" (in the words of my boss) in one of the slightly tonier sections of Los Angeles, and I find myself thinking about work all the time. To say that I was given an impossible task to fix the theatre nobody likes would be an understatement. Let me tell you, it is quite a jump to go from employee to manager. No matter how much hard work you put into it, you're going to screw up because you not know what you're doing yet. You also have to learn how to give orders to a bunch of strangers who resent you even being there in the first place. On top of that, you have to figure out how to fill out your TPS reports correctly and make sure there is enough popcorn and toilet paper. I have worked in movie theatres since I got out of college, but mainly on the other side of the wall as a projectionist at multiplexes around Boston, so it seemed like it would be pretty easy to turn this ship around. After all, I was willing, able, and, as a licensed and experienced former Union projectionist, easily the most qualified applicant to run the Norelco AA II Projector (!!!) that the theatre- yes, it has only one screen- has. My dreams of dramatically turning around the theatre needs to be put on the long- term goal shelf and I have to develop some short term solutions.

I have to sink or swim at work, but at the same time, I have to get out of my lifelong habit of letting thinking about work consume my life outside of it. If I can't, I'll go crazy. One of the things that I wanted to do when I came out here to do besides learning how to manage a movie theatre was to write. I have a great idea for a science fiction story, and I should start writing it and submitting it to publications. I am going to keep up this site and submit more "think-pieces" to that venerable journal to which I am a contributor, the Athenaeum. After all, if I want to be a writer, what's the point if I never let anybody read anything?