A Good Thing

He knew it was a rather fortuitous event that had transpired over a week ago. Truthfully, he felt kinda bad about it all at first, but after a good night's rest he felt fine and before the next week even half passed he already had begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Recently, however, he had been getting reminders of that place; they invaded his dreams. Somehow finding himself back at that office doing the same things he used to do for money, it was rather frightening.

It was rather reassuring. If he had nightmares about working for that place it was probably a good sign that he was out.

Back to square one

After much debate on how I was to present this post I decided I should do it in my typical way since this blog is SUPPOSED to be writing practice for me, but I digress.

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The check was for roughly $750. Normally that amount would look about right for a week's worth of pay for an entry level position in most industries. The thing was, that check wasn't for a week's worth of work; it was 3. Three weeks of work amounted to roughly $750. Seeing it in numbers on a hard, tangible check in front of him made that figure all that more realistic than the vague ethereal figures crunched off the top of his head. He laughed at the fact that his friends actually expected him to join them in living in the city, with how much he made a month he could probably make rent, but he wouldn't have anything left for food. Though, if that weren't enough of an excuse before, he certainly had more of one now.

He strolled casually into work, half frozen beverage from 7-11 in his hand, a present for himself for managing to complete a hard day's shoot just no longer than an hour earlier. The receptionist looked up at him as he strolled in and delivered his typical "hi". She caught him just as he walked past.

"Roger is looking for you" she said as he headed towards the back to clock in.

"Ok," he replied nonchalantly.

He searched around the office, not finding him at his desk or anywhere else around the office. As he searched, he though "this can't be good," yet at the same time, the feeling of "oh well" passed through him as well.

He eventually found him coming out of the bathroom and greeted him with a "what's up?"

Roger, a 5'5" middle eastern man with an accent as thick as his glasses, asked him to come with him and he followed his boss to the small accounting office where he was informed his help would no longer be needed as there was a new employee in accounting and he would be called should they need anything in the future. He was then handed his final paycheck, the past 3 weeks rolled into one, and left alone.

It was odd. He felt it was coming for a while now, or at least something like that. He was fairly certain it wasn't because he had begun to mess up; if that were the case he would have heard about it. But, he shrugged and picked up his bag and made his way throughout the office, saying bye to everyone.

It was interesting because just a few days before he had had a conversation with a fellow employee about how they both didn't even care if they were fired from that job, and here he was, exactly in that position.

He actually felt kind of good about it; having a legit excuse to not have to go to that crapshoot of an office was quite a nice thing to have, though it did make conversations a bit awkward sometimes. He was cautious though, he knew that this good feeling could just merely be his brain, reacting defensively and releasing all sorts of feel good chemicals to make him feel better. He knew he would know the next morning truly how he felt. Until then, however, he was going to enjoy his night.

Laziness or Loyalty?

He knew money wasn't everything, but right now it encompassed a good 70% of his field of vision. He had been out of school for a year now and was more or less in the same place he was 12 months ago; working for free, only now he had a low paying night job to give him some sort of pocket change.

This was a life style he was growing weary of, yet at the same time something was preventing him from really searching elsewhere for a change. He attributed it to his laziness and hoped that it was nothing more than that.

Laziness he could beat. It took a lot of effort, but he knew if he kicked his own ass enough he would get sick of the same old crap quickly enough to get up and do something about the predicament he was in. In short, Laziness could be likened to "Medusa" of the Gorgons; a rather difficult adversary to overcome, but one that could be defeated and killed, unlike her sisters. No, what he feared held him fast to his current lifestyle was of the worst kind; loyalty.

This loyalty was not in full, something felt out of gratefulness, friendship or anything of that sort, but rather felt more like Stockholm Syndrome, a strange phenomenon where a hostage begins to identify with and grow attached to his/her captors. Or perhaps this was a feeling of loyalty that sprouted out of the mere sense of familiarity. A habit is especially difficult to break, especially if its a bad one. Though, he rationalized, it wasn't all bad. There was some promise there. Once again, however, he feared he was putting all his eggs in one basket. Ultimately he wondered how his life would look 5 years down the line. He sincerely hoped that it would not be what it was now.

Continued Joblessness

On Friday I called ABC to see if they had filled the position yet for the position of an Overnight Avid Digitizer I had applied for a week ago; they had. While it did make sense that they didn't want me (I didn't hang up after the phone interview with a very good feeling that it had gone over well), thinking about it later, it felt like a slap in the face. This was a job that I felt more than qualified for because I knew the systems and it was a very simple task so if there was anything I was not familiar with I could easily be run through on it and I would have been fine. However, four years of film school later, even the lowest position of an Overnight (meaning 8PM to 6AM) Avid Digitizer wasn't given to me. It really made me wonder what the hell did I spend 4 years in college for if I can't even get the lowest entry level position in my field of study?

Honestly, it wasn't even like it was real digitizing anyway. It was going to be ingested clips meaning it was already digitized and all I would need to do is download it off an FTP site, import it into avid and organize it into bins, doesn't take too much to know how to do that.