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.

Recent Happenings

After reading a good friend's recent blog post half of which is about current events, I have come to once again face the rather embarrassing truth of just how unaware I am of the world going on around me. Current events has always and probably will always be the area in which I know the least about. (Especially the section on celebrities, that will probably be close to 0 on my "how much I know about this subject" meter, which is sad considering the industry I'm trying to break into, but I digress.)

It's always been hard for me to pay attention to the world at large when there's just so much going on around in the microcosm called my own life, which isn't to say I'm excessively self involved, at least I hope that isn't to say that I'm excessively self involved, but there's there's just so much going around me in regards to my own life as well as the lives of my friends; whom are within 1 degree of separation, never mind the lives of people I'll never meet. (That isn't to say I don't care about them, but I care significantly less about them than I do about my friends, or, in fact, myself.)

This all leads me to a wonderful note I actually wanted to get to about myself; I started working at USA Studios again yesterday, but this time instead of QC-ing masters and dubs I'm going through work orders and making sure the orders were filled completely before being shipped out. It's not the most desirable job in the world, but work is work and the hours fit into my schedule, even if it, once again, cuts into my socializing. Also, the people there can be pretty fun so it's not bad. I guess I just have to, once again, get used to the environment as well as the hours, though this time they're not nearly as long, which is good because I'm not as sleep deprived.

More later, this week has been/will be busy.

Money

Today I got my first paycheck from USA Studios. Yay! I'm surprised at how good that feels.

How I started working 17 hour days

Ahh!! The streak of at least 3 posts a week has been broken! Shame!!

First and foremost, my apologies to anyone actually bothering to read this blog for my scarcity in posting, I've been unusually busy recently and this busyness looks like it will be continuing for an indefinite amount of time. Additionally, for the past five days or so I have been staying at my grandma's house, which has left me internet less and effectively stranded from the going on-s of the normal world, but enough of that, my post below.

"Did you eat dinner yet," she asked over the phone. "Yes," I replied over the phone. I had straight out lied because I knew that if she knew the truth she would yell at me and I didn't have the energy for that. It was 9 PM Tuesday night and the truth was that I hadn't eaten anything sustainable since 10:00 that morning, when my grandma sat me down and made me eat breakfast before rushing off to my internship at PBS. Now, I was standing in front of several racks of tape decks, the number of which was an impressive one, but not as impressive as the Dubs facility in PBS, and I'd imagine pretty standard for a post house specializing in duplication and the like.

I had begun freelancing as a junior editor for USA Studios Monday evening. USA Studios was the afore mentioned post house and the reason I had cut my hair two weeks prior (I had an interview with them) and I was now working the graveyard shift qc-ing (quality controlling) masters sent to us and the dubs made of them. The work wasn't very exciting or an area where I imagined I'd make many valuable connections, but work was work and no matter how much I loved interning for American Masters, I wasn't getting paid. So, when this opportunity came up I jumped on it, even though I had just come off a half day (7 hour) shoot that I had gotten up at 5 AM for, although more on that shoot later. I arrived for my first day at USA Studios at 4pm and left at 11:30pm, being dismissed by the head of production, Roger, but I was asked to return the next day, which I did, this time starting at 6pm and finishing at 5am.

I began my day at 6pm because I figured out that I could leave PBS at 5:00 and make it across town to USA Studios in half an hour, which would give me enough time to grab something quick for dinner. However, as usually occurs on days I need to get somewhere, I worked up until 5:30pm, wrecking any chances of getting food and being on time. I decided that it was best not to be late on my second day, so food was passed up for work.

Finally, I had gotten off work at 5:30 am, when the guy in charge of the overnight hours wanted to go home and kicked myself and my friend Sania, who's been working with the place for the past 2 or 3 months, out so he could lock up. I hadn't taken a lunch break the entire time because I'm terrible at telling myself to eat so when I got out I was pretty hungry, but then I ran into the dilemma of 1) finding food and 2) taking the hour long trek back to my grandma's place to get some sleep so I could get up the next day to go to PBS again, even though I was told not to come in b/c it was the day before Thanks Giving. Again, I passed on food and headed back and went to sleep but missed out on PBS, so not eating was kind of pointless.

However, I've figured out that I can work 14 hour days and still get enough sleep, so I'm staying at PBS while I work for USA Studios.