Consumating's Photo Contest of the Week: Rock Star.
I am feeling decidedly un-RockStar like this evening.
I was saying to my friend Jackfish Crow (have you been to his site? You should!) my life over the past eight months would be almost amusing...if was happening to someone else. I don't hold much stock in past lives nonsense, but I'm beginning to wonder if, perhaps, the mustachioed German and trucked with the same folk. A thirty-second recap of my year, reenacted by bunnies:
- breakup with boyfriend minutes after New Year, 2006.
- move out of house.
- less-than-a-year-old computer crashes, wiping hard drive clean.
- agent is offended by abortion joke we make in spec pilot, cites ideological differences, and stops returning phone calls.
- girly bits issue finally diagnosed! Yay! However, requires shots in the box. Boo!
- insurance will not cover girly bits treatment. Out: nearly $8000 (I had seven visits, not six.)
- injure hip. One of those weird muscular things that requires massage therapy, but insurance won't cover that either
- why am I pay $350.00 a month for insurance that won't cover anything?
- apply for different insurance, get denied.
- spend a month coming up with a show, pitch a show, told that they are not interested in said show, find out mortal enemy/untalented writer/chimpanzee has pitched exact same show six weeks later. They buy from them.
acne, I remember you. Please to be going away now. - unemployment, I love you. You never let me down. $450.00 a week. Wait, my claim was damaged in the mail? I can fill out a new one. Wait, I have to call now because that one was lost too? Too many people in the queue? Wait don't hang--
- I know I put my iPod right...waitasecond. IPod? IPOD?!?!??!
I lied -- no bunnies.
I looked around yesterday, at the house that I can no longer afford - hell, I couldn't afford it in the first place - and thought WTF am I doing here? I should be living in one room with dirty shag carpeting and a hot plate. I don't know what I was thinking, except that I wasn't. My entire relationship fell down around me and all I knew was that I had to Move Out of the House Quickly. A. said he'd help me, and he did. He was generous, and I was stupid. One of the rooms is barely big enough for a bed, and a room this size in this area would garner me an extra $450 a month.
I've separated my life into stuff I can sell and stuff that's not worth anything. The savings will be used to kill the credit card. I scour CraigsList, Monster.com, MediaBistro, RealityStaff and Creative Circle for jobs daily. I assure you that if I was in slightly better shape, I'd be stripping right now. As it is, I've been searching through old email for the guy who sent me a note asking if he could pay me $50 each for my old bras.
No, I'm just kidding. All those emails were lost in the Great Computer Crash referenced above. I'm sort of glad, actually, as that would have been a wee bit too tempting.
People have said to me, you're an animation writer, how can you be broke? I'll let you in on a little secret. Freelancing animation pays nothing. No residuals, no royalties, and $1600 for an 11-minute script that I have to split as I have a writing partner. I've managed two scripts a month for the past couple of months, because, well, that's all the work there is right now. I'm hustling for new work, pitching to magazines and sites and networks and videoblogging (although I have no idea how I can get in front of a camera this week. Will figure something out.)and trying to get a podcast started and at this point, I've run so many things up the flagpole that I'm a one-woman U.N.
I. AM. WORKING.
I have no idea what to do. I'm tapped out. I'm exhausted. I'm done. I want to tag out, I want to put my dog in my car and just drive away. I keep looking back, through slack articles and pictures and old scripts and I might have been naive and stupid but there's not much that I would have done differently. Maybe my 15 minutes are up. Maybe that's all I get. Maybe I should just be happy with that.
I have no idea what the future holds. Do I even have a future? People keep telling me you can write, there's always jobs for people who can write but I've been applying, I assure you. I have a plan to go up to San Francisco but I can't find a job or afford to live here, so I haven't a clue what I think I'll be able to do there. But I need to do something. I need to put the wheels in motion. Because right now I'm heading on a crash course for living in my parent's basement and answering phones for a balding insurance agent. The plus is that I'm qualified to do that. The downside is that my parents' basement looks like the set of a snuff film.
I'm not a rock star. I'm not even close. I'm just a girl sitting in her underwear in front of her computer on a Friday night, sipping a Maker's, trying to squeeze one last bit of inspiration from her already overworked brain.
But maybe that's what being a Rock Star's all about.
Yes, I"m still taking donations for the Pink Fund:
Don't know what the Pink Fund is? It's to alleviate costs having to do with this nonsense.
