#may1968

It’s Sunday and it’s not yet noon and I’m trying to figure out what to do with the day, this early spring weekend technically-still morning and the sun and promise of over-50-degree-F weather and the robin’s egg blue skies all are conspiring to harmonize at my window to sing, “Come out and play” in California harmony, whether it be Beach Boys or Fleetwood Mac or even Mamas and Papas. Does that date me? Do I care?

I’m one of those polymaths with writing and editing and teaching on my mind that I’m not always sure which direction to turn and run in for at least a meaningful moment or two. See, I’m working on a series of short films, a new venture for me, and am excited to finish my first, a true story I’ve embellished about a famous fashion model’s experience being stranded in a Paris hotel room at the start of the May 1968 student riots. The film is in that purgatory called post-production when the waiting starts for the composer and the sound editor to perform their auditory magic after the acting and filming and editing and titles and subtitles have been applied. Oh, and the editing, always the editing. Film or video editing suits my temperament and my background as a text editor.

Spring always finds me in contemplation mode, as spring means summer is next and with that season I can’t help but tirelessly mythologize the inevitable income downturn of an educator such as myself. This year will be different, I repeat like a pop song chorus and I try to think I’m learning how to make it mean something different this year. To that end, I have been folding in more time to job hunt during the daytime work week and have had some success. I can’t shake the sense that a bit more elbow grease might provide a more robust bounty but it’s a balance between taking up the time to hunt for work and enjoying your life as is. That is, I’m a freelance writer and editor and thus work means looking for work often, although in this gig economy that job hunting treadmill may be a more popular exercise than it used to be.

All I know is it’s a beautiful day and I’ve spent much of my free time this weekend indoors and thus it’s time to motivate toward the door. I do have a new film project in the works and then still more in mind. There are 2 mini-series actually, 1 being a continuation of this 1st film’s inspiration, that of a true story of a famous female actor, in this first instance a certain fashion model-turned-film-actor. The second script is shaping up to be about another film siren who’s a personal favorite. Her story may be one that she’d rather I didn’t dredge up but maybe if it helps rekindle even a scintilla of interest in her brilliance, she might not mind. If she even ever finds out about it.