March 01, 2006 - 10:16 AM

Happy Ash Wednesday

Do you wish people a Happy Ash Wednesday? A day when you smear palm frond ashes on your forehead and solemnly promise to go on fasts and do away with certain luxuries while being very penitent? And do non-Christians get all up in your hizzy if you wish them a Happy Ash Wednesday? And, c'mon, Fat Tuesday? Really? You want to celebrate corpulence the day before Lent starts? Way to go, ass monkeys.

My right shoulder aches. It's been bothering me since Monday. It's not the normal residual pain from lifting weights, since I last did shoulder work on Friday. I'm pretty sure that it's stress and anxiety related. What supports my theory here is the fact that Monday night featured the return of my anxiety dreams. Yep, those subtly-panic-inducing dreams where I'm back living life as a student at Amherst. I'm not in full panic mode though...the dream only involved me being in the cafeteria and worrying about getting to the food before they cut off breakfast service. On the scale of anxiety, this dream equates to maybe a 3 out of 10. The more sweat-inducing dreams where I'm freaking about where I'm going to live on campus or what classes I'm missing or how I'm logistically going to commute between L.A. and Massachusetts are brought on by stress-levels around 7 or 8 in my life.

So, where's this low-level anxiety coming from? It's a lot of little worries and stresses taking nibbles out of me. Like, the whole J thing and girls in general which is throwing me for an off-and-on tizzy (she left me a message on my phone on the 14th wishing me a Happy Valentine's Day, and when I heard it, I was like "not fair! You can't wish me a Happy Valentine's Day! I'm avoiding interaction with you so that I don't think about you, and you can't just non-chalantly be friendly like that! Bad form!"). Or my state and federal tax forms, which are sitting in a small pile by my desk, waiting to be filled out and returned (and I'm itemizing because I can deduct my car purchase and my new desk and speakers and DVDs and CDs and other things as business expenses, but that's a lot of receipts to go through and calculations to be made). Then I've got possible cello playing with my friend Angela next week, Victoria in 3 weeks, and Drawn Together (the composer might need some cello) soon, which means I have to practice again. And, I've been feeling the itch to move on from this job (over a year as a P.A. for a tv show is unusual and certainly not conducive to growth), and while there has been the normal "I'm not qualified to do anything else" self-flagellation, I have been slowly pursuing a related avenue.

I've finally started talking with the sound studio that our show uses for recording dialog and effects and mixing everything. My producers have been encouraging them to give me a chance, and so, over the past 3 weeks, a couple times a week, I've been going in around 8 AM and sitting with two of the engineers for an hour, asking them questions, watching them work, getting a feel for the process. They mostly do video games there, with some voice-over work for TV and audiobooks thrown in. I have the technical skill-set to work with them, but my talents are still geared towards straight-up music, so I need to learn how to adapt to their different system.

With the video game industry really booming, they'll be moving into a larger facility this summer, when they'll be hearing more engineers. The hope is that I can learn enough and show them enough competence that I'll be someone they bring on fulltime at that point (maybe even before). I got my first test assignment yesterday, which was editing readings for an Audio Bible project they're doing. Basically, I had to follow a script, selecting approved takes of each line (sometimes choosing between 3 or 4 different takes) and assembling them into a sort of radio play. The editor who I've been sitting in with had already completed this particular section of th Book of Solomon, but he wanted to see what I could do. Even though it's been more than half a year since I was doing this sort of computer-audio editing work, I slipped right back into it like a duck to water. For some reason, this technical geek crap is fun for me. It's also cool that the two voices I was editing were some actor named Denzel and his wife. hee hee.

Now Listening To : Leona Naess- Leona Naess
Random Thought : My friend Pam had to cancel her trip to L.A. in order to attend her grandma's funeral and wake. Prayers.

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