Due Time
Sometimes,
hard work seems like
an ongoing uphill battle
with no end in sight.
And every once in a while,
a lot of it pays off all at once.
And those moments are fucking magnificent.
-nicopolitan
I actually didn’t have much of a weekend — I tried to make it out to a show on Friday night and that kind of fell through with poorly organized ride situations and me ending up catching the second half of the Laker game at a sports bar.
[non-sequitur]
Okay, before I continue, I’d like to point out that this is very out of character for me because I always say that I don’t care much for sports. And that remains true in the sense that I am definitely out of my element in a conversation with actual sports fans. You know, people who have well-thought out opinions on teams and players and drafts and they know all of the players’ names and how they’ve been playing this season and stats and standings and leaderboards and yadda yadda yadda, which are at least 88% of males at a conservative estimate. But it’s at this sports bar that I discovered there is an implicit knowledge of sports that comes from simply being raised a male. To illustrate: if you are drinking and talking (shouting?) at the television like everyone else, and you see one of the players on your team get slapped on the head by a player on the other team, you don’t turn to your friend and say, “did that just really happen?” No, you yell “THAT IS A FUCKING FOUL” and you yell it directly at the television, and this actually counts as participating in the micro-conversation of you and your friend as much as participating in the sports bar. And this isn’t advice, this is observation of what simply happens. You see, I did not know that yelling at sports games on television broadcasts is instinctual.
Sports. Fascinating culture.
[/non-sequitur]
After the Laker game, I almost made it out to a show I had wanted to go to for some time, but my original ride was pooped from work and would probably not be up for dancing, I was already kinda drunk, and the show was in Hollywood (meh), so I just went back home, booted up the computer, and did some work on one of my freelance projects.
Saturday was also about work and to my delight the show at the bar did not suck. I’ve despised a lot of nights at that bar because in retrospect to that 6 year stint, half of the nights were good shows and the other half were traumatically mediocre — and it’s that second half that made it feel less like a community and more like a job. I had gotten so used to missing out on hanging out with friends to work at a show and walking out with less money than I had walking into work.
Not this last Saturday. That show was a pretty nice kiss goodbye to the month of May. It was definitely very encouraging to see some faces I hadn’t seen in a while, and to clink glasses and crack jokes with each and everyone (among them, bloggy buddy Phil!). All of the bands were good, even the ones I had never heard before that night. The show kicked off with a friend’s band whose songs I have known and liked for a long time, but with the new backing musicians at this gig, songs with which I had become so familiar were suddenly dressed up in new textures and his returning musicians had obviously rehearsed these songs to the point where their kinetic energy felt natural. But the show at the bar had an interesting flavor in that one of my coworkers from my last agency, who has since become a good friend as much as a musical colleague, played with his new band (who were very good!). It was cool to finally get to see them live after having their demo for some time, and I’m considering following them around town once I have formally left my job at the bar.
Oh, did I mention that? I have an exit plan. Finally.
At the end of the night, I expected that the money situation would be our usual one. Most of the money at the door often goes straight to covering costs for putting on a show. However, in tying up at the end of the night, our bar owner had brought up reimbursing me for some of the equipment I had bought for the bar ages ago.
Oh shit! I remembered, That’s right! The bar owes me $200!
And I picked up the first installment of that at the end of the night. Nice!
So as of the end of the weekend, this means I am on time with freelance projects and my gradual bow out of the bar already has a set date and I can get back to writing MY OWN music.
And, then I return to Monday, to the work week. And, ah, the day job.
No, work there has not settled down. But as far as agencies are concerned in this day and age, that’s a really good sign that business is not letting up.
But my epiphany for that does not come in the form of a monetary realization. It has come in the form of a resolution.
I’m going to stop calling it my day job, and I’m going to start calling it my career.
If you’ve cared to read some of my other posts, you probably know that I’m vague about my job description and kind of only know that I work on this thing called “the internet”, but that’s really as specific as it can get. I realize I have a job title in my email signature, but the nature of what I actually do at this agency is a shit ton more nuanced than that.
It’s like Oregon Trail, only the internet itself is the trail, retainers and agency-of-record status is “Oregon”, and shitty campaigns are very much like dying of dysentery.
Okay, so my metrics* aren’t mind-blowing compared to that of my coworkers, but one must keep in mind that 1. They are really good and 2. my job isn’t just about getting metrics. It’s probably only in this industry that I get to apply so much of my scattered and assorted knowledge, which at an earlier time was probably not all that useful. 10 years ago, that would just make me a geek. Today, it makes me a professional. And that’s kinda neat.
Where do I see myself in five years?
I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the interwebs.
All in due time.
*Metrics: which in our industry is kind of like when some places have “sales numbers”
Sooo basically you’re like a doctor so nobody dies of dysentary to get to Oregon? What would be the equivalent of a rattlesnake bite? Or a broken axle?
“Where do I see myself in five years?”
I actually love that the five-year plan, and the ten-year plan and any other some number of years plan for that matter, are less important these days. Do what you love, the right way, and it will work itself out.