Monthly Archives: September 2008

I’m done writing my grant! Now I just have to wait for my mum to come pick me up so I can buy five blank videotapes. I have to get my support material together, and it’s going to take me too long to get it together to burn 5 dvds. Tomorrow I’m off to Vancouver for an interview with Storytellers In Motion. I’m pretty stoked about it. I haven’t been to Vancouver in two years, not that I will be there for very long. I’m back home on Wednesday night.

I really hope I get this grant. I am just going from grant to grant these days, which I guess is the life of an artist. But I won’t be able to apply for another Canada Council grant until I am done this video. I’m excited about this grant though, it really seems like it would be fun to work on. Well, all my videos are fun to work on. It’s just something I like doing.

I think I will still always make short videos without grants though, as long as I have access to the equipment. It’s good for me to be able to make something without relying on the green light. It means I can experiment with ideas.

I’m excited about going to Vancouver. I also applied for a travel grant to go to Toronto, but I haven’t heard back about it yet. I imagine by the time I get back from Vancouver I will know.

I have to remember to bring photos of myself as a child to this thing. Right.

It’s kind of funny that most of my videos are still in analogue form. I should really update. My goal is to make a complete DVD of all my works. At 14 videos over a period of 13 years, it’s kind of a lot to handle.

This Damnable Blog!

I am working on my next grant. And I still have grant writer’s block. What the hell. It think I wrote ONE new paragraph this afternoon thus far. And I have at least two more pages to go. Fuck! I sometimes hate writing. Someone once said (and I paraphrase) writing is sitting down to a pad of paper and concentrating until blood pours out of your forehead, and it’s true!!! It’s brutal sometimes. So why am I writing in this blog for fun? I don’t know. Maybe because this is where I can be silly and write whatever I want. Whereas a grant, I have to be very clear and specific about what I intend to do with the money.

Today I had to pick up tapes, and it took forever. I didn’t get together with Mum until about 4:20 (ha ha I know) and then it took us ages to get over the bridge because of an accident. I’m not kidding, it took half an hour to get over the brudge. But we made it to Media Group five minutes before closing so I could get my tapes. And I was close to giving up, in tears!

But I got my tapes!

Now I just have to sort myself out more.

I’ve made fourteen videos now and the battered compilation tape I had has gotten legs and walked off. So getting my whole collection together is kind of a pain in the ass. I should be better organized, but some of my stuff has been in storage and it’s moved around a lot too.

I AM getting organized though, and that must surely count for something!

My mom used to tell me to talk to my mental health professionals about being messy and disorganized, so I did and they told me some people are just messy.

See! I told you mom!

Anyway, I have to burn 5 DVD’s of two videos this weekend, and I have to finish writing my grant, and I have to do laundry, and I have to clean my apartment. And yet tonight I am going out to an opening. And still oddly enough, I am still pecking at this damnable blog!

Swimming in footage

I’m listening to this song these days:

I’m absolutely swimming in video footage. I don’t know where to start! It’s crazy, absolutely crazy. I ordinarily love editing, but yeah, it’s pretty common for me to sit down and feel lost. It’s such a crazy process, making videos and films. What I should really be doing is making more sequences with the various pieces that I will eventually put together.

I finally got it together to put the rhino video on my facebook. So there it is! I will eventually put it on Youtube I hope.

I am crazy. I’ve realized I talk to myself an awful lot, not so much in public, but I just mutter to myself throughout the day. Is that normal? I don’t know.

My quitting smoking is still going well. I’m starting to not think about it at all! It’s definitely an improvement. I’m about to go off Step 2 for Step 3. And then I’m done! So exciting!

Hey, this is my video!

Adjustments?

My psychiatrist had some kind of skiing accident and has been away for a long time. I’ve been back to my g.p., but lately I’ve been wondering if I’m fine. I think I need to make new adjustments to my meds, but I’m not sure if that’s true. And now I’ve realized I’ve just gotten so used to checking in with a doctor about my condition that I have no idea how I really am. I think I’ve been doing well, but it’s hard to get up in the morning early. And that worries me. Plus I’ve commonly had fall depressions, and I think subconsciously I’m worried about that coming up again.

Good thing I have an appointment with her soon.

I guess I do have mild depression. I’d like to shake it off, but I really think it’s related to needing more work and not being able to do mornings for some reason. And the end of the big grant. It lasted a long time, through many adventures. And I miss Scotland still.

Oddly enough I am really liking being single right now. I’m not entirely sure why that is. I guess I like my own company when I am alone. It’s comforting. And I’ve spent so much of my twenties doing things on my own that it’s just fine.

Anyway, I am trying to check in on myself and see if I am really okay or if I am slipping into anything like mania or depression.

Well, I’m not overly happy, that’s for sure. So mania must be out.

That leaves depression. aw crap. Okay, or middle ground, which would be the best.

Well it was the anniversary of a friend’s suicide this past month, that was sad.

But I did come home from Scotland, and that kinda made me sad too.

HMM> i guess there are reasons to be sad at the moment, but it still makes me uncomfortable. I hate having to look out for my moods. It’s a part of my illness I find very difficult. So weird to have to look out for your own moods, and the depressions are the worst because there’s this dark blackness to them, like you can’t see through it to your future. Ugh! I HATE THAT!

Poop on depression.

Plus it’s just sad that summer is over. Aw, no more summer til 2009!

Grant writer’s block

So I’m writing a grant to do a short recruitment video for the Martian Mining Ship that’s going to Terraform Mars for the Indigenous people of earth. It should be pretty funny. It’s based on a performance I’ve been doing here and there. Meaning, Saskatoon and twice in Vancouver.

I have the costumes designed already.

They are black coveralls with MARS CREW beaded on the back in red beads.

It’s kind of based in my desire, however far fetched, to go into space.

But it’s based on a different idea of going into space, because it’s tied in with this idea of home, and leaving home, and making a new home but it will never be the same. There’s an inherent loneliness to the idea of space travel.

Anyway, I am having grant writers block and it sucks. I can’t for the life of me describe my project. I need to read some of my old notes or something.

I can only get 17 000, which is still 17 000 more than I have now.

Damn block! I can’t even write this! I’m going to bed.

Government Supplied Gasoline

This article from the Globe and Mail about various racist comments made by the Conservative party’s folks made me shudder. So many stereotypes, so much hate. What a fucked up party man!

I am leaning towards the NDP right now and then also curious about the Green party. But then there is also the Liberals, and really that’s the only other big party aside from the Bloc, which I can’t vote for since I’m in Saskatchewan. Not that I would vote Bloc. Maybe I should just vote for a fringe independent candidate. Damn, so many choices.

It really makes me wonder about a place like the States where there are only two political parties. Not enough representation of diversity in political opinion. It’s kind of weird. Even though it’s pretty much been either Conservative or Liberal in power, there have been other people in parliament from all the other parties.

And it’s going to be another minority government. Those things seem to have elections pretty quick, and there’s always the confidence vote that can do it in.

One good thing about Canada is we do our elections with pencils and papers. No hanging chads, no electronic voting thinglydoos.

Anyway, the real point of this election is to get rid of the Conservatives. Stephen Harper is evil. He keeps axing arts funding. He gave people something like a hundred bucks a year towards their child care instead of funding day cares and the like. In Fit Of Pique I photoshopped a picture of him as George W. Bush’s Mini Me. Enough said.

Not to mention the, uh, sobering remarks made by a Tory Candidate’s assistant to Native protesters. And that guy who wants me and all my friends to live in Labrador.

LABRADOR?

What will we do there? Sniff government supplied gasoline?

Temping

Well, I’m in the temporary help industry now, where I am making a somewhat better wage doing work in light industry. Tomorrow I’m going to a warehouse to help out from 8 til 5, and the same on Thursday. Monday I was at an industrial laundry facility to count dirty clothes. I made 11 bucks an hour. This is much better than the call centres. I hated being yelled at ALL the time by people I called to take part in surveys. So far the work’s been REALLY temporary. I don’t know, it’s a strange way to earn a living, it makes me feel a bit like a prostitute, being pimped out to all kinds of businesses. At least In Theory. In practice it’s just like going to work for a few or one days and then waiting for the next assignment to come in. I’ll see if I like it after I’ve done it for longer.

A friend told me to be glad I didn’t get data entry jobs because he said they’re BORING as all hell. I guess so. Data entry doesn’t sound glamourous.

Of course the fact that I am in light industry worries me a bit because my cousin Christopher died in an industrial accident. I will have to be very careful. I got a pair of steel toed work boots today with some artist fee money because apparently most of the assignments I’m being sent to I need steel toed work boots. They’re really nice but I wish I didn’t have to lay out so much money. Of course feet never change when you’re an adult, so if I take care of them they will last me years.

My quitting smoking is still going well. I am going to a week of Step 2 and then a last week of Step 3, and then I’m going off the patches for good. I am feeling REALLY triggery for smokes lately and I don’t know why, I suspect it has to do with going for work again. I used to smoke during my breaks, now I don’t. I have to do something else.

And I like the sensation of smoking. I would smoke something totally not tobacco if I could, just for a replacement. But I don’t know the good herbal cigarettes or where to get them.

Anyway, that’s my life, not too exciting right now. Work is good though, I need the money and I actually didn’t mind being on my feet all day on Monday. If I can just keep it up . . . and get fit while I do it!

the lazy entry

I’ve been sitting around all day today. That’s not quite true, I took Mister on a long walk and he had a poo and everything. It was a perfect owner/dog moment. Now he’s snoozing by his kennel. I think I should put it away, he was going in and out for a while but now he doesn’t care to.

I finally ordered my cable package, I’m not sure I can afford it, which is a bit silly, but we’ll see what happens. I cut out various silly programs, like all the sports channels. And anyway, we’ll see. There’s still nothing on. I’m so bored! I want The Simpsons or Corner Gas or something to be on.

Today I’m mainly sitting around being a bum. It’s because I’m waiting for my cousin Deanna to come over and hang out. We’re going downtown to goof around eventually and then back to Mum’s house for dinner.

It’s going to be a nice day. I keep cleaning my house in between writing these paragraphs, and it’s made me uninspired. I should quit.

Higgs Boson and my Rugby Shirt

Hey, did you hear about the particle accelerator currently looking for the Higgs Boson particle? They did the first collision successfully today, and it’s going to be running for the next fifteen years or so while they fiddle with all kinds of things. People are scared it will somehow rip the universe apart. Or blow up earth.

Google has a pretty cute icon of the particle accelerator on it’s page.

I love Google. It’s pretty much my only search engine, which could be goofy, I know.

I’m back from my interview and wearing my Scottish Rugby Shirt, which makes me happy. It’s REALLY nice. And now appropriate for work since I may possibly be doing light industrial temp work. It would be different, and it pays better than what I was doing. I’m going to have to get some stamina. Maybe it will be good we walked so much in Scotland, because I’m in much better shape, although still quite chubby. I ate and drank more in Scotland. I usually don’t eat so much. Or maybe I do and it’s mostly snacks. I definitely don’t usually drink so much, yesterday I went for a pint and it was just that, one pint.

I’m still on my no smoking thing. I haven’t had a smoke, not even when I’ve been tempted. In the UK smokes have Smoking Kills written right on them, and it really freaked me out so of course I didn’t want to buy smokes there. And here there is the Bloody Brain, the Broken Heart, and the Cancerous Lungs. Ugh to that!

Either way, I need to get in better shape.