It's the first Monday of summer break for St. Anne the Wife and our boys. Try as I might, that woman will always be the better of us. Along with the rest of the year, she runs the summer circus at our house and we both know the lions and tigers are getting stronger and smarter. Surely they'll figure out they need us at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.
Somehow I've gone from gathering dust and questioning my life choices to being incredibly busy and still questioning my life choices. This past week had me busting my tail as a grip & electric on a commercial shoot here in Oklahoma City followed by a wild and memorable day of doc work behind a "camera."
If nothing else, freelancing teaches you how to do the thing while simultaneously prepping for the next thing. In between my hauling sandbags, rags, and combo stands to the next setup this week in the G&E department, I was juggling emails, texts, and Basecamp pings for the other jobs I'm in, all in various states of progress. There's the audio bid I'm submitting to a new-ish client, followed by the tech questions I'm working through with the Tennessee rental house for the shoot in Vegas, and the edits that are sorta working on that other thing. "Dang, looks like I'll need the nine inch 15mm rails instead of the six" and "Will you be needing sound effects with that audio guide too?" and "Here's my Venmo info for the first half of tomorrow's day-rate and expenses." Oh, and I also learned how to tie a clove hitch knot and that a combo stand weighs and feels just about the same as a built out Alexa Amira on my right shoulder.
This week also had me finishing out a book I'd bought about New York City while in New York City last weekend. The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead was a fun read with a crazy interesting writing style.
“You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.” ― Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
I'm already onto the next book I'd picked up at Books are Magic in Brooklyn last weekend. The Hard Crowd by Rachel Kushner has already taken me through her experience racing down the Baja Peninsula on a Kawasaki Ninja. Stoked to get through the rest of her book.