Celebration, Florida — June 9th 2006 — Day 24

On June 12, 2007, I wrote a post about how I’d forgotten that the anniversary of my blog was June 9, 2006. Exactly one year later, on June 12, 2008 I realized that I had once again forgotten the anniversary of my blog.

So without further ado. Let the parties begin.

And the presents.

And the fun.

And the.

And.

Okay, I’ll just celebrate by myself.

But while I’m celebrating, here’s the recap of my first post.
June 9, 2006

So I wanted my first post to be funny and witty. I wanted it to be full of insightful observations. I wanted it to be…well you get the point. So instead it’s 3:30am and since I can’t sleep I have decided what better way to start my blog than writing something at some ungodly hour in the am.

So I am Maddog. Well not really. It’s actually a nickname that was given to me years ago while I was attending the University of Kentucky. I saw a co-worker at McDonalds and she called me Maddog. I had never been called this before, and had no idea why she called me that then. But my friends heard it and it stuck. I became Maddog to everyone who knew me. This was in 1990. No one calls me that anymore. I have grown up and become Jeff. Well actually I have been called many things but most of my friends call me Jeff. But for the sake of this blog I’ll be Maddog.

And Maddog is moving to the big city. As of July 1st, I’ll be an official resident of New York City. Again. Not that this is a bad thing. I love the city. It’s home. It’s just that I have been away for three years and a lot has changed. I am no longer in a relationship. I have failed to stay in touch with most of my friends there. I have gained 70 pounds. I have finished grad school. I am poor. I have no job. And so it’s scary, in a good way.

When I get there I’ll have enough money to last me about three months. This gives me a little bit of a cushion to find work. But not much of one. It won’t allow me to be lazy until the money is gone. So the minute I get there I’ll be pounding the pavement looking for work.

What kind of work you ask? I am a lighting designer. I have just finished one of the best theatre design programs in the country and now am about to prove my professor wrong and begin making a living doing commercial theatre. At least that’s what I hope happens. Who knows? In five years I’ll be the manager of the TGI Friday’s in Time Square. You know it’s the largest TGI Fridays in the world. At least that’s what the sign says.

So you guys all get to take this journey with me. I’ll be documenting my search for work, love, happiness and fulfillment in the city. So stay tuned for all the fun that goes with moving cross country and resuming my career.

WOW. It’s really amazing to look back and see what I wrote two years ago. I had just come back from a trip to NYC where I crashed on the couch of my now roommate Chuck. Who knew then that we’d grow to be such good friends. I don’t think either of us would have guessed that we would get along so well. He hadn’t had a roommate since 1902 back when he was in college, and I hadn’t had a good roommate experience in say about 10 years. I’m thankful that worked out.

I also think it’s interesting that I’ve landed back in the restaurant world. And it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. And I make a living doing that. And for the most part things are good.

And who would have thought that I’d have spent the following two summers in FUCKING Oklahoma designing musicals for a neurotic director and a exciting host of other characters. I also wouldn’t have guessed that I’d have become such good friends with the stage manager. She is the only source of sanity in the world that I’ve been plunged into here.

And who would have known two years ago that I would create relationships with lots of people that I’ve never seen in person. There are many people that I love knowing are out there and reading my blog. There are many people whose blogs I never miss reading even if I have to go back several days to see what they were up to. I get excited still when I get comments, because I was convinced it didn’t matter what I wrote since no one would ever read it.

I’m also amazed at some of the things I wrote when I first started this thing. I was much more open then, when I didn’t know people were reading. I wrote an entire post about giving head. I know, I know. Too much information. But it’s what interested me when I did it. If you want to read it, I sure won’t make you search for it.   Just click the link.

And I guess the biggest realization is that my life for the most part is okay. I think I now have a great small group of friends that I care about and I think they care about me. I talk to them on a regular basis and I miss them when I don’t. I have a job, that’s great when my ankle isn’t broken. I get to do theatre several times a year and even though it’s stressful, it’s still a lot of fun. (I’ll explain why tomorrow). For the most part I’m healty, although I need to lose about 300 pounds. In a post a little after I started I stated that I’d come to the realization that my life wasn’t funny. It was quite ordinary. I don’t know how I felt about that then. I know how I feel about it now. I like it. I like that I sit home with Chuck on Saturday night’s watching Law & Order SVU marathons on USA. I like having the most exciting thing that happens to me in the week being that I didn’t have to wait 20 minutes for the subway a the end of the day. I like that there are people out there who think I’m good enough at my job to want to fire me to design. I have money in the bank, a great apartment, and life is good. What more could a Maddog want.

And for the record Celebration, Florida is a community created by the wonderful people at Disney. It’s current population is 3, 745. It’s a mostly rich white community because we all know that only rich white people can be the Happiest People on Earth, while living in the community that’s the Happiest Place on Earth. After reading about it, it seems more like the Scariest Place on Earth. A little Stepford Wives for me.

I was trying to find a good image of it, but I found this on the second page of my internet search and I thought it was better than a photo of a house. Wouldn’t we all like to run around pulling on things attached to boys. I’m just saying.

I also found this image on Google Image Search

Maybe it’s not such a bad place after all.

Loco, OK — Day 18

I’ve got nothing tonight.  And I mean nothing!  I slept late.  I went to the theatre.  I went to the movies.  I had bourbon with “The Director” who was VERY needy tonight.  I went to IHOP with “The Director” and Kelly.  I just got home.  It’s 3:07 a.m. and I have to be up around 10:00 a.m. which is early for me.

One of the things I’ve been doing is re-reading the posts I wrote on my OK journey last year.  I read the post that corresponds to the day of the month I’m on.  For example tonight I read June 6 and 7th’s post.  Since I’ve got nothing.  I thought I’d share with you an excerpt from a year ago tonight, and a year ago tomorrow.  Does anyone sense a common theme?

June 6, 2007

Today was only a 17 hour day.  I just got out of a meeting to figure out how to rescue the scenery design.  The director thinks it looks like a high school play and is ready to fire the designer.  I wish he’d fired him six weeks ago.  It would have made my life a lot easier.  Instead, I just have to deal with the aftermath.  Today they changed where all the scenery hangs.  Which means I need to change where all the lighting that lights the scenery hangs.  Ugh.  I think my crew is ready to kill me.  But then again they know it’s not my fault so maybe they’ll get over it.

I’ll keep you posted as things play out over the next couple of days.

June 7, 2007

And right now it’s a disaster.  Mostly because of the scenery.

To be honest with you it’s ugly.  I thought it was ugly from the beginning.  At least what I could see.  If you remember the designer was a little slow in getting me what I needed.  So the scenery is so ugly the director has now cut ALL of the ACT 1, SCENE 1 scenery.  It’s gone.  POOF!  What he hasn’t decided is what’s going to replace it.  I’m anxious to find out because it will definitely affect me.  The technical director is also anxious to find out since he’s going to have to build the replacement scenery.  All we know now is that the director hates it, the scenery designer is pissed and no one wants to do anything about it.  And it all rounds out to making more work for the rest of the crew.  YIPPEE!!!!  Oh and we open on Friday

And I ask myself, “Why am I back here?  What was I thinking”  I just want it on the record that a year from now when I mention that I’m going to OK for the summer please tell me I’m fucking crazy and need to collect cans from the side of the road, before I come to OK to work.

Please.

Loco, OK  — population 150 at the 2000 census.  Population 152 now that Kelly and I have moved in.  Unfortunately, the people who should live here, live in “State of Denial”, Nebraska.

, Nebraska.

Does anyone know how to change the font size on WordPress?

Starting a blog…

I wanted to get to bed early tonight.  In fact I had planned to be in bed by 12:30.  It’s 2:52 right now.  That’s a.m.  When my roommate went to bed, my exact words were…”I’m going to call my friend Tom, watch Jon Stewart, and go to bed.  That was at 11:15.  I just got off the phone with him about 15 minutes ago.

Tom and I used to have these great conversations in grad school.  He’s a fellow lighting designer and he shared an office with me.  We would grab a six pack of beer, turn on Tom’s I-pod (he hates my music) and chat.  We chatted about our lives, school, design, money, relationships, home, adulthood, beer, music, theatre.  You name it we talked about it.  Sometimes these chats lasted about two beers each.  And sometimes we would have someone go to the store for us and we would talk till four or five in the morning.  Luckily it was grad school so there was always someone working late that could take us home…or we crashed in the recliner in our office.

During one of these late night chats, the conversation turned to why we were in grad school, how we chose the school we did, what we had done differently, what we wish we had known then that we know now.  We both wished that there had been more help for us.  This then turned to the realization that once we graduated from undergrad there was little or no help in guiding us in our career paths.  We both knew we wanted to be designers.  But how did we get jobs?  How much should we charge?  How did we negotiate a contract?  What were things we should ask before we took a job?  What should our resume look like?   This lead into questions about:  Why go to grad school?  What program do you choose?  How many do I apply to?  Are there questions I should ask when interviewing?

Both of us come from very different backgrounds and our views of the business are very different and yet the same…if that makes sense.  This late night talk led to many other late night talks.  We started to take notes.  We emailed back and forth.  And then one night we decided we should write a book.  A How To Guide on getting work/going to grad school after undergrad.  We wrote an outline.  We gathered a list of questions that we felt needed to be answered.

And then I graduated.  And moved to NYC.  And Tom got busy in his third year of grad school.  And now it’s three years later and there is no book.  But the notes still exist.  The ideas are still there.  And after chatting tonight, it’s easy to see the excitement is still there.  We talked for almost three hours tonight.  And we agreed we should revisit this project.  He’s just taken his first teaching job, and I will start applying for teaching jobs in the near future.  And well, if we are both published, it will make his getting tenure easier, and it will make my getting hired easier.  And thus the idea was reborn.

And so we brainstormed and talked and chatted.  And somehow the idea was tossed around that perhaps the start of the book could begin in blog form.  It would be a way for us to flush out our ideas, get comments from our readers and figure out the exact scope of the project.  And after much discussion we have decided to do just that.  First we need a name of our blog.  And a header.  Branding is most important.  And then we need to figure out what our first couple of posts will be about…and then we’ll go from there.

Tom knew very little about the blog world.  He has no blogs that he reads and is kind of naive to the number of people they can reach and that you can actually get your message out.  He also didn’t know that you could start a blog for free.  Which is just what we want to do.  Get our message out.  Spend no money doing it.

So we were both given homework assignments and are going to chat again in two weeks.  At which point we’ll probably spend another three hours on the phone, but when we hang up we want to have all the information we need to write that first post.

So now we just need a name, and an image, and mission statement, a target audience, and a post.

How hard could this be???

And it gives me something to do with my time over the next to weeks.  Besides watch videos on X-Tube.