Adventures In Unemployment: Chapter 1

I’m going to try and get back in the habit of blogging, because it’s a good mental writing exercise. So if there is anyone out there who missed my posts, I’m here to serve you. For the rest of you out there, I’m sorry. I am going to have a lot of time on my hands in the next weeks, so you’ll be hearing from me a lot.

I signed up for unemployment tonight. My first check should be arriving in about ten days. It’s kind of a strange feeling, and one I’m hoping I don’t get too used to. I’ve basically spent most of June trying to get a script done for the Disney Writing Fellowship I am hoping to be chosen for (which is less than likely, but who knows?) and working on putting together hundreds of graduation DVDs for anxious private school parents. Every year since I was a junior in high school, I have filmed the graduation ceremonies at my former high school and middle school. I usually pull in a nice haul of cash, and this year was no exception. The only problem is that this year, the grad video money is not going to be additional fun money which I can blow in Vegas or, like last year, put directly into the budget of a film I am trying to make. This year, that grad video money is my whole net worth. So the government is gonna help me pay my bills for a bit.

Now that the grad DVDs are almost done and out the door, now that the spec script has been sent off to the Disney Writing Fellowship Judges, I’m just about free to start working on some other stuff.

If I am going to be getting unemployment, I’m going to make the most of it and try to have a nice period of productivity. I plan on starting work on a couple more spec TV scripts, putting together a few TV show pitch packets, both live action and animated, starting to fiddle around with a couple feature screenplay ideas I’ve been toying with for awhile, and finishing the cut of my damned film. Anybody who reads this blog who was involved in the film- which we shot over a year ago now- please don’t give up on it yet. July should be a good time to really get the editing finished, do a day or two of pick up shots, get a score laid down, and do a lot of work to improve the sound. If all goes as planned, I’ll have a finished film to send off to Sundance, which will kick off the movie’s round of festival submissions. All of this will be happening while I search for the right job, one that will actually point me in a good direction career-wise.

If I can keep my eye on the ball, hopefully I’ll be able to get some meetings and maybe, just maybe, find some sort of representation. The plan is to really stay focused, set schedules for myself for working on all these projects as they were a real paid job- that the government happens to be paying for.

That’s the somewhat ambitious plan for my the terrifying period of unemployment, which I am already a month into. The main problem, of course, is that I still have a TIVO, a PS2, and a stack of summer reading books piled high on my end table. All in all, a very dangerous group of potential distractions. Stay tuned to find out if I give into temptation or if I triumph and conquer Hollywood- actually, I think I set the TIVO to record a Quantam Leap marathon. And Project Runway starts in like a week.

This is gonna be hard.