45 Days to Go...

Somewhere between the time I wake up and deal with the delicacy of my frail body, the rigors of being a department head on set and the fleeting moment of consciousness I feel before drifting off to stressed, dreamless sleep, I enjoy moments of pure escapism that seem to be so much more necessary now more than ever. Normally, they involve having Netflix on in the background playing some wonderfully mediocre episode of Star Trek or watching my painfully mediocre Cubs play or reading Roast Beef's Achewood blog. Tonight, however, it involves an old mix CD, this blog and my thoughts. I haven't blogged much in the past few years (whether that be because of relocating, getting a career or not being  sad as much as I used to, who knows), but tonight it just felt right.

I am getting married in a little over a month and a half to a wonderfully optimistic, life-loving, caring and beautiful woman, Vicky Chan. This is something that has been a known fact for over a year and an unknown fact for many years prior to that. I will be sharing my life with her. Not that I haven't been sharing my life with her in one way or another for nearly seven years, but... you know. This is a great thing, but it also means the end/transition of other, older great things. I have been wrestling with the loss of my youth for as long as I can remember, but this, it seems is the final frontier of youth. I can still have it in my life if I want it (and with Vick, this isn't really an option, she will be forever young), but youth is entering it's definitive twilight.

That being said, what has made me come back here might be the adult things that have been hell of stressing me out lately. Career, money, wedding, etc... I had an idea float in the other day while I was confessing to Vick that I may be done with this industry. This past week has been more stressful and unfulfilling than any other in recent memory. In the last 10 days, I've had to deal with producers that call me unprofessional and incompetent in front of an entire crew via email, running back and forth between locations where construction hadn't even been started yet, gathering equipment 120 miles (round trip) away, losing key crew members and being put on the spot last minute to replace them and being forced to hear my email explode every 3 minutes with another message in a long string of pointless messages...

And this was all leading up to a tiny, two day short that almost no one was getting paid on. All of this stress, work and sweat for a short. Oh, by the way, I was also getting into the nitty-gritty of wedding planning AT THE SAME TIME. This all led me to reveal to Vick that I was done being a department head in the film industry. Too many people who don't know what they're doing for my tastes. Of course, the crew (that stayed with me) and I made it look pretty good and the producers and director were pleased as beans. This isn't the first time shit like this has happened for me and it always ends the same. I give them what they need under terrible circumstances and they assume that's what should always be accomplished. Well, fuck it. I'm done.

Telling her this made me think to that little moment in the future while my kids and I are playing in a living room and one of them asks about movies or work and I, looking for a 'Wow! Really, Dad?!' moment, tell them their ol' Dad used to be a cinematographer in Los Angeles. However, he wanted to make your life not suck and provide a real human father to bring them up, and decided to leave it behind in favor of a profession that let me stress about my family rather than how I make the money to support that family. I would hope it to be a little cooler than my Dad telling me he used to be a cabbie for a while, but the sentiment is still the same. They will know me as something, and one day they'll find out, as I did, that I had been other things as well. Momentary jumps to the future. They can be... detailed.

Back to the wedding, invites are almost all out and now it's on to planning the ceremony in detail. The first thing is that we now know what we want to walk down the isle to. Radio Ballet by Eluvium. We would love someone to play it live for us, as it is a simple, beautiful tune, but we'll be fine with it over the P.A. Also, getting the final touch sent to my cousin for the wedding video. The mood has changed since I started this post. I have shit to do!

Now Playing: Eluvium - "Leaves Eclipse the Light"