what would you be doing now if you weren't doing what you're doing?
what's the nearest you've come to blowing off what you're doing in favour of 1.?
what stopped you?
If you'd rather treat this in a lifetime/historical context (i.e. what I do is computers, and I've been doing it for ten years, and it's been several years since I had a good answer for 2), go right ahead.
1. tooling with computers, rather than working with them. I think "not working" would about sum up what I'd like to be doing.
2. investigating emigrating (and citizenship!) somewhere where the pay would be less, but the cost of living more than proportionally lesser, to take up a low-skill IT monkey job in order that I could concentrate on relaxing all the more.
Hm. Sometimes I say, "Running this company is my job. But what I DO is a, b, c, etc." But you're asking from the other perspective, and as I look at how I spend an average week these days, that's accurate. So...
1. 3 different kinds of answers here:
I would be doing something more creative, probably musical in nature, where projects have defined start and end points and one can look back at a finished piece of work with a sense of accomplishment, not a checklist of improvements to implement over the next 12 months (budgets, margins, staffing requirements, profit or lack thereof, etc.).
I would be traveling more, and have fewer material possessions, aside from maybe the music gear, both studio and stereo. Those are requirements. But a library card in every state and a comfortable Winnebago? Sure!
I might, in an ideal world, be raising teenagers by now instead of an infant and a 1st grader. That answer presupposes a vastly different universe than the one we inhabit, however.
2. 1991, the year I spent doing Shakespeare semiprofessionally, comes closest. Artsy/creative, check. Fewer material possessions, check; I was mainly broke all year long, my bike got stolen while we were on the road, I sold/gave away a lot of stuff so the remainder would fit into storage, you name it. Traveling, check, we covered the entire East coast, and I think played in 4 states in 4 days at one point.
I've never really been close to raising teenagers. Hmmm, if I were raising teenagers now, that would mean...well, I guess it would depend. I can think of about 5 people who could-have-been the mother of those teenagers, depending on whether we are talking about 13 year olds now, or 15 year olds, or what. One of those possible pasts is interesting. The rest would have been disastrous :) Ideally, since we are re-writing history, I would have met my beloved at least a decade earlier than we actually met, with similar results/responses at the meeting thereof. Ah well.
3. What stopped me, hmmm. The easy answer is "I sucked". More realistically, and more kindly to the old memory, I didn't get back into the company the following year, and then the rent came due. Also, that group, with 2 or 3 exceptions, and I do NOT count myself as an exception, was populated by a bunch of immature, partially sufferable, prima-donna twentysomethings with a ridiculously high drama queen quotient, so it's not like I would hold that up as a sustainable emotional environment for, like, personal growth, or anything. Not hardly.
Based partially on that experience, and my subsequent aversion to being dead broke and very hungry all the time, plus the much-later realization that carrying any debt at all really sucks the life out of you, I haven't pushed the "creative arts = job" angle in years. I was never serious enough about trance party promotion to earn a dime, never mind make a living at it...by definition, the profitable parties were not the ones I wanted to throw OR attend. I'm dinking in the studio in a more focused way these days, but even there my goals are low key; I am talking to some companies about sound/loop design work for games and got a verbal that I sold a couple of loops last week; I want to pull together some dub tunes and pitch them to a small label, probably Waveform; if the cash register ever rings on the current company, I'd like to take my guitar chops and play out in some improvisational context. But mostly, I want to spend more time with the family. Bar hopping to play a one-hour set for 12 people is just not as compelling as getting up at 7 to spend all weekend with Calvin. Not anymore, anyway.
Yes, I remember you as the guy who ran the EFF network in SF for a few years. I didn't watch nor listen to the press conference, and based on reports afterwards it is a good thing I didn't, as I might have harmed things around me, both inanimate and otherwise. I'm still in the Bay area, living in N. Berkeley with wife and two kids. As you might expect, this situation is less traditional than it sounds on paper :)
1. In _Measure for Measure_, I was the Provost, and one of the two "like gentlemen" of act 1, scene 2 (the elizabethan equivalent of the "third tall man" credit in film); in _Twelfth Night_, Orsino; and in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, Egeus, Flute, Thisbe, and Peasblossom (I think it took a re-assigned line or two to make it so those 4 are never on stage at the same time). All that was in repertory on the road in 91. A few years before that, I got to play Fluellen, Lord Scroop, and the Duke of Bourbon in _Henry V_, still one of my favorite plays. A few years after that, I got to play Puck against HWRNMNBSOL's Oberon at HOTT.BOB, and that is still my favorite performance of the lot of them.
2. Without playing it, it's very difficult to form an opinion, but...when they say the body style is "new thin style cutaway, two alarm bells go off. How thin is it? I've had a hard time getting good sounds out of "thin" guitars, and both the ones I am thinking of were borrowed Gibson acoustics, although I forget the model numbers. I have a single-cutaway Takamine, and while it sounds great acoustic-- full, kind of glassy, with a pronounced but not piercing high end-- when I plug it in, all the body goes out of it. I am assuming that the single-cut is making a weird resonance pattern inside the guitar, and the pickups are missing out on the whole bottom register. The first time I plugged the guitar in to record it was extremely disappointing. So one thing I would say is, if you've played it, and like it, see if your salesperson will let you plug it in and record a bit...get it on a Crate amp or something, or run a cable to a portable recorder and see how it sticks to tape.
3. "Interesting" birds, in the wild. Hmmmm. I am always fascinated by hummingbirds, just because, but no single one stands out. If we say "most interesting" as in "held my interest for the longest", the family of ducks, mama and 3 or 4 ducklings, that wandered into our cove and waddled around on the dock and rocks, swimming away from curious children, and all that, when we were at Conesus Lake 2 years ago takes the cake. We watched them (the whole clan, me, A, Nina, my folks, grandma, various neighbors) for about 2 hours every day. They rocked. If we say "interesting for it's own sake" then it has to be the brown pelican that swam by when I was out on a useless and failed whale watching trip in um, 1998 maybe? We were a good hard 2 hour cruise away from shore, and here comes dis boid, just tooling along through the waves, dodging the occasional wayward lunch (heavy seas left most of the boat looking quite green). Pelican beaks just don't look right, you know? And they clack their jaws for no good reason, but it sure looks and sounds cool.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 09:46 am (UTC)If you'd rather treat this in a lifetime/historical context (i.e. what I do is computers, and I've been doing it for ten years, and it's been several years since I had a good answer for 2), go right ahead.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 01:01 pm (UTC)1. tooling with computers, rather than working with them. I think "not working" would about sum up what I'd like to be doing.
2. investigating emigrating (and citizenship!) somewhere where the pay would be less, but the cost of living more than proportionally lesser, to take up a low-skill IT monkey job in order that I could concentrate on relaxing all the more.
3. mostly? inertia.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 01:14 pm (UTC)1. 3 different kinds of answers here:
I would be doing something more creative, probably musical in nature, where projects have defined start and end points and one can look back at a finished piece of work with a sense of accomplishment, not a checklist of improvements to implement over the next 12 months (budgets, margins, staffing requirements, profit or lack thereof, etc.).
I would be traveling more, and have fewer material possessions, aside from maybe the music gear, both studio and stereo. Those are requirements. But a library card in every state and a comfortable Winnebago? Sure!
I might, in an ideal world, be raising teenagers by now instead of an infant and a 1st grader. That answer presupposes a vastly different universe than the one we inhabit, however.
2. 1991, the year I spent doing Shakespeare semiprofessionally, comes closest. Artsy/creative, check. Fewer material possessions, check; I was mainly broke all year long, my bike got stolen while we were on the road, I sold/gave away a lot of stuff so the remainder would fit into storage, you name it. Traveling, check, we covered the entire East coast, and I think played in 4 states in 4 days at one point.
I've never really been close to raising teenagers. Hmmm, if I were raising teenagers now, that would mean...well, I guess it would depend. I can think of about 5 people who could-have-been the mother of those teenagers, depending on whether we are talking about 13 year olds now, or 15 year olds, or what. One of those possible pasts is interesting. The rest would have been disastrous :) Ideally, since we are re-writing history, I would have met my beloved at least a decade earlier than we actually met, with similar results/responses at the meeting thereof. Ah well.
3. What stopped me, hmmm. The easy answer is "I sucked". More realistically, and more kindly to the old memory, I didn't get back into the company the following year, and then the rent came due. Also, that group, with 2 or 3 exceptions, and I do NOT count myself as an exception, was populated by a bunch of immature, partially sufferable, prima-donna twentysomethings with a ridiculously high drama queen quotient, so it's not like I would hold that up as a sustainable emotional environment for, like, personal growth, or anything. Not hardly.
Based partially on that experience, and my subsequent aversion to being dead broke and very hungry all the time, plus the much-later realization that carrying any debt at all really sucks the life out of you, I haven't pushed the "creative arts = job" angle in years. I was never serious enough about trance party promotion to earn a dime, never mind make a living at it...by definition, the profitable parties were not the ones I wanted to throw OR attend. I'm dinking in the studio in a more focused way these days, but even there my goals are low key; I am talking to some companies about sound/loop design work for games and got a verbal that I sold a couple of loops last week; I want to pull together some dub tunes and pitch them to a small label, probably Waveform; if the cash register ever rings on the current company, I'd like to take my guitar chops and play out in some improvisational context. But mostly, I want to spend more time with the family. Bar hopping to play a one-hour set for 12 people is just not as compelling as getting up at 7 to spend all weekend with Calvin. Not anymore, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 10:28 am (UTC)What impression did Bush's Press Conference from a couple nights ago leave you with?
Where are you these days?
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 10:29 am (UTC)I was scared and embarrassed.
I'm back in DC.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 12:35 pm (UTC)Yes, I remember you as the guy who ran the EFF network in SF for a few years. I didn't watch nor listen to the press conference, and based on reports afterwards it is a good thing I didn't, as I might have harmed things around me, both inanimate and otherwise. I'm still in the Bay area, living in N. Berkeley with wife and two kids. As you might expect, this situation is less traditional than it sounds on paper :)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 06:18 pm (UTC)2. I need to get an acoustic-electric guitar, and I'm considering this one. What do you think?
3. What's the most interesting bird you've ever seen in the wild?
no subject
Date: 2004-04-15 09:01 pm (UTC)2. Without playing it, it's very difficult to form an opinion, but...when they say the body style is "new thin style cutaway, two alarm bells go off. How thin is it? I've had a hard time getting good sounds out of "thin" guitars, and both the ones I am thinking of were borrowed Gibson acoustics, although I forget the model numbers. I have a single-cutaway Takamine, and while it sounds great acoustic-- full, kind of glassy, with a pronounced but not piercing high end-- when I plug it in, all the body goes out of it. I am assuming that the single-cut is making a weird resonance pattern inside the guitar, and the pickups are missing out on the whole bottom register. The first time I plugged the guitar in to record it was extremely disappointing. So one thing I would say is, if you've played it, and like it, see if your salesperson will let you plug it in and record a bit...get it on a Crate amp or something, or run a cable to a portable recorder and see how it sticks to tape.
3. "Interesting" birds, in the wild. Hmmmm. I am always fascinated by hummingbirds, just because, but no single one stands out. If we say "most interesting" as in "held my interest for the longest", the family of ducks, mama and 3 or 4 ducklings, that wandered into our cove and waddled around on the dock and rocks, swimming away from curious children, and all that, when we were at Conesus Lake 2 years ago takes the cake. We watched them (the whole clan, me, A, Nina, my folks, grandma, various neighbors) for about 2 hours every day. They rocked. If we say "interesting for it's own sake" then it has to be the brown pelican that swam by when I was out on a useless and failed whale watching trip in um, 1998 maybe? We were a good hard 2 hour cruise away from shore, and here comes dis boid, just tooling along through the waves, dodging the occasional wayward lunch (heavy seas left most of the boat looking quite green). Pelican beaks just don't look right, you know? And they clack their jaws for no good reason, but it sure looks and sounds cool.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-16 05:16 am (UTC)