My brain tonight is bouncing from one piece of media to another, in part due to the recent infusion of Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volumes I and II. I missed the first one in the theater, so I rented it this week as background noise during the workathon, then caught the sequel with Nick Ferraro in the movie theater under Union Station on Friday night.
In the same way that Kill Bill cut from black and white to color, from widescreen to square screen, from live action to anime, my mind is leaping around like a Brazilian tree frog on cocaine.
Tonight, I went to a birthday party for my old friend Hillary Tisdale, where I got to hang out with Hill and her family and David Seitzinger, who has been out of town for way too long. A wonderful time was had swapping war stories and catching up, and playing a couple rounds of video games afterward. Thanks, H & K & D, for a great evening. I wish I could have seen Phoebe.
This week I broke off a friendship with someone that I used to be very, very close to, but who has since become less than a stellar friend. It’s strange, because while we have grown apart to some degree, I always felt that the connection between us at the base, at the core, was still strong. She was someone I felt I could count on, but in the last eighteen months (since the bad times that went down last January), she just hasn’t been around. In fact, she sort of turned her back on me when I was having trouble. Since all that noise went down, I’ve lost three friends, all of whom are sort of the same “type” of women. That really makes me sad. The first one that left was a girlfriend. The second one was a friend from college, and third was a friend from my year spent abroad. All three are very driven people, people who I respect a great deal, and were people with whom I thought I shared real bonds. I was wrong on all three fronts. That’s got me a little blue. Tomorrow I’ll take her picture down out of the frame on my wall.
This week I have had very high days and very low days. The very high points came after meeting with clients and feeling like we were doing great things to change the world, and on days where I got to speak with old friends and relax in the company of my social family. The low points came also after client interactions that were excruciatingly frustrating and confusing, and interacting with people who have coldly extracted themselves from that family.
It’s been both a very long week, and a very fast one. I rolled out three projects (The Virtual Book Tour, Stephanie Aaron Voiceover, and Barbara Figgins Voiceover), did a huge amount of hammering on three or four more. I’m standing on the precipice of being able to completely fiscally separate myself from the previous fiscal year, my first totally-freelance year. I’m getting ready to move to Chicago around the middle of next month. I’m laying the groundwork for some new clients out that way, and already making plans to hang out with some old friends and family. I’m considering taking an extended road trip late this week to take care of business. I’ve restarted my exercise program in earnest, and done something like 70 miles on the exercise bike this week. I should have a decent-sized number of client things up and running this week as well, knock on wood. Business is going well, and is also threatening to kill me.
It’s 1 o’clock in the morning here in Washington, D.C. My dad had his fifty-seventh birthday this week. I am twenty-six years old, and it feels like I’m a hundred and ten.
Miles to go before I sleep.