How to be an Artist !
You know, after about a month and a half with no work, I'm starting to see how people become artists!

When I was working, I used to worry about time a lot (how long until lunch, how close to the weekend, when's the next holiday). Now that I'm unemployed, I work from approximately 8:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. and from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. I define work as building my personal project and looking for a real job. I take naps whenever I want, play video games, and generally ignore the clock. I've got TiVo, so I never have to be awake for any show.

So this means that the days are all short, I only notice time as the passage of day to night, and I start noticing the seasons change. I find myself thinking about loftier issues, unbound by the fetters of office life. I've even started thinking of writing poetry.

So this is what it's like. Without Thoreau's life of "Quiet Desperation" I'm left with the ability to read, think, watch movies I never would have seen. I no longer think of my schedule, my workload, my task list

• Implement Bone Override in Goldy Boss's fat stomach - 75% finished.
  
• Implement Head tracking in Toni Boss - 50% finished
  

Don't get me wrong, I've still got a task list, but I tend to burn through it pretty fast, and still have time for other things. I've been crossing things off my todo list about as fast as I've been writing them. It's just that I find myself thinking about bigger things as well. I've got an idea for a short story (maybe a novel) based on a cryogenics clinic. I'm thinking about drawing a webcomic about the all the gods of the parthenon represented as slackers hanging out around a 7-11 (If only I knew how to draw).

I think the only way a person can become an artist is if he has no need or opportunity to work. If you have a trust fund, a scholarship, or no way out of the ghetto, you find yourself looking above the workforce, to a larger picture of life.

Either that, of I'm just dealing with a mid-life crisis.

- posted by BrandG @ 8:14 PM