these things find you, part 2

Some things regarding my Hoboken adventure that I forgot to mention. Prior to Saturday, I had no idea where Hoboken was, so my mom lent me her TomTom. I had never used it before, so I didn't know what to expect. On the drive there, it quickly endeared itself to me as the best little device ever invented. I put myself totally in the little bugger's hands, not having any idea where I was going. She (it speaks with a feminine voice, you see) guided me exactly where I wanted to go, telling me when to turn and which side of the road the exits were on. Fucking brilliant. On the way back, while driving through Manhattan, she did have a little bit of a rough time getting me back to the tunnel, but I'll forgive her that.

I cannot extol the virtues of this little thing enough. It gave me an unexpected sense of complete freedom: I could go anywhere, whenever I wanted, without preparation, just by hopping in the car and plugging in my destination. Fucking nuts. I was watching Back to the Future Part 2 the other week and was lamenting the fact that the 2015 future world in the movie is a far cry from where we'll be eight years from now. But the little TomTom restored my enthusiasm for the future.

(Getting a little carried away with the poetry, I know.)

The other thing: at the festival, I picked up a flyer for a short movie because I recognized one of the names. A Walk in the Park was DP'd by Josh Silfen, one of my counselors at The New York Film Academy which was a summer filmmaking program I did when I was 16. The short wasn't playing that day at the festival but I went home and found his personal website, which also led me to the site of another one of my counselors that summer, Ishai Setton. Turns out they did a feature recently called The Big Bad Swim, and it's been getting some attention on the festival circuit. Made me want to try and get in contact with those guys.

bicycle thief (Josh talks to God)

A couple days ago after suffering through slogs (?) of Long Island traffic, I decided that from now on I am going to ride my bike to places in town. I filled my tires with air yesterday and went for the first bike ride in a long-ass time, and believe me, I felt it.

So, of course, it's motherfucking pouring fuck-you raining today. And according to weather.com, it's supposed to be raining for weeks. Weeks. I mean come on.

Well. This gives me an excuse to stay in today to watch last night's Regenesis and The Sopranos.

I just enjoyed my first cigarette of the day out in the rain and got some great ideas for this project I started to work on. Nothing like a little nicotine-fix to get those synapses hopping...

these things find you

Had an interesting weekend. My buddy Jon has been a freelance cameraman since he made the move back from Binghamton to LI, and Saturday, he needed an assistant for a shoot at a film festival. Specifically, the Hoboken International Film Festival. I had never been to Hoboken before and was surprised to discover how close it is to Manhattan. As in just through the Holland Tunnel and bam--Hoboken.

Anyway, though it was a small festival and I thought most of the offerings were crap (sorry, it's truth), I had a great time. More importantly, I felt 'connected', like I was actually doing something. It felt good to be in and around New York again. It really jazzed me and gave me energy and hope for the future, as cliched as that sounds. So thanks to Jon for that. I took some pictures on my camera phone to post but I'm having some driver issues with my computer (no Bluetooth yet for this kid).

Before that gig materialized I was going to write a post about keeping busy. You see, I made a conscious decision to build in some downtime between graduation and 'work' (whatever that may be). I wanted some time with no responsibilities or expectations where I can just be a guy in a world for a while. Clear my head, regroup, etcetera. I have things I want to write and movies I want to make. But I was afraid that the trauma of transition back home might get to me if I didn't have anything to keep me occupied. So far, however, everything has been smooth sailing. There's lots to do and lots keeping me stimulated. There is still an aura of weirdness around everything, and I don't think it's fully sunk in yet that I'm not going back to Binghamton.

So, in short, this story isn't over.

To-Do

One of my favorite websites that I get a lot of mileage out of is Lifehacker. Check it out if you're not already a regular visitor. I swear to god, it's things like Lifehacker that give my generation a leg up on my parents'.

Anyway, I stumbled across a service they recommended called Workhack. It's a very simple writeboard to-do list, with none of the frills common to web 2.0/GTD apps and services. But it's all I need and want. I set it as my start page in Firefox and I have a feeling it's going to be very useful in getting my life together, now that I'm home for the foreseeable future...

You can use it to prioritize certain items through color and text size. For example:

Write resume
Take old clothes to clothes drop
Guitar lessons...?

Something like that. All three of those items are on my list, by the by.