Well, I finally am officially out of training, and am able to take calls on my own,which is very nice. My job is annoying enough, I don't need to be sitting with someone who I have nothing to say to, and who has nothing to say to me, and who obviously doesn't really want to be sitting there training me anyways.
I swear, I hate this town and most everyone in it. I know I've said that before, but seriously, I do. The most pointless dramas in Chicago were a pleasant and happy exchange in contrast to the dull disdain, the desperate clinging to ignorance, the insecure fear of anything different, that has been the norm in this town. Perhaps there are people not like this, and I have had enough fleeting pleasant exchanges and glimpses to believe that they may in fact exist, but they are few and far between and outweighed by the types that I have described.
It's not even that I'm a snob. I mean, yeah I like to talk about art and film, and I like a good old fashioned mob run Italian restaurant as much as the next person, but you certainly don't have to like these things in order to hang out with me. I'm not particlularly inclined toward homogeny.
The thing is this. I like some personality. If you're a trucker that lives in a trailer park, that's fine by me as long as you have something to contribute. Even if it's just drunken randomness, a smart assed comment, a point of view that I hadn't considered before. Just please give me something to seperate you from Joe shmoe who stands next to me in line at the post office.
And for fuck's sake, what's wrong with liking urbane things? Why is that such a damned affront? I never said you had to order a bottle of chianti in a fine restuarant, vacation in Rome and spend your time talking about Dario Argento. It's my preference. It makes me happy and I talk about it because it interests me. I never said you had to. I would never give you the odd and disdainful glances for not knowing about it that you give me for mentioning it. And when I get the response that you give me, I really have to wonder who the real snobs are here. I mean really.
Hmph.
Anyhow, on another subject...
I registered for my classes, finally. I am very excited about this and actually doing it gives me a much greater sense of direction. I'm taking the flash class which I am quite excited about, and I'm taking a photography class, a drawing class and a general graphic design pre req class.
I also, as some may have noticed, put a flash intro on this page. I am quite happy about that.
But the really exciting news: my friend Robert, who used to live in Chicago and now lives in Virginia, is getting some web design jobs through work. He wants me to help him out with some of them, especially in terms of using flash with them. I'm not sure if I know enough to be up to the task but I'll give it a shot. It's cool because it actually will give me the chance to build up my portfolio. Since these are actual professional jobs, I can actually point at something I've done as a contract job and cite it as experience. This is pretty exciting for me, especially because I'm hoping to learn enough over the next year so that when we move back to Chicago, I can actually get a design job.
I'm pretty damned convinced that we will be going back to a big city in a year. I mean, try as I might to make peace with this town, something really stupid always happens to change that, and it happens on a regular enough basis that I'm willing to just resign myself to surly discontent. But that's okay. I am comfortable with surly discontent, and at least I have Rob to hate it along with me. I mean, I am willing to allow for the possibility that it may become tolerable. I might meet some folks that I find interesting, and that are good to go out and drink with. But I can safely assume that I would never be fulfilled here, and that it is best treated as a means to an end.
We've tossed around the prospect of both Chicago and New York. We both have this whole east coast infatuation going on and I suppose if we did move there it would be a kind of full circle thing. My Dad was born there, and I'm a philly girl originally. I'm not sure though, the big argument for Chicago is that it still is more affordable than New York. (We can still get a two bedroom in a highrise downtown for under two grand a month in Chicago.) Also, we have a ton of friends in Chicago. Maybe I wasn't always the best friend I could be when I was there, maybe I got a little too anti social for my own good at times, but there's a lot of good folk and I really would enjoy the chance to be around them more. So who knows. We'll see. I just want to live in a cool apartment in a large city, with all the anonymity and the diversity and the old buildings. If I could break into a design job, all the better.
it's a good life...