timBoucher » Short Life Update, Sept. 17, 2008

While I have a few minutes: after being mostly unemployed for the past few weeks, I suddenly find myself with three part time jobs. Which is great, as I’ve been trying to keep up my momentum from being really busy and working really hard all summer.

Speaking of the summer, one of my jobs is actually going to be doing some theatrical carpentry work for a small but fairly well established theatre in town, with the word “Everyman” in it’s title - which seems only fitting for a variety of reasons. Though I interviewed also at the Maryland Zoo to work as a petting zoo and barnyard attendant, I haven’t heard anything back. So I’m sticking with my current part-timer at a natural pet food store in my neighborhood, and I’ll be starting soon at a nice wine/beer/liquor store in my neighborhood as well. If I’m feeling really ridiculous, maybe I’ll try and pile a fourth part time job on top of that and do some kind of 80-hr a week immigrant-style labor. Just seems like the time for me right now to do a bunch of work and pay down some debts and basically just hone and focus on the creative work I’m doing.

Speaking of creative work I’m doing, I’ve commenced work on a full-length graphic novel with a good friend of mine from way back in my art school days. It’s going to be a near-futuristic sci-fi world not dissimilar to dreams I’ve been having about such things for years. I figure I have all this material, so it only makes sense to explore it with some nice visually-driven fiction. Have also been writing some more songs since I got back from Cape Cod. I’ll try to post lyrics for them, though I don’t have any demos or anything done for them. I’m excited about these songs because they feel, to me, more lyrically and melodically complex than what I was doing before. I feel like I’ve maybe graduated to the next level of song-writing, and want to be able to do the same thing with performing as well. I have very loose tentative plans in my head to start a rock band - I even have a name picked out. I think I’m sort of mentally modeling this chapter of my life on that line in the Bob Seeger song “Night Moves” where he says: “workin and practicin.”

One of the banks I use for a credit card and checking account, Washington Mutual, is failing. I’m really excited about this; I feel somehow special. I realize I’ll still have to pay my money back to *somebody*, but I have to say that banks are so constantly fucking over everybody else, that its high time they reap what they sow. Not that the people at the top ever really suffer in situations like this: it always gets shunted off to low-level employees who probably don’t deserve it and are nice people. But whatever. Point of the story is, I’m trying to make sure I have more cash on hand these days, and I’m feeling like it’s going to become more and more important if the economy keeps spiraling downward to have strong local contacts among especially merchants: who have access to money and the ability to hire people they know they can trust.

Not that that’s really why I’m getting all these jobs. I just feel like working. I’ve sat around on my ass long enough. At least for a while…