I have been quite busy doing this and that. “This” being slowly painting the entire house, starting with the two sheds in the backyard, fence, neighbors garage. I still have to paint the actual outside of the house. “That” being investing a lot of my time into making ThirstMax an operational business that makes money! I am a partner to my father in his business — and his invention is that of ThirstMax. It has been going on too long and not moving forwards, and he has recruited my help to get the ball rolling. It has been a very humbling experience, and I am learning a great deal. It is no easy task to start a company and I need all the help and support I can get! So, if you’re in the support giving mood, give us a hoot on Twitter or Facebook and sign up for our newsletter. Who knows, you might want to buy (gasp) one! Although the Facebook page is still in production, it is getting pretty close to the real thing. I have had to brush up on my HTML (painful, *shudders*) and am learning new snippets of information everyday! GO ME!
The next big project of mine is to upgrade the site my Dad made into a fully functional WordPress static sales page and separate blog. All working with our current e-mailer, MailChimp (which I love dearly so far). WordPress has such a rich variety of widgets and plugins, so I am naturally very geekily excited, droll running down my chops. It will be a lot of work tweaking whatever theme we choose to fit the color and design scheme we have in mind. But this venture will make our business much more scalable and easier to maintain and upgrade when the time comes.
In other news, I have set some personal goals. Keeping it simple, there are only two: Lose 30 pounds and move out of my parents’ house both by December 31, 2010. I feel like these are the only two things that are restricting my creativity and general wellbeing. Beyond the obvious health reasons, I think that if I can conquer my weight problem I can do anything, period. It has been a very difficult struggle ever since I injured my knee back in my senior year of high school (funny how I still use this excuse for my uncontrolled eating binges). Since then, I have been exercising less and less — besides a short stint in college (where I got pretty slim and muscular). For the last few months I have been exercising with Angie (running, gymming, and plyometrics) and am feeling great. The next hard part is my diet — I love eating too much and need to cut out my late-night dining.
As for moving out, it’s more complicated. I love my parents to death, but I simply can’t live here anymore, nor do I want to. At UC Santa Cruz I absolutely loved the freedoms that accompany moving out of the ‘nest’. I had the best times of my life at school and I perform at life better when not restricted by the confines of my parents. I guess it is just the essence of freedom that puts my mind at ease; isn’t it like that for everyone? But, alas, finding steady work has been very difficult for me. I like to point blame at the downturn of the economy right as I graduated, but here, too are convenient excuses. I may as well get it off my chest, I have been lazy, and highly unproductive in the last year and a half. If I explore this deeper, it is really my innate fear of failure. Well, I am still investigating the reasons why I haven’t performed to my potential, and it isn’t to say that I have been entirely unemployed. My income has been quite sporadic, as I dipped my feet into different industries where I am out of my comfort zone. I did handy work with a guy for a while, I did production assistance for a while (which was great, but my producer was let go from his company), I painted my friend’s Mom’s entire house (I’m currently painting my parents’ house), I joined a terrible internship at a production company (which no longer exists, HAH – ugh, what a nightmare, I feel scammed of my time and resources), I worked and continue to work as a road tech for a dance company (can’t wait for the next season to start!). I have been all over the place and the ride has not been boring at that. As much fun as rides and roller coasters are, they always come to an end; now is my time to head towards to exit where my backpack waits for me. So, looking back at this paragraph, through my investigation of my last couple of years in LA, it has been as great as it has been terrible. I wasn’t lazy per se, as much as I was scared.
Scared of failure?; maybe. Scared of what exactly?; I’m unsure. I think it has to do with fear of what my parents thing of me. This has always been one of my biggest misunderstandings of my parents growing up (and yet still). They always reassure me that they will love me no matter what (and they have, so far…*smirk*), but I know this isn’t entirely true — or is it? Don’t parents always want what’s best for their children. I have always gone against what my parents tell me, then after college I stopped challenging as much. Why did I do this? University life had always made me question things, but accept them for what they are. Maybe it softened me…
I’ll end here, I think this last paragraph is an entirely different entry for a later time.
