Hello from the 9 to 5
Hello everyone. I feel like I always take such a long time in between posts and videos that I feel like I always need to reintroduce myself whenever I show back up on my blog or YouTube channel so I’m just gonna go with it. Once again, I’m Nicholas and this is my personal blog but I have a bunch of other channels and blogs that I slowly add to as time goes on (I should really just make a website to tie everything together one day).
Anyway, it has been over half a year since I had last written anything on here and I want to get back into the habit of doing so, especially with my current job. I created this very blog for the sake of getting myself to shut up and start blogging again every week and that was when I held a job that was for lack of a better term, “sucking me dry”. So I am happy to report, here I am, new job, new apartment, new city, and a lot more energy flowing through my veins. And all I needed was an office job.
I think a lot about how movies like Office Space or 500 Days of Summer are centered around guys who absolutely loathe their steady 9-5 with salary and benefits. But now that I’m working a 9-5 office job after years in the retail and customer service industry I can’t help but feel like this is exactly what I needed (at least for right now). I’m not saying a 9-5 office job is for everyone but as someone who likes to have a work/life balance, I feel like I have the luxury of having that now that I know I’m in and out at the same time every single day and don’t have to schedule making videos or writing blog posts between “Clopening” at a grocery store.
Anyway, that’s enough about my new job. Now that I’m settled into my new apartment with my girlfriend and I’m getting used to my routine every week, I want to start showing back up on my blog and YouTube channel but not in the sense where I make something and then disappear for a couple months. I made a video about moving into my new apartment about 3 months ago and I haven’t made anything since then but that’s also because I’ve been too busy catching up on Sleeping Dogs, Stranglehold, and Max Payne 3. I also finally finished my copy of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams and enjoyed the newest season of Doctor Who quite a bit (although I don’t know what the hell they thought they were doing with that season finale).
I have a lot I want to talk about and bring to my various channels and blogs but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t doing my usual routine of overthinking the whole process. Before, I was in the mindset of “I’ll create more when I get a new job and move out” but now that I’ve accomplished that, I haven’t actively been working on anything. And there’s no shame in that but there is so much I want to talk about and present on here and on my YouTube but I’m just overthinking the idea of sitting at my desk and setting aside time to be creative.
Austin Kleon wrote in Steal Like an Artist, “Don’t wait until you know who you are before you get started” and that has got to be my biggest weakness when it comes to trying to put out anything creative. But by sitting and trying to get into the habit of presenting myself despite all anxieties, I feel like I’m heading in the right direction.
Recently, I started studying up on more movies and becoming fascinated with John Woo’s Hong Kong films like The Killer and Hard-Boiled. I remember in college, I had this one course that went from 6 to 9 pm every Tuesday and it was a course that I skipped a handful of times- but anyway, if there’s anything that course has given me, it was the professor planting the John Woo seed in my head before graduating off into the world.
He showed the opening scene of John Woo’s The Killer and it kind of stuck with me, a dude who doesn’t really gravitate towards big gun-heavy action movies, at least the ones produced by Hollywood. But the opening scene left the biggest impression on me and I actually didn’t see the movie all the way through until last night. And so yeah, that’s my life right now: Watching John Woo, catching up on Xbox 360 games, and figuring out how the hell to make a YouTube video again.
