For the first time in a long time, I feel pretty good about my life. That’s not to say that I walk around depressed all day, it’s just that I’ve been feeling stagnant. Everything was becoming routine. I’d wake up, go to work, come home, do whatever, then sleep. The worst part of that formula is that the “work” part was the biggest element. For a creative person like me, it’s not enough to live for my day job. I’m sure there are people out there who don’t mind the daily grind. Perhaps they consider themselves lucky just to have a job - and that’s fine - but I guess I just want something more.

Maybe it’s because I’m narcissistic - or maybe I just didn’t get enough attention as a child - but I love affecting people in a positive way. Positive. (Really. I mean that.) Even when I have the occasion to put an arrogant person in his or her place, it doesn’t give me the same kind of satisfaction that doing a good does, let’s say. I think drawing emotion or deep thought out of people is a positive effect, and that’s what I try to do with my writing.

Anyway, all this is neither here nor there. The reason I’m feeling so good is because I’m back on track, taking steps to further my creative life. And I mean going beyond writing the odd restaurant review. My screenplay is on its way to that mysterious reader I mentioned earlier. The production crew for my short is coming together. And there’s a writer position with a video game company that I love for which I sent my résumé. And it’s not that I’m unhappy with my current job; it’s just not what I want to do for the rest of my life.

Well, short and sweet tonight folks. I just felt like sharing.

I hate to harp on this, but I’m not doing a very good job at blogging. And now, I can’t even blame work, since there really isn’t that much to do - comparatively anyway. The fact of the matter is, I just haven’t been inspired to write. Before, I was living hand-to-mouth, spending my paychecks on living expenses almost as soon as I got paid. Ever since Christmas money and tax refunds have rolled in, I’ve been able to get a little ahead and have some petty cash left over for needless expenses like graphics and sound cards from my PC. It’s got me going through this gaming kick and now I’ve gotten myself a little obsessed. Unfortunately, getting back into PC gaming has more drawbacks than time constraints. I’m also being reminded of all the bugginess and hardware incompatibilities I used to have to deal with. What I especially love is how everything is incompatible with Windows Vista! If you have a Sound Blaster Audigy card on you XP rig, you will be charmed and delighted to find that your 5.1 will break on Vista. You’ll have to set your output to 2.1 or you’ll be missing some channels. It’s really weird. You could, of course, upgrade to an X-fi card - like I did - to restore your surround sound.

What really gets to me is that I upgraded to Vista to play one game in particular: Bioshock. I come to find out that Bioshock (BS) crashes to BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) every five minutes on Vista. Sadly, you need Vista to run any game in DirectX 10, which has all the new bells and whistles that we game enthusiasts crave. When I contacted 2K Games about a possible solution, their tech guy advised that I run the game in DirectX 9, totally defeating the purpose of making the game for DirectX 10 and me upgrading. So let’s see, I’ve spent:

• $200 for Vista Ultimate to run DirectX 10
• $250 for 8800 GT video card to play in DirectX 10
• $150 for X-fi sound card to restore my 5.1 in Vista
• $40 for Bioshock

And now I can’t even play the freaking game, because the crashing is so aggravating - even in DirectX 9. I think this is God’s way of telling me I need to focus my time on something more productive.

With that said, a cousin of mine and I have been talking about producing a short film. I can’t discuss the concept yet, but it’s on the funny side. We met with a possible director and I thought the meet went pretty well, but we’re still open to bringing other people on board. Once my cousin gets back from Japan, we’ll have a sitdown with my other director buddy and see how everything jells.

In other news, I recently found out that my friend, The Mormon, works with someone at his restaurant with industry ties. I’ll keep the guy’s identity on the QT for now, but the important part of this story is that he’s willing to read my screenplay and see what he can do with it. This just goes to show that you never know who knows who, so network with everyone. When you’re starting out, there’s less room to be picky with your friends when your writing career is concerned.

More soon.

(Entry redacted for career reasons. If you know me, gimme a call and I’ll give you the scoop.)

Man, I need to be more punctual with these things.

After much heartfelt consideration, I’ve decided against blogging about work in earnest. Yes, I have work stories that will charm and delight you with all of the insanity that I’ve been through lately, but the telling would lose its edge without sharing my disappoints - which typically requires that I bash certain coworkers. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and I’ll save those tales for my personal blog - whenever that gets off the ground.

Tonight (in just a few hours, actually) I have another restaurant review to get to. Speaking of which, I think the hubbub regarding Dr. Godt has all blown over. I think all of the people he CC’d on his email to me use Yahoo! mail, because for a while there, I was seeing a lot of referring links from mail.yahoo.com. I was expecting a flurry of flames from the entire Godt clan, but they read silently instead, shrugged their shoulders and moved on. As far as I can tell, what had happened was that Dr. Godt ate at Spaggi’s on January 24, enjoyed his time there so much (he’s treated like family, after all) that he felt compelled to write his own review. Afterwards, he Google’d for other reviews and found mine. And you know the rest.

Well, now that things are slowing down at work and I find that my tax refunds are coming in, I’ve invested some time and money in my computer to play those games that I’ve been neglecting. Strangely, I don’t feel compelled to play marathon sessions like I used to just a few years ago. Man, I used to just let everything else in my life go to Hell so I could stay home and play video games for 14 hours straight. Now they’re only fulfilling for the length of your average movie. I don’t know if that’s because I’m outgrowing games or I have more interesting things to do with my life or if it’s because of all the damn bugs that are crashing my system! Whatever the reason, gaming isn’t as much of a driving force for me anymore. Still that doesn’t stop me from shelling out half a grand for the latest graphics card.

If you’re going to do something, even casually, do it well.

January Movie Reviews

• Hitman
• Balls of Fury
• The Sentinel

January Restaurant Reviews

• Spaggi’s
• Tutti Mangia

Look for this next restaurant review soon.