it's another grueling day shooing birds out of the shop and applying layer after layer of fussy latex paint to things. Signs, mostly. Since that's my JORB.

signmaking can be a thankless thing. You spend hours and hours on a project seeking pleasing aesthetics and inviting imagery, carving, sanding, priming, painting, and at the end of it all it's the architectural equivalent of a baseball cap; not wholly necessary but the icing on the cake. Of course you could say that a business, residence, or location without a sign goes nameless, but really what i do is just identify places with some degree of elegance.

but a lot of jobs are like that; hours and hours spent on something that's ultimately just a smaller part of the whole. look at animators, for instance. Even their greatest achievements are looked at by some who say, "Well, I mean, they're just cartoons. They're not curing cancer."

You out there who are finding ways to cure cancer, you had better have your proverbial shit together, because you've raised the bar hellaciously high for the rest of us. Brain surgeons and rocket scientists, too, you pricks. Thanks for wrecking our lives with your humanity-progressing pursuits.

There are more than a few disadvantages of my day job, one of the biggest being the all-consuming solitude. Typically, one's circle of acquiantances or even their social life can be directed by the coworkers they find themselves with. I'm really not much of an outgoing person, and more of a social sponge, where i make friends depending on the environment i'm in rather than out of principle. And when the great barrier reef of life flows empty, well, there ya go.

On the other hand, it's quite a work environment to have at one's command...all kinds of tools and machinery, chemicals and paints, and as the boss himself has said, "enough rope to hang myself with" (God, that sounds dark in this context) Not many people get the chance to commandeer their own workspace, abuse it, own it, and occassionally shriek show tunes for hours at a time amidst the cacophony of machines and pneumatic devices.

it's not a forever endeavour, this gig, but like anything else it has its ups and its downs.

it's gonna be another friday in front of the wacom tablet, striving to get some content up and out, so boo-hoo. My day did have a sparkling highlight; a heart-wrenchingly gorgeous girl at the drive-thru with a smile that's been stuck in my head for the better part of the day now...she can't possibly have any idea that it stuck with me, but for some reason my day's been better because of it.

And if you think that's pathetic, screw you

ja, mata