Trips and traps

I don't know why, but lately as I've been sitting down to write for this blog, every idea I've had for a posting flies right out of my head. I guess I should start jotting down notes when they occur to me. I've been feeling generally restless lately, what with the trip home coming up in a few weeks. I'm starting to anticipate the 18-hour drive home, which I've never made from Austin since I just moved down in May. I've flown home once since then, but this will be the first time I have no chance of making the trip in one day, like I was sometimes able to from Dallas.

I bought a sketch pad last week, the first I've had since I was a child. My sister is very talented at drawing, but I never really considered myself good at it. Lately, I've been reconsidering that, in light of a drawing I did at my roommate's urging. It's no masterpiece, but it's actually pretty decent, and it makes me want to try harder. I'm going through another period of "What do I really want to do?" at the moment, and despite all I've learned in video over the last half a year or more, I wish I'd found some kind of job immediately after the move. I feel like I'm losing time I could be using.

I think of all the people who've won the lottery and gone from poor to rich overnight, and I realize I've been wishing that would happen to me. I remember reading a study that concluded lottery-winners who were happy before winning continued to be happy, and those who weren't continued to be unhappy. The money didn't change a thing. And I'm happy right now, watching movies, getting up when I feel like it, traveling around, meeting new people, but I'm not satisfied (and the money won't last). When I see a movie like Gosford Park, in a way I wouldn't have recognized five years ago, I feel like I understand what it would be like to be born into wealth, and I can see why so many people in that position turn to drinking or drugs or whatever: for amusement. They don't feel the need to contribute anything, because their parents (or their parents) did it for them. I, on the other hand, want to make something that other people will respond to. I'm finding that my problem is, when I have limitless time to pursue my own interests, it's infinitely harder to focus on one thing to work on.

I remember when I wrote my first screenplay. I was working 40 hours a week over the summer between school years at college, and I would get home from work, go upstairs for three or four hours, and write on an old word processor. I finished the first draft in two weeks. The more I think about it, the more it seems working in accounting wasn't the reason I did so little writing in Dallas. It was the comfort. I need to get a job.