So far this summer I have lived two pretty radically opposite lifestyles.
First there was the cross country circus tour…
Our school bus was not only converted to run on veggie oil, but the inside was gutted and replaced with futon beds and storage. Every day was different from the next. With the exception of the five days we spent getting our feet off the ground at Jacob’s house in Boston, we were never in a place for more than two or three days tops.
Constantly traveling, never knowing when we would be able to shower next, where we would find a bathroom next, when we would be able to cook meals… Whenever we did cook it was a tricky ordeal, cooking for 11 people on two coleman stoves is not easy. A number of times we drove through the night, jamming all of us on the four or five beds (depending on if the food table was clean) built into the bus.
Collecting and filtering grease was a pretty ridiculous endeavor. And then of course, there was the circus aspect – performing in parks, on makeshift stages, community centers, night clubs – each time performing a different version of our ever-evolving show. We met many amazing and interesting people, and saw some pretty incredible areas of the country. It was all quite a whirlwind.
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Now, I’m working full time doing motion graphics for a documentary film about a feminist art collective, the Heretics. I wake up at 7 am everyday, have a nice breakfast of granola and coffee while I read the Seattle P-I online, then bike 10 miles to work… spend six hours working on, like, five or six seconds of animation, then bike 10 miles home. Biking is both my reward and punishment for sitting in front of the computer all day. When I get home I can relax (!?), make dinner, read, watch movies, do art projects, and hang out with my housemates.
It’s so weird for me to only have one thing I need to focus on. I’m so used to multi-tasking to the extreme, having at least a dozen different projects, meetings, jobs to do all at once. My boss is a Hampshire professor, so it feels sort of like having a full time one-on-one animation class. Except I’m getting paid. And, Joan doesn’t know anything about how to do animation, she just has a vague idea of what she wants things to look like.
How did a 21-year-old girl, still in school, get a job doing special effects on a feature film, having no prior experience, or even training? I’m basically incredibly lucky. Last summer I did a internship there two days a week, and randomly did one little animation. They loved it, and I kept working through the school year once every week or two, and now I’m back full time. I already know After Effects a thousand times better than I did last week, and I’m learning more about it every day.
I’m not sure which of these lifestyles I prefer. I mean, they’re both pretty much all I could ever hope for…
-Molly
p.s. If you are an unfortunate troglodyte who has not yet seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, stop what you are doing, close the ten other firefox windows you have open, and watch it right now. It’s probably going to change your life.
