I think I did myself a lot of good when I got a lot of my VFS bitterness out in yesterday’s blog entry. I had been holding on to that shit for a long time and it felt good to let loose on just  how much being betrayed like that hurt me and how unfair it was that after all I had been through, I got crushed like that.

One thing I forgot to mention : it’s true that in general, people do not absolutely need introductions and recommendations in order to get jobs in television. There’s freelancing, and contests, and all that kind of thing.

But I am not most people. With my massive social anxiety issues, I desperately needed someone to open doors for me. Cold calling people was not in the cards for me. Neither was pounding the pavement in order to pound on doors. I am too fragile for that. I was really, really counting on at least one of my teachers being willing to recommend me somewhere so that I would have a foot in the door and a role to fill and thus be able to get over my social anxiety and make a good impression on people.

So when I was told that would not be happening, that was it for me. End of the line.

But it was the sort of thing that hurts me so bad that it doesn’t even register right away. That’s because I pushed it down into the deepest parts of my mind and then stomped on it a few times for good measure.

Where, of course, it rotted into the fetid morass of vileness that is my current mental state. Like any untreated internal injury, it bled out slowly inside me and poisoned me over time without my being conscious of it.

And now that I have forced the pain of it to the surface, I hope I can deal with it and get some serious healing done.

In light of what was done to me, it’s pretty amazing that I had the strength and optimism needed to land the Daily Uno gig, let alone write an episode every weekday for 18 weeks in a row.

But then I fucked up that gig, and then fucked up again by not immediately getting another, and then Skyrim happened, and I fell off the face of the Earth for a while.

To be honest, I have only recently returned to it.

My three jobs are all in limbo of a sort. The text story writing gig is still ongoing. I wish I had the self-discipline to just push out story after story. I know I have the talent and I know I have the capacity.

But instead I end up doing my same dumb shit for hours. Playing video games. eading. Masturbating. Hanging with the fuzzies. Scrolling through Facebook. Renegotiating intergalatic porn rights. Naps.

Lots of naps.

It’s not what I want to be doing with my life but it’s what I can’t seem to stop myself from doing with my life. It sucks but it is familiar and reliable and that means a lot to someone as emotionally unstable and messed up as myself.

That’s how depression makes people into hollowed out addicts. Every one of us.

Anyhow, so the text story gig is ongoing. But the other two aren’t going anywhere at the moment. The $6 article writing gig is stalled out. The lady who is my handler said she was going to toss me another gig soon but that was ages ago.

Honestly, I am pretty sure I fucked that gig up permanently. I completely forgot to tell my handler that I was going away for Vcon, so over the weekend she assigned me a story, then was like “Hello? Are you ever going to do that thing I sent you?” and then had to assign it to someone else.

Yikes. And that very close on the heels of having to bail on an assignment essentially because I just couldn’t brain that day, and her having to find someone else to do it.

In the two hours before it was due.

So yeah, probably fucked that up. Oh well, it was hardly a dream gig.

And the text companion thing seems to have stalled out too. The new ads went out on Thursday, and we companions assumed there would be work waiting for us then, but the woman running it seems to have disappeared from the face of the Earth and so we’re all left milling about and wondering WTF is going on.

I am pretty nervous about one thing : it’s an hourly gig, which means that I am expected to keep track of how many hours I work in some fashion and I don’t know how to do that. I haven’t the slightest clue.

All my other UpWork work has been on a flat fee basis. And that’s how I like it. When it’s a flat fee, I can look at a gig and compare payment to labour and make my decision.

Hourly rates are a lot more…. squishy.

But I am sure I can work it out. Others do. So I have hopes for that gig.

And I might go beat the bushes for something else. I got an offer to interview for a gig making a music video for a comedy song, and I could have one hell of a lot of fun putting together something like that.

Plus I haven’t used my video editing powers in aaaaaages.

And I would be making a MUSIC VIDEO. For a former 80’s kid, that’s like the ultimate expression of the visual storytelling medium.

Music videos played a very big part of my life at one point, especially as a teen. Making one could be a strange kind of homecoming for me.

It doesn’t pay much, but whatev. I am not primarily interested in the money at this pointm I just want to show the world how talented and amazing I am.

The big paychecks can come later.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,