Filed by Bil at 10:19 am under Shameless Plugs, The Arts, The Media

Nothing flavors a meal quite like your waitress delivering your food to your table, checking to see if you need anything else, then making a beeline for the bathroom while muttering a little too loudly to herself that she’s going to weigh three pounds less by the time she comes out of there.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Start the year right for us, Little Dragon:

I’m not really in any kind of mood to reflect on the past year, let alone the past decade. I’m past reflection now. But I do recognize that this is a milestone year of sorts. I’m moving forward with my eyes on the near future, and because of the milestone year, I have a renewed energy for life, and I know with far more clarity than ever before what it is that I want to do.

Ten years ago, I was young and aimless. Now I’m older and wiser, but I don’t have the imaginary freedom that I had back then. (In the idiom that nobody is 100% free, so it follows that nobody is 100% NOT free.) This is okay, because it opens my eyes to what I can and cannot do with my limited efforts and increased outside responsibilities, and I can make plans for futures both near and far. More so than ten years ago, I am confident I can handle what life throws at me, because I’ve been thrown plenty and I’m still here.

I’m renewing my contract with myself to abandon the “day job” life by 2016.

Here it is: I want to be a professional actor and writer.

That’s how I will do it. Probably the most important thing I’ve learned in the last decade is that you can’t fight Capitalism unless you devote your entire life to it. I sort of hate money and the concept of it, but I don’t hate it nearly enough to devote my life to it. There are things that I love that I will devote my life to instead. I will henceforth be making a solid effort to transition from necessary day job to a sustainable career in arts & literature. I won’t really get into any details right now, because that’s boring, but believe me when I say I am getting to be very detail-oriented about future plans for myself.

I will, however, bore you with some comments on something I find interesting and may be writing about more in the near future. (This post is all about the future, after all, and not the past.)

I’m intrigued by social media and the realities of new journalism. I’ve written on this blog about it before (see “Websites are the future”). There are several interesting articles out there on the future of journalism and so on, which can be Googled quite easily. I’m no journalist, and I have no background in it, but “The Media” is a phrase used to define a major part of our modern civilization, which has been undergoing a massive transformation in the last decade. I probably have nothing new to contribute regarding the change in media itself, but since journalists themselves will continue to be people, I am embarking on a continuing mission to seek out new life and new civilization to talk to the up and coming journalists, those fresh out of college, those with a firm grasp on the new technology but who are not yet established journalists. It’s a weird and windy road for these young men and women. Look for more on this in the coming months.

As for my immediate future and my artistic ambitions which will be helping me shift from first gear into second: Dream Theatre is producing a play I wrote called “Aelita” (see below), alongside another play written by a very talented playwright (see below), and I am super thrilled about it. This marks the first time somebody besides me produced a play that I wrote for a full run. There’s a lot of my own philosophy in the play, and my ultimate hope is that people see it and start talking. Now that it’s close enough to actual production – opening night is less than a month away – I can just start saying, “I can’t explain it, just go see it.” It is a serious pain in the ass to answer the question people always ask me: “What’s it about?”

Since I’m not directly involved in the production, I have free time to a) start and finish more major writing projects (don’t worry, I’m way ahead of you on that one) and b) to give Tip Your Waiter Productions some extra love and attention. I’m looking ahead. I’m looking forward. And what’s in front of me? I won’t tell you yet…I’ll tell you when they get here.

Onward! To the new year, the new decade, and the new mischief!

Coming up:

Dream Theatre Company’s website

Play us off, Grizzly Bear: