Well, the first week of me being at this new job is drawing to a close. Still getting up to speed with all my new responsibilities, duties and things to remember. Sent out three emails so far and started expanding my network of contacts further. Interesting.

I’ve been reading three books simultaneously for the past week or so, but one of them finally caught my attention enough that I’m reading it exclusively. It’s called The 48 Laws of Power. It’s somewhat pandering sensationalistic writing, but it has a lot of interesting ideas on how to succeed in life and has all kinds of fascinating history lessons. Seeing what I can get out of it.

My best friend here, Tracy, took a job in Virginia so he’s going to be heading there in late May. Good for him, but that sucks ass for me since he’s my only real friend here. :(
Tomorrow I’m going to check out an apparently awesome comic book shop here with a guy I know here but haven’t hung out with before. Dea’ll come with, then we’re all going to see Dawn of the Dead, which ought to be fun.

Hmm. Well… that’s it really. Kind of a blah day.

God damn it!

For the past day or so I’ve been super-motivated to work on this model I’ve had on the backburner at home for the past three months. I’m getting hyper-motivated to work on it again, and to continue in my quest to master art, but I’m already neck-deep in books and other learning, and I don’t think I have the time to devote to mastering the two subjects at once. I wish I could clone myself and combine the knowledge my clones acquire.

So MUCH to do, and so little time to do it. I’ve probably only got another 50 to 60 years left to live, and perhaps as little as three years to do everything I’m planning right now. I wish I didn’t have to sleep, either. Ah well, working within these limits is half the challenge!

I found out the details of my new job yesterday. I’m going to be spending most mornings poring over a database of industry contacts and possible job leads and trying to get them interested in my company and get them on the phone. Should be interesting. I’ll be doing it on a probationary basis for 60 days with the goal of scheduling 15 meetings. At the end of the 60 days, if I did it, kick ass and still want to, they’ll hire me on full time to do it and I won’t be doing art for work anymore.

Interesting opportunity, to say the least. I usually don’t have any trouble rising to challenges but most of the challenge is external, so that might be a challenge.

On a more mundane note, I saw Hellboy last night and it was pretty kickass. Great special effects, characters, story, action and pacing. I’m a bit of a fan of the comic book, and I can say that Hellboy is the most faithful comic book movie adaptation I’ve seen so far. I hope this movie is a massive success and they let the director and cast make more movies! I’ve been a fan of the director since Blade 2 and knew he’d move onto bigger and better projects from here.

That’s all I have for the moment. I’m trying to get into the habit of posting more often and refining my writing ability as I go along. I used to obsessively edit forum posts and emails for half an hour to an hour at a time until they were perfect, but that’s a silly waste of time so I’m learning to get it right the first time.

Oh. I made my blog public a couple days ago. I’m not sure if that will mean increased traffic or what – I couldn’t even measure that if I wanted – but I guess it’s one step closer to putting myself out into the public. Before, only two people knew I had a blog at all. Not even Dea, my fiancee, had any idea until this week. heh

Anyway, that’s all.

Well, I found out yesterday that due to my success at GDC and my knowledge of the game industry, I’m being promoted to an Accounts Manager \ Sales Representative. Since the company I work for, Liquid Development, is an art contractor and sales are very important, this is a pretty cool deal. I’d never imagined that being a geek and learning about video games could be good for my career. haha

It looks like I’m going to be voluntarily devoting slavish amounts of time to books on sales, marketing (yay!), communication and psychology. I find it interesting that after only having been here 5 months that I’m already apparently on the management fast-track or however that goes. I’m still not sure if I’m even gong to be doing art anymore!

Six months ago, if you’d have told me I was going to be where I am now, I’d have laughed and called you crazy. And yet, here I am. How improbable, and how promising. :)

My only real concern is that if I ever go to another company and want to simply be an artist, that my quasi-managerial experience will make me appear overqualified. I suppose that’s not something I need to worry about for now, though. Right now my only concern is that I may not be learning fast enough or kicking enough ass.

I’m REALLY excited about finally being in a position where my mind will be fully engaged! I’ve been on such a reading kick lately that I’ve actually been passing up drinking in favor of reading. Now, I enjoy my alkymahol, but reading is my lifeblood.

In the past, I’ve only felt productive when I’m working on something artistic. I’ve always been driven to feel productive to the point that I feel a little guilty when I’m doing something else. Lately, though, I’ve made a transition so that I only really feel like I’m making progress if I’m reading a book and learning something new.

That’s been a strange adjustment because I’ve always resisted forms of work or effort that don’t show tangible results. Even in school, I HATED studying because I felt like it was wasting time since I wasn’t writing out the answers and actually finishing my work. I’m not sure what changed in me, but I think I like it.

It seems that every time I’m about to make a change in my life – a mental or attitude change – my mind automatically and seamlessly makes the transition with little or no effort. If I’m not ready to do something, it’s a massive struggle, but when I finally am, it’s simple. It’s odd, as if there was some sort of set pattern in my life unlocking new features as I progress.

It was like that when I learned to walk, and then when I learned to speak, then when I started texturing, then when I moved out on my own, and now again when my brain feels like it’s ready to absorb information as fast as my mind can process it. I’ve never understood how or why that happens, but it seems that there’s fuck-all I can do about it, so I may as well get used to it. ;)

Funny thing of the day: I’m paying my parents back gradually for old cel phone bills and such, and in the first check I sent to my mom, who’s a fanatic Christian psycho, in the Memo field I wrote the check as being for “Greased Spikes and Suckling Pigs for SATAN WORSHIP.” She emailed me back saying how hurt she was that I would do that and how it was disturbing that I thought that was funny and all that. I think it’s funny that she didn’t realize that her response made it THAT much funnier. :)

That’s all for now.