And so goes by another year without a blog post. Hooray!
One of the reason's I do these 'state of the human' posts is as a kind of snapshot of who I am, where I am every year. Like everyone, I change through life, and I thought it'd be interesting to see what some of those changes are. So before writing this, I thought I'd go through past years and see if anything stood out to me.
And this, this stood out to me: "In late June, I got a job as a telephone fundraiser, raising funds for LGBT groups. As a staunch conservative, it wasn't fun for me." That was from 2014, writing about 2013. And, yeah, that's who I was back then. I was christian, I was Republican, and if it hadn't been for a deep strain of laziness, I would have been an asshole about it. That... isn't me anymore. Aside from the laziness and propensity to be an asshole; that's hardwired. But now I'm atheist, leftist, and deeply embarrassed by who I once was. Is who I am now who I'll be in another eight years? There are certainly still some traits and mindsets I'd like to move past. Who knows, maybe some of the beliefs I'm proud of now will turn out to be deeply flawed and I'll be changed again. I'm honestly a little uneasy about that possibility... One thing I am sure of though, is that I'm glad I've gotten this snapshot preserved here, now, so I'll have to be honest about who I once was.
Anyway, onto this last year.
Weight loss got down to just about 200, then back up, then back down again, and is now stalled out. at 220, where I was last year. So, no photos, no new Salman at this point. It's still planned, still hoped for.
I did manage to get a short film finished that I shot back in 2020. Outside World premieres on YouTube in a few days, and later tonight I'm going to submit it to its first film festival. Check out the trailer here.
I've got a new camera, new editing computer, and just... just so goddamn much gear; the plan in the next couple months is to get a production company up and running to shoot promo videos in the Arkansas River Valley area. I've already got a wedding lined up to shoot this fall.
On the work front: August saw me transition from Casino Surveillance to Surveillance technology. Instead of watching the cameras, I install them. Being up on ladders and handling tools all day, this is definitely not something I could have done before the weight loss.
Then in October Felicity and I were walking through the mall when we saw a flyer for a haunted house opening later in the month. She started talking with the proprietor, and before long I've got an offer for a residence with the host business, complete with studio space, clients, and a promise of steady work. I stayed through Halloween, doing commercials for the haunted house and interviewing guests, but the business culture wasn't what I was looking for, so I turned the offer down. At the end of the day, I want to be a freelancer, doing work that interests me, and this opportunity was looking more and more like 9 to 5 2.0.
One final note, something that seems insignificant but is a running theme through this whole blog: EHUD. I started doing a complete and total rewrite, nothing was sacred, in late summer, but stopped when I got the Surveillance tech job. I plan to go back to it, and even though I'm only a few chapters in, it's already a much better book than the old version. The story is streamlined, John more directly interacts with the plot, there are significantly fewer viewpoint characters. Once the first draft is done and revisions begin, I'll post.
And that's it for today. I'll post when Outside World goes live, and again when Toys on the inside starts back. Until then, I've been Hez. Who I'll be tomorrow I don't know, but at least I can look back on who I was today.
