focus

[owlmoose]

When I was first contemplating unemployment, I feared that I would have a hard time focusing. I'm rather lazy by nature, and I wondered to what extent inertia would take over my life. Now I have my answer: pretty strongly. I've managed to successfully take on a couple of projects, like the Nashville trip and making the travel arrangements for T, his parents, and myself for his sister's wedding in June, but so many other things I had been thinking of doing are left undone. There were a number of things I wanted to do -- learning to make bead jewelry (I have a catalog and some ideas, but I haven't gotten around to actually ordering any supplies), working on wedding tasks, writing about cities in film. And I'm only doing the bare minimum on job-hunting, sending out a resume or two a week and not following up with the contacts people have given me. It's not like I'm leaving interview requests unanswered or anything, but I could be more aggressive about follow up calls and emails, trying to set up informational interviews, etc.

I can justify it to a certain extent by thinking of it as a sabbatical, but there's a part of me that believes I ought to have something to show for it (other than a pile of finished books, an empty Netflix queue, and a stack of completed video games). Lately I've been returning to the cities in film paper; it's something I have been meaning to do for years. But I need a more specific topic than "the depiction of cities in film" -- that's more like a doctoral dissertation than an article. One idea that comes to mind is the destruction of New York City in modern disaster films, particularly the movies of Roland Emmerich. The last time I researched this topic (for a bibliography in library school), I came across a great quote by Emmerich's sometime partner in crime, Dean Devlin, from a review of their Godzilla remake: "We destroyed a lot of New York in Independence Day, and once you get a taste for it, it's a very hard habit to break." It would even be timely, with the impending release of The Day After Tomorrow, yet another Emmerich sci-fi disaster flick that decimates Manhattan. There's a big downside to writing about these movies, though: I'd have to watch them. I have seen ID4, but I missed Godzilla on purpose and have no interest in seeing this new one either. I have been pleasently surprised by movies that I watched mostly for the depiction of a future city in the past (The Fifth Element for one -- I expected it to be silly, and it was, but it was also a great deal of fun), but I really don't think these films will qualify.

Anyway. I'll go back over my old notes, watch a few films. I'll think of something. Hopefully before I find a job and have to get back to the grind.

Comments

[luvmoose.livejournal.com]

It's "not job hunting" guilt. You aren't motivated (or maybe a bit depressed) to do the job search, but you feel like you should be, so you don't want to look like you're getting anything else done either. Because if you do, someone can say "if you have all that energy and time, why haven't you spent it finding a job?".

Books, videos, and video games are less tangible accomplishments than learning a new craft or writing. While they are "stacks" in your mind, they aren't really.

I think it might be different if you made a conscious decision not to do any job hunting for x weeks. Then you could say your primary job was to craft or write. But this is just a theory I haven't tested because I had the guilt too much.