2010 – Not The Movie… The Year

You start with an idea in your head. You take the first step, then the second. Then you realize you’re up to your neck in something mad.
Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), The Vanishing (1988)

Lists

Waaaay back when, probably the early days of the 1990s, I began an OCD-fueled list of television shows. This wasn’t merely an attempt to catalogue every show ever made, but included the broadcast date, title of each episode, writer, director and guest cast. Each entry had a sypnosis, and as the thing grew in size and scope (daring to take over my entire life) I decided to stop. Cold turkey. Never again. It didn’t quite work out the way I had hoped, and the folders and folders of information may yet, if the proper place for the information is available, be of some use. I’ve been thinking about that list, and the way in which it ate up the best part of a decade of my life (interspersed with a few other lists and some fiction) , and have come to the conclusion that my data-mining and information sorting skills are one of my strengths. You might think that I have learned better, but no… Really. Just no.

There is a wonderful (if limited) blog – and forum – which deals with lists (Listverse Forums in case you were wondering), but my junkie-like addiction to lists is barely given a fix by the way the lists appear. I can’t sit back and smile when there are a maximum of fifteen or twenty things in a given list… Hell, I’ve created lists with twenty thousand entries before now. That is one of the things 2010 will bring to this blog, much to the horror of any psychiatrists reading. Yes, I’m giving in to the compulsions and embracing my weirdness. There will be a variety presented here, but I figure that for some of them I’m going to need to upload the files themselves (hundreds of pages of information will get really old, really quick for casual browsers) or create web pages for them. Some of the stuff I’ll be presenting has been seen in a limited fashion before, but most of it is brand new.

The zombie ones all need re-working to take into account the last few years of film and book output, and the comic-book ones probably need updating as well. There will be book lists (which will be listed over on Book Re:View – where I have also started creating lists), film lists, metafiction lists… which basically boils down to all my resources which don’t have prior dibs, and all the stuff I’m not actively pursuing. Tho the question remains – who needs to have a list of fictional magazines and newspapers which have appeared in books and in films? Or a list of talking gorillas who have appeared in fiction? Maybe those can appear later… When I work out the finer details you’ll be the first to know.

Fiction

Damn, I still have to look through my discs for all the stuff I was meaning to upload. Okay, here’s a promise… I will, absolutely, grab some free time to sift through the crap and find whatever isn’t too horribly overwrought to post. I’m having some time-management issues at the moment, but as soon as I manage to dust off those pieces fit for human consumption they will be up. I may even spend a week posting excerpts of random things if I find enough gems in amongst the endless rubbish. There is a lot on disc, so I probably don’t have to worry too much about finding suitable material. I’m gonna be digging through material anyway (for the lists) and may as well make use of the effort. There is a post-it with a small list of ‘must do’ items staring at me now, so I’ll have a reminder of everything which needs attention.

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I should have personal goals for the year ahead, as that is a common theme in the ‘new decade, new life’ meme which people have jumped onto. There are a few things I want to get away from, first and foremost being the endless hours. I used to think that being (technically) unemployed would be boring, with the sitting around and doing nothing part taking up most of everything. Nope. Not in the slightest. I’m working harder now than I have ever worked in my life, punching in up to twenty hours a day on a variety of things for money alone. No artistic freedom, no leniency, just “do the job and do it right.” This, ironically, is making me more money than I ever made whilst in one job at a time; I get the feeling that I would be tempted to stick at this way of living for a bit longer – if only for the money – though there is so little time for myself that it can’t be maintained.

There is more to life than endless work, which I’m slowly beginning to realize – even if I can’t help but answer in the affirmative every time a job is offered which falls within my abilities. This is madness, and it has to stop soon.

Another thing I intend to do, from this year on, is planning. I’m good at theoretical planning, and the organization (in hierarchies) of information, but actual sort-your-life-out-planning has always fallen short of expectation. There has always been a rollercoaster of things requiring my attention, and I’ve never sat down and made a realistic schedule to keep, though time is so short now (even with the extra hours I have during the night when I should be sleeping) that I can’t go without a schedule any longer. Maybe it will have to be a color-coordinated one, so I have a clear indication of when I should remember to eat, but I’ll have to do it before I burn myself out.