The First Week of the Rest of My Life

[tealin]

And then I left Disney.

I delivered four pages' worth of reasons at my exit interview but I won't go into them all here; it basically boils down to this:

1. I left everything I loved about the life I had, to go do 2D animation in stinky LA. It was great while it lasted. Now 2D animation is no longer an option or priority, and the jobs available I could do at any studio in any one of a number of vastly preferable cities, so why stay?
2. When your job makes you forcibly resist doing something which has always brought you comfort, joy, solace, and meaning, and which is a core part of your identity, by lading it with so much negative baggage that even the thought of doing it is aversive to you, it is probably time to leave that job.

Obviously it was a very big decision, and one I've been mulling for the better part of two years now. All common sense was arguing against it: it's a high-profile, well-paying, relatively secure job in an insecure industry, with a union and benefits and goodness knows no end of perks – who in their right mind would leave such a thing? But it was driving me out of my right mind; I'm pretty eccentric at the best of times but Disney (and LA) was making me actually crazy. After a brief re-acquaintance with Real Life this summer, it finally came to a head, and I was Done. I started plotting my escape, and then the perfect job came along at the perfect time, so here I am in Silicon Valley for a few months. It's its own species of crazy to be sure, but it will be an experience, and I will go on to have more experiences, because the real world is full of them and life is too short to be spent in Elsinore.

A couple years ago I found a postcard with a quote attributed to Jack London:

I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze
than it should be stifled by dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow,
than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.

It's lived by my desk since then, challenging me ... at last I intend to see it through.

Because we all know how well things work out for incandescent interplanetary bodies. Yes we do.

It's been a week now since the exit interview. I've packed up my apartment and sent the bare essentials for starting up a new one to my parents' basement (thanks, parents!), thrown a couple weeks' worth of clothes and what I can't do without into a few suitcases, and have settled into my first week of work Up North, as they call it in the Southland, which is amusing to anyone north of the 49th parallel. By the time I'm done here I'll have reduced my three suitcases to two, and then it's off for more adventures!

In the meantime, though, I have a street full of awesome Japanese food to eat my way down, a slough to visit, a lot of sketching to catch up on, and not much time to do any of these things because this project is going to take up most of my waking hours. But it'll be good.

It hasn't been much of a week for photographs, as I've mainly been at work and it's all super double top-secret, but here's a sprinkling:

My morning toast took the shape of Australia. I thought this highly appropriate in light of current events.


I get to take the train to work! And the roads are paved well enough that, while biking, I don't have to devote more than half my attention to the surface for fear of cracks, potholes, and the other hazards ubiquitous to surface streets in LA.

That is, when I'm allowed to bike ... a certain numbskull took away that option by locking his bike through mine to the rack. (I assume it's a 'he'; the semi-chopper handlebars imply a certain amount of testosterone.)



I left a polite note, afraid he'd taken off for the weekend, but after two nights bikeless I found my exit free and clear tonight so I have transport for the weekend, hurrah.

Anyway, TRAINS! And also clouds, trees, a wide range of Asian restaurants, and an actual functioning city made of awesome at the end of the Caltrain tracks ... it's great to be part of the real world again.