Work and weddings

When I started writing this, I was in my office at 9:30 am on a Saturday trying to get a job. Making a sample reel is somewhat more difficult than writing a resume, I've discovered. You can't really exaggerate or make yourself look better; it's all out there for the viewer to see. I've spent this school year doing documentation for many many very boring campus events, and my reel reflects just that. I've also shot some really excellent speakers (Keith Knight, Dr. Cornel West, Saul Williams, Mayda del Valle), so I'm hoping the subject matter and my fantastically spectacular camerawork (ha!) will outshine the utter lack of fancy editing (there's not much post-production you can do with one-camera shoots). The idea that in a year or less I'll have to obtain employment based solely on the skills I've learned this year is... a little scary.

I went to a wedding reception on Saturday for a guy I don't really know. He's the first person my age whom I've seen actually doing their wedding thing (I've heard about a couple of my high school friends' marriages but haven't attended), and it was equal parts nice and bizarre. I didn't go to the actual ceremony, because it was a strict Mormon family-thing-only, but I went to the reception with a couple of people who know the groom much better than I. It was a little awkward, being the only people with facial piercings and no previous experience in Mormon churches, but it worked out fine when we escaped to the other partition of the gym and played basketball with a bunch of kids.

Yesterday I got to go to Happy Land, which is a magical not-so-secret place in the basement of one of the buildings on campus. People have been going there and leaving things and rearranging things and writing things on the walls for many many (15?) years now. It was everything I'd expected from the tunnels under my high school, which are in reality just sort of dark and asbestosy. But Happy Land is truly a sight to see. I'm worried that if they end up remodeling the building like they're trying to do, Happy Land will be no more.

I'm pretty much consumed by stress at the moment. Everyone at my work is really anxious right now because it’s the last two weeks before our two biggest productions of the year. This means that people are snapping at each other and forgetting to tell people things and sending accusatory emails and doing things twice or three times because they didn’t realize other people had been doing them too. I’m taking this opportunity to lie around reading young adult novels and daydream about what I’m going to do when I get to Alaska in three days. A lot of it will involve things that Katie and I were never able to do before, like sit at the bar in this one restaurant and occasionally cast a blushing glance at the bartender on whom we’ve had an enormous crush since we were fifteen. It is entirely possible that we’ll sit in the garden at our high school at midnight and smoke a clove cigarette (mom, you don’t read this anymore, right?) while wearing lots of eyeliner. We are the epitome of chic now that we are grownups.