It's mid-day Saturday, I have gotten up and done some washing. I slept in rather late again. Although today I am feeling remarkably better, things still hurt, but I can breath without too much difficulty. Always a bonus.

I am getting sick of waking up with pangs of guilt, panic and hate about:

1- The Jobs I am currently working on.
2- Looking for work.
3- Finishing University.
4- Not getting a job.

I will elaborate a little more on these in a moment. Because, honestly I am trying to forget them with all my strength at the moment. Right, a breath.

The University asked me to model a sheep model for them for a game for an OKAY amount of money. For a days work, it was quite reasonable, ideally I should have asked for about twice as much money considering the type and amount of work. I managed to get the University to triple their initial amount of money, but still, as I say ideally about twice as much is where it should have been sitting.

I did the day or so's worth of work. All good. They wanted an IK system put in. Sure. They wanted horns on the sheep. Fine. They wanted the model. All good. And the money? No where to be seen. I go in for a meeting, they are negotiating where the money will come from. They can't employ me, but do I happen to be a Sole Trader? Yes. Good. Still nothing.

I might have to send an invoice out to the University. But Who to? Where do I send it? Will it cause feathers to be pointed towards me. Anyway, I have done the work, and not seen a cent from it. But no matter. There is another job for me.

The University want me to model some medical equipment. Oh good, fine. I can deal with that. There is an image of some equipment. Model them. Quite a reasonable amount of money is on the table, for perhaps two days work. And they will get 3D printed. Why they want me to model equipment they already have I have no idea at all.

CUT TO: The phone call. I get call, I am speaking to A DOCTOR who is running the project. The first half of the University are mixed up with the second half of the University. They don't want me to model equipment they have, they want me to design equipment based on this. Make it Uniform, more practical. HOLD ON. I think. I am not A DOCTOR, and have no idea what most of this stuff does. Come to think of it, I am not even A DESIGNER. I can't design my way out of a paper bag. The University is full of designers and artists. Why not get one of those people to do this? I am completely the wrong person for this.

If Animation was A HOUSE. And I know it isn't, but if it were; A HOUSE. Then I would be a brick layer. Or a cement mixer, or a rotoscope artist. I am standing there, in the mud licking my finger. What I am being asked to do is design a house from my mud-covered perspective, and built it. To take the metaphor further, they want me to design an OFFICE, when I have only worked on a HOUSE before. Only this is AN OFFICE that people may have inserted rectally.

The second thing that had kind of blown me away is the amount of money that is ACTUALLY being offered. As opposed to the lovely dreamy kind they tell you about when they talk about the project. When you talk to the person who has their wallet in their pocket and has to actually hand over the cash. The phone call continues, yes I still am on the phone at this point, I asked him what kind of number he had in mind, he said he had $0 in mind. $0 I thought? Is this some kind of medical joke/ jargon or something I have otherwise managed to potentially miss? He wants me to work on a project for a fortnight and doesn't want to pay me a cent. I suggest some reasonable numbers. He suggests some VERY unreasonable numbers.

The matter is still in discussion, however we left it at a number that I don't want to mention here. However, if you get the rough number of hours the job will take and divide it hourly then it adds up to somewhere around the 90 cents an hour rate. This makes me more than a little angry, I am doing a job outside my field, and being paid so little money that I will actually loose money doing the job. Magically. So I am seriously considering throwing the job to someone else.

This brings me to point two (2), looking for a job. Now University is practically over I need to find a job. I am trying to keep in mind all the things people have told me about NOW for the last three years. Most effects artists give up within the first four months of being put in the real world, and move on because they need the money. This is the time that separates the people who want to be there, and the people who are there. Of course, there is also a huge percentage of people who are crap, try, burn and fail because they are, for lack of a better word; crap.

This is beginning to worry me. I honestly don't want to be unemployed, without anywhere to go or anything to do each day. I have no doubt I could remain busy for the rest of my life, reading books, making animations, painting figures and getting really interessted if the stuff I do with my life. But at the moment, I am being pressured by social norms to get some "REAL WORK" and get some kind of income. Right now I have a tiny space to breath in before it really begins, where I am trying to come up with some really clever plan to earn a living until THINGS TAKE OFF FOR ME.

I have finished reading the Richard E Grant film diaries for the second time, detailing his time from when he was like me (unemployed with a few jobs under his belt) and a HUGE FILM STAR. I am not trying to be a HUGE FILM STAR at all, just enough money to put internets on the table will suit be fine to be honest. As far as I can tell he sat about on his arse for a year feeling depressed being yelled out by his wife until someone offered him a film job.

I am not sure if I want to take that route to success. It doesn't seem like the right way to go. I am feeling anxious and panicking before the whole Unemployed thing has even started. I don't want Hannah to be yelling at me, and I really don't want to be sitting next to the phone until it rings.

I think I am going to have to go get AN JOB until SOMETHING MAGICALLY HAPPENS. I have gone out and talked to all the industry people I know about WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO. They tell me just to relax and do it. Perhaps get a job in the meantime. DO IT? What do they mean DO IT? It's the job. Clearly. I am sure my contemporaries are feeling exactly the same as I am at the moment. I spoke to them all at some point over the last three weeks or so, and they all basically told me they hadn't a clue what they were going to do beyond NOT STUDY ANYMORE and work on their showreel.

I must work on my showreel. I really hate working on it. It has a way of making you feel terrible. Putting all your energy and life into a few seconds of material that every mistake seems to jump out on. From watching it again and again. I need to come up with some new material. I wonder if comedians have this problem?

Right; three (3), University is finishing. The University system is very strange, trying to find out if you are done, how many subjects you have to do, how many you have done and if you have actually passed seems to be something that no one in any office in the whole sprawling University seem to know how to do. It's like you have just asked them how many eyes a spider has. Or some bizarre question they had never considered.

HOW DO I FIND THIS INFORMATION? It kind of surprises how much of a task it is to find this information out. It should be simple, on a system somewhere, or there should be someone in charge of it. Running a fair in the courtyard with fire-twirlers seems to be perfectly fine, but information on your academic progress seems to be something completely alien to them. (Two Ticks)

*** EATS LUNCH ***

So the whole finishing University thing seems to me to be much harder than I had first imagined, as if I don't have the prerequisite amount of points it will make the whole 18 months of my life even less useless than they first appeared. I might send the University another email to try to discover this information.

Not getting a job is the thing that worries me most, and getting a job that I hate more than the feeling of not having a job worries me even more again. Actually getting work is something I have excelled at avoiding over the last decade or so while all my friends and family take up job after job doing all these lovely regular human being kind of things.

Right. Hannah has put the heater on, and the study is getting way to hot for me to be in, so I might go outside for a moment to cool down.

Colonel Barker. "Save kitty OR Cannibalise youths."