Posts Tagged job
Moving Forward…Way Forward
Things are moving quickly here in Ransomville, NY. I have 9 days to lock Standing Firm (read a new blog post here), so that’s exciting/intimidating. I think I’m finally to the point where I’m getting more comfortable with the edit and I’ll be able to leave it alone. I really hope I don’t find anything critically bad or realize that I’m totally wrong about the pace of the film or something later. We’ll see I guess!
I’ve also picked up two new jobs for the month and into the beginning of February. I’m doing the DVD Menu’s for Rich Christiano’s “The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry.” I got to visit that set for a day and even end up in the film as a small cameo so that was fun. I’m also doing the animated titles for the behind the scenes, they came out very nice. The menu’s also look great and required some work to nail down and they’ll be a lot of little renders to do…but overall I think things are looking good. I’ve also landed doing a small website for my neighbor, who needs a site to advertise the leasing of a building they have available. January looks to be an extremely profitable month, about double what I expected so that’s awesome. God is good! 
I was reading Job today and really was reminded of what I have been given. In the first Chapter of Job, the Bible describes all that Job has (and he had a lot). In one swoop all of it is taken from him, and where most of the world (and probably me in that situation) would be utterly destroyed spiritually, Job worships God faithfully and doesn’t break his integrity before Him. That’s an extremely difficult thing to do. Can you imagine losing all you own, including what’s most dear to you within about 5 minutes? The anger that might swell in you, the despair, the utter shock. If the hard drive that holds Standing Firm on it were to explode this very moment I would probably be confused and upset to the point of vomiting. Understandably so, but even in that (and no doubt Job was feeling that) he submitted to the Lord and what he had done. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t in despair, but he wasn’t cursing the Lord for what he had done. Who am I do question? I’m not God, I don’t run the show. 
I pray I would have enough strength next time I’m hit with something really hard to stay pure in spirit…regardless of what comes my way. I think it’s hard to do that in many extreme cases, but God deserves it.
My favorite part of Job comes not in that first chapter (although that probably hit me just as hard) but all the way at the very end of the book. Very powerful stuff…
“Then Job answered the Lord and said: I know that you can do everything, and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you. You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore i have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” – Job 42:1-6
Right now I’m just looking forward to whatever God has for me in the next month and as the year rolls on. So much to look forward to and work toward. One day at a time…as always.
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’ll try and be more diligent from now on!
The Weekend
Saturday: This past weekend was a great time. I met a lot of new people, started developing some new relationships, heard some awesome preaching, had God rock my world with His truth, the list goes on. Yesterday (Sat.) was great because I didn’t really do anything all day. It was just working on stuff at home until later in the evening. I heard Eric Barton had something going on at his house so I drove an hour out to West Seneca to check it out. It was just a get together. Fun times overall. We played volleyball, ate food (yes…), played some games, even gathered in the basement later on in the night to take communion and sing a few songs. It was great, I really feel comfortable and at home with everyone. We ended the night on playing Loaded Questions which turned into a laugh factory. My cheeks hurt by the end of the night. I got home pretty late again which I knew was going to make sunday morning a challenge but o well.
Sunday: When I woke up I almost thought of just skipping today, lol. I never do that but I was just so amazingly tired from a weekend of craziness. Two extremely late nights in a row with little sleep will mess you up. I got up as late as possible and headed to church with a Slimfast in my belly (love those things). Pastor brought it home today, talking about compromise. Afterwards I didn’t get to talk to many people and everyone cleared out quickly so I was kinda bummed. Some folks I only see once a week and I missed them :/ After church I headed over to The Brickyard to take my mom to lunch. We just talked a little bit and had some great food. Not heavy conversation just relaxing. We don’t do that too much so it was a nice change. Afterwards I just went home to relax for the rest of the day. One thing I did do today was make my first hardware purchase in a while.
There are a few things I do need to buy to finish this movie properly, even though money is extremely tight. I picked up a Black Magic Intensity Pro which is an input/output card for the computer. This will allow me to playback my edits from Final Cut Pro to my 50in Plasma AND my 15in CRT that I used to use for color-correction. That’ll make viewing anything I work on from this point on much easier to preview. The greatest need was outputting to a monitor I could trust for color. You can’t color correct on LCD’s and trust them, not even close. Color isn’t even my biggest concern as most of the film is well balanced and we dialed in the white balance manually to our tastes. The greatest issue is our black and white levels. I need to make sure the film is a good mix of contrast and brightness. That’s hard to do on an LCD especially and every TV looks a bit different so finding a good balance of these values is important. I look forward to adding this piece to my machine and seeing how everything works out! The next step is more RAM and a new Graphics card for this computer. My GPU (Graphics card) seems to be pushing it pretty hard to keep these two 24in screens up and running. It’s a lot of work for a card, and doesn’t leave a whole lot for processing power in applications.
A good weekend by far, time for a good week I hope to get a call from The Chapel today about a possible position of some kind. I’ll be honest I’m hesitant to work in ministry again. I don’t mean ministry as a whole, but paid ministry. Somehow getting a pay check for your duties changes things. It’s a struggle for me, and I just know what working in that kind of environment can be like sometimes. Being a tech guy, you tend to get pretty closed off in your little cave too which is where I’ve tried to work my way out of for a while now…including my own bedroom. But I do recognize the fact that I need a certain amount just to pay my bills, I don’t expect to see a dime from Standing Firm for at least a year (and that’s if I sold it TODAY), and unless I get at least two web jobs a month (each paying $1000+), then I’m going to be going backwards…and that’s not a direction I like to be going. I need something steady that can give me a paycheck, and I don’t have a lot of options. Something like The Chapel is my only one besides working for myself when it comes to staying in the Media/Art realm. I would rather stay there than put in an application at a Starbucks, ya know?
We’ll see what God tells me to do. By no means will I pounce on the first thing that comes my way. This year above all has taught me to be patient and wait for His answer.
