Moving! Packing! New Year! Oh my!

Something I haven't written about on here is creating a huge turning point in my life and I am packing for my big move to California. I was hired as an intern at Nickelodeon Animation Studios and will be going through this six month program in the Spring. I'm going to stay out there, permanently. If I'm going to reach my goal, it'd help to be there where television and film is happening.

Preparing for this move, I've been packing for days (my mother is also moving away from Chicago- so double whammy). I don't have a lot of possessions, but of what I do own I've found that 35% of my property is in the family of paper and art supplies (used and unused), 20% is clothing (respectively, shoes, winter coats, hoodies included), 35% books and dvds and 10% electronics (laptop, tablet, other digital wonders). Here's a pie graph to visually represent this. *Note: This does not include the random props I've accumulated from student films, sketch shows, and plays over the years.

I'd say I had a feeling, but it's a hard reality to face: I have to go paperless in 2011.

I've always wanted to be a minimalist and in terms of things owned, I do not feel I qualify. This packing business has made me realize that every vacation I've taken- even the ones to Hawaii and Canada, which lasted about 10 days each- I've brought with me a sketch book (one watercolor, one drawing), my laptop, a note book, a non-fiction book (usually dealing with Animation or Writing), a fiction book (to balance the learning from the non-fiction reading), a point and shoot camera, some art supplies (watercolor, charcoal, pencils), and then a pair of pants, two pairs of socks, necessities... usually (twice, I forgot a lot of things like toothpaste and underwear and had to buy them), one sweater, and three shirts. You can really see where my priorities lie... And I usually forget to bring a brush, because apparently I forget that I have hair.

Some people have things because they look nice, and the similarities between the things I own and keep around are that they are centered around my passion. Treading through these papers of notes, lines of dialogue, dramatic central questions, plot devices, to-do lists, thank you cards, scenes from Second City's writing program, class work and notes from Columbia, I've found a couple of things that really made me reminisce.

Some post-it notes from shooting the Gallery scene for "Ruperett" in 2009. Part of Abigail's gallery show included paintings and then post-it notes where everyone could make one and put it on someone's back but you couldn't look at it. The crew did this, too. Nicole made "Party Monster" for me... We, both, thought of "Arrr" for Kesha, who played an extra... and then "42" which was what Ruperett wrote on the post-it he put on Abigail's back (semi- important to the story and definitely involved with his character development). 42 is the answer to the universe. Oh yeah!



And then I found this among my thank you cards... I used to teach art classes at a few park districts in the suburbs a couple years ago. One little girl gave me an envelope and this drawing was inside. She's the little blonde, and I'm the tall orange haired figure. She was super sweet and adorable; I love that she drew me this outside of class!



There were awesome things like the last two examples and then there is jibberish like this written on napkins. So MANY napkins... and back of receipts... Oh my, have mercy.



Here's what it says:
1:"That's like not liking God."
2:"I don't. I can't help it. Its not like I judged him."
1:"I met him, didn't like him, then judged him. We just don't click. That's not my fault."
2:"God is the sickest harp player ever, though."

The only thing I'll probably use from this is "God is the sickest harp player ever", most likely will have to drop the God and put someone's name- it still has it's charm. I have so many notes like this one. Even a post-it with my friend's dream written on it where he found a kitten on the moon and brought it to Earth only to find that the kitten was homesick.

Ridiculous stuff that I'm glad I wrote down and will eventually use in the creative process but seriously, I'm going paperless in 2011.