Muse

I am a terrible procrastinator. I'm one of those people who wrote all his papers the night before they were due, who lets dishes sit in the sink for a day or so, who will put off responsibilities at work that aren't pressing. Why? To quote Peter Gibbons again, "You see, Bob... it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care." Except for me, it's not a question of motivation, but of inspiration. I expect that eventually I will feel inspired to do things, even those things that I don't really want to do. Sometimes this works, often it doesn't. But I've had a few sparks of inspiration recently that have allowed to get some things done.

INSPIRATION: Get a bike that is rideable, and get rid of the old one in a responsible manner.

I don't know if I've bitched about it on this blog, but the bike I got when I first moved to New York had been giving me problems for a couple of months. It was an old Schwinn road bike, appropriately sized for someone over six feet tall. Being an inch or two shy of that, this bike and I were bound to have a tumultuous relationship... and we certainly did. One of the cranks kept falling off (and it's pretty difficult [i.e. impossible] to pedal a bike with only one crank), the tubes wouldn't hold air, and the brakes were terribly out of whack. So I would carry around a hammer (to bang the crank back on), a pump (to continually reinflate the tires), and I detached the brake cables. Oh, by the way, I wouldn't recommend riding a bike without brakes. Anyway, I finally got fed up with this bike and I dropped it off at Recycle-A-Bicycle in DUMBO. Fortunately, I now have a replacement, which fits me properly, and thus far, has not fallen apart. Where'd I get that? Craigslist, of course.

INSPIRATION: Do something with that huge piece of plywood sitting in my room.

Last spring I picked up a full sheet of plywood that someone was getting rid of, with the intention of doing something fun with it, such as doing a sequel to the drilled self-portrait, or playing Beirut. Of course, this thing has been sitting in my room untouched for the past six months. I was about to put it back out on the street, but my roommate convinced me that it was a waste. So now I'm in the process of covering it with gesso, to make a nice surface for a big-ass charcoal drawing.

INSPIRATION: Start messing around with video again

The last videos I made for my own projects were put together about a year ago, when I still had access to all the nice equipment at school. The video studio was all Mac-based, so I taught myself the ins and outs of Final Cut Pro. Fast forward to NYC, and when I start working on video again, I'm doing it on a PC, because my friend uses Avid. I don't know Avid, thusly I don't like Avid, and when I try running it on my PC at home, it can't handle it, so I hate Avid. So I stick with compositing and he does all the editing. That project wrapped up a while ago, but we're still in the busy season at work, so I haven't had time to start another one of my own. Hopefully that will change soon though, so I bought a used G4 Tower so Final Cut and I can become reacquainted... I'm sure my PC will be jealous, but he'll have to deal. Source of said G4? Craigslist.

Craigslist is one of those things that makes you think, "How did I ever manage without the internet?" I think everyone who lives in a Craigslist-covered city and has used the site for some purpose should keep a list of how their life has changed as a result. For me, it helped me find an apartment (indirectly), a functional bike, and a cheap Mac. How about you? Post a comment and let me know, I'm curious.

please note that Craigslist had absolutely no role in helping me find a job although I scanned the posts almost daily