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Showing posts from July, 2023

You Have to Have A Hobby: Paintings I Have Made to Keep From Going Completely Insane While Unemployed

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On Saturday I will turn 42. The "Life, the universe, and everything," birthday.  I have never felt so far away from all three of those things.  I have been unemployed since April 2022. I am not comfortable talking about why I quit my job.  I try to apply to four "cover letter" jobs a day and at least 10 "one-click" jobs daily.  It’s Not So Bad Once You Get Used To It Acrylic On Canvas, 20 X 16 Considering how much of American life is focused solely on work, money, status, and everything that I just don't have right now I feel disconnected from everything.  I have roughly one interview a week on average. Some weeks for reasons I'm not clear on, I get a spike in interviews. In the past year, I have had one follow-up interview for a job I didn't get.  No one is obligated to tell me why they didn't hire me.  One job had a ton of potential but it would have involved a move that I couldn't afford then and definitely cannot afford now. It wa

A Lack of Content as the Exclusive Content

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"Totally meant to do that."   "The entire industry has moved from a world of Newtonian economics into a world of quantum economics, where two things that seem to be in opposition can be true at the same time: You can have a massive hit on your platform, but it’s not actually doing anything to increase your platform’s revenue. It’s absolutely conceivable that the streaming subscription model is the crypto of the entertainment business." —Steven Soderbergh to Vulture Magazine, June 6, 2023 That is from a fascinating and disconcerting article that you can read here . There is wisdom in staying in your lane, but there is also wisdom in finding lessons from sources that are - or just appear to be - out of your lane. What social media platforms and studio streaming services have in common is content and how it is everything. Netflix was the vanguard of streaming exclusive original content with House of Cards. Original is the key word here because for some time, Netflix an