Intermittence

I suppose I just entered the ranks of the video professionals—or at least that of the posturing amateurs.

I’ve been paid for my first filming/editing/DVD production job. I’m putting the curriculum for a Lee’s Tae Kwon Do school in Mesquite, Texas on DVD, along with a series of self-defense clips and our school’s standard one-steps.

So far, the filming is the only portion of the project that’s been completed, but the rest is really all just detail work. It needs to be captured, edited, composited, titled, and color-corrected before I’m done, but that’s not the point.

The point is that somebody liked my work enough to write a check so I’d do it for him. That is, as the kids used to say, the bomb. Or maybe it’s tight, or off the hook. I don’t keep up with these things any more.

Oh, I also received my registration to use an assumed name. I’m now the Sole Proprietor of Wicked Things, a video production company. You may refer to me as Mr. Things, if you’d like. Only the closest of my friends call me Wick.

I go next week to get a Tax ID number and speak with an accountant.

I’ve been feeling sort of numb for the past couple of days, like my sense of purpose has been stuffed with cotton.

I’m going to be helping with my employer’s annual physical inventory on Saturday. There’s no telling how long I’ll be in the office, but I’m told that the actual counting shouldn’t continue much past noon. Estimates like that have been wildly off in the past, so I’m not holding my breath.

I believe I’m going to take my camcorder down to Cameron Park on Sunday, if it’s not raining. I need to recharge my creative spirit, and filming stuff at a leisurely rate ought to do the trick. I can experiment with exposure settings and different sorts of lighting and so on, and hopefully get ready for next weekend, when I will do my first for-pay filming job.

Next Friday also marks the first adventure I’ll run set in Eberron. I’m excited, as it’s a brand-new world which ought to break my players’ boundaries and expectations down and revitalize our gaming a bit. I have a lot of reading and note-taking to do between now and then, and I hope to be able to really make things work this time ‘round.

So, Donnell and I were tested for belt progression in Tae Kwon Do on Friday, October 8. My lovely and very capable wife is now a 3rd Geup (Red Stripe) practitioner of the art, and I am a 2nd Geup (Red Belt).

No knockouts, thank goodness, although I did graze a couple of heads and Donnell delivered a back-kick to the chin of a fellow who wasn’t being quite careful enough.

I flubbed a form twice in a row, although it was a lower-ranked form and not the one that I needed to ace in order to pass. We both performed our breaks on the first attempt—Donnell’s was a roundhouse kick (performed with the instep, which always hurts) and mine was a backswing kick (the move with which I knocked out a young man during my last test).

In all, it went better than I expected. I’m two tests away from earning by Black Belt, which is, after all, just the beginning of Tae Kwon Do mastery, and I feel like I’ve come a long way and really accomplished something.

It’s been a good weekend.