Volpone
Zombie Hunter
OK. This is going to ramble too much for Facebook.
First off, having apparently ruled out alcohol as the main reason for me waking up at 4am and not being able to get back to sleep I'm on my 3rd cocktail right now. I'm not proud of that, but it is what it is.
Second is the exchange from "Office Space" (hey, that's the movie the quote in the title of this thread is from--topicality!) with Peter and his neighbor on the "What would you do if you had a million dollars?" hits me.
I don't want to be a data analyst. I don't want to work on an assembly line. I don't want to be a landlord. Maybe I want to be an artist or work in stagecraft (set design, construction, lighting, etc), but not totally. (Actually, no, yeah. If I could work on a team building sets for a theater company and put enough money in my pocket to keep food on the table and a roof over my head, that would be a good life.) As I look at my house, I'd love to do staging and/or interior decorating. A couple weeks ago I realized--I've got a lot of things I need to do on this house still, but the interior more or less looks the way it should--except the back entryway is either dark or too bright from the overhead light. I realized I needed a funky floor lamp in that corner to finish the interior space. They had one at Wal*Mart for $15 that wasn't perfect, but I could make work and it makes me so happy to see it now. I put it next to a plant that was already there and realized it needed an end table next to it and remembered the mailbox cluster from my Dad's old post office that was collecting cobwebs down in the basement. Pulled it out, cleaned it off and it looks quite nice.
Anyway, I'm rambling. The point is that I enjoy making interiors look nice. I say I'm a "house whisperer"--I can find a neglected, rundown, unloved house and, like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, I listen to it and give it some love and what it needs and create quite a nice space. There are a couple problems with monetizing this, though.
The first is that doing anything for money seems to suck the joy out of it. I've been watching an old A&E series, "Sell This House" on Dabl. It ran for something like 11 years, and by the end you can tell the stager/designer/technical guy is burning out. Get out all the clutter and weirdness. Clean everything. Figure out ways to tie everything together, tell a story, and minimize the things that bothered people in the initial open house. It gets to be a rut. The other thing is the personality of the work. And my organic nature of approaching it. I live in a place and over time I see what it needs. People generally love what I do. But it is different if you're doing it for someone who is in a house and wants to stay there. You work with their personality and their needs. And the goal isn't to appeal to the broadest denominator, it's to create something for them. Or if you're in staging and it IS to appeal to the broadest denominator, it's resisting the temptation to paint everything grey with white trim and grey vinyl planking.
Wait, what were we talking about again?
First off, having apparently ruled out alcohol as the main reason for me waking up at 4am and not being able to get back to sleep I'm on my 3rd cocktail right now. I'm not proud of that, but it is what it is.
Second is the exchange from "Office Space" (hey, that's the movie the quote in the title of this thread is from--topicality!) with Peter and his neighbor on the "What would you do if you had a million dollars?" hits me.
I don't want to be a data analyst. I don't want to work on an assembly line. I don't want to be a landlord. Maybe I want to be an artist or work in stagecraft (set design, construction, lighting, etc), but not totally. (Actually, no, yeah. If I could work on a team building sets for a theater company and put enough money in my pocket to keep food on the table and a roof over my head, that would be a good life.) As I look at my house, I'd love to do staging and/or interior decorating. A couple weeks ago I realized--I've got a lot of things I need to do on this house still, but the interior more or less looks the way it should--except the back entryway is either dark or too bright from the overhead light. I realized I needed a funky floor lamp in that corner to finish the interior space. They had one at Wal*Mart for $15 that wasn't perfect, but I could make work and it makes me so happy to see it now. I put it next to a plant that was already there and realized it needed an end table next to it and remembered the mailbox cluster from my Dad's old post office that was collecting cobwebs down in the basement. Pulled it out, cleaned it off and it looks quite nice.
Anyway, I'm rambling. The point is that I enjoy making interiors look nice. I say I'm a "house whisperer"--I can find a neglected, rundown, unloved house and, like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, I listen to it and give it some love and what it needs and create quite a nice space. There are a couple problems with monetizing this, though.
The first is that doing anything for money seems to suck the joy out of it. I've been watching an old A&E series, "Sell This House" on Dabl. It ran for something like 11 years, and by the end you can tell the stager/designer/technical guy is burning out. Get out all the clutter and weirdness. Clean everything. Figure out ways to tie everything together, tell a story, and minimize the things that bothered people in the initial open house. It gets to be a rut. The other thing is the personality of the work. And my organic nature of approaching it. I live in a place and over time I see what it needs. People generally love what I do. But it is different if you're doing it for someone who is in a house and wants to stay there. You work with their personality and their needs. And the goal isn't to appeal to the broadest denominator, it's to create something for them. Or if you're in staging and it IS to appeal to the broadest denominator, it's resisting the temptation to paint everything grey with white trim and grey vinyl planking.
Wait, what were we talking about again?