daines'n around

I've got a fever, and that's no metaphor.

My body aches. The heat behind my eyes and my sore throat remind me, it's that time of year when I get sick again.

My mind reels. Attention is hard to pay when your reserve of energy is drained dry.

I decided to take a walk around Old Town on my lunch break this afternoon. It was easily 85 degrees, if not more, in the sun today. With the last few weeks of rain and so much indoor work during the day time I haven't spent much time at all in the sun.

The heat from the sun's rays isn't something one easily forgets. Memories of walking constantly with slacks white shirt and a tie on in Brasil came to mind, for I was dressed similarly today. There's something different about me. I'm smiling.

This isn't to infer that I go around with a sour look on my face continually throughout the day. But thinking over the last week over recent events just makes me smile. Among the sun-spurned memories of heat, my smile is also prolonged by thoughts of my surprise birthday party, phone calls from friends, reconnecting with some old friends who had lost touch, and making new friends in Orange County.

I sat in a cove, table rock in front of us, and listened to a conversation that weaved its way between moonlight, ocean waves and rising tides. The conversation traveled from small town to third world county and back to rocks on a beach... her hypotheticals, my inward hypersensitivity; her high points, my mistakes highlighted. Our ideas presented themselves to one another, curtsied, and swam out to where I couldn't find them again.

Never once did I long to be somewhere else. Never once did I want it to end. But now I speculate every hour that it is too good to be true, it is too late and already over, it isn't as easy as sitting on a rock and talking about how you hope that everyone in life feels love, because it is amazing how life changes once you feel that love.

But I've digressed from my walk around old town. The walk led me into the Barnes and Noble, and a discounted copy of The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky jumped at my attention. I read twenty pages in during the last minutes of my lunch and I'm addicted to the wry wit of the author thus far. I've found my winter semester reading. This book will add to my vocabulary I'm sure. I've had to look up three words already in the first twenty pages. I love it.

EVen the author's note as an introduction makes me want to delve deeper:

"He is a protagonist, but a protagonist vague and undefined. And, in truth, in times such as ours it would be strange to require clarity of people. One thing, I dare say, is fairly certain: this man is odd, even eccentric."

Ten minutes was all it took to inform my boss, supervisor and the CEO that in less than three weeks I would be leaving my current employment in Pasadena. Each one reacted in a similar and expected manner. They, just like me, were surprised that I have been so dedicated over the last three years to the company. I guess going through college and paying rent and bills really require a steady income. No longer will that be the case.

I said it very simply, which in essence was, "I have this opportunity and I'm going to take it." Most people are supportive. Only people who don't feel confidant in my financial situation gave any hint of not taking this position. My boss asked me to make it official and draft up a letter. I obliged him and wrote:

January 10, 2006

This is a letter to formally inform you of the resignation of my position as Facilities Coordinator with x-location. The final day of employment will be January 27, 2006.
It has been a pleasure to work and grow with such an outstanding company and all of the marvelous employees working together at x-location.

Sincerely,
Chris Daines
Facilities Coordinator

It is liberating, and yet slightly nerve racking at the same time.

I've taken a position at the Daily Sundial in Northridge as the Arts and Entertainment editor. I'll begin the second to last week in January with plans, preparatory, as well as brainstorming for a semester's worth of content in a daily newspaper. This will be the most responsibility I've ever had in a job, quite possibly the least I've ever been paid for a job as well. Let's think of it as an internship shall we?

It's already the second week of January, and I still haven't made up those goals for 2006 yet. But how about some tasks I must finish this week:

• get O.C. to agree to a specific time to meet
• make a budget that would allow me to survive on 1/3 of the income I make now
• balance checkbooks/credit statements
• brainstorm arts and entertainment story ideas
• clear out work computer of images / text not pertaining to work
• look into submitting Peru photos to photo essay competition
• look into GRE training books or courses
• begin my 6:30am wake up time shift

Left to Wander
Alone they lust for attention and reason
or love
the fog of unenlightenment
never provides escape

conception begins the play... the sonnet
the songs of angles
the hopes of children
held onto by elders

the unacted scene... so human...
the unfinished poem and
the unplayed symphony
complete; only in departure

The human
Perfectly Placed in a Pleasant Paradise
unmade before them
poor planning poor choices poor parents
poverty presents unpleasantries in the plodding future
the only promise left: doubt

They are left to ponder

What do they ponder?
The hopes and fear of a thousand
generation's folk tales
and horror stories

Religions passed on
by book and by mouth
of money and what should
be done with it

One says there exists a plan
set forth in eternity
to immortalize the soul
and eternally uniting family

Scorned and mocked, he is
The abhorred
because this guidance
is intangible

So thousands of generations
driven by fear and greed
reach the final stanza
of their unwritten poem
Reach out for love
(The only surviving human trait
perpetuated against all odds)
upon their soap boxes of death

No one listens close enough
until they die
to know of the love
that flows under the surface of society
keeping the fragile balance
between chaos and stability

There will come a day
when the unfinished poem
will end
immortalized in records
and inspiring the next generation
to answer the same questions

why am I here
where did I come from
When will the unfinished poem end?
When we stop reaching for love.

Today was all about anticipation. The Sundial staff writers, photographers, and editors met and outlined our vision for the spring semester. My mind went back to some nine months ago when I first attended my Sundial orientation meeting and felt all so very overwhelmed. The overwhelming feeling about today wasn't the unexpected. Not the kind of unexpected where you don't know what is going to come up during the year, but rather the expectations caused a general anticipation and uneasiness.

It isn't often that I am charged with having dominion over something that reaches a larger audience. I have managed projects for classes, taken care of youth groups, summer camps, and other peer groups. The majority of those events did not involve a creative process... aside from the high school band. My new job is different. I do not even see it as much of a job as much of an opportunity to show others around the school and community what a well-thought-out and planned section can be for the readers. I won't get away without writing various pieces myself this semester.

It's different writing for myself as an editor. I write for myself all the time. I write email messages and poems in lonely bedrooms and place them online for my future benefit, and the possibility of entertaining someone for a short period of time. The average visit time to my site is up to about one minute, which is an eternity in the fast-clicking world of the internet.

Tangent aside, I will now write not only for myself, but for a circulation of almost 30,000 students alumni and faculty for the physical paper, and even more with the paper's web site. I'm not writing for the other editors anymore. I have full creative control. This is new, fun, and terrifying.

Our six-hour meeting went very well, and I was pleased to see three students volunteer to write pieces for the arts and entertainment section. Someone said they'd never seen anyone volunteer for anything other than normal news writing during the first week of school. "Is it your hair?" they asked. If it was my hair, I don't care. I'm happy to have people who want to write these pieces on board.

I'm revamping chrisdaines.net to version 3.0. The most difficult part (online photo portfolio presentation) remains for me to design. My ideas are swirling, but I need something down before the end of the weekend, and most assuredly before school begins again.

Monday was a beautiful day, though I didn't get a chance to do everything I had planned, I did get a chance to meander around Venice. Pictures here at staticantics, just click on next to see the others. I'll have about four or five more photos by the end of the week.

Seeing my name more than 20 times in a row, I start to doubt that I'm spelling it correctly. I have to close my eyes and spell out my name to ensure that, yes, it is spelled correctly. I have three sheets of return address labels, not with my return address, but with my name, cell phone number, and email address. The sundial ordered business cards for the editors. The stipulation is that, only the editor in chief gets a card with his name printed on it. The other editors only get their title. I wrote my name on a few cards and handed them out, but it looked horrible. So I printed these neat little labels. Oh well, I've had business cards before when I worked for the Valley Sun, but now it says Editor. Somehow, that title makes the card all the more worthwhile.

Just a minor announcement:

Christopher, thanks for using Ticketmaster.

You purchased 1 ticket to:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Coachella Music and Arts Festival
Empire Polo Field, Indio, CA
Saturday April 29, 2006 - Sunday April 30, 2006
Seat location: section GA3
Total Charge: $194.75

I'm going to put in some entries and back date them to catch up with my week and a half i've gone without writing.

Oh, then people say, but what did you do today?
I repond gently that I saw the ducks.

That's really all I say, unless they ask me more questions.
I may show them pictures of ducks if they insist.

The air is crisp and cool, and the sky is very clear. It is a day that makes me happy to be able to go outside and enjoy it, even if for only a few monments.

Things are coming down to the wire for our first issue at the Sundial. Many of our reporters are dropping the class, and I may have to be pursuing the English, music, and history departments to ask people to come and write for the paper. It boggles my mind that we can't find enough journalism major students to fill the need of the daily paper. Chalk it up to missed opportunities by students.

I've found the cure for my insomnia: a two hour work out. I slept like a newborn calf, passed out on the couch with a cat in my lap and the playstation controller in my hand.

Today is also my last day of employment at my office job. It's been a nice three years, and there is no way I could have afforded my college education without loans, and my camera to pursue photo journalism without the support of that company. I sent out an email to the company.