I've been working a lot the past few weeks. Everybody that knows me thinks that my comments about being a "corporate whore" are typical sardonic Shawnisms. Unfortunately it's true. I have bags under my eyes, smoke in my voice, and a hollow view of life at the moment.
At the bottom of it all I couldn't explain in a descriptive sentence why I even do it? Furthermore, I couldn't explain why anybody cares. It's not like we're saving babies or even adding anything to the collective conscious. It's just selling the one thing I do best at a premium price. So, I think I'm using the term "whore" correctly.
I suppose one could say "I do it for the money". But even that seems a little incomprehensible. Is the biweekly paycheck worth kicking in my undiagnosed but very probable bipolar disorder? I don't have anything to show for it? I refuse to buy a house or even finance a car.
Yet there is some kind of satisfaction I get from completing projects that no one but my studio and the new hires at the multi national company we are doing the work for will even ever see.
Even during the last month where I've been working 12 -16 hour days I still managed to do a series of storyboards for road rage PSA and complete a cubist Picasso swipe. The boards and the oil gave me a much bigger point of satisfaction.
So here I am, up at in 5:00 am again. Wondering what happened? Why I buy into this whole “let’s do it for the Gipper” mentality?
I can sum up like this. As I was walking outside to smoke with two of the other three smokers in the office yesterday. I noticed three of the other non-smokers from a different studio were in the lunchroom playing bubble hockey. Two playing and one watching. I asked the smokers if they always had to have three? Is it still a game if they don’t have an audience?
One of the other programmers looked at me with that same incredulous look that I seem to get frequently. So I said. “Never mind, we can talk philosophy when the project is over”.