A Bit about Life — A Drop of Movies — A Goodbye

Hello again.

It’s been awhile.

Crazy how my last post — exclaiming my excitement for summer for all to read — was 4 to 5 months ago. A lot has happened since I last graced your inboxes. The list of movies I made for summer? Yeah, I only got around to 8 of those suckers. Mostly good, but like the rest of this year there hasn’t been great movies. Although I’ll still recommend The Young Woman and the Sea, one of Daisy Ridley’s best roles.

Sadly, I can’t say I’ve been away because I was living my best this summer. I was mostly working at my part-time job, which was literally a couple days a month, while applying to more jobs. I’m sure you already know this but the job market sucks right now. Or, more aptly, I suck at job hunting. From December to August I applied to over 60 jobs, of which less than 20 gave me an interview and only 1 had hired me (thanks part-time job!). While on my quest to find a new job, one I’d hoped to flourish and find a new path in, I stumbled upon some troubling patterns. For starters, since the pandemic it seems interviewers have no time for you. Whether it’s waiting for an interview (I had to leave after 40 minutes of waiting for a scheduled interview time and I was ghosted on a zoom meeting) or rushing through the interview so that they can get back to their job, it just felt like nobody cared to get to know me as a person. I remember applying to jobs before 2020 and it was expected that you’d have to talk for at minimum 15 minutes if the interview was going well. Now you’re lucky if you can even make it to 10 minutes. Then there’s their way of declining you. At the end of every interview it’s always some variation on, “We love your experience, but we’ll be looking in another direction.” Even if I asked what I could improve on, they were vague and not helpful. I applied through Indeed, websites, LinkedIn, wherever I could find and it was all the same. It was mentally taxing and honestly a big reason why I wasn’t able to watch movies or write.

In the end I went back to my last job. I left the theater business last year so that I could focus on a new path in life. I really wanted to learn new skills that could open up the job market for me (of which I failed to do), and spend all my free time writing (of which I failed to do) — living my romanticized writer’s life. But in the end I went back with my tail between my legs with conflicting emotions. On one hand, I’m happy that I’m being helpful again. One unexpected aspect I learned about myself while being jobless was realizing how much I needed to be helpful toward people in order to feel good about my existence. It also doesn’t hurt that I’m getting a steady income of money again. I’m much more frugal with my savings now, but it’s a lot of weight and anxiety off my shoulders. On the other hand, this feels like the universe saying I can’t do anything else. Sure, I got a part-time job that really me helped out, but it’s not something I could see myself doing for life. And the jobs I applied to weren’t all in the same field. A lot of it was customer service, thinking I’d have an easy ‘in’ on that subject, but I also tried branching out to publishing, aquariums, book stores, bakeries, I was certainly not picky. But nobody wanted me and part of my feelings of coming back to my old job are ‘I’m not good enough.’ My bosses say I do a good job and they appreciate me, but how can I believe them when everyone else says I’m not even good enough for a chance?

This job market has made me rethink my whole life. Whatever plans I had for my 30s are over. By the way, did I mention I turned 30 this year? Wild. I honestly never thought I’d make it to 30. Literally couldn’t imagine life after so I always assumed I’d die by then, but nope — I’m still here asking ‘why.’ I really wanted to go out with a bang with my original plans being a massive traveling trip to all the countries my ancestors came from… but you need money for that to happen so I settled with pizza from downtown. My mom did take me to Canada (the cheapest of my travel itinerary) as celebration and it was fun.

In middle school my teacher gave us a writing assignment asking the question, “Who am I? And how do I know.” As an adult I reflect on that prompt on a near daily basis and it became extremely relevant this year. I was hoping to start my writing career far before 30. Started getting my short stories edited and planned a self publishing strategy to at least prove to myself that I could do it. It still hasn’t happened, but I’m working on it, even if I’m writing as fast as George R. R. Martin is writing The Winds of Winter. On Facebook, I watch classmates that I knew growing up, getting married and having babies, while I still have yet to go on a date. Friends who drifted away moved to other states, while I still live at home. Who am I? I’m a bag of dreams that is stagnant and wasted his 20s on failure time after time, and when I finally reached my 30s, hoping to dig myself out of this pit I’ve been trapped in, I failed again and it’s exhausting.

But enough about me.

I want to focus on moving forward, especially with this newsletter. I’ve had many ideas on posts I’d like to write and hope to publish one day (Favorite Disney, Planet of the Apes retrospective, a deep dive on Verbinski’s impact to Blockbusters, etc.) while debating on resurrecting my blog. From my on and off stint writing on the Substack platform I think it’s also time to say goodbye. I may add another post or two before the year is up, but ultimately my writing concerning movies are related more toward blogging, and that is not what this site is about. This is a newsletter — getting sent directly to your inboxes — but I don’t think I can make anything on here where I couldn’t on my blog. I dedicated quite a few years to my Film Assist blog and published many posts that I am proud of. Substack was new, exciting, but you needed an already formed audience to do well on here. This didn’t influence my blog at all, if anything it took away from it. So I think next year I’ll have to change my writing strategy when it concerns films.

To those subscribed to this free publication: Thank you. It wasn’t much, and released erratically, but I enjoyed my time however brief.

I want to end on a list of my favorite movies this year (so far). Nothing extraordinary. No analysis. Just some really cool films that I’ve been enjoying this year that I think would be cool if you checked out.

• Challengers
• The Substance
• The Wild Robot
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Conclave
• Monkey Man
• Young Woman and the Sea
• Thelma
• Transformers One
• A Quiet Place: Day One
• Abigail

Ta-ta for now.