Hello.
My name is Ross and I am starting a blog today because I have literally watched every program on BBC I-player and 4od that is currently available, caught up on anything remotely unimportant on Facebook and have a bet with myself that I won't keep this up any longer than September.
I will start at the beginning with why it is totally necessary that I don't leave my computer and why I don't just go outside or talk to a human being. Basically, I need to work, because I have done nothing for the last two days. I work as a 3D animator, technically freelance, but 100% of my work is for a company in Aberdeen called Viscom - who mainly do work involving oil rigs, helicopter safety and other such energy industry related ventures. I am very lucky to have this job and basically got the opportunity through my friend Terry, who does the same sort of work - but much better. The reason I am so lucky, is that I have come to realise that personal contacts is the only way to get a decent job these days, but the strange part about it was that I lived in Aberdeen for 24 years before moving to Glasgow in January 2010 to try and find a decent job, then I landed this baby three months later, and they actually trusted me to work remotely from Glasgow - from my bedroom - which I do. Suckers.
Even though I am fairly confident no-one from work would ever have the intuition or interest to find this blog, I am not going to take any risks in going into too much detail about it. My whining about the production process of making a small "Hearts and Minds" film about some pipe-laying in Nigeria is not going to be terribly interesting to anyone else - and despite their faults, the people I work for are nice people. I'd like to share some of my work, but am not entirely sure how they feel about that either. I will share this link http://www.viscom-aberdeen.com/viscom-helps-deliver-gas-specialists-message.html to show you the project I am currently working on. Ignore the bit about completion being in July - bless them - it won't be done until September. Not my fault.
The advantages of the job (can work when I like, good pay, doing what I love(ish), one metre commute to the office) far outweigh the disadvantages (total lack of routine, computer tantrums, constant guilt that I should be working and very little human interaction) and I'm just relieved (slightly less than my Dad) that I am finally making use of my 2.1 in Design for Digital Media that took up four easy going years of my life. It will not be a job that I can keep up forever, mainly because I would be a nightmare to live with a partner/girlfriend with my disjointed schedule. Not only would it be a pisser for me to watch my dearest come home at 5.30pm and forget about their work completely, but they would probably find it utterly infuriating to see me continuing to lie in our warm and cosy bed, resetting my alarm for 10am then snoozing for a further 36 minutes after that. I have basically given up on trying to start working early, I just don't have the discipline. Another reason this job only has a certain longevity is that I basically live like a student. I can just go out drinking when I like. Between my regular ten hour sleep sessions and my vulnerability to a cider-fuelled night out, I can't decide if I'll live to 100 or be dead before I'm 30.
That freedom is, tbh, awesome though. I can make appointments for stuff with out a thought, take days off to go to the cinema at 2pm and basically do what I want, which is a fabulous asset to have as an amateur stand-up comedian. I predict 80% of this blog will be talking about stand-up. I started it when I moved to Glasgow and would be a frustrated hermit with out it. Nearly all the friends I have made down here are through stand-up and a gig in the diary is always something I look forward to immensely. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is obviously the big dick that everyone is stroking just now - I've been through about five times so far and done six gigs, I will probably do a review of it all at the end of August. For now I am playing The State Bar on Holland Street in Glasgow this evening for the first time and am focusing on that, and the new Glasgow-specific intro that I have been dying to try for a while. MUCH more to come on that throughout - lucky you.
I currently stay in the West End of Glasgow, very close to the City Centre, but am on the look out for somewhere new. My flatmate is a nice but awkward character, who has an even worse routine than mine. Where I sit at home modelling virtual lifeboats and pipe-laying equipment, he is in the other room making his dosh from online poker, a professional pastime he has been indulging in for the last three years I believe. I have quite a strict endpoint of 2am for working, after that it stops. He seems to do anything between midnight and next midnight, and like me watches endless films and TV series whilst he earns. This week I have msotly been hearing the theme music from Curb Your Enthusiasm emanating from his oversized bedroom. It's actually a hilarious set up we have, we text each other rather than go knocking on each other's bedroom doors and he never, and I mean never, uses the kitchen. Again, I will at some point flesh out the details of my small basement dwellings, but for the meantime all I can say is that we don't have a functioning living room because he uses that as his bedroom, leaving what is clearly the second bedroom as a cramped, shitty living room, with a noisy boiler in it. It's a generally a horrible, dark and empty place to bring people back to. For the third month running I am aiming to move out on the 31st, but looks like it will have to wait again.
Finally, I feel I should explain the blog title "Enter Fadman". I have relatively few belongings with me down here in Glasgow, most of my stuff is in Aberdeen at my Dad's house, but what stuff I do have fits in one bookcase type thing. The other day my friend pointed out that the items on the bookcase are an excellent cross section of all the phases I have been through, mainly in the last few years. And they were totally right. I have always known that I go through fads, get obsessed with things very quickly, indulge in them ferociously, then get bored and ditch them. A few examples from the bookcase include:
- Halo 3 for Xbox (played obsessively for 6 months in 2007)
- Creatine (I went to the gym three times a week for four months and adopted quite a strict workout routine and ate pretty fucking healthily - then just stopped)
- Books called "Cracking the Short Story Market", "Complete Guide to Film Scoring" and "The Illustrated Guide to Blackjack" (a few creative ventures that lasted about a week each and a reminder that I spent about three unemployed months in Aberdeen as a casino fiend. Not a very good one though)
- A bow tie (I do a stand-up routine about being in a barbershop quartet. Well I was, for about six combined months)
Other fads have included Battlestar Galactica, mustaches, learning German, learning Spanish, going down rivers in rubber dingys, Rammstein, keeping fit (recurring), learning Russian and Sandy Toksvig. The list goes on.
A sort of "current fad" breakdown can often be found by my bedside which currently includes a book on reading body language that I bought immediately after digesting the BBC series Sherlock that was recently on. There is also a slip from the Royal Mail telling me I missed delivery of my beard trimmer this morning (because I was in bed) and have to go to the depot to pick it up. I have an identity crisis every month and feel the need to change my hair and/or beard at a moments notice - I consider this as a sub-fad, which I tried to stop when I moved here so that people would always recognise me, but things don't always work out like you want them to. The main test is to see if doing a blog is a fad, because it is one that I have been through a few times before. I wasn't surprised when blogger.com had recognised my e-mail address. I previously used it for a blog on music reviews (a fad that actually lasted nine months in 2009) and to blog my final year project at Uni. That one lasted a week and was mostly screen shots.
That is it for now. I am going to finish some work, have some Chili Con Carne and practice my comedy set for tonight.
"When I first moved to Glasgow, I thought an Orange March was a whole month of 2 for 1 cinema tickets."
Wish me luck. I'll need it.
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