There's a place

Maybe I'm deep? Well, whatever.

[scottowilliams]

Busy night at the dream factory Jun 7 '26

I belatedly got some viral fame for calling out a political opponent on video, then had an old friend over to my place. There was something involving trains.

Mostly, the one where I was a member of Weird Al Yankovic's band. For the first time ever, he had written some lyrics that the other band members found personally offensive (they were about all of our wives hypothetically cheating on us.) I had to side with them to get him to rewrite it even though I myself was ok with the joke. It was a real tough situation and Al proves surprisingly intractable.

[scottowilliams]

Back to the drawing board

[scottowilliams]

Second interview did not trigger an existential crisis, so we're ahead

[scottowilliams]

Oh dip, second interview

What is this, a goof?

[scottowilliams]

Which is to say

The job interview went badly. I mean, I certainly feel bad about it. It was largely spent correcting my thinking about the assignment, asking me follow-ups I fumbled on, and correcting my thinking about those.

Not meanly, mind you. The interviewer was thoughtful with all this. And we ended on a fairly positive note, maybe. And I suppose I have a shred of hope if she thinks "This guy is coachable, we can get him right." Which is true. But most places don't want that and I really feel like I'd be starting on the back foot.

So, I don't know. The interview was so brutal it left me feeling I really shouldn't get this job. Which has me spiralling in all sorts of existential ways about what my future looks like and who I am. And I've just been lying in bed recovering for an hour since. My body doesn't want to do life today.

It's not a good feeling, fam.

So I return to my initial statement... I'm so fucked.

[scottowilliams]

I'm so fucked.

[scottowilliams]

So I did the homework for that job opportunity

(As discussed here)

And I have really high hopes -- like, this would be pretty cool for me -- but I have doubts about how I handled it. Like, the second I hit submit, I was like "oh man, I should have thought about that more." I immediately remembered -- haha, a few seconds too late -- some feedback I once got that I was sometimes too succinct. I personally think that's kind of BS, but hey, what if it's not?

That said, I tackled it as authentically as I could, and I stand by it, so if they don't want me they don't want me. But man, it's hard to be Zen on this one. I'm at a year since quitting my job and not only am I ready to get back on the wage train, I don't think I will ever find an opportunity as favorable as this one again. There's a lot of pressure here, much of it self-imposed, but not all. Society does want me to have a job, even if it has never been that clear what said job should be or where to find it.

You know. Everyone wants to be liked. Everyone wants to be picked.

For what it's worth, I also still have dreams that my writing submission will come to something, but I'm not deluded enough to count on that, and it's a few weeks before the timeline they indicated they would respond. I can't put everything on hold for a longshot, ya know.

[scottowilliams]

Oh dip, got an interview

[scottowilliams]

So I did the homework for that job opportunity

(As discussed here)

And I have really high hopes -- like, this would be pretty cool for me -- but I have doubts about how I handled it. Like, the second I hit submit, I was like "oh man, I should have thought about that more." I immediately remembered -- haha, a few seconds too late -- some feedback I once got that I was sometimes too succinct. I personally think that's kind of BS, but hey, what if it's not?

That said, I tackled it as authentically as I could, and I stand by it, so if they don't want me they don't want me. But man, it's hard to be Zen on this one. I'm at a year since quitting my job and not only am I ready to get back on the wage train, I don't think I will ever find an opportunity as favorable as this one again. There's a lot of pressure here, much of it self-imposed, but not all. Society does want me to have a job, even if it has never been that clear what said job should be or where to find it.

You know. Everyone wants to be liked. Everyone wants to be picked.

For what it's worth, I also still have dreams that my writing submission will come to something, but I'm not deluded enough to count on that, and it's a few weeks before the timeline they indicated they would respond. I can't put everything on hold for a longshot, ya know.

[scottowilliams]

Half-Dreaming May 15 2026

This was not one of those dreams that was in any way arcane, obscure, or difficult to parse. As always it came to me in the near-waking hours before I would have gotten up.

Again, I was at my old workplace. I wanted to talk to a colleague who had just been fired, but there were too many people around. It was also his birthday and he had places to go. I felt somewhat awkward too because I had just been asked, on a freelance basis, to do some work for them, although I ended up excusing myself because I didn't think the work they were asking me to do was necessary. After a brief interlude involving some kind of music video starting Jenna Ortega's sister, I finally did speak to this former work friend. I told him I had more ideas than anything, and scripts going. I told him -- and another co-worker who was fired years ago -- about the pilot I wrote and submitted to an agent, and I said boy, it would be hard to write 13 of these. But you get a bunch of people in a room and start accumulating ideas and it becomes easier, right? He served a cake that I liked and boasted that it was nut-free.

Well, it is true that I've written that, and other things lately. It is not true that this particular ex-co-worker was fired but a different one was and I spoke with him at length after it happened. This one in the dream happens to have messaged me the night before because he liked the video I'd posted of Hank looking for Easter eggs. He has a slight background in film production, which is probably why I associate him with the writing. Nice guy, would gladly go for a coffee with him if he drank coffee, which he does not. (He and I and another guy went to lunch on my last day, a year ago today.)

[scottowilliams]

I actually got a positive response on a job application today.

It's for a call centre job, which sounds unglamorous, but it's remote and pays more than my last one. They want me to respond to a case study before giving me an interview, which, ok.

The kicker, for me, is that they said in effect "Look, we know what an A.I. response looks like, so don't give us that." Am I in heaven? A role that not only doesn't require but seemingly rebukes A.I.? I gotta make this happen! Jeez, now I'm all nervous!

[scottowilliams]

Dream May 1 2026

In the waking world, I spent over an hour yesterday on the phone with a former colleague as he brought me up to speed on his recent departure from the company. We discussed old wounds and frustrations and what the path forward looks like.

So naturally I had a dream about that place last night. I was back but not back, kind of just checking in. I was trying to pin down that one director who was away when I left. Perhaps somewhere in my subconscious there's a desire for closure there.

At the end of the dream, I was passing by a theatre that was doing a production of my play, Half-Past Eight PM. Milling around outside were all kinds of people from different periods of my life, some I think about often, some I haven't thought of in years. There were hugs and handshakes and introductions between parties (and for some reason I said I was glad I didn't have to feed everybody.) And then I woke up.

[scottowilliams]

Hard Left

Sometimes you get so fucking fed up with the way things are, you have no choice but to take a hard left. You would think that would describe my choice to quit my job 6 months ago, but in fact that was more of a soft lane change.

With such little success in job searching and so little desire to develop, I decided to try something drastic. I searched for Canadian Screenwriting Agents.

See, I've had this script for years that I think is pretty good. Problem is, I don't want to sell the idea, partly because I would want to share credit with my brother for personal reasons, and the agency I looked at only wants solo scripts (which seems fair.)

Then while driving around an idea occurred to me. Ideas are not always cheap and easy to come by when you need them, so I set down at my computer and started writing.

My hope is to have a finished script to submit to people within a few weeks. I am not deluded enough to think this is my instant ticket to fame and fortune or any kind of guaranteed success, overnight or otherwise, but it would be a failure doing what I want to do and am good at. I am ready for the rejection that comes with this. I need to try.

Stay tuned

[scottowilliams]

I wrote the thing, to my satisfaction. In fact it only took two days to draft, which is suspiciously quick, but then I let it roll around my brain for a few weeks before revisiting it today. Aside from a few typo corrections and format things, a couple minor punchups to dialogue and one character rename, it's pretty much what I wrote back in December. I doubt there's much more I can do to it without taking it apart completely.

My cursor lingers over the submission link. They don't want me. I'm not real. It's not good. I'm not serious. I actually don't want it either. Too stressful. Still hoping for one of those cozy desk jobs that is somehow miraculously work from home and not requiring any advanced knowledge of code. That's where I belong.

The thing I understand least about myself is my simultaneous fear of success and failure. What are they going to do, reject me? Like everyone else? Or worse, get me work doing the thing I'm actually good at? Perish the thought.

[scottowilliams]

So I left this by the wayside for a while as I focused on different things. Today I was feeling extremely beaten down about my prospects so I figured "FUCK IT, HARD LEFT IT IS." I wrote a dinky little CV and polished up the script just a smidge, and bloop. Please allow 6-8 weeks for response.

I expect nothing to come of this. I would not anticipate they would see this script from some NOBODY from NOWHERE who has done NOTHING and say "Yes, we can get this made!" More likely they might say "I think we can get you taking notes in a room." And we'll see what happens if so. But the 99% likelihood is "Um, thanks kid, leave it to the pros." I'm prepared for that. Like how would that be worse than the nothing I'm experiencing?

Success would be worse in fact. I have always lived with a bizarre fear of success that has kept me from pursuing anything. Because success is hard work that begets hard work. It is not comfortable or stable. But my lack of ability to find something simple, comfortable and stable has pushed me to make the big move, just to see what would happen.

Wellp. So be it, right?

[scottowilliams]

Dream(s) April 4

In my first dream of the night I'm at a family gathering trying to help my brother find his shoes, which we do eventually locate in the living room. The second was more interesting.

I'm at a gas station. Apparently I have driven a big rig here. I philosophize on gas companies being interchangable villains of life. Gas, in the dream,is cheaper than real life by a lot.

I wind up at a hole in the wall diner just as some argument has broken out and a bunch of people push past me. Okay. I go to the counter and there are these girls there, Lisa and Katherine, who I used to be on a bowling team with back when I was in high school. We saw each other every Saturday and almost never said a word to each other.

Anyway, Lisa says she has something for me, she's been holding onto it all these years. It's a large sum of cash I somehow helped her acquire. My share. I'm amazed, I didn't know this was coming. I either helped her pick lotto numbers or unknowingly helped her rob a bank, unclear.

So, she takes it out: first a check for a large sum of money, then bills, almost too much to count as I try to make piles. I determine it's about a year's salary. I'm thrilled, you know, I'm not really working right now (besides the occasional big rig haul??) so I could use this. Mel will be happy I've got some cash. While she gives it to me, Lisa recounts a story about her troubled but lovable mother. (In reality I know nothing about her mother.)

We go to part ways. I offer my phone number in case she ever needs to reach me again -- it's taken over twenty years to run into each other, after all -- but she declines, indicating our business is concluded.

I wake up, annoyed to find this has just been a dream and I did not come into a substantial amount of money.

[scottowilliams]

There's a guy here who gives me a fistbump every time we pass each other, eg by the elevators (so once every few days.) Never spoken a word to him, unless you count making a soft *explosion* noise under my breath when we dap. No idea what his name is.

[scottowilliams]

Meanwhile

Mel ran afoul of the company higher ups when she didn't activate her ChatGPT license. After explaining why, she got a talking-to about how it's one of the company's objectives to use AI more. Barf. This may be one of those things she has to play along on. I don't think her job is in danger -- they need her -- but it's still a scary thought that she might have to tread lightly, since we're a single income household. (She could find a new job much quicker than I could.)

[scottowilliams]

The backlog is cleared and yet here I remain

It appears I have gotten into a rather surreal situation where I am to be paid the next three days to come in and do barely any work, if any at all. A small sum just to leave my house early in the morning, be away from my dog, sit at a desk, drink questionable coffee, and send the occasional e-mail. I haven't done anything in about 2 hours and prior to that I had only been assigned about 1 task per hour. Look, it's their dime and I'm not going to tell them not to pay me but I wouldn't be mad about simply being told to go home. Maybe tomorrow I'll bring some writing or something. This is insane. I shouldn't be here. Frankly I'm not even sure it's a good deal for me.

[nightlyquotes]

“I think it’s important to realize you can miss something, but not want it back.”

— Paulo Coelho

[scottowilliams]

Me when I think about my old apartment