Potentiality

Every few weeks my mind mulls things over and re-shapes the galaxy into something more resembling the truth.

It is hoped that I shall arrive at this moment of absolute truth precisely 4 seconds before I die (the 4 seconds allowing for the overwhelmingly profound nature of my discovery to be fully absorbed)

This week - it’s the power of Potential.

Yes, much like describing vibrating electrons in Voltage, My life seems to revolve around (or be revolved around, you never can know about these things) the Potential of other things.

I can usually stumble across these supposedly ABSURD ideas when I try to come up with excuses for my general lack of enthusiasm for a particular activity.

E.g. Question: “want to come out and hit the town?”

Answer: No, I’ve got work tomorrow!

This pre-fabricated excuse is not a real reason as it were. Many times I’ve been forced out on a “work-night” (used to be a “school-night”) and found myself at work the very-next day, lamenting the going out process – but continuing to do my job adequately.

So if it isn’t an actual excuse – then what is it?

Is it that the night holds a POTENTIAL to be great, and by going out to test the theory – I could be relegating it to doom?

Is it that I don’t want to over-exert myself and destroy the POTENTIAL for a great day tomorrow?

The answer is obviously both. This of course, doesn’t account for the fact that I hate people, which could be seen as a much stronger deterrent to going out and getting drunk amongst the masses of un-clean humanity.

In my lines of work, I find it very important to keep energy reserves in check. Teaching skiing to kids involves a lot of physical movement and sharp mental skills (mostly counting, to see that you haven’t lost any of the kids, but sharp mental skills non-the-less), you need to save some energy for an unexpected emergency that may-or-may-not arise. The same goes for the skiing part – it’s best done, when the movements you make are minimized, energy conserved, becoming one with the contour of the landscape, balancing the chi of your skis to the yang of the mountain??? (ahhh poetic waxing… is there no better kind?)

Likewise, booming. I quite often find myself dipping into energy reserves, as the shot progresses through take, after take, after take.

You quickly learn that if this energy is not conserved… you will run out of it – and it’s quite embarrassing to simply state that you are too tired to continue.

Throughout my time on set I’m constantly re-evaluating the best way to achieve the desired job outcomes, (clear and clean audio) using the least amount of physical energy, conserving this energy for the inevitable overtime and/or difficult scenes.

Some days it seems like all it is that I’m doing is conserving energy, with all the sitting around and what-not. Yet other days I’m well and truly over-exerting my energy stores.

Planning, and re-planning the micing of the next shot; While allowing for the inevitable changing of dialogue (even ad-libs), movement (actors and equipment) and other less tangible elements (earthquakes, flash-floods and the like), all helps keep me sane; and exercises my mind at the same time. (let’s see your overpriced ab-machine do that.)

I should point out here that I haven’t yet discovered a way to actually store my un-used energy. Other than body fat - which is notoriously BAD at being quickly accessed for booming energy. I don’t delude myself into thinking that I will be able to store this energy into some “uber-duracell”.

I guess what I’m really talking about here, is the amount of “perceived” energy that I think I have in my reserves… hence the “potential” energy. See I knew it would come around eventually… well actually I had no idea, and was blindly groping (much like a school-boy at a dance) for some tenuous hold on the original thread of this newly formed life-view.

Many people may simply dismiss all this as some introspective ego-wank, and they are more than entitled to their own opinion. However; Were I actually faced with an argument that my particular brand of galaxy were incorrect? I’d simply say “Poppy-cock” and walk away. (I have no idea what it means – but I’ve often heard it used by older people, usually in a dismissive tone; and seeing as you learn from your elders – I have decided to include it in my vocabulary) Besides, if it’s my galaxy, I can make whatever claims I like.

When countered with; “I’m not a figment of your imagination, you’re a figment of mine!” I simply tell this poor delusional person that I knew they were going to say that, and in fact – It could be said that I made them say that. I then throw in a “Poppy-cock” for good measure, and move on to the rest of my life.

You may be wondering why I keep stating that it’s my own “Galaxy” that we all live in and not my own “Universe”… Well I figure that I’m not important enough in the grand scheme of things to have my own universe; and that we are living in someone else’s Universe with the express-written (not implied aural) permission to have my own locallised Galaxy.

I am of course referring to the cat. This proud noble animal is in fact the ruler of the (our) universe and I am just leasing space for my own galaxy. Fortunately the lease is up next year and I hope to bargain much better terms, on account of the way things have been going on in my head. There’s been too much re-development (that damn construction noise keeps me up all hours), and the roof is indeed leaky (causing any new information collected to just spill out my ears).

I’m also going to ask for an upgrade from my current, depressive outlook, to a much less interesting - but whole lot more satisfyingly, Happy one. It may be cool to be a manic-depressive in someone else’s galaxy; but quite frankly I for one, am sick of it, and will be demanding a refund.

Back to the “potential” situation at hand.

Armed with this new outlook on life, things can be done to rectify the depressive nature of my galaxy.

· Accept more invitations to go out

· Mingle

· Meet new people

· Do new things

· Be dynamic

· Stop conserving energy… you only get one life you stupid tosser, why would you even waste the time thinking about this non-problem, just get out there and LIVE damn it.

On second thought, why bother; I’ve got much better things to mull-over.

And then there’s an entirely different way at looking at the meaning of my life.

Happiness is defined by: my lack of self-loathing, my abundance of motivation, physical pleasure, mental challenge, a sense of accomplishment, observing happiness in others, a smile, fresh powder snow, a beautiful sunset, common acts of nature that reveal themselves to me at the most inappropriate times, caffeine, endorphins, the feeling of movement without moving. Sleep.

I think there’s something in that for all of us.

And this – well I’ve got no idea, except it scared the bejeezers out of me, and the friends I got lost with in the back-country of Whistler mountain. It’s been two years since the “Wednesday-that-time-forgot” – happy 2 years not being dead, to Chris and Blake.

This has been a skiin’ ian production for thompsound.com archives – thanks for listening, and “good night”.

FUN FACTS

These 1000+ words were spewed out in around 1 hr, thus making it an astonishing rate of 1000/60, or roughly 16.666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666 words a minute.

Well truthfully the words were spilled out MUCH faster, but it took a quite a while to re-organise them, polish them into some acceptable form and do the menial things like spell checking and grammar ignoring. Then there was of course the inevitable photo-linking and other design aspects that needed to be attended to. But the point is still there, this is not a highly polished article; more like the ramblings of a desperately lonely old soul – whose only comfort in this harsh and demanding reality, is that it will all come crashing to a grinding halt some day allowing me into the sweet-sweet relief of death (or eternal non-existance, for those who came in late).

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