Austin Update

In one month, I will be celebrating my last day of the festival. This does not mean my last day working here, but it will be the last day of the festival and mean my time in Austin is coming to a close. Work has already ramped up and pretty much taken hold of my life. Weekdays are for working, and the weekend is for resting. I hate that latter part, but truth is these past few weekends that is all I have felt like doing.

Working with SXSW reminds me a lot of working for Denver Film Festival in that it takes a hell of a lot of work and dedicated people to do it because it will take over your life and you will need to summon up all sorts of energy you may not be used to expending. This next month is going to be really interesting, and I am excited to see how I react to it. So far, I do enjoy that my days fly by, especially that I am really homesick and would like for time to pass quickly while I am here. But I did not take too well to the Denver Film Festival in that, I got sick of being around people real fast and would duck out at Barnes and Noble to escape quite often. I also got sick, which did not help.

I am not sure why I keep doing this for this blog, but I keep writing things and then deleting them because I guess I do not want anyone to get the wrong impression. So, what am I trying to say here? Give an update. I am homesick. Do I regret coming here? Not at all. Is this what I wanted in terms of work when I quit my job end of last year? Not exactly because I wanted a freer schedule and this is not really giving me that. But it has allowed me the chance to work in a different city (I almost wrote country, ha), see the enormity of this festival, and work in a new arena.

What keeps me going here is knowing it is only temporary. I could not see myself doing this job permanently. I am having struggles lately with finding purpose in corporate structures, money, and the way the world works. Is this what people say just before going off the grid?? I promise, I am not there yet, but I just…. I don’t know. Anyway, I am really grateful I had this chance to work here, but I am also really missing Adrienne and the mountains.

So, here I go. Diving head first into the next month, and going to come out of it with a new experience. If anything, I drive a hell of a lot now and have gotten much more comfortable with driving. I actually am planning a few road trips and am totally willing to drive. This is a HUGE change, just ask Adrienne, the one who drove most of the way to Chicago in 2016 because her sister did not want to drive.