Lisa’s parents and Sam stayed over last night on their way to America to meet Livia the new arrival. Not knowing about the length of time George’s recovery would take, meant that Lisa and I couldn’t join them. Still, we’ll probably meet Livia when she visits Italy later in the year.


Today’s been much more relaxed, and although there was still an article to write for PC Plus, I’ve been able to do at least some editing work. The whole documentary’s coming together finally and I should have a finished version by the end of the month.

The natural history museum called. They’re looking for a producer for their new audio visual work – but it’s not me because they want someone full time. Still they’ve got an interesting set of projects going on and they seem interested in what I’m doing so I’ll go in and see them in the next few weeks.

Recently more and more people have wanted to pay me through paypal. Which is fine, but it’s now pushed my paypal account over some kind of barrier so I’ve now got to become a business user… which means lots of things I don’t understand and don’t have time to research…. Never mind.

Crisis back on
Ok – so the bottom seems to have fallen out of the magazine market. Well, that’s not quite true, but Digital Video is closing, Computer Arts isn’t doing reviews anymore and is changing its requirements. Imagine FX has taken its reviews in house….

All of which doesn’t entirely wreck my writing work, but it does pose a few questions.

There aren’t all that many hours in the day, and there are going to be less once Lisa goes back to work and I’m looking after George one day a week. In addition, looking ahead to the next few years, things are going to start getting expensive and Lisa isn’t going to have her job long term, so I’ll have to find a way to do less and earn more.

Plus, there’s a global recession on the way – at least I assume there is because all the banks and politicians keep reassuring us that there isn’t.

Hmm…

I’m not panicking about any of this because we’ve got backup plans and even if the financial situation gets much worse, we can still move out of London where we could have a much cheaper lifestyle because the house has gone up in value so much since we bought it….

Anyway – the point is, I need to work less and earn more – and even though I could probably replace the magazines that are going, I have to ask myself whether I really want to.

Ok, I’d certainly like to continue writing for magazines, and there are a lot of benefits to it – not least that as one of the few people who can write and do various creative videoy arty things with computers, keeping my name in the magazines means people tend to contact me with interesting projects (like the book I’m currently writing, for example).

However, if there isn’t going to be a regular magazine dedicated to filmmaking and digital video for a while, It’s going to take an awful lot of work for me to build up a similar number of commissions from other magazines – and this at a time when my illustration, animation and documentary work seem to be taking off rather well…

Perhaps it’s time to do some re-focussing….