Over Here, Having Adventures

Are blogs still a thing?

I don't know. 

It's been 5 years since I posted anything here, which is some ways isn't that long ago. But then again, the world has change drastically since then. Covid, Trump, AI... in someways 5 years ago feel like 9 lifetimes!

Boyne Valley International Film Festival has happened, we celebrated our 5th Anniversary this year, and had one of my filmmaking heroes as a guest, Shane Meadows. Now if you'd told me 5 years ago I'd be here now, I'm not sure I'd have believed you. Or maybe I would, I have a lot of belief in myself actually. You have to when you're in the ideas business. Which is what I think I'm in, less the film business, more the ideas business. I think up ideas, I make them happen. You can't do that if you don't believe in the idea first, but yourself second.

Anyway, here's why I'm back writing on here, every year, during the festival, one, two or more people mention this blog to me and how much they enjoyed it. For me the end of the blog came around the time of Covid. It just seemed like the right time, the way social media was, podcasts were blowing up, people seem to have less time to sit and read. So I kind of capped it all off with my book, 8 Simple Steps to Making Your Short Film. Which gathered up a lot the advice from my own experience on here, mainly to put it in to a document I could share with people asking for advice... which I did at first, but then I found those people never replied and never said thank you. So I thought, fuck them, I'm charging you for it. Self publish the advice as a book and now you can bloody well pay for it...

Oh yeah, I have a little less patience these days. I'm not quite as nice as I used to be. Things have happened, covid sure, which I got twice, the world went to shit, Trump peeled back the scab of reality, as we all know, and we've pretty much been wadding through the puss ever since. Thanks Trump. Two of my kids were diagnosed with autism, which is actually brilliant, it might mean I'm autistic too... I haven't been diagnosed, but I look at them and think "They're mini-me's, that's how I was as a kid"... so maybe the anxiety, occasional depression and shear exhaustion I feel actually comes form 49 years of masking? Could be? Not sure. Other stuff, money, debt, tax, us tax, house hunting etc etc etc. has all made me a little more less inclined to bend of backwards for fuckwits and god fucking know the world is full of fuckwits!

BUT, is saying all that, I do still love the world, I love my mad kids, and happy family, we're a mess, but as my middle kid said once "We're a happy mess", I love film and making films, and helping other people make films, especially that, maybe more than making me own films. I like not being selfish. I've made a heap of youth films since we last spoke, and works with amazing young people who changed how I look at the world. I want to do more of it. And I have plans to do that. So, I thought I'd jump on here and share some of those adventure with you.

I also have new scripts, and old ones, I'm still trying to get 10 Days in December made... what am I like! What is it they say, the sign of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different result, so I'll happily madly do that over and over until I get the damn thing made, because it deserves to be made and people will like it, it will travel the world, meet its audience and do well, of that I have no doubt. I just have to get over the hump of making it, which is a hump built of doubt and fear and lack of funds... it is really amazing how the lack of something can actually be an obstacle... that doesn't make sense... How can a Nothing stop you from doing a Something? Surely it can't... Well ok then, let's do it.

Right, signing off for now, excuse bad grammar and typos, but I don't care. Read it, make sense of it yourself. I'll be over here having adventures. Till next time.