So, that's that?

So Dawson turns to Pink and asks him that at the edge of the football stadium. And in asking him that, it covers the night they just had. The school year they just had. And, most importantly, how the future (at least in the short term) will be.

In the land of Pacific Gold, what you do for a living is the second question when you meet someone. This is after "nice to meet you" or "oh, you bought the whisky" or "you were sleeping on the couch." When I said where I worked that's usually all it took. They knew of the companies, and that ended that. No one would ask any other questions, except girls at a bar because they figure you're buying from here on out.

For over eight years I was doing the same old shit. It was a job that many TV executives had at some point to get the experience to move on. Only, I noticed as time was moving that I wasn't moving on. I'd switch companies, but it was the same thing. One day earlier this year a bolt of knowledge hit my brain like a soft pillow: you're doing the same thing you were doing eight years ago, except you're paid a hell of a lot more. I stopped and realized that only one factor was going good - my wallet. My brain was the one starving.

Mind you, this was the WRONG place to be for a starving brain. And I can tell you this because I have been in the thick of it for this long - TV networks fear change. They fear it like being told they no longer are relevant (which is getting closer to being each day). They only know one way, and when that one way begins to fade, there's steep wallowing in failure. And even then, in those sour days, change does not come. Part of the reason why I went to this network (one that wanted you to stay at home for one week and watch all their shows but you were free to do whatever you wanted for the rest of the season) was that I was to be a part of the changing of late night programming. It never happened, and it wasn't ever close to happening. It was by no means a failure of anyone in my department. It was people who would have to accept that change and quite possibly become a victim of it.

Am I the victim now that I have left? I was inside, trying to change things for the better and found otherwise. New ideas were met with Disney-approved "performance plans" where you filled out countless surveys on your own work. Instead of testing new formats, I spent an afternoon letting a cartoon character tell me that checking mail on Yahoo is not approved Internet use. Oh, I think I made the right choice, don't you? Almost three years to the day (and documented here on the Gold) I walked out, happier than when I entered. That is sad. But it is also good, because I've, in the words of a wise man "had enough of the bullshit." It's time to live life.