Totally still committed 100% to Thousand Movie Project but if you’ve been following for a while you might’ve noticed that I haven’t been posting the essays on schedule lately. I’ll hit a Monday, I’ll skip a Monday, I’ll hit a Thursday and skip another. Seemingly without reason.

I got reasons.

1. This time of year is always a bit stressful because the college I work at will be closed for pretty much the entire month of August, which means I don’t get a full paycheck until the last week of September or first week of October (which I know sounds bizarre, but it’s true, and almost every year they find some way of messing it up, drawing things out a week longer than necessary, which my old therapist suggested — perhaps a bit cynically — is a way for the college to make more money: if they can hold on for just one more week to whatever couple-million dollars they’ve gotta pay all their part-timers, they can collect another week’s interest on it from the bank, and get away with it by giving us some story about how “the system is resetting,” something bureaucratic, and we have no recourse but to go and complain at the bursar’s office that we need to eat, and pay rent, and to thereupon suffer the pity of whatever disaffected 19-year-old they’ve put in the position of fielding those complaints). The rent, however, takes no breaks. So apart from having to budget myself — which should probably have a positive impact on productivity, right?, since I’m not going out and blowing money on shit and should instead be at home doing work — it also means that I have to go hardcore into freelance work (I’m a researcher for a ghost writing company). So that’s cutting into my time — not a lot, but it is.
2. I’m working on a novel — which sounds so cringingly pretentious when I say it, but it is what it is. I know I’ve mentioned here and there through the Project that I’ve written three novels already, pitched them to a couple hundred agents, and been shot down each time. I’m having fun with this one, trying something new, and even though I’ve got my doubts about this current novel being the one that makes it, and lands me a book deal, I am — again — enjoying it, and need to finish. So the mornings that I might normally spend watching movies from the List, or writing essays for the Project, are instead spent mapping out plot shit and writing prose for the fiction thing.
3. The Thousand Movie Project Podcast. I stated a podcast last year, then ignored it for a while, and then in the past couple months have been devoting more and more time to it. The podcast has since been picked up by the iTunes Store and Stitcher Radio. Its home is on SoundCloud. Twice a week I jot down some loose script, run it through two or three polishes, and then record it and edit it. It’ll take me like two hours to work on the script, forty minutes to record, and forty minutes to edit each episode, and I’ve been doing about two per week. Sometimes three. So that takes up a lotta time as well. (I actually haven’t realized how much time it takes up until just now. Yeesh.
4. I’m planning two public events for Thousand Movie Project in July. The first is a screening of a couple student films at Tea & Poets. That particular event is still taking shape, but it’s looking like I’m gonna introduce the filmmakers, we’re gonna show the movies, and then have a live discussion on stage that gets recorded, edited, and tossed up onto the podcast. You’ll be hearing about that. Then, on what I believe is the last Tuesday of the month, I’ll be having a live discussion onstage with Joaquin Ortiz, one of the three owners of Tea & Poets. This, too, is intended for the podcast. You’ll be hearing about that.
5. The Project costs money. It didn’t really make a blip on the radar for the couple months before I moved over here to Little Havana, because I was basically just buying $2.99 or $3.99 rentals maybe four times a week. It added up to like the price of a meal + a beer. But money’s way tighter now, and I’m not sure exactly how I’ll float this for the time being. There might be another crowdfunding campaign on the way. Not sure. But yeah — as I eat eggs with rice for breakfast and dinner, and fill my gas tank $10 at a time, I do also find myself tugging at my collar whenever I think of bleeding $16 a week on movies.

A few of you have reached out to say that you enjoy popping in on the website now and then, that you’re interested in my progress through the Project, and I’m asked eight or nine times a week which moviepicture I’m on (still in the 240s). I appreciate everybody’s interest, especially if you’re checking out the site. It’s thrilling that I’ve got this following.

I hope you’ll bear with me for these next couple weeks as I get through the two public events, hammer my podcasting into a steadier schedule, rack up those freelancer hours and get this book done.