imisstony.com

So a couple months ago or so, I found myself feeling incredibly miserable. Not as miserable I was at this time last year... that was MIS-ER-ABLE. I'd been working for Walt Disney Animation for five years, three of which were spent on a film called Meet the Robinsons (OPENING FRIDAY, MARCH 30!) As we got closer to the release date, I started to ask myself whether my head was completely into starting on the next film (and it was looking like it would start immediately and was set for an 18-month schedule... which is very intense). The thing is, life in Los Angeles was getting increasingly hard to deal with. To be honest, loneliness was getting the best of me. To do a good job, I needed balance and everything seemed way off balance. But this wasn't enough to just up and quit my job. It's a fun company, I consider the people there my family away from home. I had benefits, a weekly pay check, all sorts of crazy fringe benefits. In fact, I never considered leaving Disney until I had a solid film idea to go off and shoot. That's been one of my goals with Filmgeneration.com from the beginning. Keep shooting shorts until I've reached the point where I felt ready to shoot something longer, something that would require some time off.

Anyhow, I was in the middle of a wrist-aching project at work when I started thinking about taking some time off to travel. I'd been wanting to go to Vietnam for a while. My friend Manash and I had discussed working hard in 2007 to save up for a big trip in '08. But then I came across WheretheHellisMatt.com. Here was a guy who had worked in game development and one day decided that there was more to life that an office job. So he packed up and traveled around the world. Along the way, he made videos of himself doing a goofy dance in exotic locales. Stride Gum found the viral vid and paid him to shoot another video the next year.

So I'm watching this video on YouTube and I'm in awe of the places there are to see out there. I've done some traveling and seen some things but to see Matt dancing in Africa with a bunch of Rwandan (I think) kids... I was overwhelmed with emotion. I've seen these places depicted in films and on tv shows but it doesn't always register in my brain that there are so many people out there. I'm often so consumed by my own problems and stuck in my little bubble that I forget. And that's why I travel. New perspectives. I'm forced to open my eyes and look around.

If you know me, you know I'm not the most impulsive person. I think things out. And then I think about them some more. With the blog, I'm hoping to give people some insight into that thought process, share my experiences, entertain, and maybe inspire as Matt did.