I was thinking about my sister’s boyfriend Ryan, he makes movies, he’s helping me make something like a movie, an ad really. He spends his work days shooting and editing and what not, really I’m not sure I know the full depth or extent of his work, but he at least films and edits. And then he comes home and watches movies. Perhaps not every night, but a lot of the nights.

I watch movies and television most nights, I love them, but I don’t make them. I’ve worked on video pieces in the past, but I’m far from a filmmaker.

I write for brands, and beyond the advertising I consume because I exist in the world, I do not pursue examples of the type of work I do between nine and five.

Is that a bad thing?

Would I be better off if I were as passionate as someone who labours on something and spends their freetime enjoying other versions of the same thing done by masters?

I can’t speak to Ryan’s degree of happiness, but media does make it seem like it’s a fairly difficult way to be.

This division of making content and consuming content is not good, I don’t think. My bar for meaningful lives lived are medieval stonemasons who got to work on structures their grandfather’s started, and that their grandchildren would not be around to see completed. I have a hard time imagining those stone masons spent their days looking at stone-cutting magazines or carving monthlys. Of course those things didn’t exist, but if they did, I think these men would rather be drinking beer with their buddies.

I don’t drink beer with my buddies really.

Mostly I walk the loop around my field and write this blog and try to play a roleplaying game when I can. Much of that is because I live a 15 minute drive from anything. If I could walk to get a beer with a buddy it might be different, but it isn’t.

Maybe I should subscribe to a few advertising magazines.