Bohemian By Design
Whether it's avoiding large financial excursions (especially at tax time) or throwing responsibility into the wind, living below the mean income per capita has meant that I have limits in my scope. However, I have wisely invested in my business and prize the establishment of my trade. Along with this, a trend of peaks and valleys provides me with moments to grow and moments of living in the pure essence of Bohemia.

Peaks
When times get lean, like they are now, I could almost smile. For instance, today I had an opportunity to be a cinematographer on a narrative student short being produced for school. The shoot went well and I was in a state of creative bliss, finding personal satisfaction in composing shots, and using my experience to help with continuity and time management (to a degree). In about 5 hours, I did about 40 setups with no crew, other than the director. Even more could have been accomplished, but there was the inevitable lag time for the roommates recruited to be actors (including one with a broken foot).


Valleys
All during this time, I was discovering that my car, which we were driving to the location, was losing it's brakes. On a hill. With freshly coated snow making the road slick. At one point, a lady was sliding right toward me as we were driving up a hill. I put the car in reverse and got out of her way. I literally could feel my mind split in two as one side was in mission mode to accomplish the video production, while my head was exploding over the dilemma with my car. Once again my hard earned money will be flushed away into expensive car repairs, a hard rut of a trend like my peaks and valleys.

Change By Design
It is only because I found about the study of this repetitive aspect to our psychology that I could take on as fact that everyone develops a formula to survive, hence we expect the same results every time we apply that formula. My formula involves periods of sluggish creativity that are spent reinforcing my assets, followed by lean times where I am prolific in my creative mediums, but earning nary enough to pay the bills. There is a similar trend to periods of travel. There could be a single year traveling a great deal followed by periods where I never leave the state. In fact, it doesn't even correlate to whether I'm broke or not.

The Art Of Chaos
So, to make it through these peaks and valleys, I have the attitude of surfing. I ride the wave and try to keep afloat. It is thrilling to be able to find the wherewithal to make things happen when life gets harder. I can base my future on the fact that I know my track record shows that I land on my feet, and that I usually find myself in a better place after every cycle of change. I base this on the reliance that formula psychology (not it's real name) is a fact, meaning I probably couldn't break my cycle if I tried.

Are We Depressed Yet?
It is an odd thing, the timing of our new great depression (what's so great about it?) is coming at the moment we as a country are now getting over the depressing period of terrorism scares and the needless war in Iraq. There is an air of optimism and re-establishing harmony in the world. Perhaps, even though layoffs and bank failures loom, nobody is panicking. I myself am taking a huge financial gamble on my new career, and have no idea how I will make it past the middle of 2009. I have a fortunate personality trait that doesn't worry about money. I maintain an attitude that money is not as important as other things, and everything will work out.


And I have the track record to prove it.