Scriptplayground Network

As most of my followers and friends know I love freelance work, its my life, passion and has been my career direction for just over 8 years. Just as most things in life change I have found myself slowly gravitating to a partial office job. I am not talking 9-5 everyday, ideally my “dream employment” would be a creative studio that has flexible hours and is fun to work with.

Well as luck (even though I don’t believe in luck) has it I may have possibly found that company or at least a very ideal candidate. Now of course I have many freelance opportunities remaining and will never truly leave the profession. I am just thinking a slow fade to a onsite job could be in my near future.

I am not one to count my chickens or celebrate too soon, but my gut has me thinking this change is exactly how I can refresh my creative juices. Maybe it will last 6 months or maybe 6 years, I just don’t want to ever miss an opportunity for the fear of the unknown.

All this being said, what is your opinion on freelance vs. full-time? How do you define your “perfect job”?

As most of you know I am from the Boston area, huge fan of the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots, pretty much all things Boston. Well I have been contemplating leaving Beantown for some time now and think I am getting closer to making the move.

Now of course this is still in its research stage, but I am seriously considering it. Right now I am mainly looking in Colorado, pretty much since I went out and visited some friends last Fall. Its just a great community, lots of outdoor activities and breathtaking views. It will of course be a challenge to root for the Boston teams especially when a few of the places I have been considering are next door to Rockies stadium.. haha.

This whole move is to test the concept that a freelancer can in fact live anywhere in the world as long as they have internet, which is something I do believe to be the case. I sort of confirmed this when I was responding to business emails on the beaches of the South Caribbean a few months back.

So as you can imagine I would be leaving some things behind, those of course being my family and most of my friends. Though as luck would have it I have a few friends out in Denver/Colorado and hey, Vegas is closer too.

There you have it, a bit of a “random” post as it has nothing to do with programming, but for those interested, in my free time I continue to do the research oh and save lots of money to make a cross-country move even possible.

Finally you may be asking “Why Colorado?”, which my response will always be, Why not? If you have no crucial reason to stay in the same location, why do it?

I’m sure you have read them all today and probably have more to go, but here is mine. A look back on 2009 which for the most part was a great year.

It started off with a bang, lots of amazing projects, travel planned and overall couldn’t ask for more. For the first part of the year I stayed home and worked but come April I was off to Flash in the Can in Toronto for probably the most exciting conference I had ever attended.

Fast forward a few more months and I was in Orlando meeting up with my family and friends, even met a friend all the way from Singapore which was a great time. Sadly 2 days later I was locked away in bed with the flu that I caught on the flight down so this vacation was cut short quickly. However soon after I was back home it was on the road again (literally a road trip) to Owosso Michigan for the 2009 Train Festival. The bonus of this trip was being able to ride on the Morning Daylight, the most elegant steam engine that is still operating (for show) to this day.

Then we come to September or what I call the most extended vacation of my life. I first flew over to Colorado to stay with some good friends and transform into a hiking, exotic-food-eating, shooting redneck and it was a blast. Then it was off to Las Vegas for Photoshopworld were I got to meet up with much of the PhotoshopCafe family. These are guys I have worked alongside for years but only now got to meet. To say it was a great time is an extreme understatement.

The last trip of the year was back to Florida for a pre-Christmas celebration with Disney, friends and family. I got to see the Christmas party at Magic Kingdom and visit pretty much every Disney park in that week. Once I got back home I continued the Disney fun and went to Disney on Ice.

Even the last day of 2009 was amazing. I trekked into Boston to see Dane Cook perform at the TD Garden and it was awesome. The travel an volume of people in the city for First Night couldn’t put a damper on the show and i’m glad I got to go.

Okay so that is pretty much a travel recap of 2009, but I did actually work too. This year had its ups/downs with that. I got to work on a few learning applications for schools, some forensic e-learning applications and even a drivers ed application that is used by huge companies to train their employees. I also launched websites for a bar in New York, a social networking site, a few forum rebuilds and even some work for an industry leading wedding book company. A special thanks to my freelance friends, Philip (PNeal) and Ryan (Spooky) for their amazing work during some of these projects.

So there you have it, 2009 in a few paragraphs. I am anxiously awaiting 2010 and all it has to offer. Feel free to comment or ask questions about these projects and travels and i’ll answer anything I am able to.

See you next year (tomorrow).

In an attempt to break my normal (don’t make new years resolutions idea) I have decided to make 2009 healthier. It is broken in to 3 easy to understand and pretty much common sense areas. Those areas are Personal Fitness, Eating Healthier and Balanced Work.

The first one, Personal Fitness is something I have *tried* in the past, but after a few weeks I would lose interest and would begin to cut back or simply stop. Well the plan this year is to fight through that because I want to live longer. Now that may sound dark in a way, but its jut common sense, a healthier person is more able to be active and generally happier. Part of the *new* addition to this year is WiiFit. More on that later, but basically its awesome.

The second step, eating healthier may also seem like common sense, but when you stay up late, work all the time and don’t get out at much, you tend to eat junk food, chug Red Bulls to keep your eyes open and always have “munchies” close by. The plan here is to no longer bring snack food into the office, cut back on the sweets overall and basically focus on the 3 meals a day and drink less soda (for more than one reason).

Now the third step, balance work is the key to the success of 1 and 2. Why you ask? Well its simple, if you are always working you need energy (carbs and sugar) which causes you to gain weight and in turn makes healthier you go right out the window. So the plan here is to work a normal set of hours, be online less (even for fun) and engage in more activities.

The obvious goal here would be to become more healthy and happy, which is a pretty awesome reward if you think about it. However, my goals/punishments surround travel, because I love to travel and I figured what better motivator than putting one of the most enjoyable things on the line. The bonus to keeping this goal throughout 2009 is yet to be determined, but I have some ideas.

So, now you may be wondering if this blog is going to become all “pro-fitness”.. well, no it is not going to be. I am in the process of setting I have set up a personal blog which I will track my progress through and will provide a link to that once its set up.