Volunteer work

I am doing an extremely labour-intensive, time-consuming, frustrating job this weekend. It will take up both days and around twenty hours. I will not be getting paid, aside from maybe a pizza (which admittedly is enough to con me into doing a fair bit. I do love pizza. However... not this much.) Generally speaking, though, if you want me to work on a weekend, for twenty hours, there'd better be some cash involved. In fact, I'm making a fairly significant financial investment in these twenty hours, one I don't believe will ever actually be returned (around $400, which is quite a lot given I still have to buy my textbooks and pay my fees for the next semester of uni, on top of monthly expenses.) To attend, I have dodged out of a fairly significant social event, several hours of paid work, and a whole lot of errands which would be a lot easier to accomplish than this is going to be.

But despite all that, I will be there anyway. Because, in the end, I think it's a good cause.

No, it's not a charity (though I do sink a lot of time and money into Canteen, the Cancer Council, and the Stalight Children's Foundation.) It's one of my highschool friends' first ever venture into the world of film-making.

The film is short, and based off Robert Louis Stephenson's novella The Suicide Club (and yes, it is exactly what it says on the can.) I'm helping pay to rent some sound equipment and a fog machine, and I'm also helping build and break down the (not huge but still hefty) set, set up sound and light equipment, clear trash out of the place we're shooting the outdoor scenes, apply powder to sweaty, shiny faces, and try to keep everyone quiet on the set and on-track. And keep Cormorant, the friend, sane.

If Cormorant wasn't a fairly close friend, and a total sweetheart, and insanely talented, and also kinda cute, there is no way I would be giving up my weekend and my money for it... but he is all those things, and I'm still a drama nerd at heart, so... here we go.

Unfortunately I'm also starting uni on Monday--so this next week or so is going to have a few touches of complete insanity. I'm taking four subjects, which is officially a full time load, and involves twenty study hours a week as of Week 2.

Fortunately I'm not officially jobless yet--the head of the team I usually work with and for has suggested to one of the corporation's managers that I be given a private contract to keep my hours flexible but remove me from the books as a casual worker. This would be quite frankly awesome if it happened, so... we'll see how it goes down. In the mean time I'm still going to be quietly handing my resume out to everyone with a 'Now Hiring' sign on their door, and quite a few places that don't. It's a cringe-worthy experience. I know none of them will pay as well as my current job and I will quite possibly have to take two seperate ones, or start working night shifts again (which I think may well kill me.) We'll just see how this goes. I'll tell you one thing, though--this is inducing a lot of hooker moments.