J has been cold-calling production companies this week. It's certainly not easy, but at least he's much braver than I am. For the first day and a half, I couldn't even sit in the same room as him! It made me too squeamish to experience all that second-hand rejection. I hid in the bedroom and worked on our website instead.

But now, the website is finished, and I'm left without much to do. And boy, I'm feeling completely useless!

So here I sit in the living room, with my fingers in my ears each time J makes a call. (I'm still squeamish, even though 90% of the people have been very polite.) And whenever someone says "send us your package" or "we'd like to read the script", I proof J's email. Although, after about 20+ calls, we pretty much have an email template for every possible scenario, which means there's not much left for me to do.

Ugh. Did I mention that I'm feeling useless?

It's just so weird to suddenly have nothing to do after being so busy, busy, busy for years!

When we had day jobs, for a good two years we spent all our free time working our asses off -- and we've continued to do so now that we have received this funding.

Yes, believe it or not, working from home on your own project isn't what most people automatically assume. Sheesh, if I got a nickel for every envious "Huh, must be nice...." I could friggin' retire!

I think what a lot of people don't understand is that working from home often means you tend to work longer, putting in more time than you would ever work at the ol' 9-5. Sure, you have the flexibility to set your own hours, but because there is nothing separating the office from the living room, you don't always call it quits at 5 o'clock. Instead you often find yourself working until your eyes bleed - into your evenings and through many weekends.

Not to mention, when you work with your boyfriend/husband, almost Every. Single. Conversation. is work-related -- coming up with new ideas, discussing certain scenes, comparing elements of other movies to moments in ours, etc. It's almost like you never stop working or thinking about the script. I often liken the topic of our script to chewing on a stale piece of bubble gum. Sometimes you just want to spit it out and start over with a new piece, blowing some fresh new bubbles... (Let's just talk about something else for a while, y'know?) But as long as that script is still in our hands, it means that bubble gum is still in our mouths, so you just keep chewing on it.

Believe me, if I didn't want to be a "real" writer so badly, and if I didn't love J so much, I'm sure this job would be the biggest friggin' drag! It is all-consuming. But loving what you do (and who you work with) makes all the difference in the world.

So now, after years of working our asses off, to suddenly be left with nothing to do during the day... gawd, I can't even begin to describe how antsy I'm feeling. Today is only day three of pitching, and it feels like it might as well have been a month!

I have already found myself searching the classified ads and job banks (and that was only on Monday afternoon.) I know I should just relax a while. I should appreciate this time and work on one of the million extracurricular projects I have lined up.... I've got a couple ideas for a new script. In my living room stands an easel with a painting I want to finish. In the spare bedroom closet is a canvas for another painting I want to start. Then there's the cookbook I've started making for my sister's birthday....

There's a zillion things I could/should be doing, and instead I'm sitting here blogging about not knowing what to do with my time. :P

Okay, I've gotta pull myself away from this damn laptop and make good use of this spare time, because I'm sure it won't be long until I'm working again and craving these moments of freedom.

Even so, I think it's gonna be kinda hard not to feel so useless...