Time and Distance

EVERY ONCE IN a while I feel like I'm really slacking and not doing enough work for the old career. And then I have weeks like this.

Fun fact: furthest distance I have traveled in my screenwriting career for work:

8136.64 miles, 13094.30 km. That's the distance from Toronto to Cape Town, South Africa, where I worked on a Canada-S.A. co-pro in 2004.

Fun fact number two: total distance I will travel to work as a screenwriter in 2009, without leaving Canada: 4590 miles (7314 km.)

And that's in one thirty day period, a month into the year.

See, that's the thing with TV in Canada. Vancouver endlessly complains about having no work because all the work is "back east," and yet writers I know in Toronto are forever hopping planes to B.C. or Halifax or Ottawa or Montreal or Winnipeg or Calgary or whereever.

All of that is a fancy way of saying that after breaking story in Vancouver for one project two weeks back, this weekend I'll be traveling to St. John's, Newfoundland to sit in a room and break story on a totally different project.

All that and the Canadian winter, too.

I'm not complaining, understand. (Well, except for the winter part. But you'd complain about that too if you had snowbird parents who taunted you with Degrees-in-Farenheit messages left on your answering machine.) But it is a pretty weird way to see the country.

"Oh wow, I look around this nondescript room, and you use white boards too! Weird! We use white boards!"

By the way, all you New Yorkers who moan about having to go to L.A. to work...: 2443 miles. 3932 km. And the FCC is a pain in the ass, but at least they're not trying to kill you.

Face it. We're tougher.

Now. I wonder if there's anywhere in St. John's where a guy could have a drink and a few laughs?