so why did I call this nothing but a stopgap.
well I started online around Mozilla 1.0 beta 1 - they come out with the betas so often you could almost measure web years by them. it was fun then, trying to work out what the difference between HTTP and httpd was and why this whole thing would make any difference anyway.
then came a year or so of messing around with cgi and its ilk - seemed like I was forever coming up with creative ways to use geek toys - that's almost the internet's raison d'etre.
after that, let's see - went to windsurf maui for three months.

Kanaha, Sprecks and Hoo'kipa (ok so I didn't sail hoo'kipa but I surfed the point in a 4 foot north swell.)

then I went to London.
what a letdown that was. thought for some reason that I would enjoy myself - big city and all that shit but it seemed like whatever I did I pissed myself off.
spent a couple of weeks freelancing (still doing it) and got extremely frustrated with clients in general.
fucking great.
funny how I idealised advertising so much when I was in university.
it's all full of half wits. talking of half wits, isn't it tedious how 90% of the people in the world are completely useless.

so I got really annoyed with myself cause I suddenly found I was being polite to people I had no business being polite to.
that's growing up, is it ?
ok, so I'm still a child. I was annoyed, primarily at myself, cause I'd compromised the one principle I was trying to live by, and that's only doing what I feel like doing.
if you think that sounds easy I'd like you to try it. almost everyone who I know who left university got stuck in this bullshit gen-x loop - not the McJob Gen-X shit we saw in Reality Bites but the more intellectual end of the spectrum. Investment banking, management consultancy - give me a break.

If I need a badge, I become a security guard.

people spend their whole lives working on their CV without stopping for a minute to think what they really want to do. what a waste of fucking time. their CV locks them into a system that they have to delude themselves they enjoy.

to fix my problem I went back to my roots as it were. told a few people to fuck off, a few more got pissed off. ego damage, big deal. now I'm happier. I've been skating a lot and I can't help but compare skaters to surfers. a friend once reminisced about being a kid and doing nothing but eating and playing sports.
sounds like a good beginning.
say we add some to it so we get eating, playing sport, thinking, sex, making stuff and that sounds about right.
of course what do we make ?
wish it was as easy as what do we sleep with...
so now I come to a turning point in my life (hey you think that sounds like bullshit - yeah - fuck you) where I finally find something i think i want.
i want film school.
i think.

nick - 3rd Sept 1996