Paul G. Newton

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Isolation makes us do strange things.

I have had many jobs over the years. Most of them have been entrepreneurial. I sold Insurance for the majority of the time. Yeah, that was fun, NOT. I was, for a long time, a freelance filmmaker and photographer. That made for many long days and sometimes weeks working from home by myself. Rarely did I have any co-workers, and I was mostly alone in my house trying to edit or drum up a sale. Usually, I spent my time learning something new or honing my After-Effects or Photoshop skills. It was a solitary existence. I do not have children, and my wife works strange hours, so it is always eerily quiet. Some people might find that relaxing, but for a guy like me, it is exhausting.

I need action and conversation to stimulate my brain. My attitude gets questionable when I have no one around to stoke the fires of creativity. I like to tell people that I am the type of person that likes to hear the roar of the cannonballs. That means there always has to be something exciting happening around me. Solitude is boring.

These past few weeks have been nerve-racking to me. But I am working it out. I get to go into the office a little here and there. Even there, I am by myself. I have made a few product videos and some promotional stuff for an online event, but they are kind of lame. They aren’t lame because the product I created isn’t any good; they are lame because it’s not hard work, and it is just an inanimate object spinning around on a turntable. There is no meat on the bone, so to speak.

I did create something exciting this weekend, though. I broke out my fog machine and filmed an eerie scene of smoke coming through the slats on a chair in my yard. Donald showed up for a few minutes. We stayed six feet apart, just like you’re supposed to (we do that anyway, no biggie).

Here is what I shot. It doesn’t have a story, but it is kind of cool.