Gig Economy Oligarch
Ah, the existential angst of contemplating an empty work schedule. Those blank spaces in the calendar beg the soul-searching question: Do I actually own and operate a viable color grading company, or am I just running a glorified side hustle with its own blog?
Well, I guess the answer kind of depends on the day.
On good days, I’m a successful entrepreneurcontemplating multi-million dollar offers from Shark Tank investors for a 2% stake in Baldwin Colour. Imagine a video industry Henry Ford who says “You can have any color you want as long as it’s rec.709.” In between client calls, I sip a lunchtime Negroni while surveying the city from the panoramic, floor-to-ceiling windows of my plush penthouse office that rotates on the top floor of my massive and ever-expanding brain.
On bad days, however, when the slump slaps me in the face, it can feel like I’m a mere color grading TaskRabbit who does Uber Post Production to make ends meet: “Baldwin is driving a DaVinci Resolve and will meet you at the color export page.” I would charge surge pricing, but apparently the budget for most projects these days is super tiny and forever shrinking. At least I’m not required to pick up belligerent drunks at midnight in the bad part of town — although I’ve worked some sessions where certain people who shall remain nameless have … Never mind.
Today, since I have time to update this blog, I clearly identify with the "lowly tech serf exploited by digital feudalism,” and not with the fake-tanned billionaire wintering in the Cayman Islands on his super-yacht, developing his own private space program while consulting with the White House via satellite phone. Alas, the only Musk we know around these parts is an ancient bottle of rancid aftershave in the back of my bathroom cabinet.
It's still the start of the year, I tell myself, and the start of the year is always slow. But is it really? And besides, it’s nearly March so who am I kidding? Nevertheless, it did snow last week. Perhaps I can write this slow period off as a Snow Day. The work will start rolling in again once all my many, many clients dig themselves out from underneath the frozen tundra
Or, God forbid, my clients are now sending all their projects to that inexplicably glamorous ‘new guy in town,’ the one who probably also offers to plow their driveways for free because he’s suddenly ubiquitous and everyone’s best friend. Soon he’ll be sponsoring the open bar and distributing branded baseball hats at some industry networking event everyone except me attends.
Yes, the procrastinating recluse Baldwin is just sitting at home writing a stupid blog about his reduced employment opportunities while lucrative deals are being struck elsewhere. That is, until the inexplicably glamorous new guy screws up big, because it turns out a color-blind zebra knows more about accurate skin tones than he does. And that always happens. Then my clients start trickling back as if the inexplicably glamorous new guy never came to town in the first place.
Which he didn’t, because he was always just another very ripe figment of my professional paranoia.
Such is the manic-depressive life cycle of the color grading professional who owns his own business, or freelance career, or day job, or side hustle, or whatever we are calling whatever I do for a living. John D. Rockefeller or Hobo Joe: who will I be next week?