There has been a rather clever ad campaign courtesy the New York Lottery recently. I see them every time I ride the subway and they have the funny effect of not making me think about the lotto, but rather about life. It's the slogan: What will you think about when you don't have to think about money?

I guess I've been thinking a lot about money recently because I left my job in August after three years. It was a really great job with amazing benefits and incredible people. But I had gotten to the point where I couldn't get out of bed in the morning, and more importantly, I was no longer producing artistically. I was consumed with how much I hated my days. My depression blocked my focus and inspiration. So I left.

Now I'm artistically blocked because I haven't yet found a steady job and my thoughts are consumed by lack of money. I was speaking to a writer friend about this very same thing a few weeks back. We were pondering the amount of effort we expend on just trying to make ends meet and the potential of that effort put towards a better purpose. In a creative city whose constantly increasing cost makes it difficult for creatives to survive, we've been seeing a lot of friends bite the dust and move back home, wherever that is. Or enroll in law school. Or become a stay-at-home parent. Or finally take over that family business. And I wake up every day and continue to fight the good fight with no promise that I will make it another day.

Maybe this has always been New York's story: every day hundreds of people arrive to pursue their dreams and there's only so much room. But what if it's a national epidemic? What if artists are biting the dust in Seattle, and L.A., and Miami? What if life is getting so expensive and the middle class is disappearing so quickly, that the United States is basically losing its artists?

I know some people might think, But you just said hundreds arrive in New York everyday! The thing is, though, that those are usually younger people, brand new to the city, brand new to their art form. You know how you get better at practicing medicine the longer you're a doctor? Yeah, well, same goes for practicing your art. What I see happening is that we're potentially losing our artists when they're just hitting their stride. You struggle in a studio with a crazy roommate for a few years living off ramen and occasionally sleeping in the bathtub. You go to coffee shops and absorb the scene and get a pulse on what's going on while you continue to take classes and practice. And after several years of this, you get tired - the rent has gone up steadily, but your wages haven't. You remember when soap used to cost a couple of dollars less...just last year. And you've finally come up with the idea that's going to be your break, that truly conveys the human spirit: an idea for that novel/landscape/film script. But then you lose your lease, your bartending shifts get cut down, you have unpaid doctor's bills because of that bad back from sleeping in the bathtub and you have no idea how you're going to get to the next day. All that energy and passion that you had for that great creative work...that you didn't have when your intestinal tract wasn't yet eroded by too much ramen...is now spent trying to survive.

That's our art these days: survival. What message could Rent have conveyed if they'd actually been able to pay the rent? Would Jonathan Larson have encouraged us instead to feed the hungry and be kind to one another if there was room in his brain, if he weren't consumed with making ends meet? Food for thought: An interesting article about the effect on compromised brain activity when in a state of poverty. It's not just artists that bite the dust.

And I'm certainly not the only person using precious brain activity to think about what could be were it not for worries and obligations. A Tokyo artist and psychologist, Naho Iguchi, is spending a year in Berlin to experiment with making decisions not tied to worries about money or social obligations. In order to do so, she had to get funding from 22 different donors.

The haunting question remains every time I ride the subway: What would I be capable of producing if money weren't on my mind constantly? I have every intention of finding out. But others may not be so lucky.

The American Way (circa 2013): we kill ourselves working an ungodly amount of hours (most of which are spent watching cat videos) while we try to "compete" with Japan. Or is it China? Is Russia still in the picture? Who cares. We're all a bunch of lemmings who are conned into spending The Best Years of Our Lives  attached to a computer screen doing something a well-trained baboon could do, while we sit on our growing asses, moving in departmental herds through the maze of bleak hallways, hunting for and grazing on that day's celebratory ice-cream cake, and using up our best creativity fantasizing about the different ways to off our co-workers.

And for what? Rent money. And why? Cause a steady bunch of competitive greedy assholes are graduating from business schools all over the country ever year and see the entire world as one big Scrabble game, human lives included. And we let them!

It was leaked this morning that Yahoo! is eliminating the option of working from home starting in June. Marissa Mayer, the famous pregnant CEO (she already popped), believes that it will inspire more creativity and productivity when employees are working in closer proximity for longer hours together. Though on paper (re: back-lit monitor) this makes sense, I can't help but think of my own pet project wherein I've been studying my personal productivity and creativity. As an artist with few resources and time (see above: The American Way) it's important for me to know the exact ideal surroundings for creativity and the exact moment when it's time to quit for the day and rest/live. You may already know the answer, but suffice it to say, a bitterly cold office with crap lighting and uniform furnishings chosen by other people - plus the requirement to stay seated and stare at a computer monitor - does not an ideal creative environment make. Now, I've done what I can to change the feel of my allotted nine sq.ft. Please see decorative picture below:

But the one thing that is literally killing me are the long hours. My patience for pretty much anything taps out at six hours (I would've never survived the first screening of von Stroheim's Greed - I would've stood up, slapped that fucker, thrown up on him, and walked out to the nearest bar). On Monday I left work at 2:30 to go to acupuncture. Luckily, my lovely acupuncturist always runs an hour late, so I sat in the waiting room reading about lovely things in her books and magazines, smiling at how I couldn't possibly return to work until the next day. I had a blast. I felt energized - so energized that I stopped by 23rd street on a whim to obtain a spelt bagel and read a few pages of my book. I didn't crawl home like I usually do and opt to just eat hummus for dinner cause it's easiest. I felt alive, like part of the living! I felt so good that the next day I thought for sure I could even cook something when I got home from work! Here's what actually went down: at 2:30, six hours into my daily tenure, I was ready to get up and do something else. But wait a tick, my contract requires that I stay until 5:30 because the phone may ring at any moment! Or there could be, *gasp*, a FedEx delivery to sign for, or someone may generally need their ass wiped by the support staff (re: me). So I tried to focus and do three more hours of work. I barely pushed out one email. I managed to half-heartedly organize something. And then I dragged myself to the gym where I had to cut my workout short because I didn't have the energy. And then I went home, collapsed on the couch and ate hummus for dinner.

No amount of ticking stripe fabric can save a genuinely creative person being worked to death by The American Way. And all those people who spend 1-2 days a week working from home? They're bright people who inherently know that should they be forced to spend more than 30 hours per week with people they have no familial relation to and didn't choose to marry, then their creativity and productivity actually suffers. So, in conclusion, and on behalf of all Yahoo! employees...dear Marissa Mayer: I have an exhausted widened ass you can kiss.

Upon joining the Twitter community this morning (yes, I'm social media shy), I discovered that the big news of the day is that Disney has announced its first Latina princess. Then another headline catches my eye: apparently Castro had a stroke. (But I didn't consider that big news since he's been looking - and acting - like shit for decades and, let's face it, probably died and was stuffed thirty years ago, with his physical movements controlled by a complex electronic system.)

So let's talk about this princess!

http://www.latina.com/entertainment/tv/disneys-first-latina-princess-sparks-debate

Thank you so much to everyone who has donated so far! We're nearly on schedule: only $1,000 left to get to 25%. Please help us spread the word so we can get there by Wednesday (the quarter mark).

Making this film is the hardest and most important thing I've ever done (taking the SATs is a close second, which tells you something about our warped education system). Here’s why:

1. White Alligator is my first film. I do not yet have a proven track record or
fancy-pants introductions to big studios.

2. It takes a lot of money to make a movie, but you need a track record to get said money (See #1.).

3. I've had to bleed my friends and family dry in the worst recession of my (admittedly short) lifetime. With more and more celebrities using Kickstarter for their projects, we newbies are fading into the wallpaper.

4. The networking is killing me. (I'm naturally shy.)

But you know what? It’s all worth it. And here’s why:

In the process of making this film, a lot of people have been telling me their stories. When you take on a cause, you become an ear for the unheard voices. Although it is difficult for me to listen to these stories (I’m awfully sensitive), I know how vital it is for them to be told. Because injustice thrives on silence. When you are not heard, you start to lose a sense of your own humanity. And then you're toast.

Here is the latest story, which just happened to one of our cast members.

She was in an acting class last week. Halfway through the class, the instructor separated the students into groups based on nationality. I have no idea what he was trying to get across, except maybe trying to teach them their "types.” (I hope a shudder just went through you when you read that: actors routinely get "typed".) She was the only Spanish speaker, and when she introduced herself, the teacher had the gall to ask her if she was legal. Later, when she asked if there were many opportunities in film for a woman her age, he said that of course there were because everyone else her age is dead.

This is a teacher. A teacher. And this woman paid her hard-earned money to take this class. And these things happen all the time.

She called to thank me for making this film. I thanked her for sharing her story with me.