This year, I've been living with doctors. I've also lived with a lawyer and an engineer. Now I'm living with another lawyer and someone who works in HR.

Normal people. People whose jobs have structure and purpose.

And they're not boring, either. They're interesting. They build (literally) bridges. Not in a "build a bridge and get over it" kind of a way, or a "bridges to a network of artistic communities" kind of a way - they literally build bridges. Well, the engineer does. The other ones do things like, you know, deliver babies. Bring people into the world. That kind of stuff. The others appear in court. One of them employs people.

I don't even employ myself. I'm what's called freelance.

Wikipedia defines a freelancer as "a self-employed person working in a profession or trade in which full-time employment is also common. The word's etymology derives from the medieval term for a mercenary, a "free lance," which literally described a knight who was not attached to any particular lord, and could be hired for a given task".

Well, it's true in a way. I'm not attached to any particular lord. Not in my professional life. In that sense, I guess I'm kind of my own lord, which is nice.

It's the "working in a profession or trade at any given task" aspect that makes freelance sound rather like work-whoring. Sometimes, when I go home to find doctors who've saved lives and engineers who've constructed bridges, it does make me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my time. The other day, I was negotiating orange juice prices (no, really) at one of my paid jobs, when Rita called asking did I know the German translation of "I Could Be Anybody". Not exactly your average day in the office.

I suppose it could be described as "mercenary" though.

I'm thinking of writing "mercenary" as my profession on my tax forms. Or at the very least on my passport. Although the other option is, I could just write, "own lord". I'd be in some good company there.

We got the film back from the colourist yesterday and now we're watching it again. We've watched it a few times now. Like, maybe a couple of million. Maybe a trillion. You know China? China's really big. We've watched the film a China-worth of times.

This whole "colours" thing is funny. Weird funny - not amusing - it's the least amusing thing ever. Deeply serious. You sit there, staring at a whole lot of screens and making really rash decisions based on instinct. And it's not even a good instinct, apparently. The colourist (cool job title, don't you think?) - his name's Marcus - he told us that it's a fact (so therefore it is) that humans only retain memory of colour for five seconds. So if I show you a colour and then six seconds later I show you another colour, well frankly I don't care what you think because you don't know what you're talking about.

So, imagine the confidence that piece of information inspires in us as we all sit around watching the same pictures over and over and trying to remember what we think we want.

Anyway, gives a whole new meaning to the expression, "You're looking a little off-colour". Our film was looking quite off-colour for a while there, but it's looking healthier now. It's back on the solids and it isn't watching Oprah and vomitting into a bucket anymore. Hopefully it will be able to go outside and play with its friends soon.

Personally, I can't wait.

Little bastard's been under my feet for months.