A long, long week. I returned back to the office on Monday after a week at home, and returned into the midst of the chaotic project, a project for which I'm partly responsible. What started off as, supposedly, a small, five week project is rapidly expanding to a three-month six-person project. Our project-manager is incompetent and I feel that I'm doing both his work and my own, as "technical lead." Added to that is the immaturity of the software we're selling the customer, and an unmakeable deadline and you have all the ingredients to make a project-management disaster.

Nevertheless, it's kind of fun. I enjoy working in a crisis environment, and since I feel that I'm doing my own job pretty darned competently, I look back on the week as being successful from a personal point of view.

I've been going to the chiropractor every other day for an adjustment, and my back is feeling a lot better. I even returned to the gym, albeit using such light weights that I feel people are probably laughing at me. My chiropractor had initially said that I couldn't work out for six weeks, but she qualified it, when I asked her, that I just couldn't do heavy weights.

An odd thing; during the whole of the week leading up to last weekend, when I was largely unable to do anything except lie on my sofa, I was in high spirits. Yet last Saturday, when I finally returned to "real life" I was hit by a depression which lasted the whole week long. If I could somehow figure out the seeming random triggers that lead me into fatigue and depression and learn to supress them, life would be pretty groovy.

My chiropractor is probably going to give me hell for what I did this weekend, since by Sunday evening I'll have spent two consecutive days in fairly strenuous activity. For the first time in my life, I've been working on a real film set. It's an Indie short movie; and I heard through the grapevine that they needed a couple of production-assistants to fill in for the weekend shoot. It's a low-budget affair, of course, with hardly anybody picking up a paycheck, but it has a full crew of experienced film-makers, and it's been an extremely valuable opportunity for me.

Until last night, the first assistant-director hadn't confirmed with me that they needed me, and I was almost hoping that he wouldn't. I was still feeling down and just wanted the weekend to unwind, escape and, hopefully, center myself. I'm not good in situations where I'm suddenly interacting with a sea of strangers, and I was a little nervous that my general low spirits would make it impossible for me to, at a minimum, blend in smoothly, let alone enjoy the experience.

But shortly after I arrived at the set at the frosty hour of 6.00 a.m. this morning, I somehow found my self-confidence again. My job for the day was to be the script-supervisor. It doesn't sound like much, but it's actually a very important and difficult position. You spend the day in close proximity to the director and the action, monitoring the script to make sure that nobody drops a line, and keeping strict notes on takes and continuity so that the cuts between takes, in the final edited movie, will look smooth.

People were surprisingly friendly, and, by the end of the day, I'd pretty much had an engaging chat with most members of the crew, the gaffers and grips (who seem to form a gruff little clicque of their own) excepted. And I learned a hell of a lot. In one day I feel I've firmly and finally emplanted in my head that film-making is what I want to do. No question.

Well, one question, actually. How do I go about making a career of it? That remains the quandary. How to make a good living from directing films without "going Hollywood."

Last night I came out of the gym just in time to see the Olympic torch being carried down Market Street - quite an unexpected experience. People had thronged out of the restaurants, and little American flags had been distributed, and I waved mine with the rest of them. It was only afterwards I realized that it's the first time I've ever had an American flag in my hand, let alone wave it.