If you’re like me finding things to become passionate about is easy, all you need is a slightly idealistic outlook and the willingness to try something new and presto, the passion of the month. It’s far more unusual to find things that resonate for any length of time, the primary reason I have no tattoos.

In 1991 I was 13 and saw Terminator 2. It changed my life. The special effects, the visual effects, the T-1000, all created little resonating pools of delight. Suddenly I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up - a liquid metal killing machine who moonlighted as a VFX artist when the “hits” were few and far between.

I dropped out of high school and managed to get a place in the Animation and Interactive Media programme at RMIT, but much like before grew restless and dropped out of that as well. What followed was a string of work choices bearing little in common with that adolescent career goal. I worked as a graphic designer (but really wasn’t very good at it), was a passable barman, ran laser games for hoards of screaming kids, answered phones for airlines, studied data and performed analysis, became a desktop and server technician, and found myself working in a sales/data analysis role for a multi-national IT provider.

Very little liquid metal anywhere, yet I can’t stop thinking about it. This is very unusual.

I’m at the point where if this VFX thing doesn’t happen, on some level I’m going to die inside. It doesn’t need to be paid work (and I like my current job), just getting good enough to help out on some independent film would be a win.

So this will hopefully be a journal of how a guy who wears a suit five days a week, with more than a little passing interest in something, finally does something about it.