butthentherewillbenostory:
Ill gush about the episode itself later. Right now, through really
pathetic and determined tears, I need to tell Aaron Sorkin that he
is the reason I want to be a writer. He never fails to amaze me. Every
time I think I have seen the best of the man I have idolized for half of
my life, he…
I need to get this kid’s enthusiasm back in my own writing practice and stop sweating the money part. This is what I’m supposed to do, and all that matters is that I send my work out there, and cross my fingers that someone is changed for the better by my words. Thank you, butthentherewillbenostory
Originally from MyBlog.
Being a worker ant doesn’t seem as bad as it used to be.
I’ve blogged about how reconciling steady income versus my art has been the central struggle for most of my adult life, one that contributed to my divorce and nearly all the upheaval of the past five years.
The conventional minded people in my life used to say I was just picky, or lazy, or just never satisfied with anything I was doing. Maybe that was slightly true, but definitely not the whole picture….
So, lately, things are good in the long run. That commercial I shot will send me a bit of money in the next while, and as an ACTRA apprentice, I’ll have plenty more opportunities to have more lucrative roles in the next few months. I’m querying my novel like mad, and if no agent takes it, I have two back-up plans to get it done. Freelance, things are quiet, but I’m sure they’ll pick up, and realistically, it can only get better.
That’s the future. For right now, I need some cash.
Summer hours in retail tend to suck, and my hours at the store have been cut back. I take more where I can, but I also need to keep as much space free as possible to keep auditioning, training, writing, and exercising. Once fall kicks in, they’ll pick up again and won’t stop until Christmas, but there’s a whole six weeks between now and then.
In all the artsy careers, you’re supposed to forgo the whole idea of a “steady” paycheque in favour of a series of lump sums of cash that you get once in a while. In the meantime, you’re either hustling for new work or coasting on what you’ve already got. This week, I’m admittedly drifting, but I’m not spending a ton fo cash, either. Summertime always finds me torn between wanting to enjoy the time, the weather, the pretty girls wearing next to nothing walking down the street, patio beers and barbecues….and also wanting to not be broke.
That’s my goal for 2013: work my ass off doing what I love during the colder months and coast. I suppose with that mentality, I know money’s coming up in the future regardless. All I have to do is be careful with what I’ve got now, and enjoy the time, even if that means foregoing some of summertime’s more expensive options (no rooftop martinis for this writer/actor).
Money’s not inherently evil, and I do want it, but I’ve broken out of that years-long pattern of thinking money can only come to me through a 9 to 5 job. If the price of doing joy-filled work is that the work itself pays in occasional big lump sums rather than consistent smaller salaries, then so be it.
Le sigh. Off to query and to hunt for auditions.
Good day today, on the writing front. Two meetings, one in Toronto where I was the client, and one in nearby Mississauga where I was the freelance service provider. Neither of these are particularly lucrative in the short term, but these would be long-term investments in my own talents and success, I strongly feel that. Plus, this is damn good fun!
There’s a lot to take in, and so much to do, I need to be very productive tomorrow. Really good day, though, if exhausting.
Still….I dunno, a few things made me sad about today. For starters, I guess I was hoping for some kind of miraculous influx of money right away. There’s no advance in my immediate future, and possibly even a lot of expenditure getting work started. Then again, in business as with dating, you should never get hung up on one person for long. Go fishing for more clients until you find one that sticks. That’s what I have to do, even if it means schlepping over to the bookstore and putting up with the Man’s BS for a bit longer.
Also, it’s days like these I realize how much I miss having that one person to talk to about matters. I tried with a couple of my friends, but they’re all busy and, well, they can’t provide that conversation anyway. But that one person - your lover, whether you call her “girlfriend” or “wife” or whatever - is usually who indulges your babbling on about good news and major decisions.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m an individualist, and I think we should be self-reliant for the most part if we can help it. We should be individually accountable for ourselves, emotionally and physically. But we’re not hermits, either, and sometimes you need someone who knows you best on the outside, better than anyone else, to bounce ideas off of, to ask questions and express your anxieties. I really could have used such a person today.
Part of me still thinks I need to be quote-unquote “successful” before I will find someone new. I talked about this in my insomniac rant, though, that people find each other anytime, whether you’re broke or rich, when it’s meant to happen. That being said, I keep thinking that when I have a small fortune from writing, I should be able to “buy” any woman I want. Maybe it’s that whole “Scarface” thing - first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women - but, I dunno, if I was rich and threw my money around for that purpose, I’d only attract gold-diggers anyway. Maybe it’s not so much the money and material goodies as it is the confidence that comes with having acquired them that’s attractive to women. Maybe it’s just a man living his passion and working hard at it that gets the attention of the women he deserves to meet.
Maybe I need to spell out exactly what kind of girlfriend and future wife I’d like to attract for her to show up. Maybe time to walk my talk on this whole Law of Attraction business.
Or maybe lotusgalramblings was right. Time to silence my busy head with some yoga. March 26th, baby. It’s gonna happen.
I believe in the Law of Attraction. I’m seeing it work every day. The formula’s simple: put out intentions on a certain frequency, take actions based on those intentions, and you’ll manifest results. If you believe it, great. If you don’t, just stop reading now and do us both a favor.
Of course, nobody does this 100%. In fact, if I’m having a really off day or some random event, I’ll just go complete off kilter and put energies out there that, according to how the LOA works, will start reversing the great manifestations that have come from my more awesome times.
Like tonight: I can’t fucking sleep. I’ve got too many thoughts bouncing around in my head, things I feel I can’t control right now. Building this business, moving out of the house again, Hawaii, my ex, soulmates, books, sex, bosses, my fucking novel narrative. You’d think I’d be able to write this shit out in story form, but I just need a flat out rant to discharge this in a safe place. Can’t leave this one in the chamber.
Right now, I’ve got all these great things going for me, and I’m grateful, but I swear to Christ, I’m scared to death because of one reason and one reason only: I’m scared that the success I’m looking for is going to force me to be inauthentic.
Inauthenticity has held me back and fucked me up more than anything else in my life. It destroyed my marriage, ruined every single job experience I’ve had to date, kept me in debt, kept me poor, kept me from traveling the world, kept me from true expression.
When I tell people about the great news about my new work, they celebrate more than I do. They ask “Dude, why aren’t you more excited?” I’m not celebrating because now that I have it, I’m scared to lose it by screwing something up. Maybe I’ll say the wrong thing. Maybe one of them will disapprove of something I say on Facebook, or in my manuscript, and that’ll be that.
Today, I got “talked to” by a manager at the bookstore for being too chatty with a colleague when there was NO ONE ELSE IN THE STORE. I’m tired of this bullshit: they don’t see who I really am. I can’t show them who I am, because who I am is not in keeping with the company’s goals. I’m not a fucking minimum wage drone, but I need the job until I can bring in my own income while freeing up my time to build.
But what if I have to be something other than who I am to keep the work I’ve just gotten? To impress agents? To impress clients?
Intellectually, I know they were attracted to me by my authentic works in the first place, but that’s not what I’m feeling. What if I lose them? What if I’m going to be forever stuck in this trap of never truly being able to be myself? I’m not just talking about social niceties - dressing up a bit to create a good first impression, moderating your posts on social media with new contacts who don’t know you well enough - I mean just day-to-day-authenticity?
Same thing with love. I’m long past this idea that I’m somehow “not ready to date”. Who the fuck is ever “ready”? It happens when it’s meant to, whether your broke off your ass living with your light-sleeping family members or living in the Hills. God knows with my ex, new love happened to her before her existing relationship had concluded and that was a fucking MARRIAGE. But when it happens again, when some beautiful, intelligent, great girl who I love somehow finds a way to love a nerdy, messed up, overmotional, teddy bear guy like me, what if she leaves me? What if I give it my all, open myself up again, and she goes and runs off with another one of my friends? Or some guy I didn’t even know who has everything I don’t? What if I’ll get all of my fondest wishes in the world, finally open myself up, and then have it all taken away from me?
Wanna know one thing that fucked my authenticity early on? I was hanging out with friends not long after the breakup, and I was having an angry day where I just wanted to go apeshit on her and my former friend. My other friends, looking out for my best interest, said “Think about the next girl you’ll be with, your real soulmate, the one who you could potentially spend the rest of your life with. What would she think of your actions?”
So, ever since, I’ve been self-censoring even a basic expression of those kinds of thoughts and feelings. Right now, they’re so raw and angry, I can’t even distill them into a manuscript. I can only write them out here. Even then…..
Times like these, when I can intellectually see that I’m on the brink of a great new start, I just feel so damned tired of doing it myself. It’s not manly to want someone to save you, it runs completely against all of the personal development practices and just plain horse sense that you should never want someone else to do for you what you can do for yourself.
But right now, I feel like I need saving. I’m tired of being afraid all the time. I’m tired of running away from the responsibility that what I do might be even just a little important to others, that what I do is valuable to the world. And I’m just so, so tired of doing this alone. Wanna know what’s worse than being alone? Being alone in a house full of family who don’t understand their own son and brother in the least, so wrapped up they are in their own problems. We’re just so narcississitc, all of us. I no longer have anyone to stay up with me to talk to. That person left me long before she physically went away, and that was my fault.
And maybe salvation will come in the form of a soul mate. How would that girl even look, anyway? Who would she be? Maybe salvation will come in the form of work, of money gotten by doing what I was meant to do in this world.
Or maybe there just won’t be any salvation. Maybe I’m just gonna be stuck like this for the rest of my sad little life.
Anyway, I’m tired now. Like, it’s so bad. I’m even scared that my two IRL friends are gonna read this and then think I’m really messed up, but I’m not. But I am. It’s late at night. Tomorrow, I’ll be hunky dory again. My coach and benefactor says “every breakdown precedes a breakthrough”. That’s the bright hope that just looks as faint as an outer planet in the night sky, here and now, at 3:18am. It’s happened so often these past three months since I started working with her, I’m just about expecting it.
I mean, do most people feel these things this intensely? Maybe it’s just because I’m good with words that I give a clearer, sharper more accurate voice to feelings that most people would dismiss casually as “I’m just pissed” or “I’m having a bad day.” The feelings that they numb with drink and drugs and mindless sex, other addictions. You just feel too much, and you just want to feel nothing. I get it now.
But I’m scared this kind of open and healthy expression will scare away women and I literally will be Forever Alone. I’m scared I’m gonna wear out my fellow writer friends who understand this more than anyone with all of this sharing. And now I’m scared that potential clients will read this and run away from me, keeping me destitute and under the thumb of corporate clones and numbers people who try to squeeze as much as they can out of me while paying me pennies.
I really am scared, more than I let on, that there is no salvation. I mean, two years since I started this new phase, my ex is remarried, and I haven’t even had so much as a one night stand.
Is there no one who will bear with me through this? I mean, nobody?
End rant.
