Dharma Lady

Firstly, I need to apologize. My gut tells me nothing is wrong, but my heart feels the guilt of something, and in this instance (as with most instances), the heart wins. So, if I have in any way, shape, or form, offended you, hurt you, pissed you off, frustrated you, bitten you, or otherwise irritated you, I cannot help but feel deeply sorry. The inner workings of my brain dictate that I must feel extreme guilt and sadness over the awful things I say and do, and like what Tom Hanks so boldly declares in the classic tech-savvy "will they or won't they" thriller, You've Got Mail...

"I must warn you, that when you finally have the pleasure of saying the thing you mean to say at the moment you mean to say it…remorse inevitably follows"

Truer words have probably been spoken, but in this particular context, Mr. "Just Call Me Joe" Hanks is the I Ching... So, with that in mind, I just want to say, "I hope you're not mad at me, because I'm not mad at you."

Secondly, I came to this realization as I tried for once to actually go to bed at a decent hour:

I sure have been half-assing it lately.

And by "it", I mean everything.

Why, might you ask? Well, I suppose it has a lot to do with my situation. I've resigned myself to experience mediocrity, as if this is to be the expected post-collegiate experience and all. I've almost convinced myself that I'm happy waking up at 9:30 every morning, wandering aimlessly around the house, maybe doing some mild exercise, having a shower, and then figuring out on a minute by minute basis what the crap I'm gonna try next. By the time I decide to do something productive, it's time to eat dinner. And that's it. From there on out, my day is done. Nothing of worth to show for it. Nothing. Yeah, I finished a spec script for 30 Rock, and I've managed to do tons of edits on my senior project, but really? 8 months after graduating, and all I have to show for it is a half-way decent spec script and a new version of a film that should have been done 8 months ago? I've tried to write, but writing without a purpose feels like a chore, and one that is rarely rewarding (Just to be clear, writing my 30 Rock spec was the most fun I've had writing in a long, long time). I kick myself every day at around 11:30 pm, where I realize I have nothing to show for the past 15 hours that I've been awake, so I panic, and I think "Well, what can I do now?" As the fatigue of a day's layabout sets in (pathetic, I know), I decide rather quickly that instead of writing, I'll catch up on Breaking Bad, or watch some dopey movie on Instant Watch, all things that I can (and do) do during the day...

And this half-assing thing extends beyond my secular pursuits. I feel spiritually less than I have been in a while, and it's eating me up. I won't go into this, as it's personal, but being home has made it surprisingly harder to be where I want to be spiritually. I've just been experiencing a lot of adult onset anxiety (or AOA). Chalk that one up to the number 8, and the fact that three people I came to know well growing up have all left their wives to seek selfish endeavors... So you can imagine I've struggled a bit.

So yeah, half-assed. That's exactly how I'd describe my days as of late.

And for those of you mildly put off by my word choice, then I applaud your concern, but, let's be honest, folks: as someone I may have offended once put it, "There's sometimes really no other way to say it " - I'm paraphrasing, of course, but you get the point.

I'm tired of living my weeks Wednesday to Wednesday (if I need to explain this, you don't come here often), because eventually, Wednesdays will be full of summer replacement programming, and So You Think You Can Dance results shows. Soon, what will I have that I can genuinely look forward to? I've grounded my reality in the experiencing of the unreal, and it's making my personal life a living hell. I don't sleep at night because I worry about everything I'm not doing, and how I need to start doing it. It's why I usually don't even try to sleep until I'm tired. It's why I wake up at 9:30.

I'm trying to remedy the writing issues with Script Frenzy, a "competition" of sorts where folks are challenged to complete a screenplay (or a comic book, or a TV spec pilot), of about 100 pages in 30 days (or the month of April). There's no prize, other than a finished script (which is actually a worthy reward). But, I'm on the fence as to what to write. I wrote about a page and half today of something, before giving up, and watching the Damages finale (sooooo good, by the way), so I'm thinking of trying something new. I want to be excited to write again, and I hope this can do it.

As for the other things, we'll see. I know what I need to do, but I just don't have the balls to do it. Well, that's not entirely true. I always feel like I have the best of intentions, just never the gall to follow through. I've never been good with goals, setting them or achieving them. I hate to be disappointed, so I try to avoid setting my sights too high... (and I'm going into filmmaking, why? *shrug*)

I dunno. All in all, this blog post reminds me of something I heard Meg Ryan once say:

"The odd thing about this form of communication is that you're more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant so much more to me than so many somethings."

So, maybe it ain't all bad. Maybe doing nothing can actually prove to be something. Nora Ephron emphatically states in a revealing behind-the-scenes featurette that "Everything is copy", meaning that everything is a story; I just think I need to pull together everything good about my time here, and forget my failures. I have a lot to be grateful for, being home, and I suppose I need to hold on to those, and stop wishing things were perfect.

I think this sums it all up:

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, valuable, but small. And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void...."

*le sigh*