Mental Flotsam, Mental Jetsam

Because the only thing that beats going crazy is going crazy with somebody else

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

On Bearings, And Lack Of Same


Hmm. I find myself… kinda lost in thought at the moment. Feeling a bit lost in general, although not to the point of any kind of worry.

Nocturne’s finished and sent. My latest efforts on the subject have just been in detail work. It’s important, but still it feels like a… finishing touch.

The script I’m currently working on stumped me when the characters have to order dinner. I haven’t been able to get past that chunk of scene three for a day now.

I found out yesterday that I’ll be working Saturday and Sunday of this week, at the office. I’m not complaining. I can use the overtime; and my weekends (when not performing) seem to be an exercise in wasting time, anyway.

Tonight, my family celebrates the birthdays of my sister-in-law Maggie, and myself. We were born only two days apart, and since she’s become part of the family we decided to celebrate them together, if we could. We’re having fondue, a treat I haven’t had in years.

I’m just not sure what to do next. I don’t have any voice-over jobs in the immediate future, and I’m still working on refining my narration demo before I send it to a certain someone. The Discovery Education show is still in production, but it’s miles from the finish line and I don’t have any further involvement with it.

I’m planning to see McCall in Bell, Book & Candle this weekend, I promised her I would and I intend to keep my word. No reason that my day job should conflict with it, come Saturday.

I think part of it is that I’m not sure what to do with my newly-rationed free time. I have more than I did while rehearsing for Book of Days, but less than I would if I weren’t working overtime at the office. I want to stay productive and busy, but at the moment I don’t have any more projects…

At least until Saturday. I’m auditioning for a show (not gonna spill the beans just yet). If I make the cast, great. If not, there are other try-outs coming up in the next month or so.

The other thing on my mind: I recently re-opened lines of communication with someone I haven’t spoken to in almost three years. It’s throwing some things into a sharper contrast.

Crap. Here’s the thing. It’s been a good year. Certainly what I’d call productive. Two shows under my belt so far (a lean number compared to ’04 and ’03), two scripts of mine have seen a stage, and the Ruby Griffith Awards have done a lot toward validating my place in the world as some kind of writer and actor. But accomplishments shouldn’t make me happy. I feel blessed to have them, but I’m not here just to achieve a list of tasks before I kick the bucket. There’s more to it than that. What it is… I’m not real sure on at the moment.

Damn slow days. Stupid brain.

1 Comments:

  • At 2:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I'm rereading a classic that I read for the first time this year, The Ambassadors, by Henry James. Today I marked a passage that I just want to be able to find on occasion. The speech is made by a man of 55, who feels his life has been uninteresting, bland, that he has basically never colored outside the lines, etc.

    "... don't forget that you're young -- blessedly young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what HAVE you had? This place and these impressions -- mild as you may find them to wind a man up so; all my impressions of Chad and of people I've seen at his place -- well, have had their abundant message for me, have just dropped THAT into my mind. I see it now. I haven't done so enough before--and now I'm old; too old at any rate for what I see. Oh, I DO see, at least; and more than you'd believe or I can express. It's too late. And it's as if the train had fairly waited at the station for me without my having had the gumption to know it was there. Now I hear its faint receding whistle miles and miles down the line. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. The affair--I mean the affair of life--couldn't, no doubt, have been different for me; for it's at the best a tin mould, either fluted and embossed, with ornamental excrescences, or else smooth and dreadfully plain, into which, a helpless jelly, one's consciousness is poured--so that one 'takes' the form, as the great cook says, and is more or less compactly held by it; one lives in fine as one can. Still, one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be, like me, without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don't quite know which. Of course at present I'm a case of reaction against the mistake; and the voice of reaction should, no doubt, always be taken with an allowance. But that doesn't affect the point that the right time is now yours. The right time is ANY time that one is still so lucky as to have. You've plenty; that's the great thing; you're, as I say, damn you, so happily and hatefully young. Don't at any rate miss things out of stupidity. Of course I don't take you for a fool, or I shouldn't be addressing you thus awfully. Do what you like so long as you don't make MY mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!"


    You're doing it. Whatever happens, you won't regret these things you're doing now. Keep on keepin' on, as they said in the 60s.

     

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