Good Intentions vs. Self Image

I got a nice gesture from the folks at The Black List today, a tweet to allay some of my depression at getting a shitty review. It actually makes me feel a little bit worse by driving home what bothered me so much in the first place but it's a nice thing to attempt and it is truly appreciated.This is the message:

The average for ALL ratings (pros included) is 6.84. For uploaded scripts, it's closer to 5.

"So what, dipshit, is it that bothers you so much about this," my hypothetical readers might ask between hawking dick pills? Well, the idea of being an average amateur is frightening to me beyond all comprehension. A lifetime spent fucking around with words and getting a degree SPECIFICALLY in screenwriting almost 10 years ago has gotten me far enough to be an average goddamned hobbyist? Fucking hell, that's brutal. I fucking hate it. I don't really believe it's true but I have more expectation than ever that I'm delusional and the asshole teacher at Northridge that graded my thesis might be right after all. She just got an award for lifetime service or something this past spring. One of my least favorite educators I have ever known. I don't keep detailed records on these things so I wouldn't go so far as to say worst (though she graded a senior seminar on punctuality and regularly claimed I was late even when I was sitting down in a desk before she even got there) but it was an unpleasant experience all around. And now more than ever I feel like she had me pegged dead to rights in terms of my capabilities and career expectations.

I wrote yesterday about my review from The Black List. It's a sore subject for me but it's happened and maybe it'll help in the short and long term. I'm going to go ahead and re-work the script a little, it might end up a little bit shorter. But if I take down the version that's up there and come back with a new one that still get notes about what a shitbox I've shoved under their digital door, I might just give up writing and go... I don't know what. I've never had a backup plan but I've never bothered to be an adult before, either.

I'm not going to lose the high-minded "ridiculous" parts of the script because I don't have a problem with it. If it's funny or even a little off-putting, so be it. The biggest weakness of the script, per that review and perhaps per my own unrecognized feeling, is the plot. It's a revenge movie that detours into a broken love story. I had my reasons to go that direction but it is against the whole concept of a revenge movie. Single focus, single determination, only one possible end for the protagonist. I was trying to make it a little bit like Drive, perhaps, which is a different movie with a different motivation for the lead.

Maybe it's all good motivation? Maybe I just got a bad reader? Maybe I'm still going to be selling fish come next summer and I'll just break down and go on a really long bender. Look at me, a 35 year old hobbyist and real life Walter Mitty.

Scratching My Brain

On my way home today I saw a dead dog on the side of the road. It was at the northbound connection between the 91 and the 110. I don't know if the dog had caused an accident but there were two cars stopped just ahead of where he lay and at least one of the travelers was emotionally distressed in a way that seemed incommensurate with a minor fender bender. It was a singularly awful image.

The dog appeared to be a large pit bull but I can't be sure of that. I think rigor mortis had set in and there wasn't a lot of blood visible. Just one bent paw hanging off of a straight front leg and the head bent at an impossible angle. The neck was clearly broken but it might have happened after the dog died.

As I made my way past the death scene I became aware of a gross little coincidence. A Florence + The Machine song with the hook, "the dog days are over," was playing on the radio station (98.7FM Rockoholics station). I felt like puking or like I was on the cusp of vomiting.  It was sort of like a headache but instead of pain there is an itchy hollowness, a thorough discomfort and sadness. I don't know of any way to assuage that feeling. It's the same thing I felt while watching Magic Mike. If there had been a tall building to jump from I might have taken my chances.

I listen to the radio sometimes while I drive. It feels a little anachronistic now but I didn't have a cable to connect my phone to the stereo. So there I was with a song I was unsure of my feelings toward and was trying to make up my mind until I saw that dog's appendages suspended in the early evening air like a broken tree branch. I lost track of the song until I was past the corpse.

Some things make me really hate being alive. It's not shame or anger. On some level I like both shame and anger. It's a hopelessness that sets in from time to time that makes me really wish that I could be ripped apart molecule by molecule and spread across the universe. Not to be dead but to just not be at all.

I feel horrible for animals in a way that I can never feel for an adult human. Tragedy with people makes more sense than some dog that, perhaps if I had known the dog I would have hated the dog, really doesn't have much say in what goes on with its life. If the dog's owners had trained it (or not trained it, depending on the circumstances) to live close to a feral state in its manners it still wouldn't know any better and would be exploding inside as it got tossed off a truck bed (or whatever vehicle) by the one being the dog really knows to love. That just bothers me in ways I can't own up to.

I'm not really a total sucker for the Sara McLachlan commercials because I just keep thinking, "this song is painful," and, "Sara, how about you chip off a few mil and leave me the hell alone?" But the animal faces do get to me. Somehow I ended up driving home thinking about how easy it is to see through the matrix but how hard it is to actually fight it or leave it behind. I have an unfathomable amount of debts that I'm currently scared to pay because it would mean eating a lot less and maybe even moving into a more dangerous place. I have my dumb comforts that aren't very comforting and the dead dog punctured me for a few hours. I'll be fine. I'll probably wake up back in my normal haze tomorrow morning. My string of self-loathing came to a head when I remembered Jessie Bernstein saying, "just because something disturbs me I like to think it is important." Well, the weird air still pervades my being. But I'm not as sick as I was earlier. I still want to scratch and smush my brain until it stops itching me.

The Not So Great Depression

Is it possible for one to just will themself to be cured of depression? Would it help if said depression had never been diagnosed due to a confluence of factors including never having spoken a word to a doctor about the subject? I'm pretty sure I would get medication for depression if I went to a doctor about it but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to sit home alone playing video games and jacking off non-stop while considering words I'd like to write and sell for profit and dream about a better life with a better home and a car with all the bells and whistles like a valid registration and insurance. When my lady is home we watch TV and I feel like I should be writing. When she's not I watch TV and feel like I should be writing. I've considered taking up smoking but I don't like tobacco. I've got this idea in my head now that being depressed and being fat are converging and feeding each other. Depression is the yeast and fat is the, um, fatty substance that feeds the yeast? So I've decided that if I work out a few times a week and lose some weight I'll get back to the svelte figger I had back about 5 years ago when I was running 3 or 6 miles 3 times a week. And doing capoeira. And then I'll be happier. And then the words will flow. Does this idea make sense? I am not a doctor. I am not even a writer though I sometimes purport to be. In other instances I'm a painter. Mostly I'm just a fat slovenly Walter Mitty-type drowning in a sea of brokenness and brokeness. Sports! The grainy sneezed on nature of this clip seems fitting to me so I'll stop looking for a decent quality version of it: