It's day two of a feel-all-good-and-accomplished marathon. I won't go into detail or specifics about the rejection I recently suffered, but I will say that I'm becoming a professional rebounder. In fact, I can only hope for more upsets in the future, because frankly, I'm a collector of chances to start from scratch and a fan of nowhere to go but up.
Yesterday, I picked up "The Phantom Tollbooth" from Strand (the famous 'mile of books' discount bookstore just south of Union Square) for a delightfully criminal five dollars. Everything I remember from that book, I remember because of the cartoon (no real shame there, as the Chuck Jone's classic is just that). But everything I don't remember (namely the whole middle section of the book and a couple of really amazing characters) is blowing MY FUCKING MIND.
Appropriately, the entire Doldrums bit left me jaw dropped and amazed by it's cleverness, not to mention it's applicability to my life when I'm feeling particularly shitty. After detailing their day-to-day schedule (including five naps), the Lethargarians tell Milo, "As you can see, that leaves no time for brooding, lagging, plodding or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done."
Cut to me, sitting in my pajamas with hummus all over my expressionless face. It's like in "The Neverending Story" when the kid realizes the book is talking about him, only in this case it was like the book wanted to hold an intervention. Thankfully, Milo gets saved by the watchdog, who tells him that all he needs to do to get his car moving again is think. OH, METAPHOR.
So yeah! My car is moving again, and things just keep happening that are making me optimistic and enthusiastic about life (either that or this is what they call the "manic" phase of Bipolar... one of the two). Sitting in a Starbucks, reading, writing, drinking copious amounts of coffee and contemplating leaves me feeling like I just ran a couple miles.
Which, I'm re-affirming now in the hopes that I don't forget it later, is so important. My enthusiasm and well-being depends on a constant influx of information and activity of my imagination. When I become stagnant and passive (as excessive TV is wont to make me), I get all depressed and chubby.
Last night I saw "Charlie Wilson's War" and after reading an article in Script Magazine by Aaron Sorkin, I've never been more convinced in my life that I need to be a writer. Plays, movies, or TV-- it has to happen. The gigantic self-concocted illusion, however, is that my feeling necessity to become a successful writer is going to magically translate into it happening, without all the effort and years of practice.
That's why I hope this is just "Day Two" of a habit that I'm about to form. A strict regimen of reading, writing and contemplating are now my day job. Television is okay (even Sorkin suggests "seeing a lot of movies and watching a lot of television") but to prevent slipping back into my doldrum-esque unemployed coma, I vow to make watching an active activity.
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2 comments:
irst Up Guy says, "Go for the positive. It can't hurt." :-) Actually, reading your writing is a pleasure. You probably COULD go directly into a successful writing career, if only people could see how good you are. Why don't you just write a whole slew of stories, articles, books, plays, TV scripts, etc., so that you have about a dozen years of product to prove it! By the way, about half the ornaments are off the tree already. Another day's work to go and it will have disappeared. Bah, humbug!
big bro will probably disagree with me, but there is a state of mind induced by caffeine that just can't be replicated any other way and sometimes seems very very necessary to the creative process...
also, i'm slightly adoring of sorkin's writing
ALSO, reading your blogs always make my day better. i imagine that the more people who get to read your writing the better off the world will be.
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