wilderworks

I'm feeling a little bit better today, mostly because I managed to write a full scene of Ladies & Gentlemen . I did a little at work, a lot at home. I don't know what the cause was, but I hope it had nothing to do with smoking several clove cigarettes on Sunday night. More likely, it has to do with confessing to myself, to the internet, and to my roommate, that things weren't going well with my writing career or private hopes, which I did at the same time I smoked and drank. I guess sometimes, one needs to come to the edge, look over, and be reminded what it looks like over there. Or at least, remember that the brink is always there, and if you really want to, you've given yourself permission to visit it again, without branding yourself a permenant resident. Whatever it may be, I hope I can sustain some energy for at least a few weeks. I hate the 24-hour flu version of productivity, and I seem to be prone to it of late. I need to stop letting days slip awa

I have a terribly virulent strain of writer's block, and it seems like I've had it for months. It seems that way because I have. Since at least December. I'd be willing to start smoking again to crack it open. It's reached its roots and shoots into every nook of my life. For me, the block is never caused by a problem I can't solve. Writer's block is always an inability to find a problem I care to solve. It's always a question of care. A problem of passion. And this year, this year, this year so far, I can't seem to care about writing another screenplay, or another short, or another contest runner-up-ship, or another disappointment. I don't care to meet people, I don't care to date, I don't care to write. I only get excited about paying off my debt. "When you get old, your heart dies." I was fooling with my picture phone and took some photos of myself, quite similar to some I took in Harlem three years ago. I loaded them on

For we are many.

Quite out of the blue today, my manager told me I'm under consideration for a promotion, hopefully a raise. And I hope, a substantial one, since I'm still at starter pay for a QC. Of course, the catch is I'll have to learn to open work orders, and thereby, I'll know how to open jobs, assign jobs to transcriptionists in-house and out, (both of which I recruit, test, and interview), and then process, print, and delivery finished jobs. Meaning, I'll have a hand in every step of the process, excluding sales and billing, the bookends. However, if that could mean a dollar or two more an hour (hoping for too much, I know), it'd be worth extending my stay there. I'm getting so close to paying off my credit-card debts, I feel it in my bones. Barring a tragedy, November or December, my car will be paid off, this laptop and my desktop will be paid off, and my other credit debts will be memories. Sitting on the balcony on break, eyes shut to the sun, I sometim

I have to bite my tongue so that I don't accidentally quit work today. If this almost-week off doesn't reset the system, I'm not long for this position. Meanwhile, I was reading about alcoholics last night, and determined that I'm not an alcoholic. I am, however, a sleep-a-holic. How could anyone sleep only the amount that they need? Who wouldn't want that feeling to just go on, and on, and on?

I have the mood swings and cravings of a pregnant woman. Today I want pretzels for dinner. Thin pretzels. And I'm an "adult," so I'm going to have some.

"Weebles wobble and then, with a subtle sigh, resign themselves to gravity, and sadly, slowly, fall to the ground." I had another vivid dream last night, but I can remember only small bits of it. Jason Schwartzman and I were trying to pitch a film to a producer. It was Schwartzman's idea, and he was bringing me in to back him up. It had something to do with a guy whose dog used to scratch the hardwood floors with his nails. After the dog finally died, the man replaced the floor with ceramic tiles. And yet, the man kept hearing dog sounds. And then, one fateful day, the tiles were scratched. This was very high concept horror, I suppose. This is what Schwartzman wanted me to punch up. The producer got furious with us. His investor, a doctor, had just lost his temper at him and thrown a tantrum in the middle of the hospital. The movie was a no-go. Homosexuality was involved, as were crayons, but I'm not clear on the details. Either way, he was blaming our poo

"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure."

I had a dream last night that I was getting married. The ceremony was in a big empty auditorium, something like a converted gymnasium, full of long tables and plastic chairs, like a school cafeteria. I'd been there before, but only in dreams, it seems. Everything about the ceremony was half-assed and tossed together. The organist, on a casio keyboard mounted to a portable boom box, kept playing the opening notes of "Here Comes the Bride," over and over and over, but never got to the part where the bride comes. The march went down between tables and chairs. There was no bridal party, and no one gave anyone away. I was marrying Melissa, my girlfriend from high school. She had a white dress. The priest was a young dark-haried woman, and she read her lines from a pamphlet mounted to the podeum for show, and she couldn't quite angle her head enough to read them right. Afterward I sat at the table with Melissa's relatives, two sisters, aunts perhaps, and t

"Life isn't long enough for love and art."