As Yet Untitled

Vlog challenge day 3 - may 8 2013 - “old waistband” (by Ira Heinichen)

Vlog day two - may 7 - part 1: “we’ve played tennis” (by Ira Heinichen)

Been a while, which is good sign (I think?) since I really only blog here where I’m feeling out of sorts…which is why we don’t *tell* people about this blog, eh? :P

Anywho, wanting a clean slate today. Starting a new project, a challenge of sorts; I’ve tried and failed at P90x now I think five times over the last three years…in that time I’ve got as far as two full months in before something “came up” or “happened”…several of which were completely legitimate. Ie- it’s very hard to work out every day when you’re filming 14 hours days or travelling…but at the end of the day, it’s all bullshit. I’m tired of trying a failing.

I’m also deciding to rally against feeling “overwhelmed,” which is the mental state of choice for the past year-plus. And probably deservedly so…but something’s got to give. I’m not going to get what I want sitting around trying to relax myself and waiting to put on my plate what I really want to be on there. I’ve got push ahead, grab what I want, hold myself accountable to being more, and then crash when I can…set myself up to take those breathers by tackling what needs to be tackled.

Or maybe this is an exercise in seeing how far I can push myself before it actually falls apart…I’m not sure. Obviously, my nature would steer me away from that happening, but this suffocation I’m feeling fucking sucks. “Floating Anxiety” I believe they call it. My friend Joe said once in passing that “you’re good as long as you don’t have that.” Well, that stuck in my mind because it pretty much perfectly describes what I’m feeling. It never stops, there’s always a floating “you’re fucked” out there.

And I’ve *tried* simplifying as much as I possibly could. In fact, that’s why I stopped P90x the last time. I wanted to focus. But my life is not simple, and trying to make it so hasn’t worked. And maybe I’m totally going down the wrong path here, and there’s something in this “keep it simple” tack that I didn’t fully commit to or realize, but what was stressing me out constantly was everything that I had cut out.

Like writing.

Like working out.

Like getting out there for golf and tennis - things that get me moving.

I do know for sure, that I don’t want a new distraction…like the two hours today I spent setting up the blog you see right below this post. That may be a mistake…but then again, I feel a *constant* need to create, and maybe doing these videos will help that, even if I have tucked them away from even my family and friends. They’re not impossible to find, they just feel very self-serving right now and whiny to be honest…and maybe *I* need to work through that right now, but that doesn’t mean anyone else does.

Confession: I just ruined a pot on the stove because I was in my office, on my computer twiddling with youtube, forgetting about the water that I was boiling in the kitchen. That’s honestly what made me sit down right now and write this thing. That’s how out of it I’m feeling today, a pattern that’s wracked me each of the past four or five months after making a big push to get my editing done just in time…or actually never in enough time because I consistently don’t get paid for three or four of the last videos I finish…

Maybe I need to make a list of this shit that I’m fucking up right now:

1. not finishing p90x

2. not getting up on time pretty much every day

3. not eating enough…I’m starving right now, actually

4. finishing editing each month in the last week, which means I don’t get paid for everything I finish

5. only writing when I meet with Josh

6. getting sucked into baseball as a distraction, rather than a reward

7. no sex

8. feeling shitty about auditions, either just stressed about them, or feeling like I’m not doing good work

9. where’s the confidence or the inspiration…I want to do nothing…as this list shows

Anyway, enough today. I don’t feel better yet, but I am going to get my ass up and eat some damn food. Then get my editing done. And hopefully talking to my iPhone and posting that here will help me work through whatever nonsense this is.

I leave you with Imagine Dragons…”tiptoe” isn’t necessarily my favorite, but it is the second track off their album, and “radioactive” just seems overdone :P

peace, *ira

90 day vlog challenge day one

This song makes me think of a lot of things.

I’ve probably listened to it a million times now because it’s the first track off an incredible album that has been my soundtrack for the summer. Which is weird, because the song sounds like warmth on a cold day. Which is why it makes me think of home in the waning months of a year. When there’s far more gray in the air than any other color.

It also makes me think of this interview I listened to tonight on KCRW’s The Business podcast with Derek Cianfrance whose film “Blue Valentine” received some serious attention two years ago during awards season for its extremely intimate storytelling.

He was talking about balancing the business with the art, and how he needed help to tell his stories…and that’s why he was a filmmaker. Because he needed help. Otherwise he’d just be a writer.

And at first, he refused work and took unemployment because he was an artist. But as obscurity began to mount along with the bills, he started saying yes to wart commercials and MTV documentaries on Basketball players…and he found that he was rusty. He had been out of practice. He found he needed that work. And when he got good at that, scripts that he had written years before got made. And he started pushing that rock up the mountain.

It made me feel like this song, listening to him say those things. That hard work can translate into art, and that art can translate into business.

It made *me* want to work hard. Which I remember feeling the strongest when I was home, usually on cold moist Humboldt County days, dreaming of what my future could hold.

They are related, business and art. We are all drawn to excellence, because its ease is intoxicating. I still dream of excellence. Of being an artist. I don’t feel like one, but that’s only because I want to work harder.

The album is called “Devil’s Walk” by Apparat, and I highly recommend a purchase.

I really have no idea what this post is going to be about, or this “blog,” really. All I know is that today feels intense…just like this piece by Hans Zimmer. It’s been stuck in my head really for the past couple days, boiling really.

If anyone is reading, I guess in the end I decided to share my thoughts with the world, maybe to seek approval from those I know and love, or maybe to share on the chance someone might actually get something out reading…both seem presumptuous and adolescent, don’t they? So we’ll go with option three. Feels appropriate.

The truth is, this has always been the best way I work stuff out in my head, when the paralyzing crushingness of everything becomes overwhelming - all the angles, all the negativity and the self loathing for being so negative and the just-snap-out-of-it’s drown out what I’m really feeling and fearing. Black and white has always been my friend. Text on paper. Somethingness from Nothingness. It’s inherently *doing* something in the middle of a crisis where I feel I’m doing *nothing*.

This year has been intense. I know that intellectually. I’ve decided to do a lot of things, like move into a new place, reset my path financially. Gone are the days of being a server, toiling in creative purgatory with “never enough time.” It was sucking my soul. Waiting tables and working banquets had it’s place, I don’t want to give the wrong impression. But I needed, desperately, to move on. Why am I here? I kept asking myself. So I quit. Last year. And got a shit ton done. Not enough, mind you, never enough, but that’s a different blog post. But money. Money money money. The lack of it was killing me. Could have killed me relationship. So that’s what *this* year was about. How not to work the way I used to but still make money.

So I found work as an apartment manager. Free rent. Check.

Unemployment held the bills at bay till I found work-from-home work. Got offered a job yesterday editing online. Check.

But what I FEEL…is not enough. And I sincerely don’t mean that as a plea for some recognition, it’s honestly what I feel. And I guess I’m realizing this now because at the end of the day, I fear it’s not what I want.

A fool would read that last sentence and tell me to pursue my passion and forget the rest. Number one, I can’t forget the rest, it’s not the way I’m wired. Number two, I’ve been there last year and it wasn’t enough…because I needed the security I’m creating right now.

What DO I want?

Hans Zimmer, that’s what I want. This music is so fucking good it’d make everything in me shiver if I let it. It’s sublime, powerful in an effortless way. It’s artistry from someone who is a master at their craft. Just what notes to pluck, and when, to tell the truth of the human condition.

THAT’S what I fucking want. So bad. And I’m so so afraid I won’t ever get there. I’m afraid I won’t be good enough, or I won’t work hard enough, and that’s the way I feel right now. And I feel like it’s too easy to say it’s because I “needed to get my shit together” and I know I did need to do that, but I haven’t been able to do both and it’s fucking killing me.

And Hans Zimmer really speaks to me on this day today because I’m turning 30 soon, and “Time” has gone by so fast. So fast. And I want so much.