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The Penitent man shall pass
I’ve been in an awful creative slump for a while now.
I feel like I can’t come up with anything good, or useful. I don’t know if it’s because I’m depressed, if I’m still getting used to my meds, if my sleep is off, if I’m just tired, or what. I know one thing’s for sure; it’s pissing me off. BIG TIME.
I want to write something interesting, something fresh, but something that isn’t as dark as my prior work. I think that’s a problem for me because I like the darkness, the sardonic nature of my characters, and the humor that I’m able to get through that. I want to write something much lighter, but I can’t find anything that would fit. I mean, Unicorns are awesome and all, but I don’t know if I can write one word of a script or story without saying FUCK half a dozen times.
Maybe I’m fighting my nature too much. Maybe I’m just not making the effort to try and work. Like I said before, I have been depressed. This summer sucked a lot of the life out of me, and what I did in the spring is long past. Maybe it’s the heat. The San Fernando Valley is a bitch during the summer, but lately, it’s been hotter than the entirety of it. And it’s Mid-September for fuck’s sakes!
I just don’t want to be that brooding guy, but I know I am. Sure, I’m funny, and I’m well liked, but my dark side is a bitch and half. I’m trying not to be the victim. I’m in control, but I don’t know what to do with that control. I’ve never really had the wheel my whole life. Someone was always driving for me.
I talked to one of my dear friends about this today, and he commented that it may take me another YEAR to figure all this out. It’s not what I want to hear, but he’s probably right. I’m a stubborn son of a bitch, and I have problems with taking the first steps towards change. I don’t get out of the house enough, and I’m rather overweight. Okay, maybe I’m fat, but I’m not obese. I’m not at the “GODDAMN, use a treadmill!” stage. That’s a step in the right direction I suppose.
The only thing really going for me is that I’m in school, and I’m giving it my all. Sometimes, that’s not enough in other people’s eyes, namely the ones helping to fund me. Maybe I expect too much out of myself. I get upset if I get a C. Anything above a B is fine, but I still feel like I can do better. I’ve only had one C+, as I said a while ago, but I felt it was deserved. The other day, on my last day of class for the next week until the new quarter starts, my professor praised me in front of the whole class about my effort. All of my other classmates had given me compliments beforehand, as that was what we were doing for each other (very 1st grade, I know), then he would comment. He called me a ‘tentpole’, which was very flattering, but I was kind of in a daze. I said I was very humbled by all of the praise I had received, but I even said I could do better. If even my best isn’t good enough for me, what ever will be?
Anyway, so I’m kind of stuck in this loophole. I don’t know if I’m just going through a REALLY long phase, or if I’m just drowning in my own depression. I did break my sobriety last Saturday, but I haven’t smoked since. I don’t really feel like going back to it anymore. I like it, sure, but it never really helped me. Maybe I just want another taste to help my creativity. Maybe I should have another taste to help it. I don’t know. I don’t want to go down that dark path again.
This probably all seems ridiculous considering how much I write per post on these things, but you have to understand, this is just me talking about my life. It’s not like I’m writing short stories, or scripts. This is purely for pleasure, and maybe to keep myself from getting rusty. I don’t edit these. I don’t refine. I just let it flow. That’s what I do. It helps me iron shit out. Public or not, I would probably be keeping a journal if it weren’t for Tumblr.
Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough. Maybe one of you has some advice for me?
Maybe not. Whatever.
- H
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Sand in the Vaseline
Why do I feel so out of place? So tortured by my own self? Angry to the point of exploding bouts of rage? Upset that I can’t find love?…
It’s a constant struggle. Same shit, different day. Half of it is bullshit, and the other half is just shit.
I never thought I’d be here, like this, in this place. I thought by now, I’d be a success, with lots of money, women, and all the happiness I could ever want. But its not to be. I sit in my apartment, alone, isolated, and unchanged. Sure, I’m going to school, and I have friends, but I don’t let anyone get close enough to really make them see what lies beneath. I put on a superficial front of happiness, while I rip myself to shreds on the inside. I can’t even talk to women all that well, as friends yes, but as something more, never. I’m an unbalanced, awkward fool that hates himself, but only wants to be himself. A walking contradiction. A callous abscess. A beast of burden, but only to myself.
I wish it weren’t this way. I wish I didn’t hide myself away from it all, living in fear. I change with the world, but that change never gives me the closure I seek. All the medication, therapy, and talking can’t change the fact that, though I’m not alone, I FEEL alone. My struggles are my own, and no one gives a fuck. I know that’s the truth, and I’m okay with that, but it still hurts. The pain is just too much, and I’m getting tired of it. It’s an old habit, a routine, one that will destroy me if I let it.
I’m falling once again into darkness, a pit that I’ve crawled out of more times than I can count on my hands, but I don’t know if I can make it out alone this time.
I just want to feel some kind of satisfaction for once, to know that I mean something to myself, not just to other people. I know a lot of people care about me, but the lack of caring for myself is what makes it a problem. But the other issue is that I’m being told to do so many different things, sending me off in different directions… I can’t follow them all, but I get the overwhelming feeling that they won’t help me, nor cure my mental ailment. I genuinely appreciate all the help, but it does nothing to ease my pain. It masks it.
And that’s what I’m always doing. Wearing different masks. Just like my fuck up of a father before me. I’m trying to break the pattern, but the pattern is creeping up on me. I hurt on the inside. External pain is nothing.
At this point, I feel that this will pass, as everything does, but what if it doesn’t? What if I keep complaining about the same things? Never finding a solution? What if I am stuck in a tormented haze for the rest of my life, unwilling to find a proper way to cope?
I’ve been sober over a month. I thought it would help, and it has, but its also made things worse in the process. It’s made me look at myself more deeply than I wished, and just recognize my flaws that much more. How much time I’ve wasted, how I’m not so young as I once was, and that my life means nothing to my family.
I’ve tried to be a good man, but even with all that good karma, my life has been filled with sadness, loss, hatred, betrayal, and darkness. I just wish it could all be over, not at the end of a noose, but at the end of a sentence.
- H
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The Human Condition.
This week is the clusterfuck of all clusterfucks. Everything good, everything bad… It’s pretty much happened.
I started the week with a BANG, producing a short film on Tuesday morning from 2am to 11am. It was hellish, but went well overall. I don’t think I can complain too much about it since I have yet to see any of the footage, and I was more concerned about getting to bed. I slept 14 hours after that, so I’d say it went pretty well.
Yesterday was horseshit. One of my classmates didn’t have a single fucking person on his crew, and it was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen performed. I had to do 5 different things at once, plus he didn’t have a fucking clue what he wanted going in. I know I might be a little harsh, but a project like this, you can’t fuck around. It’s how it goes. I take this shit seriously. I wish other people did, but I guess that’s how it goes.
Retarded Dystopian movies starring dead bitches don’t help my mood either.
And finally, last night, I wrote 4 1/2 pages of my first feature script. I didn’t feel the need to write more, even though I should have. I thought they were great. My teacher thought they were shit, but he and my classmates tried to help me. I was hurt because it was what I imagined in my head, but I guess that my vision isn’t always the best version of it. It still doesn’t feel too good.
Now? I’m reminiscing about not having a girlfriend, being a bit of a pervert, and accepting that I intentionally isolate myself in order to not get hurt because I’ve been hurt so many times. I’m also preparing for my first directing project in almost a year, which happens on this coming Wednesday.
I’m not stretching myself too thin anymore, but I’m still healing from stretching far beyond what I thought I could. It seems to me that for every good thing I do for someone else, a bad thing occurs to me personally. Why is this? Does the universe hate me so? I know I haven’t been great lately, but I try so damn hard…
I just wish that my efforts were rewarded with something more tangible, something less toxic, and something exciting to wrap around. I feel like I’m losing part of that spark that makes me me.
Maybe I’m just all balled up inside. Twisted, feeling under-appreciated, majorly hurt. Doesn’t matter how good things are going, I truly feel this way. What appears fine on the surface, isn’t necessarily what’s true deep within.
With my birthday around the corner, I have nothing planned, nothing to do, and everything I want to happen. I wish I didn’t feel like I was so alienated from my friends.
It all boils down to the question I always ask myself; Why is it I can save everyone else, but I can’t save myself?
- H
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I am not what I am expected to be
I am who I am, and I accept this with full responsibility and capability, despite the consequences, through each sacrifice, through each challenge. I will always be held accountable for the things I say and do, and I will always be a few steps ahead of where you think I am.
The problem with acceptance is that you have to give up yourself to the universe instead of trying to fight it the whole way. Through good times, and bad, you see the world as it truly is at that moment, rather than trying to see it the way you WANT to see it.
Thinking that you can bullshit someone just to get in with a crowd, or get in to something is fine, but do you feel good about it at the end of the day? Do you really believe that that’s where you belong? Why put yourself in a group you have little in common with than find a community where you feel appreciated, even respected?
Respect is commanded when you Respect WHO YOU ARE, not what you’re trying to be. Respect comes from when you show people your true colors with no expectations of how or what they are willing to think. True respect is when you don’t need to show people, you just are.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re short or tall, Black or White, Fat or Skinny… Respect is mutual across all realms, but only with acceptance and respect for yourself.
It’s important when having that mutual respect for others to be without bias, without hate, and trying not to use someone JUST for what they can provide. The benefits of mutual respect are limitless, but if you limit your respect for another, you limit yourself entirely. It doesn’t matter if they’re not as smart as you, don’t dress the same, have a different background… What matters is trying to look at it from where they’re coming from, not just putting YOUR perspective on things.
True greatness comes from emotionally connecting with someone on a level of mutual, honest, unbias respect, and respect for yourself. Acceptance and Truth are the same thing, just different in the way they are established and shown.
Don’t lie to yourself. Be who you are, and let other people be who they’re going to be. For some, ignorance is bliss, for others, like myself, the truth is what I seek, though it is a much harder road.
Don’t be the dictator of your mind, be the liberator of your soul.
- H