Self-induced crises

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Don’t cheat

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Script Frenzy has ended.  I reached an admirable 85 pages.

I was going to submit a less-than-admirable 100, but when I got to the website to upload my doctored document, I found the uploading feature closed.  It was set to American-centric time and clocked off, probably, at midnight on Pacific Daylight Savings Time – about 7 hours ago.

But my aim was to see a thing through, and I did.  I wrote three TV episodes, plus the beginnings of a musical.  Little of this is good work, but I never pledged to write well – just to write.  And write I did, until life got in the way (which I’m kind of grateful for, truth be told – as I’ve said before, “Ah life – it’s a keeper”).

So why would I go and cheat and add some stuff I’d written prior to April in order to give myself a 100 page document to submit?  How cheap is that?!  Sucked in to me for stuffing up the deadline and missing out on an ill-got whole number.  For shame!

I wouldn’t cheat in a game against anyone else – if I ever get the chance to peek at cards or short change Monopoly money, I can’t keep a lid on myself for longer than a minute.  In a spirit of guilt or giggling, I cannot shut my mouth. 

I’ve been told before I’m a crap liar and I’m inclined to agree.  On the other hand, one of my high school teachers once told me I was “either very unfortunate or a damn good liar” when I’d come up with yet another excuse for why I hadn’t done my homework.  Though, the fact that she pointed out how “good” a liar I - allegedly - was, pretty much spells the opposite.

Anyway, my point - buried in an entanglement of tangents here – is, I’m prepared to cheat myself way above and beyond my preparedness to cheat others.  This is comforting in a way – also, unsettling.

Still.  85 pages.   That’s about as much script than I’ve written in the entire last six years.  So in that sense, I didn’t short-change anyone, or anything – not even myself.

I may have cheated this blog though.  So I guess my new pledge is to give it some TLC. 

“Don’t go chasin’ waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to…”

Hey, if I’m gonna short-change this blog, I may as well screw it up good ‘n’ proper before I make amends.

Er, sorry.

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A tree grows in Artyom

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

I’m very sorry to go on about this, but my shuddering must be setting off volcanoes in Iceland.

I’m hoping that, by writing and reading and thinking about it that I’ll desensitise myself.  So far, this tack is not working.  But still, there’s a story to be told (and I’m right on Script Frenzy target with 50 pages and I’m procrastinating over starting episode 3).

It’s been reported that a 28-year-old guy in Russia named Artyom had a tree growing inside his lung.  This was good news, considering they thought it was cancer.  Lung cancer is horrific, no question, and please allow me to preface the following rant with me stating emphatically that I certainly do not mean to dilute the seriousness of this disease.  Artyom was relieved to have a cancer-free outcome - just as any of us would be.

However.

IT WAS A TREE.  A fir tree, in case you were wondering.  A TREE!  I can actually feel the blood drain from my face.

To think that it had reached FIVE CENTIMETRES.  It brings tears to my eyes.

Did Artyom keep his mouth open long enough to give it some sunlight?  I suppose if his airways were open long enough for a seed to descend and take root, chances are the sun shone in too at some point.

Did the leaves whistle when he breathed?  Did Artyom emit an alpine-fresh scent, but nobody knew why?  Did his red blood cells decorate it at Christmas time?  Did they still admire it when it was covered in snow?

Are environmentalists going to start suggesting the rest of us follow suit so that we can all start exhaling oxygen instead of CO2?  Neutralise this, b!tche$.

I think the thing I find most disturbing – that is, aside from the fact that IT WAS A TREE - is that you could have something like that going on inside you that you have no idea about.

A doctor once told me you can have a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball and have no idea.  I was 8 years old at the time.  This may go toward explaining why I don’t like surprises.

Indeed, Artyom said “I never felt like I had an alien object inside of me”.  He just got really, really sick for a while.  X-rays showed a hideous tumour.  Surgery showed IT WAS A TREE.

The whole thing is having the ‘teeth effect’ on me.  You know, when they discover ill-fated fetus siblings inside people and it turns out they have fully formed teeth?

And yet, somehow, I’m coping even less with this.  This fir tree didn’t share genes with Artyom, it wasn’t his less fortunate brother, it wasn’t some aspect of the complex formation of a human being gone awry.  No.  IT WAS A TREE.  A TREE!!!  With needles that made the poor guy’s capillaries bleed!  Oh dear God, someone please hold my hand.

I’m hoping – HOPING – that we wake up tomorrow to the news that it’s a hoax.  I’ll curse, I’ll laugh, and I’ll be really bloody relieved.

And I won’t have to wear a mask the next time I go bushwalking.

Posted in Kid's-eye view, Self-induced crises | 2 Responses »
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Check-in

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Normally I’d frame a post like this in some kind of broader doesn’t-this-happen-to-all-of-us kind of theme.

Not this time.

I’m writing just to check in here and because I’ve realised a few things.

  1. The original idea for me to write a public-worthy blog has flown out the window – this blog is as self-indulgent and unfocused as its predecessor.  It’s just less defamatory.
  2. I’m procrastinating massively.
  3. Maybe I should finally update the neglected Veggie Rant for a blog that actually has a point to it.
  4. I’m not sure why I’m writing numeric points because there aren’t that many points to make.
  5. My right wisdom tooth is an absolute mess at the moment.  Not that you wanted to know.
  6. Still procrastinating.
  7. Yep, still procrastinating.
  8. I made awesome pizza this long weekend.  I’m particularly self-impressed with my potato and rosemary and my sweet potato and feta.  I should take pictures.  I should learn to make my own bases next.
  9. See clauses 2, 6, and 7.

So fine.  I’m procrastinating around fulfilling my Script Frenzy pledge.  I’ve written one-and-a-bit episodes so far (32 pages) when I should’ve finished two episodes by now (around the 43 pages mark).

It’s not funny, but I know where it needs to be funny and vaguely how it needs to be funny and I knew it wouldn’t be funny at this stage anyway.  Phew.  Though I do kind of wish it was funny because then I’d feel a bit more justified in carrying on, considering it’s meant to be a goddamn comedy series.  But you wouldn’t know it to read it.  It’s comedy incognito.  Lord.

I also have a lot of music to learn and singing practice to do.  I need to start exercising again.  I need a haircut and that’s just the start of the general maintenance required.  I need to stop downloading TV shows lest I blow my bandwidth limit.  I need to stop watching TV shows so I can get singing, learning, writing, general maintenance, and life underway.

I feel very lost with singing at the moment, by the way, so I’m procrastinating around doing that too.  That’s probably why I’ve managed to write 32 pages of script thus far, and why I have still not managed to grasp vocal mixing yet.  Nor have I grasped how to sing my solo without feeling both atonal and a w*^ker.  Of course, it doesn’t help that I don’t even know the words yet.  What an asset I’ll be come rehearsal – ie: next weekend.  Crap, crap, crap!!!

Am I doomed to get things done by using one thing as a means of procrastination around another?

That could work, except for the part where all I can really think about is watching the next episode of Damages season 2 (Should we side with Glenn Close or not?  Who does Rose Byrne shoot in those cutaways??  No, don’t tell me!).

How did I become this cowardly, inert, procrastinating, craft-poor blob?

How can I write 11 pages by midnight?

How can I learn 8 songs by Sunday?

How can I fit in 2 Pump classes this week?  Will I still be able to walk afterwards?

Why did I make this cocktail so sour?

Why did I make a cocktail at all?  I’m supposed to be writing!  Plus, I already had open Zibobo Rosa (Mmmm…) in the fridge – couldn’t I have had a flute of that?

Who says ‘flute’ like that?  Especially with reference to domestic booze consumption?

Anyway, I had to use that lime – it cost 50 freaking cents – and if four sachets of sugar and half a glass of cranberry juice isn’t enough to sweeten it, then too bloody bad.

(beat)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!

 Blackout.

Posted in Pointless Interludes, Self-induced crises | 2 Responses »
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April Fool

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

It’s only six days until April, which means that six days from now I’ll be embarking on a new venture. I really, really, really want it to work this time.  And by ‘work’ I mean I don’t want to give-up 1/8th of the way in.  I want to – no matter how badly crap I think it is – finish it. 

Finish.  Get to the end.  Find an ending – any ending – and get there.  Cross the finish line.  Find the holy grail.  Kiss the knight or the frog or the ground of a new land.  Hear the aria from the rotund diva.  Whatever you want to call it.  And for no reason other than, just to prove I can.  Well, not no other reason – there are plenty – but in the event that there was no other reason, that would be The One.

I’m talking about this.

Now, I know I made a truly pissweak attempt at this - its novel-writing equivalent - and gave up around the 14% mark.  And it barely saw the light of day because I hated it so much.  I hated writing it and I hated reading it back and I hated my poorly-defined characters, my shallow-yet-indulgent attempt at premise, and my unbearably laboured prose.

(Maybe I should post some excerpts on here for a laugh?  Titled: “Why Keira should never become a novelist”)

But with this I feel I have a chance.  I’ve spent time on my characters and my plot.  I’m writing about what I know, yet – hopefully – not too close to my own life that it seems precious and self-indulgent.  And, eventually, I think it’ll be funny (and by ‘eventually’ I mean in 10 drafts’ time).

But even if not – and even if it’s all crap and unfunny and dumb and “[I] know deep down in [my] little heart that it’s $hit” as my last creative writing teacher once said in class (not to me specifically, as far as I could tell) - I still want to finish it.

I’ve also psyched myself out of expecting too much.  I have crippled myself countless times by my unforgiving expectation of instant brilliance.  No more.  I just want to finish the thing and, I dare say, to enjoy the process.  Then I can figure out “what next?”.

This determination – and this public-ish (I say ‘ish’ because, really, how many people actually read this blog?) pledge – could have one of at least two effects:

1) I’ll disappear from The Daley Rant until May.  Though, I’ll be doing a show in May and travelling in June, which could mean you won’t hear from me till July – during which time I’ll be scourged with Seasonal Affective Disorder, which means you shan’t want to read me until September.

Or…

2) I write on here a lot. Either due to: 
(a) The act of writing begetting more writing, words flying in every direction, a magical creative flow with inspiration gushing out of every orifice (ew)
or
(b) Procrastination.

Either way, I ask you to hold me to this project.

Feel free to harass me.  Ask how far I’ve got.  Ask me at the end of each day “Have you written your 3.3 pages?”

Just to qualify, though, I’ve never been a “little bit each day” kind of person.  I’m a crammer.  Instead of 3.3 pages per day, it’s more likely to be 23.1 pages every Sunday.  So maybe ask about that instead.

Posted in Pointless Interludes, Self-induced crises | 1 Response »
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Undercurrent

Friday, February 6th, 2009

Smiling through sheer terrorI read somewhere that, as we go about our day-to-day lives, we all have an undercurrent of anxiety quietly bubbling under the surface. 

It’s not the hospital-waiting-room kind of anxiety.  Most of the time, we don’t even realise it’s there.   But it is. 

We hope it doesn’t/does rain.  We look both ways before crossing.  We better not use the word ‘dead’ around someone who’s just lost a beloved pet.  We wonder if we have seeds between our teeth after eating those new crispbreads-with-27-different-grains (answer: yes).  We use paper towels when we open the toilet door (okay, that’s just me).

They’re the little things that guide us through each day, keep us out of peril, out of minor disagreements, or prevent us from looking like multigrained fools.

Lately, though, my anxiety isn’t so much an undercurrent as it is white-water rapids.  This is partially a hormonal issue, I’ll admit.  Also, I have a first-time-in-a-while show coming up and it’s always in the back of my mind.

But these obvious things aside, for so many hours a week (I’ll let you guess which) I feel like I should be doing something else. 

It’s like I have an English exam tomorrow that I haven’t read the novel for (it was Dickens).  But instead of reading like the wind, I get sudden inspiration to write out the entire Pearl Jam catalogue in phonetics.

For significantly fewer hours, I feel like I’m in just the right place, doing just the right thing. 

Today, when I said “I have a cold and my laptop is broken beyond repair”, someone suggested that “maybe it’s a sign”.  I don’t believe in signs – I think you can attribute any meaning to anything – but I do believe in choices.

I could just choose not to be so anxious.  Or I could chose to eliminate the things that make me anxious…  Or I could “choose vodka and Chaka Khan”.

But if I didn’t have to wear hotpants in 12 days’ time, I’d totally choose chocolate.

Posted in Grumpybum, Pointless Interludes, Self-induced crises | 2 Responses »

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