Deadlines

When I looked at my Blogspot dashboard and realized that I had ONE (1) post for the entire month of June, I couldn't help but be disappointed in myself.  Now, this is mostly due to the fact that  the kids are out of school and I'm not sitting in a city I no longer live in whiling away time.  Though one couldn't tell it from my absence here, the month of June has been fairly productive on many fronts.  Interviews, creative projects, writing assignments, and some travel and family time.

That's the beauty - and the curse - of life in the 21st Century...  so many things going on at once.  To a certain degree, it's become more difficult to live up to the adage "Do one thing, and do it well."  There are so many things begging for our attention, yet - last I checked - there still remain only 24 hours in a day.  While I constantly challenge that "empty" space of life when I simply must SLEEP (damn hypothalamus!), it can be difficult to prioritize the other 18-ish hours of the day.  Especially when the world is your oyster, as it were.

To ensure I'm spending time on things of import, I've been challenging myself, putting deadlines of one sort or another into place.  It's amazing how easy it it to accomplish something when you've got a fire under your ass!  As such, I will, dear readers, place a similar deadline on my blog time, so as not to deprive you of my wisdom and humor.  I've seen it done by fellow bloggers... it appears to work.

So let's try Sundays.

I must go now, as I'm on several deadlines.  Until next we meet, keep filling in the cells on your spreadsheets!

The Preface

The conceit of a preface is that it is typically penned by an author after a manuscript is finished.  It’s almost like a sort of legend (or disclaimer, if you want to look at it like that).  If there were, for instance, a preface at the beginning of an atlas of the United States (arranged alphabetically, without a miniature version of the entire country), it might read like this:  “While each of the fifty pages inside this book don’t appear to connect in any way whatsoever, trust me, they do, and this is how…”

While this preface may be presumed by the reader to have been written AFTER the completion of this work, let me assure you that that is furthest from the truth…  That is because I know how things go.  Life is dirty, haphazard.  It’s a patchwork of circumstances.  A cacophony of events that by themselves may each explode into some logical beginning, middle, and end, but not always.  In life, the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts; we have so many of these little things added into the mix – the little “dead-ends” in life, things that we start and stop, never returning to again.  The only common thread would be the character(s).

Of course, I don’t need to point out that oftentimes “supporting” characters appear and disappear from the theatre of our lives without a flashing neon sign advertising the significance of their existence in our narratives.  I move that every single “minor” character in our lives sheds some microscopic part of themselves, which is then incorporated into our mental and/or physical being, nudging us – often just ever so slightly – onto another path.

It is often difficult to draw lines between every event in a person’s life…  If an author documented every moment of our lives into an objective, chronological history, invariably the harshest critics would tear it apart.  “Without structure” some would say.  Others would ask “What is the unifying theme?”  I would venture to guess that nearly 100% of those people went through life very much the same way.

In pinball, that little metal ball doesn’t have the luxury of contemplating its existence.  It is at the mercy of physics and the obstacles it encounters along the way.  Occasionally, some sort of outside force (vis a vis a player using the flippers) can effect some change on the ball’s trajectory and momentum.  Much like the events and people in our own lives.  But at the end of the day – much like us – there are two givens in the longevity of a pinball:  it is “born” and then it “dies.”

Between those two points lie 99.9999999999999999999% of the game….

Zombie Apocalypse

WOW...  Three weeks - two major curve balls.  To continue the baseball analogy, I've been hit by BOTH and haven't been given a walk by the ump.  Now, it's not my style to argue with the ump - after all, in this instance, the ump is the universe, and I've found very very very few arguments with the universe come out in favor of the little guy...

Losing nearly 60% of a household income is devastating enough, but the last 40% was wiped out on Friday.  That's right...  three weeks to the day after I lost my job, my wife lost hers.  As you can imagine, it's been a bit difficult to remain objective over the last few days....

Let me assure you - we're avoiding negativity, sharp knives, and booze for the next few weeks.  For the children...

The good news is that we had an opportunity to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse before the proverbial doodoo hit the fan.  Adding that to our stockpile of potassium iodide (one a day keeps the glow away!)...  We have 995 rolls of gold foil  - the guy at the door told us it'll be worth more than our gold bars AND Iraqi dinars COMBINED - plus, he said we can use it for our foil caps when the Psychic Friends Against Recycling Turtles invade the Earth on 11/12/13.

I'll tell you - chucking it all is looking better and better!!

Still waiting for the cells on the spreadsheet of my life to calculate...  Damn thing's been running really slow when I started plugging all these new cells in.

Good news is that that little lizard guy helped me save $400 a year on my car insurance.  Bad news is the little Australian bugger just drove off with the Sienna (paid for) after he backed into the Rav (not paid for).  He's fast as hell - and surprisingly agile behind the wheel of a full-sized vehicle, even with the Highway Patrol chasing him while he's texting, talking NON-HANDS-FREE on his Blackberry, and eating too much marmite on toast....

Yeah, there have been some dark places over the years, but I've tried to keep my sense of humor and positive outlook.

Windows, doors, universe, blah blah blah, yada yada yada.

I have no intention whatsoever of ending up in another dark place, certainly won't write myself into some dingy jail like the Seinfeld quartet.  Talk about a disappointing whimper.  No...  I'm going out with my humor and positivity ablazing.  Screw it all!  So, here it goes...

There's a priest and a 12-year-old lawyer holed up in the rectory (author's note:  I always find this term amusing when speaking of priests).  The cops are pounding on the door, demanding that the priest come out and face the music.  The 12-year-old lawyer looks at the pathetic priest and says, "I'll get you off."

How's that for starters????



"The report of my death was an exaggeration."  Mark Twain, 1897

Chucking it all

Yeah, so it's been a few days...  Our entire family loves Oregon, and it's been a while since we've been, so we spent a long weekend in Oregon for my wife's birthday.  I'm happy to report that there was weather (typical and welcomed), that we had a wonderful time (we've never been disappointed)... and that WE DIDN'T WANT TO COME BACK (no surprise here)!

Anytime we go up there, we dream of chucking it all - quitting our jobs, leaving California once and for all, and going someplace "to live and do what we really want."  It's not just me.  I am prone to bouts of ants-in-the-pants, likely an effect of growing up a mortgage brat, attending three different schools in less than a year, going from DC to Michigan to Texas as my dad moved up the ladder in the mortgage business.  No, it's not just me, because my upbringing is different than my wife's, and she always buys into the dream, too.  I would imagine it's a pretty common occurrence among the general population.

So why are we all so afraid to - in the immortal words of the great philosopher, Nike - "Just do it"?

I am of the firm opinion that in order to learn and grow, to be better humans, to really EXPERIENCE life, we need to move, change, and see and touch different things.  But this is where the pesky quandary of life always seems to elbow its way in...  We have a family.  We have responsibilities.  We have cats. To top it off, in our particular situation, our savings was wiped out after lengthy bouts of unemployment and some less-than-scrupulous "friends" of ours (now in federal prison).   We can't just uproot the whole kitten-caboodle (literally) and fly by the seat of our pants.  Can we???

My wife and I "chucked it all" once before, not long after we got married.  It was my doing - a week after a phone call from my best friend who'd just landed himself a job in LA, and I was driving from Chicago to LA with only my clothes, my computer, a small stack of scripts, and a handful of contacts.  While we are a few years older, we have re-demonstrated this streak several times since.  And, I'm happy to report, we've never ended up worse as a result.

It's been proven over and over that life is a web of paths.  To borrow from earlier posts, life is a spreadsheet, full of IF/THEN formulas.  We can also talk about windows, doors, etc., etc.  The heart and mind bounce you back and forth between what's best for you and yours, what's "expected" from society, and what's "possible" (in oh so many ways).  In an earlier draft of "Somewhere Along the Way," the main character, Thomas, shares life lessons with his 21-year-old son:  "It's OK to stand in the middle of the road to figure out which way to go - but don't do it too long.  Because then life will just pass you by..."

Forget the horror stories that your mom and Hollywood taught you and go with me here...  Picture yourself as a hitchhiker, walking along some grand, cosmic thoroughfare, with your thumb out.  It's important that you're WALKING, with your THUMB OUT - otherwise, you're just a spectator, letting life's possibilities pass by. 

I signed on to my usual websites this morning in my search for my "next thing" and saw something posted by another friend, GB, this morning.  A quick web search attributes this beaut to George Harrison:  "Life flows on within you, and without you."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Dark places

I suspect that for most of us, our dark places emerge from our immediate circumstances rather than some physio-chemical disturbance in our headmeat...  Of course, when we're suffering through puberty and the subsequent off-kilter firing of synapses and multiple glands (north and south), we're prone to the occasional outburst of a black, brooding fear and loathing of gargantuan proportions.

Looking back on art of all types from a particularly angsty portion of my life (16 thru 19), it's difficult to separate the "normal" from the "abnormal" - the pure circumstantial from the pure chemical.  There were probably many occasions when one fed the other, leading to some rather dark and dreary moments of existence.  Thankfully, there were very few instances where the problems outweighed the solutions, and thankfully, there was some outlet to tamp down the demons and bring that happier place around again.

There are times in life when fighting the darkness becomes one's main focus, and most of the time, it centers around one's circumstances...  I've been in some dark and dismal places over the last few years, all courtesy of my circumstances.  If I were a drinker or a drug user, I'd probably be dead by now.  But I'm a hopeless optimist - I like to think that for every dark tunnel, there's light at the other end, and it's not (usually) an 8,000 ton freight train barreling toward you.

But let's say it is a train - you're in a hopelessly long and narrow tunnel with limited options.  Will you try to run, stay ahead of the train?  Will you gather your body against the side of the tunnel and hope it passes you, leaving you unharmed with only a new Einstein hairdo?  Perhaps you do this - and as it's passing you, you realize the train is going much slower than you realized through this dark place.  Do you reach out and grab on?  After all, it could very well be on its way to another place, far from here, where circumstances are of a different hue - more muted, and far less jarring, than this dark place you're starting from....

The Process

Oh, the Process...

Based on conversations with writer friends of mine, I'm happy to report I'm no different than them.  After all, best laid plans - and along the way, life happens. As a writer, I'm always working on "my" process.  It's constantly ebbing and flowing with my mood, activities, circumstances, etc.  But the process is more than creating characters and jerking them around in their world until they vomit.  It's LIFE - all of us, being jerked around in our world until we throw up.  Hopefully we have the courage to keep getting back on that crazy rollercoaster for another round.

Just over a year ago, I finished the latest draft of a dramatic script called "Somewhere Along the Way."  It's the first script I've written in a while that was straight drama (I tend toward supernatural movies and/or thrillers these days).  This story begins with a guy in his early 40s who is at a crossroads.  His marriage is failing, he feels disconnected from his college-aged children, and his family's homebuilding business is suffering through the worst housing crash in decades.  Everything he's known his entire adult life has come into question.  And, as a result, his own sense of self is a big friggin' question mark.  His process?  He runs to a familiar place, far from the current trials of life, back to where life used to make sense.  It's there after some happy, sad, and angry moments that he realizes that, despite all the plans he made, "Somewhere Along the Way" life just happened.  For better or worse, he is who he is because of all these little events.  And it's time for him to choose where he goes next.

We all choose how to deal with life's challenges (big and small),.  We simply MUST in order to remain viable as humans. While life zips by around us - seemingly at the speed of light these days - we're bombarded by our own IF/THEN statements.  Of course, most of our decisions are conscious, predetermined by evolution or our environment, or some combination thereof.  Regardless of how we ultimately decide, most decisions in life are innocuous (soy or no soy latte?  paper or plastic?) while others are lifechangers (quit or stay?  straight or gay?).  How we deal is our process - which ultimately generates the formulas on the spreadsheet of our lives.

Yeah, I know...  To some degree, seeing life as one big spreadsheet is macabre, maybe even a bit hokie.  I certainly don't want to place my very existence into the hands of those who gave us the blue screen.  But think about it:  the final cell on the spreadsheet of life is your eulogy - what those who knew you would say about you when you're gone.

You want to make sure the result of that final formula isn't #NAME? or #NULL.

Pulling the plug

I don't have to tell you...  There are some days where just getting out of bed takes every fiber of your being.  Even still, a lot of those fibers fight every step.  It's because, buried deep in those gelatinous melons of ours, evolution has buried thousands - perhaps even MILLIONS - of fight-or-flight synapses whose main objective is SURVIVAL.  Survival of self (both mental and physical), survival of the species, etc., etc.

In 21st Century America, pulling the plug isn't as scary as it used to be.  So why don't we do it more often?  Probably because we've grown accustomed to the road we're already on.  Even though the highway is crumbling beneath our feet, we're comfortable taking this route because we know it so well.

I have an uncle who "pulled the plug" in the grandest way...  A born artist and lover of wildlife, he'd been worn down by the years, chewed up and spit out by life several times.  Married, divorced, success, failure, finally ending up a recluse with a house full of sick and dying exotic birds, living on nothing more than cigarettes and coffee.  Eventually, it got harder for him to get out of bed every morning.  Then, one day, he decided he wasn't going to get out of bed ever again.  He put a .38 in his mouth  - and he pulled the plug.

Now, since we know so little about what (if anything) is on the other side of this life, it's hard to know if he actually had the right idea...

Some philosophies will tell you that his end was a new, better beginning for those who knew and loved him.

Others will tell you he ascended to the next plane to begin a new life's journey.

Still others say that, by taking the life given to him by some Higher Being, his soul has been damned, cast into a pit of fire and brimstone where his Earthly pain will forever pale in comparison.

Still haven't figured out where I am on this...

While I have been prone to the lull of comfort, my underlying instinct is to fight.  To use every day to its fullest (just wish humans didn't have to SLEEP!).  Maybe the best way to apply the "Pulling the Plug" philosophy to life is to see life as a sort of switchboard, constantly shifting our plugs until we connect to what talks to us.

Then again, this is the 21st Century - there are fewer and fewer plugs these days.  Perhaps life is actually  the ultimate "IF/THEN" statement....

~S from across the street

So, as a follow-up to the aforementioned broken arm story...  Imagine the scene:  a narrow, residential street lined with homes of about 1100 square feet.  It was early June just outside of Washington, D.C., and the summer was just warming up.  We'd just gotten home from a T-Ball game - it was 6-ish in the evening and I'd just gotten the T-Ball fundraiser.  I was determined to make good on my responsibility immediately, so I went across the street to get my first sponsor.

I rang the doorbell...  no response.  I could hear the neighbor in the house, vacuuming. Naturally, I rang again.  Still no answer...  So I went down the steps, turned around, and peered through the large glass window on the front of the house.  I could see him in there, tried to get his attention, but he couldn't see me.  So I started backing up...  slowly... still looking through the window... further... almost there...


My mom said she not only heard my screaming from across the street, but could SEE that my arm was broken.  It was in an S shape - a multiple compound fracture of the right arm. Not so common in kids, but quite impressive nonetheless.  Naturally, the drive to the hospital was more traumatic than the break itself, with each little bump in the road feeling like a railroad spike being twisted in my forearm.

I had to be placed under general anesthesia so they could set my arm, and I was in a plaster cast from knuckles to armpit for more than six weeks.  Being a righty, T-Ball was over before it really even began.  It's a shame, because I was good.  I was already being scouted by the Majors (tongue planted firmly in cheek here).

It started off as a pretty boring summer, laid up with an elevated arm, with a (doctor-forbidden) hanger at the ready to scratch inside the cast.  There were only 4 or 5 TV stations back then and no such thing as home video, so I read everything I could get my hands on.  But after a while, that wasn't doing it for me.  I'd started to feel an obnoxious little tickle in my brain that couldn't be scratched by any amount of literary masterpieces.  There was self-expression buried in there, and it had to be excavated.  IMMEDIATELY.

Being a righty, handwriting was out of the question. As the creative juices started to spill forth, I did the next best thing:  I pecked away at my mom's manual typewriter with my left hand.  And a writer was born....

End of a professional T-Ball career...

When I was 8, a devastating accident in my neighbor's garden ended my hopes of a professional T-ball career, so I turned to writing that summer.  Now, I'll admit it straight out: my first story, "Dinosaurs and the Universe" was largely plagiarized from Time/Life books on the subjects.  But I was hooked on writing, and have been writing ever since. These days, I do all kinds of writing, but my passion is screenwriting.