Please excuse my whiney stream-of-conciousness.

November 26, 2018  9:52 pm

GOD, I hate everything.
NO, actually, I don't hate EVERY thing. There is some degree of sustained self-loathing going on, but actual, active hating on anything or anyone else, no.

I'm restless and distracted because there's so many things to do or that I want to do, but nothing can be done quickly. I need to just focus on one thing at a time. there's no short cut to getting all this shit done. Instead, I just need to pick a project/objective and then proceed to fulfilling the needs of each particular project.

But right now I just want to eat.
Right now I just want to sleep.
Right now I should do something constructive, like some domestic chore; nothing elaborate, just something simple, like, folding laundry. or cleaning up some of my basement living quarters.


10:27 pm

Well, okay. I folded some laundry.
Whoo. Hoo.
WOW, I'm really in a shitty mood.
Okay, I think I know why, too.
I haven't gotten enough sleep lately. Today was my day off but I didn't really sleep in. And I don't usually go to bed at any reasonable time, either. And my job requires some steady physical exertion. And I'm fucking 58 years old. So, all this adds up to: GET MORE SLEEP, OLD MAN.
Yeah, so not enough sleep and then just general stress and/or obsessive preoccupations with matters that I don't seem to actually try to deal with. Like, thinking about stuff to draw, or film, and having various ideas for comics, film, whatever, and then, when I have an opportunity towards working on any of these ideas, etc., I don't. Instead, I go braindead on the internet. Or I sink to deeper depths and rush over to free porn on-line. Porn, for god's sake! I'm a fool.


November 28,  2:36 am

I should go to bed. "Get more sleep, old man," indeed. Although, actually, I did fall asleep on my bed, then had to get up to go the bathroom. So, I'm off to slumberland again, but let me try to move a little further along in this post.
Tonight we had another BM-VM Screenwriters meeting at the Alberta Dr. Wegmans. This is the second season we're doing this. We initiated this second group of meetings apart from the main group, the Buffalo Movie-Video Makers. I just thought it would be constructive to establish a core group of local writers and a meeting place for them. Also, BM-VM's core meeting structure (starting at 7:15, a 10-minute intermission, ending at 9:00) seemed somewhat restrictive to any extended discussion of screenwriting, too. Well, okay, that's debatable. But, I think the club's interests for a focus on screenwriting was limited, so attempting to form a splinter group seemed like a worthwhile experiment, and I think we're getting some traction. I'll elaborate more on my movie blog at some point.

Meanwhile, it started snowing yesterday afternoon and there's a winter advisory going on until 6 pm today. And so, yeah, I should go to bed because I have to open today at work and I'll have to deal with snow and that assorted winter bullshit. Ugh.

I was thinking about the fastest way to get my word count and I started thinking about THE SHINING and Jack's novel-writing efforts.
Maybe if I just kept repeating "All work and no play makes a Jack a dull boy." over and over ad nauseum. Let's see... count that sentence as 11 words, divide into 50,000... so I just have to write 4545.454545 times.
Er... nope.
But, an interesting thought. Okay, if I did do something like that (um... cheating), I'd have to come up with a more appropriate phrase. Like...

Um...

"Time waits for no man."
Okay, that has more significance for me, but it's only 5 words, so I'd have to repeat that 10,000 times.
"I hate everything."
No! That's only three words!
Actually, wait: "I hate everything. No. That's not true. I sometimes feel that way at my most frustrated, but what I actually feel is not hate for the world, but self-loathing."
Ah, who wants to read THAT over and over again.
Screw it.

Oh, I came to sort of a realization/epiphany about my stalled approach to wanting to do a comic for myself: remove some of my restrictions/ambitions. Specifically, allow myself to be free to create a story and draw using all the generic, derivative conventions of comic stories I'm used to. Like, genre tropes, typical depictions of female characters, etc. That's the main reason I want to make comics is to work in these tropes. But then I feel self-conscious about doing something so stereotypical and derivative. Then it occurred to me, that's my older creator speaking, the personality that wants to create something "lasting" instead of something disposable. But, then it occurred to me that since I haven't produced that much art/comics, part of my need to create still resides in a much less developed artistic self, who still has to take his beginning steps, who has to learn BY treading these derivative paths of self-discovery. Once I do these for awhile, I think some developing maturity will  kick in and I'll start to be compelled to do something more than just create sexy babes, etc.
So, with that in mind, I have an idea for a title to experiment with such drivel: GROTESQUE: SUPERLATIVE TALES OF DERIVATIVE BULLS#!T. That's my self-conscious title.
We'll see if that frees me up to finally start putting ideas down on paper that actually sticks.

ARGH!! 3:18 am!
Alright, I'm off to bed again.

...to be continued...

Dear Diary... Still trying to get my shit together. Oh, and it's also time for NaNoWriMo!!!

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Dear Diary:

Well, I'll try something here. I'm calling these "Dear Diary" posts (at least, for now) because I'm sort of in a ruminative mood but also working on other stuff in the house. So, I'm


Wednesday, November 2

Hahaha.
Well, I must've had a burning desire to write something down on October 23.
Yeah.

Dear Diary:

Well, I'll try something here. I'm calling these "Dear Diary" posts (at least, for now) because I'm sort of in a ruminative mood but also working on other stuff in the house. So, I'm

I got interrupted  (distracted? bored?) in mid-sentence and I never went back to it. Although, at two words it really wasn't much of a mid-sentence. So, I'm not sure what I was going to saying in that sentence.
Kind of sums up my blogging output: iffy content and incomplete.

But, that's not why I'm here now.

My original intention was to sort of think out loud as I was doing chores in the house. Little drive-bys at the computer keyboard as I tried to be productive around the house. Well, that didn't quite work out, but I'm sure that impulse will come up again. So, moving on...

Since October 23, Time and Life continued to move along.
On my film blog I tried to do this thing I called the October/Halloween CRAM-A-THON. The goal was to watch 31 "Halloween" movies during October. The initial impulse was to watch horror films, but then some other genres snuck in there (a pair of Marvel superhero films), so I opened it up to more genre-y fare but not necessarily horror. Anyway, I wasn't completely successful, but I did see a lucky 13 films, which wasn't bad. If I kept up that pace of movie-watching through the year, I'd be at 130 films (instead of at 69 films, so far). So, okay. Not successful, but an improvement. Similar to my usual mantra, "Better late than never" and "I'll take what I can get." Um, and "Completion not perfection" is in there, too.
I was also hoping to write some more blog posts (namely movie reviews) for the CRAM-A-THON but that didn't happen at all. But, that's okay, because it's November. Time for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)! So, I'm going to subvert the initial intentions of the early 30 day challenge to write the first draft of a 50,000 word (at least) novel and just focus on trying to increase my blog post output (by a coincidental minimum 50,000 words).
Most of those blog results will be at my film blog, especially with this year's Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival starting in just 2 days (Friday, November 4).

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

January 1, 2017

...Or not.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

But, I digress.

So, yeah, as I mentioned above my so-called CRAM-A-THON only achieved modest success in that I actually saw some movies, just not 31 of them. Instead, I was dyslexic and managed 13.

However, though that battle was lost, the year-long war was more successful.

November 23, 2018  12:52 am

Well, here we are, almost two years later.

52 minutes ago was Thanksgiving Day, just to give you some sense of where we are in time, if not space.

I've only recently started looking at old, unfinished blog posts and seeing what I can finally wrap up in an attempt to:

- Finish something;

- Get back to working on my 2018 New Year Resolution to write 50,000 words of blog posts over the course of the year.

- Uh, that's about it.

Anyway, it's both interesting and constructive re-reading these post fragments. Some of these pseudo-posts are so impulsive that when I re-read them their subject matter is somewhat alien to me. I mean, yes, I actually wrote these things, but some things don't ring a bell. I'm, like, really, I wrote this? I thought this? For instance, in this very post, above I talk about my usual mantra, "Better late than never." Yes, I say that a lot and that really is my mantra, especially when it comes to creating something/anything for a deadline. But, in the same sentence I also add, "I'll take what I can get" and also add, "completion not perfection." Both of those are additional pseudo-mantras I made up while writing in the moment, but I don't really say either of those things to myself or even feel that way.

Especially, "I'll take what I can get." That really means nothing to me. It sort of sounds similar to "Things can always be worse," at least, in terms of the spirit of it, although "things can always be worse" sounds more like a constructive, positive approach to Life, while "I'll take what I can get" sounds more desperate to my ear; although, I can also see how it can be used in the same constructive, positive spin as the other saying. Anyway, more to the point, "I'll take what I can get" is not something I really say or embrace at this moment. I don't know what I was on when I said that above.

However, in hindsight (and conjecturing out of my ass), "completion not perfection" sounds like a spontaneous pep-talky aphorism I spewed out. It's not a bad principle to follow while striving towards the goal of finishing projects and following through on various impulsive objectives I have. But, so far, I haven't really followed through enough on things to actually try and use this mantra regularly, so it's still an abstract idea to me, if that makes any sense. But, having said that, maybe I should try to adopt that as an active approach to following through on ideas, projects, and general Life objectives.

And maybe I will, goddammit.

Sorry, it's the holidays and that's adding stress, i.e. I'm swearing more, motherfucker!

It's also getting near the end of the year and all my resolutions are starting to re-surface, goals I've optimistically set to accomplish in 2018 that I soon forgot about, or more to the point, I didn't then attempt to come up with a strategy/strategies to accomplish those goals. So, my frustration at seeing yet another unsuccessful year at accomplishing my list of recycled New Year's objectives is bubbling up as well.

BUT... I ain't dead yet. And the year ain't over.

There is another saying I sometimes use, especially when I feel overwhelmed about accomplishing something that seems to have too many components to it: ""One day at a time."

I don't know if that saying has a biblical origin or not, or if it's origins are primarily from 12-step programs (I'm pretty sure it's one foundational saying from Alcoholics Anonymous (or any other addiction recovery program) as members attempt to stay sober and work their way through each day to avoid drinking alcohol and remain clean. Although, in this case, I'm not trying to give up a destructive habit so much as trying to establish a constructive habit. And more specifically here, that constructive habit is trying to post more often in my three blogs. 

Okay, bla bla bla.

Let me try to wrap up here and actually focus on what I think may have been the original subject of this particular post when I started writing it over 2 years ago...

November 26,  6:28 pm

Well, Thanksgiving not only signals the arrival of the shopping season, but also the holidays in general as we prepare for Christmas and then New Year's Eve. So, for me, it's kind of awakening my usual panic or despondency about how little progress I've made with my list of New Year's Resolutions/Goals for the Year.
So, with 35 days left to 2018, let me re-commit to, at least, trying to achieve some of my goals for the year.

1. Watch 100 movies.
2. Write a blog post a month for each of my three blogs (i.e. 12 new posts each).
3. Finally do my comic book story for the Apple Corps Comic. In my original game plan which I mapped out at the beginning of the year (more or less), I felt a reasonable goal was to accomplish writing, penciling and inking my 12 page story for the comic by the end of January 2019. So, I'm going to see how much I can achieve of this still.
4. Create a product to sell on Society6.
5. Get our old house on the market.

So, we'll see how that works out.

...to be continued