Writing Free

In 2006, I tried to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with a friend. On the...

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:41:00 -0700

In 2006, I tried to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with a friend. On the last day up, about 1.5 hours from the peak, I vomited and passed out. I was nauseous, freezing and exhausted. It felt like the worst hangover of my life. I didn’t want to go up. I didn’t want to go down. I just wanted to die, so I wouldn’t have to move anymore.

I didn’t, obviously. Our guide picked my useless ass up and helped me stumble, fall and vomit my way back to the nearest hut in front of the hundreds of people summiting the mountain that day, most of whom did reach the peak along with my friend.

I failed. I failed spectacularly, I failed horrifically, I failed to the point that I wanted to die. But I didn’t die, and now I know: that won’t kill me. And as the cliché goes, it makes me stronger.

What kind of a peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:45:00 -0700

What kind of a peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace – the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living – the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.

Examine our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable – that mankind is doomed – that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are man-made – therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable – and we believe they can do it again.

#JFK (at Pico-Robertson)

YES!

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:35:06 -0700

YES!

Brilliant. Although I liked and shared this but didn’t...

Fri, 03 May 2013 11:08:04 -0700

Brilliant. Although I liked and shared this but didn’t donate any money, so I’m kind of a hypocrite.

Full article: http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/3/4296194/unicef-facebook-activism-ad-campaign-likes-dont-save-lives

Reblog: 99 Life Hacks to make your life easier

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:17:22 -0700

Mind = Blown

shialabeowulf:

Read More

What the fuck is normal anyway?

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:14:16 -0700

What the fuck is normal anyway?

This is an insult.

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:38:00 -0700

It is very difficult for me to act consistently like a mature adult.

I am arrogant. I am condescending. I am petty. I am self-righteous. I hate to lose or even seem like I lost.

Yet I have long-ago discovered that, when arguing with people, they tend to be more open-minded and prone to reaching a mutually agreeable resolution if you remain calm, objective, and even deferential at times.

But really, any time I have to deal with some of these fucking idiots, I’m always on the brink. And sometimes the best way to get away from the ledge is to step off of it and see how far you fall.

With that in mind, I’m allowing the sociopath normally hiding in the corner of my head to write the following open insult to no one in general but many people in particular —

I don’t like you. I don’t respect you. I don’t appreciate hearing your opinions. In fact, I have never heard an opinion escape your putrid lips that hasn’t bolstered my already immutable image of you as a festering sack of feces polluting the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to wander into your radius of stupidity.

I would call you retarded, but that would be a callous slight to those individuals who have no control over the physical impediments of their brains. Your impediment is in your poor judgment. And your lack of taste. And your complete refusal to use logic or reason. I often wonder if your inability to feel any type of empathy and the dim expression that’s always painted on your simian face are indicators of autism or if you’ve made a conscious decision to be as ignorant and selfish as a bawling child shoving a toy into his own anus so he doesn’t need to share it.

Watching your decision-making process actually reminds me of watching an ape lying on its back and urinating into its own mouth. It’s revolting, and yet it’s spectacular in its absurdity. I find myself asking the same questions when witnessing either event. Why would you do that? How could you possibly think that makes sense? Should I call a professional to help you, or are you so far beyond repair that I should just throw you a banana and let you enjoy drowning in your own filth?

I have no hope for you. You have no redeeming qualities. You are a total negative to humanity and to this planet. Even when the day comes, hopefully not far in the future, when your bowels release your ample waste one final time and you sink back below the dirt in which you have wallowed most of your pathetic life, the ground under which you are buried will become so toxic that the only thing that could possibly grow from it will be cancer and incompetence.

If, by some blessing, tomorrow you are struck and killed by a bus as you saunter across the street as oblivious as you always are to the decorum the rest of our population follows, I would laugh. I would laugh, and I wouldn’t feel remotely sad. I would call my friends, and they would feel odd and conflicted because they aren’t as sociopathic as I am, but when they try to give you a half-hearted eulogy, they wouldn’t get very far because nobody likes you.

Nobody likes you, and nobody cares about you except for me. And all I care about is that your life is as miserable and insufferable as you have made the lives of everyone who has the misfortune of your disgusting image stained on their memories.

That is all, and now you have my permission to fuck off.

I suck at OKCupid

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:15:32 -0700

Drinking. Problems.

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:11:49 -0800

Earlier this year, I finally had a little success getting some scripts written. It is one of my greatest embarrassments that I moved out to L.A. over three years ago and still barely have any written material that I’m proud enough to show anybody, much less submit to a contest or fellowship. Thus it was a great feeling finally to be closing out script after script, even if they were just first drafts, even if they were just shorts and webisodes, even if initial reactions to them had just been lukewarm. I was getting writing done. Progress was happening.

It wasn’t a conscious or active decision, but I then let my foot off the pedal and decided to celebrate my meager accomplishments in the only way I knew how—by drinking until my mind was obliterated and then going out and doing all the things my happily married friends claim they never spend any time missing.

It’s March now, and I feel like I’ve never stopped celebrating, although I’ve long run out of reasons to celebrate. I’m certainly not writing.

Accomplishing the goals I set for myself is a very broad, level happiness. It’s foundational. It brings stability and makes me feel secure. It’s the type of happiness you feel after staying patient and disciplined long enough to see the fruits of your hard labor.

The happiness I feel in anticipation of an ungodly amount of drinking is different. It’s sharp. It spikes. It makes me want to drop whatever I’m doing and just get started. Nothing gets finished. It’s the type of happiness you feel the moment you realize you’ve just met someone amazing with whom you’ve made a special bond. It’s a crush, that feeling the cynical would call infatuation and the uneducated would call falling in love.

Getting drunk, to me, feels like love.

And then I wake up the next morning, and that feels like headaches and nausea. I don’t get out of bed until the sun is already setting, missing out on the only consistent source of brightness living in L.A. I open my wallet and cringe at the numbers on the receipts crumpled in there. I spend the entire day reacquainting my brain with functioning, and then I go to bed again with the self-imposed burden of knowing two days have gone by without any steps taken toward that distant place of success in my mind.

Of course, that’s not the entire story of my failing grade in Hollywood. I wasn’t popping 30 mg of Adderall XR a day to curb my drinking. But the stress doesn’t help. The distraction doesn’t help. The guilt and the shame don’t help. The pressure I put on myself might’ve been too high, and the drinking to alleviate it doesn’t help. Chasing women around bars doesn’t help. Making snarky comments on Facebook statuses from people I barely know doesn’t help. Taking a picture of a sandwich and putting it on Instagram with a Lo-Fi filter and the sunburst doesn’t fucking help.

And yet — is that the answer? I’ve already given up a steady income, a wonderful relationship, traveling with my friends to all the places in the world I’m dying to see; all because I thought those held me back from being able to do what I needed to do. Am I to give up one more thing that I love? Of course I could do it in moderation, but what’s the point? My love isn’t drinking. My love is getting drunk.

I have always subscribed to the belief that you can’t be creative without a full life, but the further I immerse myself in my creative pursuits, the emptier my life feels. Are these hollow sacrifices that I’m making? And if I’m doing it wrong, what is right? Should I get married and knock out a couple kids? The stress hasn’t helped.

It’s March 2013. Year 4 of the L.A. Experience. I know incredibly more now than I did when I first got here, and I’m still laughably far from figuring it out.

The only thing I’ve discovered is what I’d long already known: this helps. Blogging, I have found, is not writing. Not the writing I’m trying to do, but it’s close. It begets writing, which begets more writing. Just as progress begets more progress and success begets more success. Momentum is so critical to accomplishing goals, and every drinking binge drags that to a crawl if not an utter stop. Yet how much would I have to write about if all I did was right? Doesn’t great inertia build even greater momentum?

I’m not sure what to think. All I want right now is a drink.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Muthafuckas.

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:11:56 -0800

Happy Valentine’s Day, Muthafuckas.

Destruction

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:59:00 -0800

The greatest power that exists is the power of creation. I learned that from a children’s cartoon when I was a kid, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Creation is the highest form of power.

I am not a creator. I wish I were. I wish words and ideas and characters and motives and circumstances coalesced fluidly in my mind and flowed through my fingertips onto paper as perfect, pristine narrative. But they do not.

I am a creature of destruction. I am a destroyer. I am The Destroyer. I tear things down, I wipe things out, I bring civilization to ruins and dance gleefully in the rubble. There is beauty in entropy.

And when my task is complete, I move on and let those with true power paint their masterpieces on the canvases that I wiped blank for them. I don’t look back; I don’t monitor their progress; I don’t admire their results. I know if I return to find their creations lacking I will again simply do what my nature is to do.

Typical.

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 13:56:00 -0800

Typical.

What does it mean to be an aspiring screenwriter?

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 20:53:58 -0800

Writing. Lots of writing. Rewriting. Hating your script. Hating yourself. Rewriting. Begging your friends to read your script and give you notes. Waiting. Rewriting. Reminding your friends you sent them a script to read. Waiting. Reading their notes. Hating their notes. Hating them. Rewriting. Sending your script out to contests, agents, managers, producers. Waiting. Nothing. Sending it out to different contests, agents, managers, producers. Waiting. Getting feedback. Hating feedback. Hating the industry. Questioning why you moved to LA. Drinking. Drinking. Drinking. Meeting an arbitrary friend of a friend of a former co-worker who happens to be a producer and agrees to read your script. Waiting. Hoping. Praying. Checking back with him. “Sorry, I lost your email. Can you send it again?” Son of a bitch! Rewriting. Waiting.

All while you work crappy jobs for crappy pay while dreaming of finally selling a script so you can stop asking your parents for money.

#LIVINGTHEDREAM

Childhood Super Powers vs. Adulthood Super Powers

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:21:27 -0800

As a child, I wanted the ability to:

1. Fly like Superman
2. Read minds like Professor X
3. Become super strong when I’m angry like the Hulk

As an adult, I want the ability to:

1. Look like Superman, without working out
2. Never need sleep like Jack Bauer
3. Become super erect even when I’m drunk like every teen dad from my Ohio high school

If I could only have one, though, I’d pick never needing sleep. Then the super boner thing. And then flying.

Best roller coaster photo ever.

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 23:10:04 -0800

Best roller coaster photo ever.

memosfromfury: It’s been two weeks.The Mayans were wrong.Get...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 23:03:22 -0800

memosfromfury:

It’s been two weeks.

The Mayans were wrong.

Get back to work.

This has been the first awesome one in a while.

2013

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 02:14:14 -0800

1. More writing.
2. Less drinking.
3. No strip clubs.

Let’s go.

This isn't a New Year's Resolution. This is the End of the World.

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:37:37 -0800

There are some who say the Mayans never intended 12/21/2012 to mark the Apocalypse, but that it was simply the end of another Mayan calendar cycle. The fact that the world looks eerily similar to how it did before 12/21/2012 would seem to validate their hypothesis.

Fuck’em. They’re wrong. The world ended. You survived. This is the new world.

Whoever you were before, you are no longer that person. You are who you want to be now. Be this new person every day, every minute, every moment waking or otherwise. Think this person’s thoughts, dream this person’s dreams, chase this person’s goals.

All your burdens, all your worries, all your fears, all your guilt, all your shame, they mean nothing now. You are free. You are liberated. Stop carrying that world on your shoulders. It doesn’t exist anymore.

If any responsibilities carried over from your old world, you decide whether or not they’re still worth bearing in the new world. You can only escape responsibilities through death, and you didn’t die. Champion your responsibilities. Leave your burdens.

If anyone you love from the old world also made it, let them know how grateful you are that they’re alive. Never let them forget.

If anyone else you knew from the old world also made it, you decide whether or not you still need to know them in the new world. Don’t bother saying goodbye to anyone who didn’t make it. They’re dead. Move on.

If you’re sure somebody needs to be in the new world with you, find them. They might not fill the role you want them to, they might not even have a place with you after all, but it’s worth finding out.

Take a step back. The world ended. You’re still here. This is you now. These are your beliefs. These are your people. You get to decide how you want your part of the world to be rebuilt.

Everything that has ever happened since the beginning of time until now has simply been a prologue to this. This is it. This is the new beginning. Chapter one. Page one.

Start writing. And watch out for those fucking zombies.

Photo

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 10:28:56 -0800

Young man, I would like to shake your hand. Source:...

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 18:38:49 -0800

Young man, I would like to shake your hand.

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/moments-that-restored-our-faith-in-humanity-this-y