ACTS OF CATHARSIS: PART I — WHY I WRITE … OR DON’T

Sometimes, I just need to find a form of catharsis. I keep happening across all these film and TV related stories upon which I want to comment; I’ve seen several films in the past two weeks; and I’ve got plenty jostling around this addled brain o’ mine; but for some reason, I haven’t been able to write any of it because I keep having this other stuff to get to. This being some sort of “blog,” it shouldn’t matter, right? I should simply be able to write any one thing at any one time and people will find it or not, read it or not, but whatever happens, I’m done with it.

Yet for me, my move — now nearly a month old — keeps hovering over me. Maybe it’s because I still haven’t manage to completely settle in my new place; maybe it’s because I’m still going through a natural period of adjustment; maybe it’s for any number of reasons I have yet to identify. The only thing I know for near-certain is that I’ve now been planning for weeks to write about it, to post some before/after pictures of my old apartment, to deal with what actually (and surprisingly) turned out to be a slightly traumatic experience, but for whatever poor reason — namely my own procrastination — I have yet to do so. And instead, I keep coming to this space, not writing any of the stuff bursting to come out and only commenting on why I’m not writing — which is such a blogger cliche anyway, I feel like I should just go and delete all those posts in order to reacquire some positive karma or something.

But that’s not how I’ve ever treated this space.

It’s always been my stream-of-consciousness, somewhere between an actual journal and a site dedicated to critical examination of film, TV, media, and whatever. I don’t think it’s ever quite been either of those things — certainly not a personal journal — and while I’ll stand behind any criticism or comments I’ve written here, anything I’ve posted has generally been the result of me sitting at the keyboard, letting my fingers fly and living with what comes out. A lack of hardcore editing (beyond the occasional typo or grammatical nonsense) is what keeps this site slightly blurry.

Now suddenly I find myself with a speaking engagement (more on that later) and a dire need to put myself out there as a writer for hire. I always intended to find some freelance writing opportunities when I left HBO (Gothamist doesn’t exactly count because they don’t exactly pay), but I haven’t done the necessary work to put myself out there. Now, I feel like if I’m going to be chatting in public with a bunch of film bloggers, and if I really want to try to make any money writing about film and entertainment, I probable should actually, you know, write about film and entertainment. I never truly thought of this blog as a place to bare my emotional trauma and soul, and I don’t know that I want to put that much of myself out there for the interweb anyway.

And still, there’s something about these past couple months that has to get out of me. My friends know it because I can’t seem to talk about anything else. I dread going to large social gatherings because I feel like all I have to contribute is my crappy painful apartment search, and now my continuing agonizing job search; and am I just being picky? Am I spreading my net wide-enough? Am I too spoiled as to what I’m willing and not willing to do? Is it fair to feel like I want to skip over some dues-paying here or there since I already did many years of it? Is it ridiculous to feel old at 34 not because I’m 34 but rather because of all the people I meet in their late-20s/early-30s who suddenly are so much further along and accomplished (at least career-wise) than I? And most importantly, why is it, as I mentioned in this post about my interview with Kimmi Auerbach that I can’t turn my inspiration into motivation? Why do I still find myself up at 5 AM watching bad Mandy Moore movies on Cinemax when I could be focusing on things that are important like contacting editors and coming up with pitches; writing the short film I’ve been threatening to make for the past five years; rewriting the feature script I haven’t touched in two years; or even just coming to this space and relating the probably-not-so-exciting-to-anyone-but-myself stories of the past three months or even nine years. Because somewhere in my head, I’m focused on the thought that spouting this stuff and getting it out “there” (wherever there might be) will release me from dwelling on it. But at the same time, not writing about any of it just allows me to keep not writing about any of it.

Procrastination is a bitch, yo! And I’m its biggest practitioner.

The strange thing is how many people I’ve discussed my writing issues with recently. Mostly they’ve been other writers of various degrees of success, and yet still, getting caught up in an afternoon showing of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which I’ve seen at least 30-40 times), is easier than sitting to write about the goodbye to my old apartment or my welcome to Brooklyn. Even now: this isn’t the post I sat down to write. This is some random jumble of words that in its own way is my avoiding the seven ideas I have jotted down on my legal pad. And at this very moment, I don’t even know where I’m going with it.

Part of my problem is the hate-love-hate relationship I have with writing, which I’m pretty certain I’ve mentioned here before. I never grew-up considering myself a writer. I didn’t keep detailed journals through high school. I was never writing short stories. I kind of fell into it at UCLA when I discovered the Daily Bruin would actually pay me to see movies and interview celebrities. Seemed like a pretty good deal to me at the time, certainly better than folding t-shirts in Bearwear. Some people even thought I was good at it; I’m not sure that I was ever one of them. I’m still not sure that I am. Last night I was chatting with a friend online, and I decided to show her one of the catalog entries I wrote for a film at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Reading it myself, I wondered how I ever let that be the final copy I submitted. It was terrible. It was messy. Yeah my point got across, but it just could have been written so much smoother. Yet I know that in the moment, I wrote the entry, I probably spent a fair amount of time pouring over and editing it, and then the next day (or the day after that) before turning it in again, I looked at it once more. Editing and reediting … something which I have a lot of trouble doing without a fair amount of distance. I haven’t picked up my feature script in two years because not only did I edit the shit out of it when I finished the first draft, but I know that when I look at it now, most of it will make me cringe, and the amount of work I have to do — I know that it will take a lot of time that for one reason or another I haven’t been able to dedicate to it yet.

I love writing when it’s easy, but it is almost never that. I’ve never been one who has to write every day for fear of going crazy. I know many people like that; I admire many people like that. I know people who find writing difficult because it wears on them emotionally. Whatever they’re writing comes from a place deep inside where they deal with what’s important in their lives, and bringing up those issues is both cathartic and difficult. For me writing is painful because it’s hard; it’s painful because I’m impatient; it’s painful because it’s something that one must do (at least for a time) without any guarantee that it’s going to actually get anywhere. It’s difficult to see films released with utterly underdeveloped screenplays that are so poorly written while knowing that someone made a few hundred thousand dollars while working on it for weeks or months yet still knowing that I can spend every night for three months working on a script that I don’t even like without making a dime. But see, that’s the wrong motivation. I never wanted to be somebody working for money as much as somebody who loves his work and makes enough to live comfortably.

Kimmi’s philosophy of finding happiness even when you don’t have everything you want is probably the healthiest and sanest (and most unreachable for me right now) way of thinking and living I’ve ever encountered. And yet, I can’t fathom it in any tangible way. The stresses of everyday life — so many of them self-imposed rather than simply solved — are nearly unbearable. And the weirdest thing is, I’m not even sure how I got here. Nine-plus years in New York, and I know I didn’t always have such a hard time pushing myself. I know that when I get into the right situation, I’m as dedicated and hard-working as anybody — maybe even more so. It’s part of what has made my Tribeca experiences so valuable, and at times frustrating. A 14 hour day at Tribeca would always go twice as quickly as a seven-hour day at HBO Sports.

I can’t keep track of everything I’ve mentioned in the 600-odd posts on this site during the 21 months of its existence. I may or may not (although chances are that I have) mentioned my super-hero alter ego, “Tangent Man.” He comes out when I least expect it, and he’s obviously dominating the conversation in my head right now. So before it gets too completely out-of-hand (too late!) I’m going to move on and get to that about which I actually intended to write. Thanks for bearing with me. I swear this will get more interesting (to someone) soon.