Jane Espenson Writer of such great shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, etc... Plus some great screenwriting craft informationnn Alex Epstein Author of such books as "Crafty Screenwriting" and "Crafty TV Writing" Ken Levine Emmy winning writer for shows like M*A*S*H, Cheers, The Simpsons, Frasier, etc... Denis McGrath Intelligent Canadian TV screenwriter, always has an opinion worth reading. Whedonesque All things Whedon, all the time. Blogger
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Lose...
Lose. It's a word we're all familiar with. There's not a person among us that hasn't felt lose or lost at some point in their life. I, myself, have felt some form of it prominently in my life since the age of 18. Ten years of this feeling. You'd think I'd be use to it. But it's not a feeling we can get use to. Sure we can deaden ourselves to keep from displaying the hurt but it's still there beneath everything.
I was 18 the first moment I felt true lose, when my father died. It was four o'clock in the morning or there abouts when my mother woke my brother and me up. (My sister had since moved out) Groggily and sleepy eyed we staggered into the living room and gathered around my mother. I knew something was wrong but what. And then she uttered those fateful words "You're father has passed away." My insides deflated like a balloon accidentally released before it can be tied shut. My life... everything I had know, everything I had understood about my life up to that point had changed in a split second. Nothing made sense anymore. My brain was swimming among oceans of despair and grief. I tried so hard to pull my head above the water but I never could and still can't. At some point I think I stopped struggling and gave in. My head no longer skates the surface but glides along the bottom of the deep end. I remember being unbelievably ambitious. I wanted to be a performer, any kind, it didn't matter what. But through increasing amounts of low self-esteem and doubt that dream slowly slipped away. It's now been replaced with the ideas that I can never live up to an audience member's expectations so why continue. It's been replaced with fear of not living up to my own expectations. And so I felt lose again which just propelled me further under the crushing waves.
I'm now feeling a lose of, not quite, the same magnitude. The lose of my hands... and, again, my dream. This time the lose is physical. This is the second time that I've lost something physical. The first was when I was diagnosed with Plantar Fasciitis in my left foot. Because of this I can no longer stand or walk for several hours at a time, taking away half of the job possibilities along the way. So I did what any person would've done. I got a desk job. For the last 5 plus years I've been doing telephone tech support. For those of you who don't know that means that you answer phone call after phone call assisting customers with computer problems. This means that you're, basically, typing non-stop for 8-10 hours a day. It caught up with me. Over a year ago my life changed again but this time it changed with the smallest of aches. My thumb was the culprit causing me dull aches through it. But then it spread like a wild fire through the entirety of my right hand. Trying to lessen the pain I switched my mouse to a track ball and to my left hand. Two weeks later that hand hurt also. And they've never stopped hurting. A year and 3 months later I've been told by doctors that there's nothing they can do for me except attempt to lessen the pain management. The dream I spoke of earlier, the one that I finally chose to truly move on with... it was to be a screenwriter. How am I to do that now? I felt like I was finally reaching the surface again, finally going to get a breath of fresh air. But there seems to be a some maniacal mad man intent on enjoying my suffering that's holding me under the water. This mad man seems to have an amazing sense of irony too, because I was suppose to begin my 3rd screenwriting course to continue my education and become a better screenwriter right when the pain began.
But I must end this here. I've now left the it-only-hurts-a-little-bit stage of writing and slid right into the ow-it-burns-it-burns stage. I'll write again soon... hopefully.
