Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Thursday, November 04, 2004 The Pitch: It's like Up! meets Down! Wow. Welcome back. My new theory is: the more you blog, the less things happen. And, obviously in this case, vice versa.So: Edi and I went on the cruise to Mexico and it was great. I saw something like eight movies without even trying to while hanging around in the cabin in between shuttling up to the spa and the pools and the decks and all the eating. I managed to only put on five pounds during the cruise and the lovely and talented E. stayed the same. And somewhere in all the eating and napping and drinking and reading and looking out at the sea, I managed to ask Edi to marry me, and she was so narcotized by all the surrounding pleasantness that she said yes. All following paragraphs, and most of this one, pretty much pale in importance to that. Then we got home, rested, I returned to work. I drove off to a Target in the dead of night so I could get Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and my car's steering column started shimmying along the way. (Today I get to go to the shop to find out what the hell is wrong with it.) The irony was not entirely lost on me. Then there was the Geoff Johns signing at CE (he's great, and probably the kindest, most professional comic pro I've ever met), my birthday (great, except my computer doesn't run XP and isn't a Mac, thus putting a delay on the coolest present I think I've ever gotten--which Edi gave me, of course), more work, the election, walking through a Day of the Dead parade to go watch election returns, and then post-election depression. Lots and lots of it. Mainly, the election has me worried for myself. I have spent a while trying to figure out my bitter, easily resigned acceptance state. Is it because I expected Kerry to lose? (Which I did at many points during the months leading up to the election.) Is it because I don't think the election was stolen this time? (Or was it? Is the reason the exit polls were so off is because so many first-time and transient voters turned out and got shafted with uncounted provisional ballots? I think it's just the feeling I've expressed elsewhere on the Internet--a lot of people turned out to vote for Bush. This is the way of life they want. (And my apologies for any Bush voters who read the site--I think there might be at least one of you out there and it's not my intention to put words in your mouth.) It's like almost the entire Internet, and all of San Francisco, showed up for school ready to show off their beautiful new lunchboxes, and everyone's already switched to chainsaw-toting cannibalism. That's how out of touch we are. That's how useless our beautiful lunchboxes are. Let's not forget Nanowrimo, because I almost did. I did none of my usual recruiting, mail-list organizing, pep talk rah-rahing: Unlike previous years, I've not been writing regularly in the days leading up to Nano, and so was more intimidated by the process than I've been in any year since the first. Additionally, the first day, my Palm pilot ran out of battery juice and, as has happened 90% of the time for the last year or so, totally erased everything when I swapped out the batteries. For the first time in all the time I've done Nano (and this is my fourth) my word count for Day One was Zero. Ditto for Day Two. Yesterday, thank goodness, I sat down in two long stretches and knocked out 5,000 words, which caught me up. Part of me wants to sit down and knock out another 5,000 words again, giving me some breathing room until the 6th, but I'm both a little daunted and disgusted by the prospect: It's supposed to be write a crappy novel in one month, not write a crappy novel in ten sessions staggered throughout the month. The real goal of Nano for me is to make me create time for my writing in my schedule, not learn how to hit a deadline by pulling all-nighters: that's what I learned in college, and it hasn't helped me much at all. But there's all this good stuff going on: Edi's marrying me; GTA:SA is great; I did crank out 5,000 words; Emusic has had the three new releases I've most wanted (the new albums by Tom Waits, Elliott Smith and Robyn Hitchcock all in the last week or two) and so I downloaded and have been listening to them while bashing my way through a narrative; Jaime Hernandez's Locas book is out and it's gorgeous, and I'm happy and surprised with Marvel's Jack Kirby Hardcover: it's beautifully reproduced and covers a wonderful amount of ground. So that's the update--my hope is now it'll be a little easier for me to make them. And, if my theory holds true, things will start to settle down a little bit. I'm 38 and can't handle too much excitement. posted by Jeff | 8:17 AM | |
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