Rants - Radicalization

Rants - Radicalization

What radicalized me?

What radicalized ME?!

No.

Life - Not Worth Celebrating

 Life - Not Worth Celebrating

I have been grappling of late with the feeling of being a friend in passing. Where people only message when they need something, or as a perfunctory thing in between actual events, with no stakes, and often only with responses of "Nice" and "Yeah".

And it makes me want to socially withdraw, which seems to compound the issue. It is this feeling of being socially outcast, where I have no one to discuss thoughts or emotions, even though I'm not actually 'down' or feeling negative, these connections are profoundly unsatisfying and commonly feel not worth the energy to develop further. I don't feel like the summation of human contact with others should be constantly through the lens of suffering or needing help.

Covid has emphasized this feeling of societal drift. I feel like I don't have anyone to celebrate with.

Maybe there's nothing worth celebrating.

Maybe I'm not worth celebrating.

Life - Frustrations

Life - Frustrations

I am getting increasingly tired of the amount of communicative labour my friends unconsciously demand of me. The pressure to be the one who organizes people, who get them in contact, who finds information, who works at being helpful.

It's gotten to the point where the perception that having been a 'stage manager' means that I somehow like being the one who has to pull teeth to get emails or phone numbers, event starts, locations, maps, or even just check in constantly with people so they will arrive on time to a gathering, is beginning to make me furious.

You're grown adults. Take notes. Text a heads up if you're going to be late. Let someone know where you're at. Google maps the best route. Remember the information I LITERALLY SPELLED OUT. Why am I the one who has to do all this work as though you're still first-year acting students?

Please. Grow. Up.

Life - Falling Out

Life - Falling Out

You asked me once. To not share my writing with you anymore. It was too heavy, it hurt too much. It was too emotional for you.

So I stopped.

I never mentioned my writing to you again.

But I did not cease.

Choice - Silent

Choice - Silent

Do me a favor.

When you see posts of people fighting against racism, calling out discrimination, or even just being brave, forthright and honest...

Don't be silent.

Tell them "I see you. I hear you. Thank you." Even DM them, if you don't feel you can post that publically.

Don't be silent.

We hear that silence.

I'm still hearing that silence, more than a week later.

I've been hearing that silence my entire life.

Letters - 13 / 15 Dear Ex Best Friend

Letters - 13 / 15 Dear Ex Best Friend

Dear ex-best friend,

I have never explained out loud why we had our falling out. But I know keenly why.

It is because you disavowed our friendship in order to find social position. I remember it exactly. Because there was someone else, a peer, you wished to impress. So you callously threw years of our friendship away. For someone who was white. For someone who was interesting, and advantaged. For someone you admired, instead of someone you already enjoyed the trust of...me.

Letters - 7 / 15 Dear First Love

Letters - 7 / 15 Dear First Love

Dear First Love,

…

It was a long time ago. We were kids. Sometimes I see your posts on social media, facebook or instagram. I never like or respond, and I know you don’t do the same for me either. I’m afraid of opening up old wounds. Are there old wounds? I don’t even really know. I know I messaged once, I guess almost ten years ago now. Never heard back. And I didn’t want to push it.

Letters - 6 /15 Dear Past Me

Letters - 6 / 15 Dear Past Me

Dear Past Me,

Find mentors, figure out what makes you happy and don’t let people shame you for it. Learn discipline as soon as you can, because you took a long time getting there and the guilt once you got it...sucked. Go easy on yourself when you find things that other people care about, that you don’t. Don’t force it. You won’t have to. And in the end, it probably won’t matter that much anyway.

Letters - 5 / 15 Dear Crush

Letters - 5 / 15 Dear Crush

Dear Crush,

Life - Obligation

Life - Obligation

Do not be daunted
by the enormity
of the world's grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated
to complete the work,
but neither are you free
to abandon it.

- The Talmud

Life - Helpless Rage

Life - Helpless Rage

I am alone, standing before a heavy bag. Music I don't remember. There is an acrid smell of chalk and sweat, and the lights are half on, cold, and quiet.

Fists up.

Life - Notification

Life - Notification

They changed the sound of notifications. I almost didn't even notice. And yet I couldn't not. They changed the sound, and my fingers no longer tense as my heart seizes when I hear it.

It used to have a specific meaning in my brain, it use to evoke a specific, pavlovian response to me.

They changed the sound. The old one is gone.

I could have changed it at any time. I am aware of the process for it, perhaps in a dream I even did once or twice. Imagining different outcomes perhaps.

They changed the sound, and I have returned to that platform.

It's different now.

They took the choice from me. I'm not sure if that makes me happy...or not.

Life - Exhaust

Life - Exhaust

There are moments in my life when the incandescent rage in my chest burns out. It sputters and coughs, dying into weak embers.

And I feel cold... and empty.

It's moments like those, I wonder what's really holding me together, except for this strange
self induced agony.

Quotes - Energy - Stephen King

Quotes - Energy - Stephen King

"The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself - that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you didn't stop being a  kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown's trick balloon. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air of a tire."

-Stephen King

Life - Quiet New Year

Life - Quiet New Year

It was Lunar New Year earlier this week.

There are a bunch of traditions around New Year. You're not supposed to shower away the good luck on the day, or shave. You're supposed to have already cleaned the night before, so there are many places for luck, prosperity, and happiness to fill.

I didn't really do that.

I worked late on a stressful project.

Picked up a quick to go meal.

Ate alone, listened to music, and went to sleep.

It's the most depressing Lunar New Year I've had in forever. Except for calling my own parents, no other phone calls, no other real well wishes. Just a really empty moment.

It's weird, because I keep looking at the last few weeks of my life, which seem to be filled with work and walking through the dark. I've become like those Salarymen, collecting a paycheque for doing a bunch of managerial work that feels...empty.

Quotes - Fred Rogers - Life Isn't Cheap

Quotes - Fred Rogers - Life Isn't Cheap

"Fame is a four-letter word; and like tape or zoom or face or pain or life or love, what ultimately matters is what we do with it.

I feel that those of us in television are chosen to be servants. It doesn't matter what our particular job, we are chosen to help meet the deeper needs of those who watch and listen--day and night!

The conductor of the orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl grew up in a family that had little interest in music, but he often tells people he found his early inspiration from the fine musicians on television.

Last month a thirteen-year-old boy abducted an eight-year-old girl; and when people asked him why, he said he learned about it on TV. 'Something different to try,' he said. 'Life's cheap; what does it matter?'

Well, life isn't cheap. It's the greatest mystery of any millennium, and television needs to do all it can to broadcast that ... to show and tell what the good in life is all about.

But how do we make goodness attractive? By doing whatever we can do to bring courage to those whose lives move near our own--by treating our 'neighbor' at least as well as we treat ourselves and allowing that to inform everything that we produce.

Who in your life has been such a servant to you ... who has helped you love the good that grows within you? Let's just take ten seconds to think of some of those people who have loved us and wanted what was best for us in life--those who have encouraged us to become who we are tonight--just ten seconds of silence.

No matter where they are--either here or in heaven--imagine how pleased those people must be to know that you thought of them right now.

We all have only one life to live on earth. And through television, we have the choice of encouraging others to demean this life or to cherish it in creative, imaginative ways."

-Fred Rogers

Quotes - Marie Kondo

Quotes - Marie Kondo

“The process of facing and selecting our possessions can be quite painful. It forces us to confront our imperfections and inadequacies and the foolish choices we made in the past…The things we own are real. They exist here and now as a result of choices made in the past by no one other than ourselves. It is dangerous to ignore them or to discard them indiscriminately as if denying the choices we made…It is only when we face the things we own one by one and experience the emotions they evoke that we can truly appreciate our relationship with them.” - Marie Kondo

Life - Fault

Life - Fault

Sometimes, no amount of being told "It's not your fault." sticks. In your head and heart, you always just hear;

"It's your fault."

Over. And over.

It's your fault.

It's your fault.

It's your fault.

The words twist around and around. Over and over in your head. These are personal failings. They are raw wounds that ache invisibly.

Politics - Student's March

Politics - Student's March

Explain to me what is today, because this is the only thing I can see:

Thousands, thousands and thousands of students who rose up in protest.

Maybe a million. Maybe millions.

Students, teenagers, CHILDREN. Protesting their right to live. To draw attention to the fact that adults have failed them. Adults have failed them again, and again, for 19 years. Since a fateful day in April, 1999, when 13 people died and Americans did nothing.

The pattern repeats itself. Over and over, until Sandy Hook. 20 children are shot and die. Their ages are between 6 and 7.

America does nothing.

Stoneman Douglas literally one month ago. Another 17 students are shot dead, another 17 wounded. In the face of despair, and the agony of what they shared, those same teenagers now are demanding MORE. They are rising up, they are angry and RIGHTLY so.

They have been failed, and they recognize it. You have a country where a dude tried to blow up his shoes and now we all check our shoes before we go on an airplane. But the response to a gun in a school was to arm every teacher.

No one believes it. The NRA has become an organization lobby for the profit of itself and to maintain its stranglehold grip on power by any means necessary.

Including sacrificing children.

Secret - Begin

Secret - Begin

Here is the secret. You will never be ready to make that piece of art, write that book, screenplay, sculpture, design that video game, build that perfect website. You will never read the book that makes it 100% fall into place. Find the perfect toolset. String the perfect guitar or arrange the perfect composition of music before you begin.

You will never be ready before you begin. So you may as well just begin.

Get going.