Reminders

Sometimes there are no fierce overtones. There's no rising crescendo or '80s movie montage expediting the great volume of work to be done.  Mostly it's just this - black on white - over and over and over again. I wish I could say this was satisfying but then I found out satisfaction was a byproduct of perspective.

I don't know anything about relativity except that things only make sense in relation to other things. Would that imply the absence of objective value? And would that be a problem? Sure right because government attempts to use evidence and fact to implement fairness or whatever substitute is now in place that prevents revolution. But the idea of fairness (or whatever) only applies when we agree on that issue and we settle for democracy as a way to say "well if the people who have a mind to invest themselves in the argument largely believe x, then x must be true." There's little left for those marginalized to argue. Either they are dismissed or, if they have another relative authority like wealth, they just override the far more fragile authority of agreement.

I'm getting the sense that the only way for passionate artists and critical thinkers to live is through their attempts at strategic manipulation of the mass of minds seeking solace in the confusion of relativity. Be the most relevant and relativity is yours. Money provides a false medium for universal value because it's presented as the currency which accesses all of life's spoils.

Maybe the real asset has always been that which generates income - the people and ideas. And so it's greatest adversary is the force that confuses real contribution for false contribution. More simply put: earned income versus credit, activism versus consumerism, education versus employment training, etc.

We won't fight the war in this post but I'm going to envision what a community of contribution looks like . . . 

There.  It's beautiful. I can also appreciate how a limited view would confuse this vision for modern society - because technically we give back through taxes and barter to some degree - but we don't really see work as contributing to society. That's just something we scream at teenagers when they're in the way (and not me personally and hopefully not ever because I used to be one after all).  We're really only ever working for ourselves because employment is too easily abusive. We don't operate according to transparent ideologies. Money has superseded intent and it serves only itself, conscripting souls along the way.

I've been getting on my own case because of how long it's taking to write my first post-graduate short story. I switched gears and finally started seriously editing my most recent films, shot last year.  I'm going to get the series of films up on vimeo under lock & key and then submit trailers to youtube to share space with my self-shot reality show and gaming streams. After that I continue to write and produce films in seasons while turning my eye to community building and developing the art of the campaign.

My bank account is in the negative and it won't be long before they look to shut it down but it looks like the food stamps will kick in and Medicaid is back so that's something. The preoccupation with my own poverty has been a real distraction and source of poisonous anxiety. I'm tired of it sitting in my mind like a malicious gargoyle. I need to embrace my freedom.

For the first time in my life, my time is truly my own. I'm master of my voice and free from the slavery of income.  I can set new terms for my contract with society and perhaps I can become the man I'm supposed to be.  

Belief is a tool. It requires instinct and will to wield it. We can have these things and still deny belief out of fear. We can also invest our instincts and will into areas of our lives outside of our control and lose the context for belief.  Alternatively, when we harness it and place it firmly into its place within the trinity - Instinct, Will, and Belief - I have to believe its manufacture predicates the basis for a preferred and powerful destiny.

The reminder: Steady young one. Focus.

Operating premise for Ronin Soul: Devil's Detour - Even our deepest will is only half our own.

-Carlos

The Path of Ease

     Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor was one of the books on deck recently. The book was more a pamphlet - incredibly thin and no more then 70 pages or so if that. [SHIT. I can't believe it's 5 PM already. Got caught up with the Latin Jazz station on my Pandora account and totally concerned about keeping the kitchen clean, my stiff back, fighting the temptation to do anything else but write and I can confirm that waking up at noon didn't help.  How the the hell am I ever going to make a "real" job work?]
     I won't spoil the read too much by saying that within it is a criticism of religious indoctrination while investigating themes of government and freedom.  I bring it up because I had a moment the other day at Metro PCS where the argument of the "free" had finally penetrated my consciousness.
     Disclaimer, I hate "bosses," Boss culture in America today is largely part of the grander problem. Too many of them are assholes and it's not like the humble workers with justice and integrity in their hearts don't exist. It's that they're often too humble to step forward and claim leadership.  So without proper advocacy and existing leadership willing to dig out the diamonds in the rough, you have an exponential increase in the amount of assholes stinking up the planet. 
     Ambition is something we all have but not everyone gives themselves license to execute their ambition when it comes at the cost of those around them. The problem: leadership implies a far greater level of service.  As a menial, you focus upward.  As a leader you are indebted to the customers you serve and those who serve you to maintain a strong course with all-around benefit.  This means nurturing your community as often as it does keeping a firm grip on your agenda and these opportunities are hard to craft the appropriate agent for. So when an asshole arrives convinced of his/her own importance, they exude enough confidence to appear the most appropriate candidate.
     This is my generalization. PRO TIP: You want the heroes who refuse the call because they understand the burden and then you want to convince them if they don't take control, the world will cease to exist as we know it.
     In any event, I never hear about great bosses or even leaders in "real" job settings.  They all have a "cover my ass" complex that prevents them from the flexibility needed to live and work among other human beings. Because they are the example promoted by the company, they give in to a preferred-status self-appraisal which will always be a false projection. I have a perhaps mystical view of equality and as long as I maintain it I'm apt to treat the traditional "boss" figure like it's due for a knuckle-sandwich.
     So there I am at Metro PCS and I'm listening to the workers talk about some training and examinations they've taken and the conversation indicates this is for career development within the company.  It' kinda went something like:

Her #1: "Girrrlll, you know I was handlin my business. That mobile exam I was like 'beep, boop, boop, beep!  It was that Mac training I had to take, like, three four five times.  Like dang!"

Her #2: "Yeah riiight?! So hard. My brain hurteded!"

Her #1: "Hyuck, hyuck!"

Here #2: "Wak, wak, wak!"

     I was sitting there waiting for help. One man was being helped at the only open register and about 4 other workers were engaging or listening in on said conversation while my queue went from two minutes to four minutes to six minutes.  The bill pay kiosk next to me was the alternative but some very perplexed adults were fussing with it since the time I walked in the store. I remained patient because the world is absurd.
     I went through a range of emotions that ended with something I found I could marvel at. The first was annoyance. It wasn't that I minded the chatter or even being ignored at first. It was that the levity in the environment came from the emotional freedom derived from knowing that the job was, at the moment, a suitable vehicle providing so many typical life needs such that any compelling seriousness otherwise was of no consequence. A career in mobile sales? Sure, why not? I felt foolish for all my designs and my desires. Put on a uniform, I thought, and get on with it.  I suppose I felt jealous and pained by their comfort.
     Then I recalled the Grand Inquisitor and thought about how we define freedom. Must freedom from worry come from submission to an institution? Does a pursuit for financial freedom mean slavery and suffering beneath an ideal - akin in a way to martyrdom?
     Am I free, when committing to blogging and filmmaking and video game broadcasting and fiction, even though I am stuck in the home I grew up in with a college degree that has sealed me in a level of debt I had no business taking on? Who is freer? The average Joe at Metro PCS filling the time with simple humor and the regular company of others also conscripted or myself? And what is the value of freedom if one the one hand you give up your freedom to make someone else wealthier or you preserve your freedom just to shuffle around in hubris and existential melancholy?  Not everyone is ready to be the mascot of the American dream.  Even given the opportunity to sell drugs, I had to decline because I really believed you had to be much cooler to pull it off!
     I also thought about my work in a community leader position in my final years at college and realized the painful truth that the reason students couldn't comprehend my desperation for activism is because . . . they were happier not comprehending it. 
     What I marveled at before I was finally attended to at the store were the smiles and the easy humor of the workers. They belonged to a place. They had options to move forward. They helped each other (and covered for one another). They had standards they could understand and criticize and rules they could bend or enforce.  They had a system in which they could quantify their value and identify a limited freedom that they could argue compensates for some quality of life which is better than an unproven standard where the weight of the modern economy is on them.
     The film program at school forces everyone to eventually, even if briefly, abandon the illusion of safety. It forces students to strain their employment contract.  It forces students to contribute more to team work and eventually lead those teams while, without question, making significant and costly mistakes. It forces students to analyze their own complacency and for that reason I'd say that the college experience was worthwhile. That reason doesn't hold up on a practical level at all but it's a way for adults to conceive of one day inheriting this Earth and making it better for the next generation.
     It's just a shame the truth doesn't quite make itself known until all the trouble has already happened and that was the inherent challenge to working with this community. Now I'm considering rebuilding it as a non-profit outside of school and primarily communicating its services and opportunities to alumni.
     The lure of slavery is so real.  We need employment the way we need to know that something is out there beyond the cosmos and deep within us. That something holds a clue, if not the answer, as to the reason of our own creation. Consciousness is practically a cosmic element but what does it serve in a universe that is self-sufficient and constantly fluctuating in a dance all it's own?  Our nature to explore the truth of physical reality and our ability to manipulate matter with design in mind is awesome in a universe with seemingly no other intelligent agent.  Over time we might become masters of it if we don't destroy ourselves first.
     But how does that happen when power is so distracting? If you know everyone around you would rather follow than lead, what would stop you from abusing that truth if you were so inclined? Greed is a symptom of complacency. Everyone wants to do what they want to do. But when their options are designed by you, then manipulation becomes currency.  How could anyone with an equally conscious bearing resign him/herself to an entire life of manipulation?
      We're not talking about consciousness here though.  We're talking about the the confusion of and between what we give the term "happiness" and "the pursuit of happiness?"  The definition and scope of happiness differs between slave and master.  And the level of ease is measured differently between these platforms. For those of us who adamantly embrace the ideal of equality and democracy and personal freedoms, we strain a great deal presuming everyone deserves a right to the truth even when we acknowledge that the truth would expose these neighbors to a life of plight and quite possibly despair.
      Most super heroes are free to fight the important battles because after much internal debate, they embrace their special nature. But the special nature of independent masters is simply a willingness to embrace the truth of the duality of civilization. You can't expect everyone to rally for their financial independence and their freedoms when the work involved is terrifying to them. Not everyone can afford to question the way things are.  This life is not a platform for everyone's revolution at once. So the superhero embraces the needs of fantastical distance, whereby God or some other such form of divinity or spectacle arrives, in inhuman guise, to right the wrongs these people refuse to accuse directly and would not support if a higher authority did not seem to appear and demand of them their allegiance.  This is why villains and heroes tend to find such common language with one another. They both know that despite popular thinking, it's their job to do the thinking for everyone else on the scale of which sets the tilt of the world and the standard by which determines the death vs. prosperity ratio for generations to come.  It's simply too much.
     So where does that leave those of us on the precipice, perceiving the greater design? What are we supposed to do when the path of ease is nothing more than a lifelong disease?

-C


   

Ritual of the World Warp and Preparing to Do

     Someone once told me that one of the things that made people unique among living things is that we had the ability to contemplate the nature of our own minds.  The brain - if we assume our identity exists within that - thinks about itself.

     That type of reflection comes with the logic that there forever remains things to think about - have you ever quite been able to put the questions of yourself to rest?  So you can spend your whole life with your brain and your body and still not grasp them entirely. This is fine when we engage with life responsively.  Why think when reaction takes care of the greater majority of our needs?  

     The problem arises when we need to focus.  Let's accept for the sake of argument that the meme of us existing in an age of severely reduced attention spans is true.  We lock into fluid streams of information but no longer are as inclined to derive context, express balanced criticism, analyze, sympathize and innovate upon.  We need drugs for this or to be born with a genetic predisposition for obsession or stubbornness.  We are driven constantly to consume rather than co-create.  

     Engaging the faculties of the mind needed to execute a vision and execute it consistently is a process that appears to me to be like Bruce Wayne becoming Batman.  You consider something iconic and inhuman and utilize that form to disinherit your wayward nature (e.g. 'I'm indpendent,' 'I take care of myself,' 'I'm a hustler,' 'I'm positive,' 'no excuses,' etc.). You try to reclaim a more simplistic way of living - one that empowers the directive you've set for yourself.  But really you are embellishing a narrative that you wish you could react to in only very few ways.  You try to force the behavior by reading a book, or listening to a tape or criticizing and distancing yourself from others or reading your 10 steps of this or that to bind yourself to an ideal that is strict. You set standards that are restrictive and uninviting and you call it discipline. The trick is to collapse your range of responses and convince yourself it is good to freely remove your right to behave freely.

     But the human mind is transcendent and our emotional range is vast.  The minute you entertain an investigation of these depths, you gain a momentary perception of the void.  Self-control, or lack of it, is the clue.  Why are we tempted to do things we don't value? Why don't we value the things we know we must do? Why is freedom such a desperate nerve for us?  Why are our emotions so much more influential than the thoughts that we can actually interpret properly?  Could it be that denial of this expanse of meaning is not only unnatural but harmful? If we all thought and felt a little more and accepted what was there, what might be the exponential outcome?

     Limiting is the first suggestion for those who attempt to use common language to teach success:  "Don't think too much,"  "keep it simple stupid," "don't put the cart before the horse," "describe it in one sentence," "give me bullet points . . . "

     Is that really what they did?

     I believe they miss the point. These ideas try to encourage us not to confuse the issue.  But it could be that the issue really is grand. Writing is not just about writing after all.  It says something about who we are.  Exercising or starting a business or taking up a musical instrument is a choice devised from a rainbow of influences rolling around deep within ourselves.  These decisions are uniquely created, regardless of their outward similarities with others.  Connecting with the spiritual history within inclinations is surely a route to true commitment because that effort requires self-acceptance and that requires forgiveness and that requires love.

    You could do worse things than honor yourself when you commit to a practice.  But how can you know it is an honor if focus is about eliminating what others will tell you confuses the issue?  If the issue is really that deep, and you have taken the time to understand why, then conviction is yours.

   I tried an experiment the other day when I was trying to get through page 3 of my first short story in this new chapter of my life. I was dealing with my pension for distraction. This takes the form of restlessness, talking to myself, pacing, sleepiness, and obviously the temptation to check my Twitter feed among other things.  My interest and my focus kept being pulled away. When I began being reproachful, the anxiety poisoned the experience and creativity diminished. I had to do things the hard way and no shortcuts.

     I first considered my surroundings. I took in my room.  I took in the encroaching furniture and the clutter of papers and cameras and loose clothing.  I took in the fact that this is the space I grew up in. I felt my shame and investigated it. What I found is that I actually had a great deal of options in which to determine the fault. I knew that accepting responsibility was the honorable choice but accepting myself was honestly the more nurturing. That's what I needed to work: I needed to understand I was still worth it.  

     This was a choice not to wallow in shame. It got in the way. The next step was to handle the aesthetic of my environment. It's one room for 30 years of child to man (I did move away for about 6 years and had to return after my last official employer laid off most of the staff in bankruptcy).  I closed my eyes then and imagined each wall replaced with those of a sprawling loft looking upon the city skyline.  I imagined the warmth of the uncluttered summer sky on my skin blasting through ceiling high windows and radiating off a minimalist and clean space ripe for serious work and social affairs.  Most importantly I imagined it mine.

     The funny thing about that dream: the new environment really didn't impact the nature of the work or the weight of its responsibility.  As I turned my attention to the writing desk of my well-earned metropolitan palace, an old familiarity and perhaps an old ache returned and not much else mattered - not the sunlight and not the heights - just the page. The lesson there is that the craft of any great dream is elemental and indifferent to circumstance. That craft's relationship with focus is no less different.

     Things are not inherently simple because we take in the entire universe with our eyes, imagine all the world's comfort in an instance and recoil at discomfort with every moment.  Something important has to be at the root of labor and the return to the fields - something as vast as all the reasons to refuse the call.  Sitting down to page 3 was all about remembering how much fun I thought this would be as a kid. Forming the world and a path through it was all about a character I was getting to know and had the freedom to know intimately up until the same forgiveness for her faults that I claim for myself.  The healing soothed the effort.  

     Not breaking that connection was a matter of the consistent choices I made to stick with it.  But here's how: all our interests and preoccupations divide a singular pool of energy that we distribute each day. Some distributions carry over and create stress for their stagnation. The discipline enacted here was the conscious emotional reclamation of other distributions of energy, other pools, and coursing them back toward the deepest well with whispers already commanding my attempt to try and urging me to succeed. Let's walk it through:

1. At my laptop with the document open and my hands on the keys (getting here used to be the hardest part)
2. My tablet alerts me to a Facebook update
3. I catch the intrigue and wonder if I can create it within the next paragraph of my story
4. I hit a wall and wonder if I can use that as a break to catch up on movie or industry news
5. I use the desire to read and reapply it to reviewing my story so far
6. My cat approaches with repeated requests for attention
7. I gently remove him from my space and close my door realizing that all my children need love and in their appropriate time

     I am a writer and that means accepting that I write when a non-writer would likely be doing something else.  I write fiction and that means when I could be writing besides fiction (including this blog unfortunately) I find my home in developing a new world.

     There are no immediately available comprehensive definitions for focus if you were to just look it up.  But imagine the joining of several different rays of light into a powerful lazer.  The lazer becomes stronger as the beam intensifies through its concentration. Likewise you must at first leech the emotional energy already existing in your roster of distractions to empower your cause.  Turn the blade.  Look at your distractions favorably as they indicate the other places where your energy has pooled and then become selfish with that energy for your goal in the moment.  It's a deliberate process.  Your mind must be awake and energize.  You must have sleep for this and food in your stomach.  And being conscious this way is exhausting by the end of the day but we all know that anything you do long enough appears to get easier. 

     The meditative practice for this is to swap your emotional relations around.  Imagine feeling about work the way you feel about a lover.  Imagine feeling the way you do about your living conditions, the way you do about a growing garden.  You can swap anything you like. The imagination is your empire.  Then take this practice into the moment of your execution and free the vastness of your mind to settle upon your determination without reservation. In this way everything you have is pulling for this one thing that you've decided to do over a long term. You'll know its working when the days fly and the work, and it's inevitable complications, become familiar and seemingly effortless.

The actual craft of writing itself is a muscle that gets good with practice and reflection. But the beginning is all about masterfully operating the energy with which you charge that practice. It is not simple and you must forgive yourself the complexity of a being that will never truly know itself. That takes an immense amount of compassion but the most courageous actions will grow from it. I believe this will prove the heart of my success and the same for all those who consider themselves sensitive people.

-C

Dreams Run Amok

     I had a dream with my cat.  Her name is Domino.  She's a little less than a year old - mischievous but very kind.

     I had a dream that her dopplegangers were sneaking into my home and pretending to be her but not very well as I could tell when they were all together that something had gone wrong.  Some of them had chrome fangs and some of them were all white instead of pinto-colored as domino is. They varied in size and they all seemed quite dismissive of me.  Their eagerness to be in my home and immediately find their hiding places was the most unnerving.  I couldn't watch them all and there were signs of intelligence.  It gave me a sense of the gremlins.

     When I was telling my mother about it, it occurred to me that the threat I imagined could easily have been real.  A new bloomed in my mind about a woman, a spinster, who is being manipulated to front for an invasion of demons.

     I really want to write this.  The campier, the trashier, the better.  I owe no one!  The problem: I got up and sat down and there were youtube tutorilas and my twitch page and e-mails and facebook AND a reflection of myself in a mirror just behind my laptop reminding me how utterly human I am.  I'm only on page 3 of my first short post college, I still have at least half a dozen to edit and post and a bunch of other things to do which I'm tired of reminding myself.

     How did a genetic make-up come about with a combination so awkwardly ambitious?  I hold my face a lot.

ON SETTING ASIDE TIME

     What a beautiful strategy.  They don't tell you growing up that even when you're told things you don't really know them till about 20 years later.  At least no one told me - the epiphanies I've been having, my goodness!  Consciously adapting such a simple idea is the luxury of not being in a third-world country, being at war or being stricken with a chronic illness.  I get to sit here on my ass and think . . . for hours.  And to think there is a rich history of brilliant and industrious men building our nation.  But what the hell was wrong with them?

     I don't mean they were bad people.  But how does a human being come out industrious?  It's absurd.  Highly valuable yes but also absurd.  There are imbalances everywhere and we are supposed to be the crafty navigators of the treacherous oceans of ideology and personal culture.  How's it done if you are a sensitive person?  A writer writes, but apparently he also complains a great deal.  Sorry for that.

     For me there is yet to be a substitute for the time spent crafting original content. It is what it is.  Slug it out.  The war must simply be waged, season by season and inch by inch.  And it saddens me that I've somehow made it three decades on this world without yet honestly determining my ability to successfully engage these wars.  That's what frightens me.  It's so easy to commit in just about every other way then the way you've been pointed.  Knowing this means accepting that discomfort is the waypoint of progress. And if I must choose progress, and how I can I not when mortality is certain, then discomfort must become my new aphrodesiac . . . like miserable foreplay followed by the grim determination of a preposterous act of fornication BECAUSE in the end art is actually very hard work. Consuming it is fun, but making it sucks.  And that's what dreams get you: a familiar bitch of a place to belong.

     With that said, I will go dark on social media save news of releasing my shorts, videos and Twitch casts.  And reopen engagement when the well dries up (or simply when I need it to). Wish me luck!

- C

Speed and Endurance (Blog, Write Fiction, Twitch, Edit Video, Produce Films erday)

     I'm temporarily not including photos anymore in my blog.  I'd pull stuff off the images tab in google that I felt would help explain a point.

     Time sync.

     I don't want to be lazy so I'll probably get back to it but seriously, time is friggin' precious.  So much work.  I think I'm going to have to clock in 70-80 hrs a day and keep a time card, just to make sure I'm being as proactive and efficient as I can be.

    I am a disorganized SOB and distracted as F*ck!  My short story is only a page in cause I had a massive brain fart just trying to get started.  I believe there is a legendary moment in a writer's life where writing fiction becomes more or less familiar.  Pfft.  But here's hoping.

    Meanwhile, two more stories have arrived on the Imagination Train:  1) A fable about a peasant girl who loses her queen's crown in the woods where a hidden fairy empire exists and threatens to keep her forever from returning home.  2) A smaller short about a boy who's been playing with a carnivorous alien in his room without his mom knowing and the one night where the boy unwittingly explains to the alien the value in eating everything possible to grow and get strong.

    The first story was a test my girlfriend gave me to put her to bed in practice for having a daughter that would, on the fly, ask me to tell her a story.  Unfortunately my gf fell asleep before I could finish the story so I know most of it up until the climax and then it gets fuzzy.  The 2nd story, with the alien, is based on a recent recurring nightmare.  This is maybe the first nightmare in 20 years that is recurring and where I end up actually being eaten in the end (thought I don't share the same space as the boy until that moment).  It's also similar in ways to the short I'm writing - a familial issue spliced with some seemingly imaginary but actually dangerous circumstances apparently overlooked at the top level.

      It's exciting as long as I can keep these keys moving fast enough to stay in pace with the wave of ideas and I really do intend to write them all.  To think I almost convinced my gf to spend $50 on a web-developer program on Udemy.  But honestly, I gotta work what I have and make my own cash.  That's what this is all about and I really have to stay focused.

     So it looks like I'll have to set an initial goal for to actively promote my website.  I got my first follower on Twitch last night.  While that's growing I can maybe write the first 10 shorts and 2 intro chapters to my leading ideas for serialization - including Ronin Soul (which I haven't formally introduced).  Then I'll switch focus to revisiting and re-editing (alhaogha;oa;owe;awofnh!!!!!) my films from college, after which I'll remix my twitch highlights from Dragon Age: Inquisition.  From there I'll make room for my Youtube program intro and writing my business plans...

     But first, I'm gonna drink this big cup of coffee on the throne and think about absolutely nothing because sometimes that's about the only thing that makes sense.

-C

P.S. Oh yeah, speed and endurance: That's where this should all be headed.  If I come anywhere close to achieving this as an independent professional - well I might finally start believing I'll deserve any of the rewards I've seen out there waiting for people like us.

On consolidating an online presence

Every major site with social elements has a community with profile linking and supported commenting.  They encourage usage, debate, feedback and even to platform these sites for your own ventures.

How much of it is a gimmick and how much of it serves practical use? I can't say.  All I know now is that it's completely exhausting.  I'm tired of combing through personal photos for profile images but I suppose the more you do it, the more you start to develop a mind for it.

I've begun writing a "scary" story about a young girl who's being encouraged by a mysterious being to push people in front of trains.  I haven't committed to writing fiction in a long time and wow, this s serious business.  The amount of time I've spent staring out of the window, pacing in my room and doing just about anything else, including writing this blog entry, should have really made for some progress but getting through just the first page of world-setting was like pulling teeth.

In my distraction, I veered off to twitch.tv again (which is probably why common advice is to turn off the internet and the electricity if you can manage it).  I decided to look more carefully at how streams are growing.  There's a lot of styling and branding that has to be accomplished.  Certain sayings become memorable, certain colors become iconic of the player, and a look is usually immortalized via cartooning or digitizing of the player.

I doubt I can do a proper drawing without first putting a major investment in training myself in that craft but maybe with some more photoshop tutorials an short term and doable idea will come to me to place-hold until I can get some help.  In the mean time, just improving my commentary is about all I can focus on during the show.

Additionally there's this highlight business which allows me to export clips from my cast and then put them on youtube.  What I haven't figured out yet is the best way to pull a voice-over or what images I want to bookend the clips with to better brand what I'm offering.

On top of that I'm still sorta slacking in putting in serious editing time on my movies and my crafting my opening video introducing the "Build-It! Transmedia Project" which is pretty much this type of information but visual and more entertaining.

I'm learning lots and progress is really slow at the moment.  But one thing is for certain: there are no shortcuts.

- C

On release from the wheel

Good evening,

Fiction writing for novels is different from the script format in that a writer can return to the senses and wayward thoughts of the character.  

For adaptations to screen this is awesome because it gives you solid footing for shooting with subtext in your composition and gives your actors a great deal of insight into the motivations moving them through a given scene.  I feel like true adaptations are provided with a great deal of heavy lifting from the source narrative.  That's why I want to keep the craft growing alongside anything else.  It can double the work but if the original story is good, at least people can read it straight and find something in it.

I was thinking about this because it's only at the end of film school that I've finally begun to see how my mind visualizes information.  Through the early part of my college career where it was all about the creative writing courses, we were going deep into literature and the words themselves carried the ruling potency.  Sure they created images but the images were flashes, abstract, and usually combined with other types of stimuli like smells and touch.  Now I can see scenes when I want to and that's pretty cool.

As an example: I recently wrote a very 'stick-it-to-the-man' e-mail to a big group of students that were once part of my constituency as film society president.  In that I alerted them to a host of issues I'd recently dealt with prior to my resignation, including duplicitous faculty, obstruction, undermining language, just a slew of issues that distracted from getting the work done until eventually the loophole was uncovered that came with a threat ending my resignation.  I'm so happy to get that stuff off my chest.

While I'm writing of course all I can envision are all the people I'm pissing off. Before the work probably would have stuck pretty close to the flow of the keys but now there are visual associations like these people with real titles and shit...I'm in my room at my laptop but I'm very much with their faces closely observing the way they contort and grimace before my loose-lips syndrome. It's like getting up close to a JHS bully in slow-mo, able to really observe the humanity in the eyes of someone too much of a villain to recognize that they are one; both human and a villain.  It's all justified and what's most sad is that I probably could've easily crossed over to the dark side at many points in my life given the right circumstances.  The appearance of something like righteousness is just a weird occurrence.

I don't know what happens to people when they finally get a salary or benefits . . . I mean we all need them but we're so afraid to lose them too.  And then you become your salary and your benefits and you act as an agent in defense of the system that provides them.  Freedom is abandoned and I can't say if the alternative is necessarily worse.  But, for now, in the absence of money I've found a type of allowance to explore my potential and my voice.  Apparently I'm good at thinking and analyzing and using those thoughts to make people in "powerful" positions uncomfortable.  Well, school faculty isn't really a good test for that but relative to me as a recent student, it sure felt intense.

I'm glad to let go of that madness.  I'm glad to have a brief time, even if I'm joke-broke, to fool around in my imagination and see what's inside.  I can't wait to share something done - like really DONE.  Then I'm gonna get smashed!

- C
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Story inbound: Thirteen year-old Mary is aloof, antisocial and a bit morbid.  Her parents are patient, her 11 year-old brother oblivious.  Her imaginary friend Norn is however quite skillfull in tutoring young Mary how to push unsuspecting commuters before oncoming trains and getting away with it. When a chance witness takes off, Mary gives chase and unwittingly alerts a nearby patrolman to investigate with Norn silently in tow.

Sometimes you gotta put your own north star up there.

 Um...

 

shit.

I woke up a week ago and decided I was gonna be a content creator via this blog, youtube, twitch and vimeo (my gf encourages me to use colors...)

THE GOALS: 

• write fiction for people who still like to read and don't mind reading from an amateur as long as the stories are cool
• make movies I want to make for folks that can appreciate them [cheap or no-budget, but funny or thrilling]
• play games and share that experience with folks that can dig it
• do it all in a way where the products compliment each other
• do it all in a way that increases my chances of being able to survive off this and contribute to a household CAUSE I'M 31 AND A COLLEGE EDUCATION = F*IN USELESS!

[Disclaimer: I went for a double major in creative writing and film production.  I understand, but I had hopes and I still believe it would've been useful if someone had explained you could build your craft outside of college without having to go into debt. Leave college for occupational therapy or accounting. Film Production especially put me in the $60,000 hole besides other expenses that built up while I was busting my ass on set.  I was naive and to stick it out was just me being stubborn.  But I didn't want to be called a quitter.  Lesson: Knowing when to quit is wisdom.  Too bad it tends to stem from hindsight.]

That's me ^ using the internets.  OBS WHAT?!



OBSERVATIONS
A few things have become immediately clear:  

1. The market is saturated but that doesn't mean it's saturated with entertainers.  If I'm going to make it, I've got to learn how to be clear, engaged and be entertaining.
2. I need control over the stream.  Control might as well mean becoming a GOD-DAMNED ASTRONAUT (they're cool, just sayin)! And I'm going to need money.
3. I need to remember what it was to enjoy video games and movies again.  Since college, production's become slave labor and video games are a source of guilt.  The audience this is built for is eagerly awaiting an escape and I gotta be able to find it myself.

BUT HOW (I really don't f*in know!)

This is an old blog. If you dare to read older posts prepare to be either bored, depressed, confused, or secretly consoled that you're not alone given pretty typical themes of awkwardness, searching or whatever.

I think I've been trying to tell my story in attempt to export accountability. That doesn't work. I wasn't offering anything in return. There are no solid answers or pathways.  You gotta cut through the brush.  You gotta lather up the sky and plant your own business up there.

My business now is the big thing, it's the thing we all want: do what we love for a living, be able to do it well and be fairly compensated for it. What's especially important to recognize here is that if I can pull it off, anyone can!

It so happens I'm just about as far from success as you can get without being a hobo. My personal TV is broken. My laptop is over decade old. I have nothing to invest in any new equipment or games and I have zero experience in broadcasting. The gauntlet's been set.

This is a dangerous situation.

--------------------------------

The rest of this week I'll be editing a few films I made in college and writing my video intro for my youtube channel. I'll also be revising some shorts stories I've written. I'll set a date now for uploading at least one short film Thursday and one short story Friday.  

Twitch streaming practice will begin late nights till about 3 or 4 am EST and Tuesdays from 5-9pm or so.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.

- C

Emotional Risk is Finite Bloodletting

Image Credit:playalapa.com Morning Sunlight in the Jungle

 I don't believe there's a true image of the jungle we can uniformly rely upon.  The clearing up ahead we've been searching for is unanimously ominous by the time we realize how important it's become.  We've learned to do without it.  We've convinced ourselves that humility was God's greatest lesson.  And yet there it is.

Waiting long enough to understand it's not a reflective mirage beyond the haze of breaking light, but another pair of eyes altogether glinting across the clearing, is part of growing wiser.  We are our worst danger, both within ourselves and upon each other.  Simultaneously we need one another to learn and grow and to make better use of the efforts enlisted in our deep struggles.

I don't want to be writing at 1:11 AM.  I want to sleep.  I'm turning 31.  I'm not nearly as depressed as I was this time last year.  But I am conscious that the energy I've taken for granted all this time is definitely on allowance and the currency is far less than what it was when I was younger.  Either that, or I spent it all too soon satisfied with fantasy alone.

  

image credit:
http://images.forwallpaper.com/

It was always about dragon-slaying.  When I got up this morning, dragging my gut out of bed and washing my face with soap that didn't seem to be working on imperfections that never seemed to clear up and a nagging sense that the day was already wasted, it was very much still about dragon-slaying.  Some books call it resistance.  It's like there's this spiritual gravity which binds us from the freedom we believe is hidden in the world in the form of some destiny bound to a magical weapon meant for our singular wielding.

But the dragon never dies.  Both it and us reawaken to circle each other until the days have all gone and we're all but forgotten...

Why did I abandon this blog?  Two years ago it could've been any number of reasons: a bad breakup, loss of the dream, serious life doubts, you name it.  I've been broke and not being able to make money over an extended period of time is bound to have a psychological effect.  I'm not on meds because I'm too stubborn to stay consistent with the perpetual flow of doctor's appointments that take place after just the first.  I was so busy asking questions I didn't know that answering them was up to me.  I needed time.

Image credit: familyguy.wikia.com

But not writing wasn't the answer.  It has remained an important space for reflection and without it I've been numb to my own journey.  I'm not happy with the habits I've been repeating but I will talk about what good's been done today and what I might do better tomorrow:  I awoke this morning with a thought to accomplish, efficiently, an assignment due at my internship EOD by lunchtime.  Barring a small complication, that was accomplished.  I was able to use the remainder of the day to review several articles about the evolving freedom of filmmaker entrepreneurs in the age of self-distribution, review some interesting parallels in the music industry, and share these thoughts with a co-worker.  I'm not going to be interning for long, and it frustrates me that many of the professional staff are nearly 10 years younger than me while I'm just interning.  But I am happy to be in an environment where I can talk openly about my interests.

I came home to have dinner with a loved one, exercise, watch some Sherlock Holmes and there's a peace worth fighting for.  The only problem is the big job isn't done: a story teller must tell the stories, a producer must produce, and I think I'm going to skip my thesis film at Brooklyn College, graduate with my English degree, and move away from, what is to me, a needless expense that would only bury me further in debt with little to show.  I have too many stories half-baked in too many scribbles across too many half-used legal pads.  I long deeply for that sense of achievement and camaraderie a thesis engagement, but I truly feel what I'm putting aside is...well, life.  I need to move on and out of Brooklyn College and I need to do it before I lose my mind.

This weekend I should be performing location sound services for a short (26 pages!) paranormal action/drama pilot that a friend's pulled me on for no-pay.  I don't want to do it.  But I will because I've got a few of these left in me and sometimes bright young people just need a little help.  Where else can they get it if not from friends that believe in them?  As long as I can live in that world, I don't mind making a part of it.  

The Afternoon After

Image from http://www.boattitleanswers.com/

   As if it were yet a turning point . . . But I am trying, still, to change what I represent; both consciously and unconsciously.

   That much being evident I believe I need to bring the focus around. My first order of business is to rise up out of the hole: achieve gainful employment or earn meaningful income otherwise. By meaningful or gainful I mean, at the least, that I can support myself and a little bit more. That's my first goal.

   The future beyond that point is equally clear to me but I'll begin but underscoring the point that what I can do for myself, I will work to pass on ever year - either through perspective, influence, participation or donation.

   Chances are anything I am able to accomplish will not happen alone and my ability to achieve wealth or success on my brand will have more to do with my diligence at work, my capacity to uphold a distinct quality standard, and mostly my ability to work well with others and to inspire them to offer their best with me.

   The vision of the income stream is set to 3 fields: Sound, Writing, and Business Management. More specifically sound recording and design, writing fiction and editorials, and lastly business to the extent of the founding and management of my own non-profit production company, for-profit studio, and the regular production of shorts, features and other modes of storytelling throughout.

   There is enough here to last a lifetime but even this work leads somewhere. My first step however is to become solvent and now that the road has been cleared of some debris (the games on my laptop) I believe the urgency I've denounced for so long will come home to roost.

She's bound on the tracks and getting the hint she can't stay there

I was up all night again playing Diablo III. It was just about 5am when I finally quit my session. I had been playing since roughly 11am the previous day. I had taken a few breaks to eat. I studied a text book for perhaps 20 minutes. My mom is working at Macy's because she's obligated to. My gf was studying her ass of for her PhD. It's not that I'm not in school and a normal job at this point would prove a hindrance. The idea is that with the time I have available I should be pulling ahead of the game and setting down to lay out the tracks for my near future. Instead I was actively putting it off, choosing to be anything but what my truer passions have been stirring me for because of this amazing distraction we call gaming...It is an addiction. I slipped back into it. But with the recent election, because of Obama and the sever nature of the business I claim to be interested in, and my age, I am sorely aware of the fact that I cannot hold onto my youth forever. I matter now. My mind and my limbs are needed and whey they are not available it is felt. It's painful returning to consciousness. And I know that when I finally do sleep today and wake up around 2pm or so, I won't know where to begin to fill the void. I'll be shaken. My library won't do it. It won't attack me. My studies won't stimulate me in that frenzied kinetic way. My dreams will seem more displaced from reality that that tangible controller... But now that I've finally taken the step to uninstall all gaming from my laptop and my 360 is still packed away, perhaps I can make that change. I'm no longer wild enough to say this is the day of days, this is the moment of change. I don't know what makes the difference. I'm not sure what keeps us from change and what finally agrees to allow us to move forward with it but if it truly were up to my most present and concerned facets I would have been in a very different place by now. An aspect of myself got too big and I do have reason to fear it's response over the next few days at it realizes it doesn't have its most immediate arena for amusement. Sure there's writing and drawing and learning. Sure there's the films and self-investment otherwise and exercise. Sure there's my family, gf, and friends. Sure there's the search for work and the development of my company which all is very important. And of course there are the spiritual pursuits. But there's this illusion I uphold about time in between, as if there ever really is. About decompressing and mindlessness and free time. There truly isn't any. But a part of me still subscribes to a period in my life where I didn't have to care, even if I did... I'm going to change. Before I hit rock bottom, before utmost tragedy. Before I have to be taught a painful and ugly life lesson. I'm going to change before I fail everyone in my corner, before it supposedly becomes easier and before that fabled perspective arrives off a spaceship and hands me my destiny. I'm going to change before I get too old and worn out to fool around. I'm going to change on purpose because - I deserve to take myself seriously. And if I ever hope to be truly taken seriously, if I ever hope to inspire followers, I need to apply myself. Today hasn't even begun and it's already practically wasted...but I suppose starting the day with a sacrifice and some choice words isn't the worst case. Perhaps 20 minutes ago I was absorbed in my avatar's performance. Now I'm rubbing my face incessantly and tugging on my hair. I'm slouching. The middle of my back feels just awful. And when I stretch I can tell my ribs and breastplate were compressed. I must look crazy. And I'm pretty sure the uneven sleep cycle contributes to stress related symptoms and the odd physical cue like acne. I feel very much uncool. But the greater realization was that not only of degeneration but a near-conscious choice away from the things I claimed responsibility for and the desire to be recognized for. I've dropped the ball horribly this semester and was approaching the precipice... I could always have done better, but now I feel that I truly need to. The games, I see, will mark the end of me and everything I stand for if I don't resist today and forever forward work to replace the focus of that obsessive habit with one nearer to the practice of whom I deserve to be and whom others deserve from me. Specifically, the writer, the film maker, the founder, the activist, the father, the good son, the happy man, the true adventurer. There's still room for him yet I know, but only if I embrace him now. Life will not get any easier if I continue to turn my nose up and away from so precious a path as the one I've been escaping. God help me. I'm so tired all of a sudden and I don't know how to end...

I Don't Know What to Do: War

Yesterday I was in the city. Manhattan was full on a weekday evening. It was pregnant with exasperation and beautiful people and the achingly high buildings which speak of an alternate reality right next to ours at the bottom but theoretical at our best attempt to picture. I came away from a production meeting proceeding an uneventful casting (in terms of turnout, not quality per se). I went home feeling a little uplifted. The director's confidence helped me feel well-placed. And I reorganized my thoughts on the way. I was at war. I've been struggling to gain a winning hand in this mess of my identity. Action defines a person. Although I'm an idealist, I'm nothing if not executing the weight of my ideals... Ugh, that old problem again. I can speak of the proverbial "this time." I can talk forever of the beauty of a world pulled together knowing the effort involved is unfathomable. I can cling to dreams because the romance of longing for something truly great and selfless is both rapturous and selfish. But the truest work is in giving. Real work is the provision of labor and focus. Real work is meaningful and draining and rewarding. Real work is not something someone can ask of you. It is a precedent you can set and remake every day. Being a real worker is often joyless but it is soothing on some level. Directly or indirectly, it requires a divorce from the ego. But does this mean we give up pursuits of power and the benefits of wielding it? Sexuality, wealth, popularity, fine materials and expensive trinkets? Do we give up wanting to travel to the exotic, eat the exotic, have grand spaces allocated for our sole enjoyment and servants at our beck and call? Do we give up the pleasure of music and celebration in exclusive locales, access, luxury? I don't have any of the above and something tells me that if I did I would abuse them all with abandon. I would live this way if I could. I would submerse myself in the mire of stimulus until I had lost the very meaning I was born with and all I am had been supplanted with a meaningless joy. I would do it because I know I cannot truly live without understanding what I would be giving up. To see the limitations of myself now, of myself in power, of myself as an idealist, of myself as resigned, to envision all ends in limitation places idealism in paradox. The freedom to believe whatever versus the self-contained nature of any concept conceivable; where you look, you find Him - infinite forms of finite meaning; a language against boundary and a path to truth. The harmony of all of agendas will only create stagnation, a loss of need. The search is more essential. We are headed somewhere... We are imbalanced because evolution requires it. We must fight always to turn the leading philosophy, or to strengthen it. To what end? Does it matter? The breakdown of all pursuits is ubiquitous. Power corrupts, as they say. This is just one manifestation. College dropouts amass great wealth; this is another. There are no true stigmas BECAUSE because war is there to change the definition of stigma. I wrote once more that I would pursue earning $10k a month. Around $6k from production and post sound and the remaining over time from literary residuals, film distribution and my nonprofit salary. I told myself this having only half a business plan, half a sound kit, half an understanding of sound design, any number of half-developed short fiction and novel ideas. The war has raged for the last 20 years, slowly at first and now more fiercely. The enemies recognize each other and brutalize each other openly, leaving me the host frantic with desperation and guilt, doubt and rage. I lean into it. I lean into it. I will tremble beneath the strike. I will feel the fear. I will shake and cry. I will stand if more from stubborn will than from courage. I will stand because people depend on me. And more will before this battle is over. I am haunted by it.

Smart brain lists agenda, body to follow

Inspired by the short story "Memento Mori" by Jon Nolan, I take whole-heartedly to the concept that I'm not altogether of one mind on any given inspiration. My day is littered with wayward suggestions, many of which I'm directly responsible for, so that at the end of the day when I remember the yearnings of this year, my age and life, I'm left wondering why I didn't commit the day pursuing them. The hours fly by in a waste of irrelevance. Might as well commit some things here and perhaps if I remember to read this post early enough in the day I will find the heart to stay true to the yearnings that accompany me to bed every evenings with harsh reprove. I will play the piano. I will read music. I will speak Spanish. I will speak Russian. I will speak Hebrew. I will write countless works of fiction and have several published. I will stay fit and healthy. I will keep the stress away. I will start and build and lead a successful film company. I will have a home. I will have a family. I will support my mom. I will dress well. I will have a nice car. I will save money for my children. I will mentor a host of youth with a philosophy that will strengthen the film industry. I will read my library in its entirety. I will dance salsa well. I will be a functional sketch artist. I will make my family proud every year. I will play video games again one day on my own big screen with surround sound. I will see my films in the cinema, my books in the store. I will travel and I will have wonderful views from all my homes. There's more. It gets quite specific in fact. The details in the dreams aren't likely beneficial for you, my nonexistent reader, and less so for me since I'm sure given the chance anyone can site an endless list of what appeals to them. These first entries came to mind first and so I'll deal with them. In order to do the things that require mastery, like artistry, dance, writing, speaking different languages and building a business based on a collaborative medium, as well as staying fit, one would assume a daily routine. So how do I create one suitable while eating and maintaining some social and hygienic responsibilities and protect myself from being led astray? Planning, the original intent of this post, isn't working.

Self-discovery

Modesty dictates we humiliate ourselves. The nature of the humble man is to admit his faults and decline recognition of his strengths. To do anything else is liable to invite criticism. We fear that. We like our eligibility, we enjoy the benefits of a well-regarded ego. Science has taught us the ego is not acting alone. Before I continue I should say that what's brought be to this discussion is a lack of opportunity. I'm trying to give up one obsession and replace it with another one which has been greatly neglected. The formation of ideas, philosophizing, communicating and eventually using the influence of developed thought to enhance the world through story or conversation of some other means. But the premise, yes? No jobs. I'm suited for very little. My copy-writing is verbose and frankly I don't enjoy it for products I don't believe in and I doubt myself for products I might believe in because marketing is an industry of bullshit. You make buying decisions on analysis that means very little. You sell yourself, your own conviction to people that are too scared to take any responsibility for themselves. Ultimately what is of value is access to TV/Radio and Web. Something catchy, some well received art and smart wording and the right connections and you can sell almost any concept. I'm presuming. I have no direct experience but a track record of success isn't based on any quantifiable outcome because each deal may have been bullshit that came out of the last pile of bullshit being bought. It's simply people that understand how to manipulate public thinking with the presumption of being right. I think the public itself is too wild a beast to be predicted but if you only provide them with certain choices you only have to be as attractive as the other guy to get a share of public access. I digress. I analyze too much for that work and I think it's shifty. Can't get into hospitality cause it's got a fence and I don't know anyone on the inside. I have no admin experience, most offices prefer women and apprenticeship is a lost mechanism. I can't apply to full-time positions because of school and frankly there are no more leaders in the corporate world. Just over privileged bosses that are petty or indifferent, really human beings with a dose of authority that results in capable, hard-working folks supervised by fearful, self-important, morons. The greater the authority the greater the servant you are, both to your company AND your subordinates. They respond because you lead them. They curse you and hate you if you treat them like slaves. But it's better, from the company standpoint, to limit dissent with tyrannical behavior. The more difficult and irrational a supervisor is, the better chance they have at receiving a promotion. I'm ranting now. This was about self-discovery. I'm mad. I've discovered that. I will discover a few more things before the day is through and many of these things I'll forget. I suppose under the right range of influences I could be anything. And here's the kicker, the choice to pursue the development of certain discovered aspects is as much a part of who you are and can be as is what you discover in the first place. You are allowed not simply to take the good with the bad, although that certainly is a start, but also to become attracted to your own best attributes and to exercise them as a muscle. Leadership doesn't only come from taking responsibility for your faults, but also taking responsibility for your strengths. Imagine a romantic relationship where you never sought forgiveness for your insecurities because you understood the truth and chose to work beyond it. Imagine the way your parents would look at you if you simply embraced your destiny and let them know you were going to be OK. I'm jobless today because of the economy and because face-to-face interviews have been replaced with digital walls that only benefit understaffed HR departments who will probably hire the bosses asshole nephew anyway. But I can think and I am physically capable. I can work even if no work is given to me. I can be my own industry if I choose to be. Realizing this is a strength in itself. There was never anything to lose because nothing belongs to you, not even time which is ever flowing. The only thing that will attract the right things to you is accepting your greatest self and letting others know that you know things will happen exactly as they should. As long as you uphold your end, you're doing all you can and it is better to live with that pride than to fuss over the inequity of your environment.... Damn. Well we all need an outlet.

Today is (aw hell you can see the date next to the post)

I spent the last two days on Diablo III. Then I woke up and had a fit of hysteria to some dub-step. I exercised and practiced talking about my company in the mirror. More ideas and no assets. Ah...what it means to be an American. I've inherited the dream and my only job is to chase it. It can be my only function. Everything else is moot. Today's epiphany: Our identities are preconditioned by external influence. We are not that. Our physical type is preconditioned by inherited influence. We are not that. Our emotions are conditioned by chemical reaction. We are not them. We are born from both extremes and what is truly us is that one element that weighs the options and moves forward. The enemy is the thought that makes us believe it is better to make no choice or that one is not available. We are choice. That is, if not the defining element of our existence, the one subtle clue to the truth of our destiny. We should hold on to it as if our life depended. We should hold to the little voice that warns us away from harm, and supports us through acts of bravery. We should stay true to the nature that existed before our current nature was given to us. It is not human. We are only human for being born on Earth and in our time. The truth of us comes from what humans are meant to be. Adaptation is a core element of my business model. It has to be. If we are contained, with as little assets as we have, we are dead in the water. Mobility will be our answer. Are projects must be flexible. Our income streams must be diverse. Our staffing must be interchangeable. That is how we will defeat many waves of resistance.

Today is Monday, Fourth of June, Year 2012

I did little of what I wanted to do yesterday. Plagued by human frailty, I wonder what the machine lives like. No matter. I will delve into the distraction and come out of it alive yet. I'll undo the curse. I must. Ahead of me, so that I may recall and be so bold as to state, lies an ambitious journey. It's one that I pray will affect the class structure as a tectonic plate with a mind to move. I believe people should work and have stability. Moreso, I believe the abundance of the current age should be presented. We are a shortsighted race. Profit is all too important now. I'm happy for it in that it becomes a measure of esteem to those with a mind for conquest, venture, investment and building. But for everyone else that has yet to withdraw their sword, we need education. And yet education is under attack. So jobs, and schools and . . . Dreams, yes? I see now that I am afraid of what I am suited for. I am afraid it will not be my dream. I have suffered illusions before. Most of them were born in my heart from longing and loneliness. You can influence the world but you can't control people. But I need people to make this work. How will I inspire them? How will I inspire them?

Today is Sunday, the Third of June, Year 2012

I would like to be less obscure. I would also like to be far more committed to my plans then, lets say, the plans organized by Blizzard and Bioware and Bethesda game developers. A valuable lesson here though: if you want to be successful in life, sell crack. My thoughts should be shorter. I'll start with my plans for today: a new love journeys far from me. There's a need to fill the gap. Old initiatives vie for priority. But one looms above them all. I have no specialization save what my schooling is prepping me for. I don't know how this happened. But I'm going to acknowledge that I've done enough day dreaming about starting my own company to warrant some relevant behavior. I'm playing Diablo III till 10 AM. Then I am walking to campus to see if its open so I can write till 2pm. Though I am eager to dive into my fiction once again, I have a lot to do for my business plan. It's the priority. I am coming back home to exercise. From 5pm to 9pm I will look for work and/or try to organize work opportunities. I will watch the season finale of Games of Thrones. I'll meditate for 30 minutes on my progress and my next step and I'll write to notify those following me of how things went. Then I will play more Diablo III.

On Victory

It's never the point, is it?

It's fleeting. It doesn't provide. I mean there is the endorphin reaction, sure. But anything worth celebrating is usually won at great cost against great adversity. And for what? To take in the moment and go home?

It's not about the end but what comes after. It's about utilizing the prestige or the momentum to great effect. It's about continuing on in a greater state than you were before.

I have this habit of writing to fulfill a sense of productivity, like depositing change in a bank. And I think if I can just get my hands loose I'll continue and write my fiction and my poetry. But instead I allow this feeling of satisfaction, this false accomplishment, to take the place of anything else I might do that would actually mean something.


It calms me down. Admittedly the act is an escape. I write something to avoid writing THE thing. I never thought that each poem and each completed short would simply be a step in a building process of my own strength as a writer. I mean we know this as common sense - that people who do something often get better at it. But I think my perspective viewed the outcome as the goal, not as one long continuous evolution of effort. So I'd write for the day and forget about it. I'd eat for the moment and forget about it. I'd earn a paycheck from work and use it as I need it but not as I choose to invest it. Each repetitive thing we ignore is valuable in the pursuit of a great living state IF we understand the worth of victory as a practice.

Victory or success or winning, all mean you have a temporary edge. It's confidence. It's being known perhaps. It's an opportunity to be listened to and taken seriously.

On the road to public success must be an infinite amount of private ones. There certainly are an infinite amount of private failures I can account for, otherwise I wouldn't be home in my pajamas for the last 3 days playing games on my laptop. Now there is a habit well constructed and afforded by the genius in interactive entertainment. How can a person with the aptitude for over 12 hours of focus, easily, have it susceptible to the particular stimulus of the digital medium and not be able to wield it on command?

I thought wanting something and achieving it were arbitrarily related. Now I see that the tools best suited are not aptly applied as a rule in some cases. Crossed wiring?

But like any program, a command change in one line can alter the function. They way I viewed tasks made the approach seem laborious. But looking beyond the final word of the story, beyond the development of the script, beyond the choice to try, beyond the eventual success of achievement, and I am confronted by an ideal state by which I can do . . . some real good in this world.

Well I'm not sure if I truly believe that. For every idea I have there are people that would attack it and maybe the best ideas are never seen that way until they've been marketed right. Trying to find the true good in the middle of all the things that seem to come close is impossible. Sometimes it seems like humans were never meant to agree. But then there's victory and you can't be victorious in the way we are used to without it being recognized by those around you.

It's a moment of communion but that isn't the point now. It just resembles something that we are all attracted to... And I suppose those that are watching want to be a part of it. So victory becomes a greater statement about what we all want in the world, the quality within us to offer something important. And then-to do just that.

If I look at meeting goals as having the right to meet another and taking joy in each accomplishment, then I would never cease in my effort and I would accomplish a great deal.

My challenge exists in all the habits formed prior to this new practice, where there was no importance beyond the act or beyond the day. I've had so much time to lose my sense of urgency that now, when I'm trying to create a sense of perpetual joy while acting upon a realized freedom to succeed, I am faced with a wall of complacency.

In games we are provoked into action and we call it stimulus. We are attacked and we find within us the nature to respond, to end the conflict, to resolve the turmoil, to save the day or overcome the challenge otherwise. But when realizing our own worth we are faced with the infinite. I don't know where to begin at first because I'm thinking of some goal that doesn't exist.

Victory isn't a goal, it's a state of existence. One instance of success MUST role into another. It is the waves of motion in the ocean, it is the steady self-perpetuating rhythm of our hearts. Success is life and death every day, a cycle that has allowed humanity to form. So success in the heart and mind must not be constricted . . .

We call it hard work and seek to escape it. We seek to relax and think we owe it to ourselves to rest. But when it's the right work and we use that same formula we are missing the point. This is the problem, or part of it at least.

I believe investment is dangerous, I am programmed to avoid my commitment. It's not that I don't want to write but I have a strong sense that I shouldn't and I can't figure out the one root and this is how I know that wanting something isn't enough. The feeling, it's the feeling. There is a lot of hesitation when I think about acting. Hesitation and fear as if I stood before something too important to touch but would be mine if I felt the conviction of being worthy of it.

It's an honest question poised to me from something ultimately beyond my understanding:

DO I REALLY WANT THIS? IS IT REALLY MINE? DO I HAVE THE RIGHT?

There is no judgement in the question because all the consequences are known and accounted for somewhere. It's just a question for me and about me and no one truly knows what it feels to be asked it in my shoes and know one should ever care.

The universe is benevolent and just. The void it contains eclipses our understanding, our perspective, our reality. You do not accept deals with it lightly if you do not know your place, and yet men do it easily enough in their ignorance and plow forward through history recklessly and call it it bravery. There is a modicum of bravery sure, when facing the unknown.

But it is far more terrible to face the full request and consequence of your existence and choose the path forward once you understand the importance of the part you can play.

So we come at last to the famous saying "Be careful what you wish for." It is a lesson in the heart of me that I do not take lightly and it is disguised by humility, thought it is truly a fear of my own capacity; of the image I must invoke, the person I must become to allow for all the effort I am as yet unfamiliar with in this life. But the choice is not fleeting, it stays with me and stares at me and waits. It is the patience of it that is unnerving and makes me feel like I have a debt to pay.