Yeah, we’re going to talk about my fucking glacier again.

For those of you who are new to the game, when I talk about my iceberg, I am talking about the huge mass of frozen repressed emotion inside me. It is the burden of many years of suppression under the reign of depression – while also being its cause.

Nobody ever said mental illness was fair.

It might even be the basic cause of depression in others too. That would certainly explain why therapy works, and matches my subjective experience of it. Therapy, as defined as the unearthing and expression of repressed memories, works to reduce the mass of that inner glacier, and over time as the glacier gets smaller, its chilling effect lessens, and the easier it is to think, feel, and regulate your own mood.

That’s what the four or five years of therapy before going to Kwantlen were for. I had to birth enough icebergs and watch as, separated from the main mass, they drifted southward and melted.

As I have said before. the process itself is rarely pleasant – nobody has depression from years of suppressed joy, methinks – but the results are phenomenal. I am so much more than I was even six months ago.

Heck, I’m so much more than I was at the beginning of this term, and that’s seven weeks ago!

So VFS has been very good for me on that score. It can’t replace therapy – something I will get back to on break – but nevertheless, it accelerates the process. Maybe by forcing me to have to get the fuck over myself in order to get done what I need to get done.

Speaking of which : right now, what I should be doing is working on the final version of my detailed outline for my Bob’s Burgers episode for TV Spec class. But the suggestions people had for it the last time it was presented represent such a radical change that I am having a lot of trouble getting started.

I thought I was cool with it earlier, when I was thinking about it in class. So they want the episode to be mostly about the karaoke plotline. I can do that. It could be quite hilarious. Karaoke, plus they also liked the Tina plot, then I would have to pick either the Gene or Louise plot to be my C plot^[1]. I thought I was ready for this, my first time basically having to start over.

But nope. I really don’t want to do it. Part of me is still pissed off about them not thinking the Gene and Louise plots are in character. To me, they totally are. I will admit that they are too similar, but I reject the idea that they are out of character. Louise definitely cares what people think of her and so does Gene, if you can puncture his obliviousness. Which Geena CAN.

What’s more, I think a spec script that shows a really deep understanding of the characters will impress people more than a formulaic retread of what’s come before.

So I suppose the problem is that I am of two minds about the whole thing. Part of me feels like I should make the changes suggested, if for no other reason than to practice the sort of flexibility I will need once I am in the industry. After all, if I am working on a show and the head writer tells me to make a ton of changes, I am gonna have to make those changes. Otherwise I will risk getting fired and, worse, get a reputation for being “difficult”.

Being labeled “difficult” is the kiss of death in entertainment, especially for people starting out.

And I suppose it would be a tad precious of me to say that I will do it for money but not for marks.

So I guess I will have to do it, at least a little. Maybe the trick is to stop thinking of it as starting over and think of it as a totally new episode that happens to include some elements from another, perfectly good episode.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. I’ll still have my original outline around – I am hardly going to overwrite it. I will just spawn a new version of the file and work on IT. There will be two semi-related scripts, one the radio edit, the other the original cut.

I guess I can live with that.

Now theres just a matter of putting in the work. That means I have to expand the karaoke plot a fair bit. That shouldn’t be too hard. There has to be tons of comedy gold in the idea of Bob’s Burgers characters singing karaoke. Imagine how hard it will be to get Linda to let go of the mic!

Back to that glacier parked on my heart.

I think it’s what gets between me and others, too. Part of me feels like other people can feel its coldness, but that sounds like crazy thinking. It’s more like other people can feel the distance it creates between me and them, and can tell how walled off I am and how hard it is to reach me.

And the thing is, people will only try to reach you for so long before giving up. And that traitor, depression, looks forward to their giving up because that will relieve the tension of having to deal with people at all.

This is what leads to isolation – and it’s the isolation that really kills you. It cuts you off from all the positive inputs that would help you and leaves you on the brink of total emotional starvation.

And if you’re a fat person like me, you try to cure that salvation with food. I have been extra hungry lately, and it’s led me to wonder if I am truly hungry or is that just my primal response to emotional needs. It’s a very tricky question given my diabetes. It could be either.

One thing is for certain, though :

I should never ever ever ever ever skip a meal.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.