Still trying to clear that creative jam inside me, so here’s the next bucket of unprocess emotion for me to run through the smelter.

Full disclosure : Smelter is a cool word.

Been feeling kind of wretched lately. Feeling poisoned, which is a feeling I know well. I feel toxic and gross and like I need a good full body cleanse to full out all the old gunk and deadwood so I can breathe free for a change.

And I have plenty going on to make me sick. Like my sleep apnea, which is completely untreated, and mt diabetes, which is half (ass) treated.

And I feel so damned tired lately. That’s probably due to the apnea. Funny how smothering in your sleep and having your blood oxygen level plummet and having your lung capacity go down that really makes a fella feel run down.

Weird, but true.

I could go on and on about how bad I am at taking care of myself, but what’s the point? It’s not going to help. I just have to accept that I am a very ill person and the illnesses make it hard to look after myself and that makes the illnesses worse.

I think I underestimate just how fragile I am a lot of the time. I have talked before about how some things are very hard ro me to do and I can’t explain why, so I can’t justify it or make people understand it. I have no choice but to ask people to take my word for it, and show me some mercy as well as the understanding that mental illness makes my world very different than their world and so they should take that into consideration.

I mean, I’m disabled, for fuck’s sake.

But until just now, I have never pondered turning that level of forgiveness on myself. Of telling myself that I get by however I get by with what I have and that’s all I can ever do. Life has dealt me a pretty lousy hand and all I can do is play my cards the best that I can. And that means forgiving myself for being imperfect.

And it’s not like berating myself over my flaws is going to do any good. Quite the opposite, really. The more I do it,. the more I destroy myself inside and the harder it gets to do things right, which leads to still more excoriation of self, and so forth and so on till I have chewed myself down to my current pathetic state.

See, even in trying to talk myself out of my self-destructive patterns, I end up criticizing myself at the end of the paragraph. It’s like a kind of sick, sick addiction to self-destruction. Like I am addicted to the taste of my own flesh.

And to go even deeper, I think this self-destruction also serves the more sinister purpose of destroying any solid structure I try to construct inside me.  There is a side of me that wants order and structure in this flaming maelstrom of a mind, but it is overruled by the very deep and maniacal fear of being caught in the wrong “shape” when a crisis happens and not being able to shift to a form that is right for the situation. That side compels me to maximize flexibility at all times regardless of how much it costs me

I know that all sounds fairly crazy. But it’s how things work for me. My fear of being “trapped” is so strong that it demands I remain in a liquid state, as if Odo from Deep Space Nine got so frightened by something that he just stayed in his bucket most of the time, emerging only in a very fluid, shapeless form, ready to go back to the bucket at the slightest fright.

And the thing is, this formlessness inside me is what lets me be so creative. I can take numerous and splendiforous forms and make all kinds of connections that are a lot less than obvious to others. It serves my powerful intellect as well, because it lets me do my “open the lock by oozing into the lock and turning part of myself into the key” trick.

I know that’s not the easiest explanation to grasp, but the sad truth is, it’s the best one I have come up with yet.

But the second I have done one of my tricks, I go right back to being fluid. No structure remains because of that rabid animal fear of being committed to the wrong shape. The side of me that loves to build sandcastles is constantly having those sandcastles washed away by the crashing waves.

Clearly, the root of my problem is this deep and terrible fear of being in the wrong shape. I have to talk it down out of its tree and calm it down and tell it that because its so flexible. it can afford to let structure remain, because it can always pull it down when the time comes.

And, on the negative side of things, that personal growth is meaningless if it is impermanent. I am going to have to accept some inner structure if I want to be a stronger and more confident person. My soul is badly in need of some kind of skeleton to give it form and structure and support.

Being goo gets real fucking old after a while, know what I mean?

Besides, what about being trapped in formlessness? The very fact that I can’t hold any particular form for very long is a limitation in and of itself. What if a situation comes along that requires holding the same shape for a long time? What then?

I realize now that I tend to think of my formless nature as being my ultimate strength. I can handle anything by changing into the right form…. right? It’s like the ultimate superpower. I can be Superman, the Flash, or Wolverine whenever I like. Right?

No, not really. I can take on some of their attributes, but it’s still just a half-assed replica made of goo. It’s more illusion that reality and it might convince others of my amazingness, but it shouldn’t fool me.

And to be honest, most of the time it doesn’t fool them, either.

And yet, I can’t envision a more structured life. Or at least, I can’t envision one where all the structure has to be self-generated.

That’s just plain never going to work for me. The best I can hope for is to go somewhere that will give me the structure I need, like school did.

I really do dream of a life where someone says “Do this!” and I do that, and I am then told “Good work!! Here’s the next thing…. “.

And that seems really…. doable. right?

All I need to do is get a goddamned job.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I have been tasked with coming up with a final script for our trailer, and I am determined to give it my all this time, and that means powering through all the bullshit clogging my brain and making it hard to think about it because there’s all these emotions in the way.

Emotions that make it impossible to go forward because they force me into a state of indecision. It’s like my brain is locked into immobility like a seized engine, and gunning the engine will only end up grinding your engine to pieces.

So hit it, emotions!

The important one is pressure. I am beginning to learn that I can only handle pressure by completely ignoring it and approaching things as challenges that will help me grow, not burdens that will break me down.

When I think about the fact that all these people are depending on me, I feel intense panic. Perhaps when I am more seasoned a writer, I will confident enough to just shrug that off and say “No problem. Bring it on!”.

But I’m not there yet.

I don’t want this panicking to be my reaction. It makes me feel weak and foolish. I want to regain the crazy self confidence I had not that long ago where I was determined to conquer the world with my crazy strong writing skills and full of vitality and ambition.

I mean seriously. WTF happened to that guy?

I just have to keep telling myself that the nervous rabbit freaking out part of me is not the real me. That just a temporary mask I wear until I heal enough to take it off.

The real me is the guy who relishes challenges and attacks each problem with vigor and the awe inspiring power of his gigantic brain.

I know I can write this thing and make it kickass. My bare bones version was OK. But it had none of my signature pizzazz and comedy sizzle. I want it to be 60 to 120 seconds of solid entertainment. I want it to spread because it’s funny and funny travels.

I know I can do it. I have the talent and the ability and the training. All I need is to generate the pulling power to pull the cork out of the bottle with my creative juices in it, and let things flow. I know I can make it happen!

Well, that made me feel a little better. What else?

I feel like there’s a lot of threshold anxiety involved as well. As the name implies, threshold anxiety happens when someone is afraid to cross that threshold from one situation to another.. This is especially prevalent when the transition is to a “bigger” state of being. like moving from your small town to the big city, or finally telling the person you are dating that you love them.

It’s a transition to a state with far more variables, most of which are unknowns, and it is easy to fall into the trap of eternal “not yet”. Well then…. when?

And what is worse is that your sneaky little metaconscious mind knows that if you keep putting the transition off, the problem will go away. It will go away because you have tragically and irrevocably let people down, given up on yourself, and chosen the safe and familiar terribleness over the new and challenging improvement.

But you feel safe and calm now in your fetid little hidey hole, and you have successfully pushed everything else out of your mind by diving deep into your distractions, and so everything is OK.

Actually, it’s awful. The boat is both on fire and sinking. But you’ve locked your cabin door and turned the radio on really loud so you don’t hear the screams and get back to reading this really good novel you’ve been reading, and then you pretend that everything is just fine and whatever problems are out there will go away on their own.

And then, when you’re floating in the icy North Atlantic, your last thought before you slip beneath the waves tio an icy tomb is “Why do these thing keep happening to ME?”.

Hmmm. Kind got off on a rant against myself. That’s new.

At some point, if I don’t clear the creative clog, I am going to have to write the damned thing through sheer force of will. Drag myself over the miles like a child carrying a bag that is too big for it so they have to push it along.

I don’t want it to come to that. For one thing, it will hurt like a bitch. I would much rather reach deep down and find that spark of feisty fire that acts as the pilot light to the propane oven that is my soul.

Great, now I am nostalgic and homesick.

And if that feisty fairy magic doesn’t work, there’s always rage. Fuck my limitations. Fuck the supposed limits. Fuck indecision and especially fuck fear. I will batter down the gates of heaven to get what I want. I will stir the seas till they rain like a thousand storms down on the cities of the world if I don’t get what I want. I will take a sledgehammer to every part of me that gets in the way of my ambition.

And then I’ll get REALLY MAD.

I think I am getting there. I am getting to the point where I will be willing an d ready to go forth and write the shit out of that thing. I am itching to evolve. I want to leave the wimpy scaredy fragile me behind in the dirt and stride forward with a confidence stride and my head held high because I am awesome.

And that remains true no matter how many times I fuck up in humiliating ways. Fuck that. I am going to make content so fresh and new and powerful that it changes how people look at art forever.

And get rich in the process!

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.