Sicker than usual, that is.
I feel really terrible. Worn out and dragged down and ill. There’s some kind of fluid in my lungs, my throat is swollen and sore, my head is pounding, and feel very fragile and confused and scared.
So there’s that.
And all on a day when I have work to do.
The day started off wrong. At around 4:30 am, I laid down to rest my eyes and let my stimulation level “zero out”.
I do this all the time. Usually results in me mellowing out for like 45 mins or so.
But this time, I slept till 10 am and woke up feeling terrible.
But I often wake up feeling horrible, so I didn’t realize I actually was sick until I was up and moving and the outside air hit my lungs on the way to the bank to cash my cheque.
It’s pretty unmistakable now. I feel awful. Malaise galore. Nausea too. I know I should eat, but I can’t. I just can’t.
I can barely make myself take my meds.
I’m going to lay down for a while so I can marshal my energies for work.
Don’t this just figure?
I feel a lot better after a couple more hours of sleep. Still got the rest of the symptoms but I at least don’t feel like death warmed over in the microwave any more.
I probably shouldn’t make grand pronouncements about my health before 4 pm, because that’s basically when my day begins.
That’s how much of a night owl I have become. I stay up till 6, 7, or even 8 am, then I sleep a bunch, and between 3 and 4 pm I start to truly wake up.
Glad I wrote that down. Been sort of avoiding acknowledging it for a while.
Eh, so I am a night person. History is full of them. It’s not like it’s hurting me. I have very little contact with the workaday 9 to 5 world so it’s not like it’s costing me much.
I guess I was resisting the idea and telling myself that I will go back to “normal” any minute now because being such a night owl makes me feel like I have drifted even further away from the rest of humanity.
But maybe that’s my path. To drift away. To follow my star as far as I can go and find that place where everything comes together. To walk the philosopher’s path that winds ever higher up the mountain, the air getting colder and the path lonelier as I go, but the view becoming oh so clear and I can see so much.;
And the humanity I leave behind will be reclaimed when I reach my promised land and achieve through wisdom and understanding what others achieve by simple faith.
Seems like a lot of trouble to go to get what others take for granted, but nobody said the philosopher’s road was an easy one,.
Nobody said it was voluntary, either. I didn’t choose this path, I fled to it when nothing else ,ade any sense to me.
But I am beyond committed to it now. So much so that I have only two options : go forward, or stop.
And I am through with stopping and being stopped.
Forward, always forward.
More after the break.
Wrote the thing, sent it to E. awaiting reaction.
As usual, I set out to do what I was told to do but ended up doing something that may or may not qualify as what I was told to do.
Let’s be clear though : what I was told to do was to go through the show bible and expand on whatever caught my attention.
What caught my attention was that the plot synopses were terrible. Wayy too detailed, lots of extraneous info, not well put.
So instead of trying to fix them, I wrote five of my own.
I was originally going to do ten, but they turned out to be longer than i anticipated and required more of my creative energies than i anticipated too, so I had to cut back to a more reasonable amount.
And even then, that fifth one was hard. I was so tired!
I guess for me, imagining the entire main plot of an episode takes a hell of a lot of brain calories. Makes sense given the depth and reach of my imagination.
Still, a note of caution is warranted. And the note reads : “Remember that your powers, while awesome, are not unlimited in supply. It just seems that way when nothing has taxed them much lately. ”
And I did expand on something in the show bible. I “expanded” the number of plot synopses by five.
What can I say, I have always found it way easier to create than destroy.
Still, looking back, I probably should have done some character work instead. It’s what E told me he thought needed the most work.
I’ll save that for the next document, if there is one, I guess.
The existing roster of characters is decent. There’s The Dumb One, The Crazy One, The Old Guy, The Relatable Coward, The Precocious Child (also the main character).
All well known types it’s easy to write for. In comedy writing, you are not looking for complex and unique characters full of depth and nuance.
You are looking for unique iterations of a known type. And there’s dozens of known types to choose from,
You could have the Snarky Intellectual, the Overprotective Jewish Mother, the Bickering Couple, the Tired Single Mom, the Wife Who Drinks Because Her Husband Cheats On Her, the Wacky Neighbor, the Sex Crazed Best Friend, the relatable Cranky Guy, the Senile Old Coot, the Working Class Dad…. I could go on and on.
Granted, most people are not as aware of these things as I am, But these comedy types work because it gets people into the scene and the comedy as seamlessly as possible.
They don’t need character exposition to get the jokes. They don’t need an in depth understanding of the situation. They don’t need to know the plot.
If you have written things properlu, some part of their mind goes, “I see, that’s the Dumb Guy” and you’re all set for comedy.
The details that make this Dumb Guy unique can come later.
This was fun. I should write down my thoughts on TV more often.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.