A little note from Canada to our good friends in the European Union.
You’ll no doubt notice that the video is rather short today. It is, in face, only two minutes and change long. I somehow managed to be succinct.
And I am not sure how I feel about that.
I mean, I got my point across clearly and amusingly. I can’t think of anything more than needed to be said. It is a thing which is sufficient unto itself.
And yet, the whole thing was too easy. Not only did I get my whole point out in just two minutes, there was even a lot less excision to do than is normal.
In other words, there was not that many ums, ahs, y’knows, and weird pauses while my brain loads the next set of words than usual.
I’ve noticed that my speech is becoming more fluent when I am making these things lately but this was a quantum jump, not an incremental one.
Could I be leveling up as a presenter and commentator?
That would certainly put a new complexion on things. If making these videos becomes a lot less work, then that would leave me a lot more energy in my budget to do more with the videos than I have been doing.
Like increasing production values, though I am quite cautious about that. I don’t want to load my vids down with a lot of cheap looking and pointless adornment, nor do I want to make it look all slick and professional and therefore less sincere.
So it’s kind of hard to imagine where those production values would go. I could add a (very brief) title sequence and outro, I suppose, though I have no frigging clue what I would put in one.
Like, most of my videos are just me talking. A highlight reel of that would be pretty boring with music playing over it.
Maybe I would have to go through my recent videos and find little snippets where I thought I was particularly insightful and/or hilarious and/or charming.
I think my fragile psyche could handle doing that.
As for the outro, just credits, I suppose, though it might be fun to sneak in some of the joke credits I have come up with over the years.
Like “Best Boy : Arfy the Wonder Dog”, that kind of thing.
Or I could go with the other idea I had today while I was feeling guilty for my video being too short (and easy), which was just to come up with more stuff.
If I started doing a desk jokes type show – you know, headline then punchline, like on Colbert or the Daily Show – then obviously I would need a heck of a lot more than just one joke a day for it.
But I’m more about the commentary. I suppose I could have it be that there’s the first segment where I do desk jokes then the second segment where I get more into depth upon an issue of the day in a more editorial way.
And then, a zany undercranked chase sequence while Yakity Sax plays!
This is sounding increasingly like a TV show, and that’s not the worst thing in the world. After all, TV is still a thing. People still watch TV shows, even if it’s via streaming and not via cable so much any more.
TV survived the switch from antenna to cable, it will survive the switch from cable to streaming just as well.
People will always want to watch TV even when it’s being beamed directly into our skulls via remote telepathy.
And I will still want to be the person who makes it.
So this could all work out, actually.
Which would be nice.
More after the break.
Rough and raw
That’s how I feel lately, on an emotional level. Like the substance of my soul is tender and sensitive from its long, long slumber and so the world feels jagged and spiky to me even though the life force propelling it has never been stronger.
It’s an adjustment.
Right now, I am still learning how to focus these newly awakened vital energies into healthy outlets so that they don’t end up turning into anxiety.
That means I have to be open to being motivated and that, in turn, means I have to try to overcome the negative thought patterns of depression that make me think that I have to minimize effort at all cost.
Because that’s the depression talking, making me protect it at my own expense by making me think it’s a part of me.
But it’s not. It’s just a disease. An accident. It’s only a part of me in the sense that a tumour would be part of me, and like a tumour, it can be excised and absolutely nothing of importance will be lost.
And a great deal will be gained once that fucking thing is gone.
But it’s still hooked up to a lot of important parts of me, so I can’t just hack it out of there with a rusty butter knife. It has to be removed with surgical precision and that takes time and care and patience.
Hence my metaphor of defusing a bomb. That one’s pretty old.
It’s been taking longer than I thought.
But now that my Paxil dose is going down, the process has sped up considerably. I feel like my mind can clean the toxins out of its bloodstream (like dialysis) much more efficiently than before and that lets my mind’s immune system attack that fucking tumour and make it wither away.
But it all rests on my being able to be the more vital and active and engaged person I have wanted to be for so long, and that means unlearning bad habits of the mind.
I’m working on it.
See, this is where the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy types have it wrong. They thing that you can change the thought patterns and everything else will follow.
Which would be laughable if it wasn’t so sickening. And destructive. It’s like thinking you can lose weight by drawing on your scale with a Sharpie.
Thoughts follow emotions. Emotions don’t follow thoughts. No matter what we think and no matter what we do and no matter what elaborate bullshit our rational minds cook up, emotions are always in control and we can only hope to use rational tools in order to pursue our purely emotional aims.
And I say this as someone with a long history of being extremely cerebral.
So take it from one who knows.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.