I am incredibly close to completing my second term at VFS. In fact, I’m only fifteen minutes away!

I shall explain.

All I have left is my one-on-two with my Sketch prof and the nice lady who is going to produce the skit show next term in which actors will actually act out one of my skits. The idea is that they will tell me which of the two they chose and why, and hash out any last minute concerns with me.

I am not looking forward to it.

Why? Because I feel acutely embarrassed by the skits I submitted. They are not my best work. Most of the skits of my classmates are better. And both my skits are super short. One is one page and the other is two. So whichever one they choose, my bit will be real real short.

I feel like I fucked up big time.

My skits aren’t terrible or anything, but I can do so much better. I didn’t spend much time at all writing them, and it shows. So while they do contain my characteristic wit, I feel like they are sloppy, hurried work, and there was no excuse for that.

Besides wanting to get back to my fucking video game. Which is no excuse at all.

Heck, even some of my old skits from Way Back When would have made a better choice than the two POS I submitted. Sure, those skits seem hopelessly amateurish to me now, but at least they were more than two pages long and were made with much precision and care.

Instead, I submitted an updated version of my Hillary skit and a quickie about an athlete who thanks Satan for his success.

The immediate issue is that I care too damned much. This is Sketch, something I love, and something wherein I am extremely eager to make a good impression. But I am too neurotic for that level of enthusiasm, and so instead of healthy zeal, it turns the whole thing into crushing anxiety, self-doubt, and second guessing.

And then, in what I am beginning to think might be the basic pattern of my mental malfunction, the maelstrom of emotions leaves me paralyzed, unable to act. Just brood, and hate myself. And when I finally overcome that, I have built the writing up as such a huge thing in my mind that it terrifies me and I (drumroll please) just want to get it over with as quickly as possible!

Voila, the formula for sloppy crappy work.

So clearly, I need to learn to corral my neuroses. Honestly, I am starting to think that cocky self-assurance might actually work better for me as long as it comes with a work ethic attached. After all, a cocky attitude got me through school and college. Didn’t study or take school seriously at all, waltzed in, aced the test, walked out. That might seem like a terrible way to do business and it certainly doesn’t pass the common sense test, but for someone like me, it has hidden benefits.

Namely that the cockiness counters the screaming neurosis and allows me to function so I can actually do a good job.

As I have mentioned many, many, many times in this space before, I never had to study at school. What I don’t think I have mentioned is what happened when I tried. I tried to learn to study many times, but it always resulted in exactly what I am talking about : I became a nervous wreck, what had been easy for me now seemed impossible, and I was far worse off than before.

Turns out, cockiness really works for me.

So perhaps I will attempt to stay cocky and egotistical in the future – the kind of egotistical that would not dare to let anything go until it was good enough to be released under my name.

In other words, I need to stop being so goddamned lazy/fearful and buckle down and work really hard on this shit. That means not considering it done the second I finish the first draft. That is going to require a significant amount of psychological growth, because when I go back to improve said first draft, all that neurotic bullshit starts happening. I suppose it’s because when I stop writing about it, I have to either shove it out the door so I can forget about it, or stay with it and start really thinking about it, and unleash a tidal wave of self-doubt and neurosis which destroys my confidence in the work entirely and leaves me broken and fearful.

Clearly, I need a third option.

Because I will not always have a forgiving editor or other person to act as the other half of the equation and make the corrections, which I then implement. There will be times that I have to do the whole thing by myself, from beginning to end, and if it’s not good enough, I just plain won’t get the job (or whatever).

What’s more, I need to be able to keep the whole thing in my mind even after the first draft is done, because I need to be able to improve it. So it can’t always be a “fire and forget” thing. I need to somehow get to the place where I can do all the perfecting and polishing myself.

Oh well. At least my skits (remember those?) are funny-ish and the organizers said they wanted some short stuff to use to vary the pace of the show to keep it interesting. So my stuff might be good for that. I am probably being far too hard on myself out of rampaging insanity. I am a good writer, and a very funny guy, and I should remember that when times get tough.

So I fuck up sometimes. Who doesn’t? I will catch up and everything will be cool.

I just have to cut down on the time I spend in the “safety” of video games and the Internet so that I get used to going without it and get my fucking priorities straight.

And now, I will go play a game I downloaded from the Internet.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.