I Get The Job Done....

In case y'all didn't know, I'm a serious workaholic. Much like how a shark has to stay in motion, I always have to be doing, channeling the sometimes overwhelming amount of energy within me to a given purpose. It's probably how I got my first novel written in eight months, or how my early scripts (though they sucked) found their way from start to finish in just a matter of weeks. The sense of being able to clear a thing from my boards is much like the stuffed elk's head that hangs over the fireplace in some lodge, like the plaques and certificates that professional keep framed on their walls. I like the challenges. I like the variety. The downside has been that I live in a world where most folks don't like either.

I finished the first draft of my screenplay on Saturday, a monumental thing considering that it's easily the best piece of dramatic writing I've ever done, I think, a perfect balance between comedy, drama and action. But you can't take my world for it as I'm still high off of the initial completion. In a day or two I revisit the thing with the delete button and a page full of notes and it's perfection will vanish like doughnuts at a cop convention. But in the same weekend I managed to walk through a hundred pages of a client manuscript, meet with a prospective other, buy toilet paper in bulk, have breakfast with my godsister, watch Seven for the seven thousandth time, have a heart to heart with my homeboy and to talk to both of my parents just long enough to let them know I'm no struggling anymore. My home theater is on its way out though after seven years. And even when I duct taped a good eighth of the wall behind my stove, my war with Mickey continues. Who would have thought that a rodent would become the symbol of one of the wealthiest corporations on the planet.

I've been having these dreams too, dreams that have reminded me that not only is the past prologue, but that so many of the thing that pained me could have been averted had I just been a little more patient, a little more cirumspect. But when you're a man who feels the need to be in constant motion (whether it's biking or just thinking way too much) sometimes the most important connections of all end up getting missed. So as I came awake this morning to the sounds of my ghetto ass neighbors underneath, a crew of four to five in a one-bedroom apartment who seem to speak as if they're rocking a crowd of 1000 between their kitchen and the living room, I was proud to that not unlike Gloria, I have seemingly survived one of the most difficult seasons in my life. And I am truly a better man for it.

Now as the sting of winter reddens my face and my bike has been brought upstairs to keep out of the cold, what I long for most is the warmth of Spring, of doing laps in Prospect Park, grilled salmon dinners from Exquisite, the dinner party where I'll finally make that Mac and Cheese with lobster, and the prospect of staking a claim in new Hollywood once this darn strike is over. I know and recognize that a lot of people are fairing far worse than I and that as long as I followed the rules so many of my fears were completely unnecessary. For a long while there I forgot who was running the show. I forgot that I have someone to answer to other than myself.

So now there will be interviews sessions and script rewrites and convos with Glass and Joy about strategy and hopefully a return to glorious things like sushi, the occasional whisky and that darn apple and pear pie I've been saying I was going to make for three weeks. There's always something to do. So like Nike, I just do it. Out.