Not Overdrawn Yet

New Year’s Resolutions are like a karmic credit card binge. You make something around 5 pledges to yourself, any one of which would take a major investment of personal will. I mean that you would have to actually liquidate will from somewhere else in your life just to get there. Sure you MIGHT be able to lose 20 pounds OR get a raise OR find that special someone OR finish that addition to the house OR give up whatever particular tool it is you use to pummel your brain. But you’re not doing them all. Hell, even doing one is going to cost you.

I am getting fatter. That’s okay – I don’t think I’ve actually been skinny for ten years. I could exercise – I’ve seen myself build that routine more than once. Maybe I could even do it to the extent that a real change happens.

But I’m using that willpower already.

You might find this strange, Jimmy, but I feel like I am more serious about writing than I was even when I sold my screenplay. It’s not that I DO it more – as we’ve discussed, since I took this job I do it less. It’s just that I notice my interests and attentions narrowing severely. I have a girlfriend who is awesome, and it’s a hell of a year for football; but mostly, when I’m not punching the time clock, I’m working on the novel. Or thinking about the novel. Or distracting myself from the novel.

The only movie I have been to in almost two weeks was the Inglorious Basterds screening, and I had seen that movie already. For me to be spending this much time away from the big screen, in DECEMBER, is a scandal.

I’ve noticed that seriousness infecting everything to do with what I write. I find myself thinking more and more about how, if something in this life proves worthy of the brain I was given, it’s going to be something I wrote. I think less and less about my big studio screenplay ideas, and more about the wild and personal ideas that were supposed to wait until I was more solvent. I don’t think about settling down, making my own family. I just think about these stories I’m trying to tell, and how I will BE one of those people who finishes that novel, damn it. I am thinking less about HOW this is supposed to make me money, and betting more on the simple faith that it will.

The other night I got in bed, meaning to get a full night’s sleep, but mad with myself for only putting 300 new words into the book. So I told myself I didn’t need the sleep so badly (I did; I really did), got out of bed and wrote another 500.

By all rational measures, I am becoming more foolish as I become more fat. I think this is an encouraging development.