I’m 34 today. I do not yet have a lawn which I can shoo damned kids off of. Is that where I’m headed? Am I a “lawn” kind of guy? I liked having a lawn as a kid. If I ever have kids, I think they should have a lawn. Do I want kids? So many unanswered questions, at an age when, before penicillin and democracy, I would probably be already dead.
I tend to be grim around birthdays, and woke up wishing I could just spend the day sleeping and moping; but I think that’s more of the short-term depression that comes from the show just closing and me not knowing what to do with myself in the aftermath. I have been resisting the urge to sleep and mope since Sunday, basically.
If I look at where things are right now, I feel pretty good. The return to acting has been incredibly rewarding, I’m in arguably the best physical shape of the last 5-6 years and probably further back, and my finances are more stable than they’ve been at any point since after the script sale.
The script sale. Holy Moley that was a long time ago now. There’s really nothing tangible to show for it these days other than my WGA quarterly dues and the old contract buried in a box somewhere. The money’s spent and they didn’t make the movie. When I think about the frustrations in my life that I want to remedy, the biggest is this feeling that I have written so many scripts since Queen Lara that I believe are better – that I feel like I have grown significantly as a screenwriter – and yet lightning hasn’t yet struck for a second time.
The Vegas Project still has a lot of potential and is trundling around town, apparently; but when one rich person I haven’t met talks about my script with another rich person I haven’t met, my ears don’t burn. I am gearing up to make a new assault at the fortress door with the script I finished in the Spring, but there are some logistical aspects to that which are delaying me, to my frustration. I am pushing ahead on the short film, and I am glad I am sticking with that if for no other reason than to have SOMETHING physical besides a screenplay to stick in peoples’ hands. The antipathy to reading out here seems to grow every year.
Maybe the problem is that I do birthdays backwards. I do plenty of ruminating already at New Year’s. Seems to be my pattern, really.
Tonight we’ll do our best to simply enjoy the moment; how about that?