A reoccurring patten in my thinking: As I’m embarking on some fun activity that incongruously but predictably evokes feelings of dread, I remember reading (long ago, when I single) about how sometimes women date men they think they are attracted to, when really they are fearful of them, because they misattribute the similar physical symptoms (butterflies in the stomach etc). I just Googled it — it’s probably “misattribution of arousal“.
After I remember that, I wonder, Does it go the other way?
This thought pattern occurs pretty much every time I walk out the door to drive to a pitch meeting or a fancy party with a familiar pressure inside my sternum, like a hand around my heart, squeezing into a fist (I’ve heard this description used for heart attacks, but this doesn’t feel like a heart attack… or does it?) I wonder Am I actually fearful, anxious and dreading, or am I actually excited, but confused because excitement feels a lot like fear and anxiety?
There must be some nuance of feeling that I’m not quite sensing, between the feeling of dread when staring down two gallons of colonoscopy prep, or going to the hospital for something unpleasant and the the feeling that accompanies something I want to do — or at least that I wanted to do at some point in the past when I made the plan. During the thing, I will enjoy parts of it, and after the thing, I will avow that I am glad I did the thing (setting aside the post-event feeling combo of “I had fun” with “afterburn of shame” for another post.)
All this is basically elaborating on the same theme as when I wrote about feeling compelled to do things that terrify me a couple months ago. (No surprise. As I mentioned, it’s a pattern.) Since then, I have moved through the list items I laid out in that post: I shot a short film, started a Substack newsletter, and enrolled in the class about pitching freelance articles to publications. Because I tried to do the class, impossibly, in conjunction with the other two things (plus work and life) today I need to do a lot of catching up. My assignments include writing things and sending actual pitches for articles to actual editors of publications, which, when I planned today, these didn’t seem like a big deal, but now that it is today, I’m having this familiar conversation with myself because I’m feeling those familiar feelings. Dread. Or excitement! One or the other!
Either way, it’s on my calendar, so now I’ve got to do it.
It’s a weird way to go through life though, isn’t it?
(PS: Two things writing this post makes me want to think / write about at a later date: 1) Calendaring Creativity (pros and cons, creativity vs creating. 2) How much I despise the word “excited.” Because the world, or because me? Discuss!)
Just got back from dropping Paul off at the airport. Driving home in the still-excellent traffic, I felt pretty chipper and considered starting my day early. But by the time I got home, the wisdom of getting back in my pajamas had asserted itself, and I have a feeling that by the end of this post I’ll be ready to go back to sleep.
We’re getting older. That’s the headline news, the reality that overshadows and colors other life events. Paul has, this year, added a number of white hairs to his curly mop. I’m stiff and sore in places that I never considered could be the source of pain. I make involuntary noises when I change positions sometimes, and he falls asleep watching TV.
Remember that first year or so after a certain person was elected, you’d wake up in the morning and it would hit you, oh fuck, that guy’s president, and there was nothing you could really do about it, so you’d just go about your day, doing all the things you do, but with this added awareness that would sometimes fade into the background and sometimes not? The knowledge of getting old bears some similarities.
I had a writing teacher who would talk about the acute thread of the narrative—like the two friends going on a road trip, and then the chronic part of the narrative, which is that element from the past that exerts pressure on the proceedings. Like you realize the road trip is a final hurrah before one friend ships off to war and the other friend is secretly in love but has never confessed it. I think in film school we would have called the chronic element backstory that added emotional stakes.
Backstory can be revealed in various ways—the more sophisticated way is series of small revelations deployed throughout a story, like Tar. The more efficient but heavy-handed way is thrown on the plate right at the top, like Star Wars, or more recently, Renfield.
The “has gotten old” story element can have an elegant, gradual reveal to the extent that one can hide it at the beginning — from others or oneself — so it can emerge organically alongside the acute plot points, like a character starting a new job, going on a date, or waking up in the wee hours to take a spouse to the airport and then choosing whether to chase one’s youthful ambitions or go back to sleep.
At a certain age, being old becomes not-at-all hide-able and can only work as a top-of-show element – something the audience knows about the character before learning anything else.
Anywhooo — when I wake up in the wee hours these days, this is apparently what I think about. Mortality.
When I wake up after the sun, I am less philosophical and instead think about all my little obligations and goals and how best to prioritize and juggle them.
My 3-month-long production gig ended this past week, so I’ve been reaching out to friends, adding back in some workout routines, and trying to transition my brain into writer-mode instead of producer-mode. I can feel it happening, which is a relief, but, sadly, my time away from the pen hasn’t miraculously turned me into a speed writer.
I have several writing projects on the pile and am feeling the shortness of time — not just due mortality — ha ha— but because this same job is slated to start back up the last week of June. I’m very glad to be booked ahead as it removes some uncertainty, but it also creates a ticking clock. Two months seems like a lot of time until I see how the days between now and then fill up with non-writing things:
I have another short production job next weekend / week, after which an ex-employer has asked if I can to come back to support them during the first couple weeks of May prior to a large event. In mid-May, I’m on the wait list for a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat, so it might or might not happen. In May or June a trip to Texas might be needed to help with some family stuff. Add in high school graduations, birthdays, dinners, doctors’ appointments…
And then it will be the last week of June. Two months as a fractal of life – flying by.
There was this hot minute where I wondered whether this should be the year I tried NaNoWriMo, which challenges a writer to write 50,000 of a novel during the month of November.
The answer is “Nope. ‘Tis not to be that kind of November.” There’s a lot of life-stuff happening.
BUT I will be revisiting a 10,000 word novelette I started a while back, no doubt re-ordering each sentence four or five times — which math-wise, is like 50,000 words!
But before those things take up all my brain space and I forget — a quick gratitude-y post of a couple cool things from October.
30 Days of Yoga IRL. A yoga studio that opened by us ran an introductory special: Unlimited classes for 30 days for 30 bucks. At this place the default cost per class is $25, so obvi the 30 for $30 is a deal!
Studio yoga classes are expensive for me right now, but in general I think they can be worth their cost. My first yoga experiences happened at a time before it was mainstream, so doing it at all meant doing it at a dedicated studio with dedicated teachers. Good training early on gave me a solid and long-lived practice. Once you have a strong foundation, you can get greater value out of free yoga classes taught by aerobics instructors at low-rent gyms, or on YouTube during the pandemic.
And it enables you to recognize a well-lead class and really appreciate it, which I’ve been doing! I took about 15 classes in 30 days. In the near future, I’ll pick up a few “Community Classes” (classes a studio gives to the community at a lesser price) for the next couple months and it looks like next year will contain a couple months between producing gigs where extra time and extra money coincide and I’ll buy their month subscription then.
Dick Francis (and probably Mary Francis, too) One of my current writing assignments — the digital comic I’ve mentioned — involves horse racing and the kind of shenanigans that an ex-mafia guy in need of some extra currency might get up to at a horse-racing track. It’s up to me to figure out the details of what these shenanigans might be, so I’ve been researching, interviewing acquaintances who are into racing, reading books and articles about betting, watching old movies like “Let It Ride.” All these have been somewhat educational but not inspiring.
But then I stumbled onto the novels of Dick Francis… and they are so. much. fun! Like if Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett had a love child and he was a British steeplechase jockey… which is what Dick Francis was before embarking on his second career as a crime thriller writer. From 1962 to his death in 2010, he wrote 42 books. So far I’ve stayed up to into the wee hours reading his debut novel, Dead Cert, as well as all his books that feature his only recurring protagonist, Sid Halley – a one-handed ex-jockey-turned-crack-investigator who pursues his perps despite being haunted by personal demons. I’ll be looking for a couple Dick Francis novels to download to my Kindle before my upcoming 15-hour flight to Istanbul!
The library book I read didn’t have the cool Trevor Denning illustration of this first edition, but was just as fun between the covers.
Welp, I’ve let a couple months go by without posting, and now enough has happened that it’s difficult to pick any one thing to talk about, so I guess I’ll just ramble and see what comes out.
Right now, Paul and I are babysitting for our three and a half year old nephew. It’s a fun age to spend time with kids because they tend to be very loving and enthusiastic about the familiar adults in their lives. But it’s also an age where they demand lot of attention. Today’s original plan was to arrive around 6pm, and our assumption was that we’d eat and play and nephew would stay up an extra hour or so (that was a big deal when I was a kid!), and be asleep around 8:30ish. My original plan had been to work on one of my current gigs —story for a digital comic— for a couple hours in the afternoon, and then a couple more after nephew went to bed.
It turned out we actually needed to come earlier —around 3pm. When we got there, my brother-in-law informed us, that because it was special baby-sitter night, there were no rules! Our nephew had permission to watch TV or play as late as he wanted, etc… and they had let him have an extra long nap in preparation.
I’m sure you see where this is going…
At 3pm, our nephew was literally shrieking in excitement at our arrival. He couldn’t wait to show us his new plastic black widow spider.
The beloved Black Widow Spider
Eight hours later, we’ve played about a hundred games that involve hiding the spider, going for walks with the spider, building a cushion cave for the spider, playing “the floor is lava” with the spider. My nephew informed me at one point that the spider has “had a very good day.” It’s going on 11pm now, and I can report that while the spider’s battery seems to be depleting, my nephew’s energy is unflagging. Right now, he and Paul and the spider are watching You-tube videos set to repetitive carnival-like music and I’m stealing some laptop time to write this and send grateful thoughts and psychic reinforcement to all parents, teachers and childcare providers in the world… (more tomorrow).
When it comes to habits, the key takeaway is this: dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it. Gambling addicts have a dopamine spike right before they place a bet, not after they win. Cocaine addicts get a surge of dopamine when they see the powder, not after they take it. Whenever you predict that an opportunity will be rewarding, your levels of dopamine spike in anticipation. And whenever dopamine rises, so does your motivation to act.
It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action.
Atomic Habits, by James Clear, p 106
I’ve been thinking about anticipation in our society. About how dopamine keeps flowing for a person who believes a reward is coming—and how capitalism is great at instilling belief in rewards by showing us other people receiving rewards and selling the idea that with enough work, it will be our turn, or at least our children’s turn. And, if that seems too obviously unrealistic, Christianity offers the back-up belief that rewards will be offered in the life to come, if we are good.
For our economic system (or those who profit by it), it’s good for people to believe in capitalism, religion, or both because it keeps them anticipating a reward. If people stop anticipating— because they stop believing the reward will manifest, or in the value of the reward — their dopamine levels could drop to such an extent that (like the rats mentioned in my previous post) they stop working. Which would be bad, because everyone striving for their individual rewards within the system, is the system.
The pandemic has shown, in a small way, how when people can’t / won’t service the system, it becomes inconvenient for the people who need a new bathroom vanities, cling peaches or car parts, and it also becomes threatening to the people who normally profit from all these transactions. I’m far from the first to theorize that in order to keep things running, the system might ultimately have to provide rewards of actual value — like workplace safety, higher wages and maybe some other things, like respect and appreciation for one’s contributions and skills…etc.
Oops — I think most of that was a tangent. The real topic of this post (of course) is me.
Who am I? I’m a subset of people: i.e. a writer, existing in a subsector of the capitalist system: i.e. the entertainment industry. The rewards I want are the same boring things most people in my industry who aren’t sociopaths want: creative opportunities, a living wage, functional work relationships, etc. For a fair while, I’ve sustained myself with the anticipation of obtaining these, because I had some belief that it was possible. Like its parent system, Hollywood is great at saying “look at all these other people getting treats—if they can do it, you can too!”— and also selling the idea that if you are just good enough, God (or someone) will pick you and lift you up to heaven (or at least higher up the food chain). You can anticipate this happening at any moment…Dopamine!
The thing is, one starts to lose one’s ability to anticipate a bright future if this keeps happening:
If you don’t want to kick the ball anymore, CB, there’s thousands of writers out there who would kill for the chance.
Please know, that, within my field, I am in no way unique and this football-yanking happens to lots and lots of people, all the time. So this is not a plea for sympathy, inasmuch as a preamble for some self interrogation, wherein I ask:
Who’s at fault in the situation pictured above?
Is it Lucy, for being a jerk? For sure. But. Is it also Charlie Brown? Why does CB repeatedly come back to Lucy and her ball? Doesn’t he have any other friends who treat him better? Is Lucy so much more glamorous and interesting than those friends? Or, is Lucy his only acquaintance with a football, and a football is the only kind of ball he wants to kick?
What’s with Charlie Brown’s obsession with that dumb football anyway? That question is facetious — I know the answer. He feels like he’s meant to kick that football. If he could just have that one chance, where the ball didn’t get pulled away, and his foot could connect — he can feel in his bones how that football would go flying! (And once that ball was in the air, the world would know, and soon he’d have his face on a cereal box or at least be kicking footballs everyday for money. It’s just one kick between him and living the dream!)
But who are we kidding? It’s in Lucy’s nature to pull the ball away. Like the proverbial scorpion who has to sting, or like Jessica Rabbit, who’s just drawn that way, Lucy is literally incapable of not fucking with the ball.
So the question becomes, what should Charlie Brown do now? I mean, shouldn’t he try playing some other game that doesn’t include Lucy? Like baseball or soccer, or Yahtzee? Or maybe he could start mowing lawns, and just buy his own football?
Hell, he could start a lawn-mowing franchise and eventually buy a whole football team. By then he’d be past the prime for football-kicking himself, but he’d likely have friends who are more loyal than Lucy, clients who truly appreciate (and pay for) their evenly-cut lawns, and co-workers who invite him to BBQs and their kids’ birthday parties where they share inside jokes and compare lawn mowers.
Possibly, he could have a happy life with plenty of anticipation and dopamine despite never kicking a football!
Ugh, I just passed 1000 words! I didn’t want to do that. How can I wrap this up? Okay, here:
Capitalism is deeply flawed but seems poised to persist.
Given the fact that I’m not Neo, and can’t unplug from the Matrix, I need to live in it. (Matrix=capitalist system. I didn’t set up that metaphor in this mini-essay, but it’s so commonly used I don’t need to, right?)
Within the capitalist system, my stubborn commitment to football kicking (i.e. screenwriting) seems increasingly likely to end with me living underneath an overpass (at least between police sweeps), while Lucy / Hollywood forgets I ever existed and doesn’t feel the least bit guilty.
However, Hollywood is just one subsector of the big capitalist machine, and if I can quit sulking about the not-getting-to-kick-the-football thing, I could look for a different sector that doesn’t lead to the whole overpass scenario.
And in the process, I could even look for a sector with work-life balance, respect for my skills, and getting compensated happily and fairly instead of grudgingly and as little as possible. (I don’t know if this place actually exists, but what is life without a search for mythical lands?)
All of which would help renew my faith in humanity and the capitalist whole reward system, which would reset my ability anticipate good things, triggering the release of dopamine…
