News

I’ve worked on the rewrite of SWALLOWING DARKNESS all day. I’m damn near cross-eyed from it. Got to take a break. I’ve just finished walking my office back and forth until I got my pedometer to go over 5,000 steps. I find that it’s better to keep track of your step count than your time walking. I’ve really missed my treadmill time. Today was the first time I actually allowed myself to "exercise" walk. My ankle is letting me know that it’s still not well. I see the doctor later next week. Still wearing the brace most of the time, but I’m much better. Not nearly as painful.

But the walking, though making my ankle ache, made the rest of me feel better. A little more clear headed, and not so fuzzy. Rewrite is due next week, so probably will work some this weekend. Not a lot, but some. I found a quote that I’ve put near my computer on the main desk: "There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want, and after that, to enjoy it." Logan Pearsall Smith.

I’m pretty good at the first part; it’s the second part I’m not so good at. But you know what they say, the first step to learning a new habit, or getting rid of an old one, is to acknowledge the need for change. I need to change. Because if you don’t allow yourself to enjoy your success, you become a sort of slave to it. There are days when I feel like Marley from Charles Dickens’s "A Christmas Carol," you know when he shows up with all the ghostly chains. Now, his chains are formed of greed and cruelty, and that’s not my problem. But chains can be made up of anything that weighs you down, and my lack of enjoyment does just that. A work ethic is great, but you also need to enjoy yourself, or what are you working for?

Remember when I talked about us watching the movie "Real Genius" last weekend? This next bit is a spoiler, but the movie has been out since 1985, and so, I guess it’s not like I’m doing spoilers for "Dark Knight", but be warned, the next part is a spoiler. Ready?

There are two main characters of the movie. Val Kilmer’s character, Chris Knight, was once the best and brightest at a college that specializes in geniuses, but now there is a fifteen-year-old wunder-kin, whose supposed to be as bright or brighter. But Chris isn’t jealous, he asks to room with the kid. Why? Because, he feels that once he was Mitch, the kid, played by Gabriel Jarret, and he wanted to room with his old self. The kid is very buttoned up, and very, very serious about his work. Chris is not. In fact, he’s a party guy, and the life of the party. He spends the early part of the movie trying to get Mitch to lighten up, and uses another older genius that broke under the pressure as a warning to Mitch, and himself, that if you don’t lighten up, you break. So far, so good, but then Chris’s character’s behavior endangers his entire future. His partying ways, and his neglect of his work threatens to loose him a chance to graduate and the job he thinks is already his after college. It takes Mitch’s help to save Chris’s future. By the end of the movie Mitch is enjoying his life more, and has a girl friend. Chris is still having a good time, (look for the bunny slippers at the end), but he’s also realized that maybe a little work and seriousness has it’s uses. The message that I took away from the movie was that if you’re too serious, you go nuts, and have no fun, but if you have only fun, you throw away everything, and end up with nothing. It’s the middle ground between the two extremes that is successful, and enjoyable.

I have to say, I finished the movie and wondered if I was Mitch? I’ll never be Chris. I’m far too serious for that. Besides, I knew guys in high school and college that were like Chris (without the genius part), and I found them shallow and insincere. Or that’s how they hit my radar. Truthfully, like the two characters in the film I found that the party guys needed a little of Mitch’s sincerity to make me be interested in them, but the Mitchs of the world needed a little of that lightness to keep the two of us from being so serious it wasn’t any fun to date each other. I need a man who makes me laugh, and can take me out of myself, because I live in a world that can get very dark, and very, very serious. Some people think that’s what being a grown-up means, but it doesn’t. If you’re careful, you can be pretty much the same person as an adult that you were as a child. I was a very serious child. I am a grown-up that gets paid for sitting alone in a room and playing with my imaginary friends. I just write down my games now, and share them with you guys. But, in the end, I get paid to play let’s-pretend. I was doing the same thing at seven, though admittedly, with a less adult content.

But somewhere in all that "play" I’m struggling to have fun. When did my "play" become just work? When did I cross the boundary from Chris-land and slide back into Mitch-world? Where is my middle ground? One of the reasons that Jon and I work is a couple is that he is better at having fun than I am, so he helps me lighten up. I help him be more serious, and work better. It’s a balance. But lately, he can only lighten me up so far, and I’m left with the thought: am I Mitch at the beginning of the movie, and if I don’t get a little more Chris Knight in me, will I break?